This message was shared by our Director Ben Jealous about our national gathering here in Tennessee. A few edits have been made for posting.
This is a pivotal moment for our country, our planet, our movement, and the Sierra Club as an organization. It is crucial that Sierra Club leaders come together to align on our priorities and prepare for upcoming threats and opportunities. Further, it is important for us to come together to establish how we can best support every single person who works here, who volunteers with us, and who dedicates their precious time to the Sierra Club and the movement.
We hope this forum and opportunity for face-to-face meetings will help strengthen the bonds of camaraderie; that they will embolden collaboration among our geographically dispersed staff and volunteer leaders.
Besides being a relatively central and inexpensive-to-travel-to location for our participants, there is relevant history and a significance to our work of the region, the state, and even the part of the state where we will be.
As we all know, the bulk of clean energy projects are going to red states like Tennessee, with roughly 80% of clean energy investments going to Republican districts like the one we’ll be in. For decades, states like California led the way in the adoption of renewables. But as that has shifted, so must we. Red states are the future of the green economy and the future of the green movement. What makes Sierra Club powerful is that we are in every state, and it is the red states where we have focused on making up lost ground these past couple of years with the addition of more Chapter directors.
Nashville is no longer just the beltbuckle of the Bible Belt, it is now also the beltbuckle of America’s Battery Belt.
I grew up both fearful and fascinated by Tennessee. My mother told me stories of having to hide against the floorboards of the cars she traveled in to evade the Klan. Yet, the soundtrack of the movements of the 60s and 70s I was enamored with as the child of activist parents was the rock music that was born in Memphis. Memphis musical and cultural staple B.B. King was also a legend where I grew up in California because of his performances at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
The history is rich for both the civil rights and environmental movements as well. Middle Tennessee, where we will be, is the birthplace of climate leaders like Al Gore and Van Jones. And Tennessee is the death place of Dr. King, whose final days in Memphis were spent teaching us about intersectional movement building as he spoke and organized on behalf of a poor people’s campaign and striking sanitation workers. Tennessee was also home to the Highlander Folk School, a civil rights movement academy where leaders like Dr. King and Rosa Parks received training. And it was at Nashville’s Fisk University where, as young students, future civil rights icons like John Lewis and Diane Nash were taught by Rev. James Lawson.
We will be at the Wilson County Fairgrounds. It offers us an expansive space including campgrounds, allowing us to grow and evolve the Sierra Summit into the future. It sits in a region on the vanguard of regenerative agriculture, less than an hour from Al Gore’s farm which itself is a beacon of regenerative farming.
Finally, working in places like Tennessee is vital as we hone our effectiveness in carrying the banners of audacious hospitality and building uncomfortably large coalitions.
We are excited not only for this gathering but to reap the fruit it will produce. This will be the kind of gathering that fuels movements and spawns the bold ideas and strategies that create progress.
I look forward to seeing so many of you in Tennessee and our entire community when we all come together next year.
On behalf of all the Sierra Club’s leadership, thank you for everything you do.
Ben