Maryland Sierra Club Organizer Garners Kudos in Essence Magazine

Maryland Sierra Club organizer Christine Hill was featured in Essence magazine's "Young, Black, and Amazing!" package in its August issue (p. 50).

[The feature appears in the print, but not the online edition of the magazine.]

"Armed with a law degree, this conservation representative works with the Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club to demand a safe and healthy environment," Essence writes. "Hill is known for rallying members and leading town hall meetings petitioning for clean water and air and renewable clean energy."

Essence, a monthly magazine targeted at African-American women between the ages of 18 and 49, has a monthly circulation of 1,050,000 and an estimated readership of 8.5 million.

"To be featured in Essence is truly an honor," Hill says. "I've been reading this magazine for as long as I can remember. I even remember being a little girl, sitting on my momma's lap as she read it."

Hill says black environmentalists have been historically overlooked. "I hope this feature can be a catalyst for other young women of color to get involved and become the leaders of this and coming generations."

Born and raised in the Washington, D.C., area, Hill earned a Bachelor's of Art in Broadcast Communications and Electronic Media from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and then went on to earn a Juris Doctor from Vermont Law School (currently ranked #1 in Environmental Law by U.S. News and World Report) in South Royalton, Vermont.

As the Conservation and Policy Associate with the Sierra Club's Maryland Chapter and Beyond Coal campaign, Hill has been working to promote clean energy—and particularly offshore wind—to members of the Maryland state legislature. When she's not in Annapolis working on clean energy policy, she is collaborating with other Sierra Club and community organizers in Prince George's County, Maryland—per capita the wealthiest black-majority county in the nation—on effective grassroots strategies in communities of color.

Hill has led, organized, or co-organized rallies, press conferences, town hall meetings and lobby day events, written newspaper articles, and given speeches on various topics. She recently introduced Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley's Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act at the 2012 Maryland Legislative Session's Environmental Summit.

Above, Hill discusses the bill with citizens in Annapolis; below, local residents sign up to be Sierra Club members at a town hall meeting on offshore wind power that Hill helped organize in Prince George's County.

Bronze Star Recipient Stacy Bare New Mission Outdoors Director

Photo by Chris Kassar

On July 16, former U.S. Army Captain and Bronze Star recipient Stacy Bare was named director of the Sierra Club's Mission Outdoors program. Formerly a representative for the Club's Military Families & Veterans Initiative, Bare served in Bosnia and Iraq and spent time as a civilian explosive ordnance disposal technician in Angola and the Republic of Georgia.

That's Bare in the blue parka atop 14,411-foor Mt. Rainier—highest peak in the Cascade Range—the week before he officially took the reins of Mission Outdoors. From left to right: Luis Benitez, Bare, Nick Watson, and Chad Butrick. (Watson and Butrick are fellow veterans.) Last fall, Bare helped train eight veterans in mountaineering and accompanied them on a September 11 ascent of the Grand Teton in Wyoming to commemorate 9/11.

After receiving the Bronze Star for meritorious service in Baghdad during the Iraq War, Bare returned to the States and completed his Masters in City Planning and Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

It was during this time that he first began to struggle with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To combat the affliction, he turned to rock-climbing and the outdoors, which he credits with allowing him to rebuild his life.

"Life experience has left me believing in the healing power of time spent in nature," he says. "Access to our nation's outdoors spaces and wild places—around the corner and across the country—ought not to be exclusive. I look forward to leading Mission Outdoors and ensuring that access to nature is available to anyone who wants and needs it."

Mission Outdoors is comprised of four Sierra Club programs: Building Bridges to the Outdoors; Inner City Outings; Local Outings; and the Military Families & Veterans Initiative. "Taken together, these programs embody the heritage and spirit of John Muir's vision to connect America to the great outdoors," Bare says.

Sierra Club Proud to Be a "Got Your Six" Campaign Partner

 

The "Got Your Six" (GY6) campaign is a show of force from the American pubic to ensure that we welcome home our returning veterans - an additional one million in the next five years - as leaders and civic assets who can be key contributing members to our communities. There are six pillars to the GY6 campaign: Jobs, Education, Health, Housing, Family, and Leadership.

The Sierra Club is proud to be a strategic partner to help assist the activation partners on five of the six pillars. We will work with our partners to help identify employment opportunities in the great outdoors and clean energy fields for veterans; support continued environmental education; improve social and mental health, as well as the reintegration of families through expanding outside recreation opportunities; and ultimately through transitioning military leadership skills to the outdoors to get all of America outside.

The Sierra Club has a long history with the military, highlighted by WW2 and 10th Mountain Veteran David Brower who as a Sierra Club member helped to train the 10th Mountain, and as a decorated Veteran (won the Bronze Star) of the 10th Mountain went on to become the Sierra Club’s first executive director. We reinitiated our partnership with the military with the creation of the Military Family Outdoors program in 2006, now a part of Mission Outdoors.

We have strong qualitative evidence that time in the outdoors helps to strengthen families and mitigate the effects of post-traumatic stress. We help veterans utilitize their skills through leadership in the outdoors and through community service. Community service opportunities for veterans abound in the Sierra Club through programs like the Water Sentinels, Inner City Outings, Local Outings, and more.

 

Supporting military families and veterans is not a partisan issue. We can all do our part and at the Sierra Club we are proud of the work we have done and will continue to do to ensure our military and veteran communities and families can all get outside to experience the freedom of the land they defended.

Learn more about "Got Your Six" at their website.

Southwestern Tribes Lead Cultural Healing March to Move Beyond Coal

Enduring record heat, Native Americans in southern Nevada led a three-day, 50-mile Cultural Healing Walk over Earth Day weekend to draw attention to the devastating effects of coal pollution on their community. The Moapa Band of Paiutes partnered with the Sierra Club to organize the walk and Earth Day rally, which drew members of several tribal nations and supporters from throughout the Southwest.

The cultural healing walk commenced at the Reid Gardner coal-fired power plant, which abuts Moapa Paiute lands, and ended at an April 23 rally at the Lloyd George Federal Building in Las Vegas. Reid Gardner is the last coal-burning power plant in Nevada.

The goal of the healing walk was to highlight the harm Reid Gardner is doing to the tribe's health, culture, and economy. Toxic coal dust from the plant is picked up by wind storms, blows over tribal lands and the towns of Moapa and Mesquite, and up to pristine areas like the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park.

"We were here, we are here, and we will be here," Moapa Paiute member Calvin Meyers says of his tribe's relationship to their historical lands. Watch this video about the cultural healing walk, produced by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, featuring Moapa Paiute members and local Sierra Club organizer Vinny Spotleson. That's Spotleson below, with his mom, Kay.

Big Push for Offshore Wind Power in Maryland

After Governor Martin O'Malley's Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2012 passed in the state House of Delegates on March 30 by an overwhelming 88-47 vote, hundreds of Marylanders from across the state gathered in Annapolis on April 2 to show their support for the bill as the Senate prepared to vote.

 
Working as part of Marylanders for Offshore Wind Power—a coalition of environmental, labor, faith, business, and community groups who have joined together to help spur the development of offshore wind energy off Maryland's coast—the Sierra Club helped turn out more than 500 citizen activists from different backgrounds to listen to the governor (below), members of the House, and other wind advocates.

"It would be absolutely nuts for us, as an Atlantic state, not to want to be one of the first to harness the most available, renewable resource we have out there," said O'Malley.

The Maryland Sierra Club has been working for two years to promote the Offshore Wind Energy Act, which would jumpstart an offshore wind industry that is expected to create thousands of clean energy jobs and provide a huge share of Maryland's power in the decades to come.

Student organizations, nurses, religious groups, and minority businesses were among those who spoke in support of offshore wind. Maryland Sierra Club organizer Christine Hill (below) helped organize the Annapolis rally.

"Energy experts agree that America’s coastline from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, is one of the best places in the world for wind turbines," she said. "It is a region of shallow water, very windy conditions, and it's right next to 64 million electricity users from Boston to Charlotte. A multi-billion dollar wind industry is coming soon—guaranteed—to this region as a solution to our twin challenges of energy independence and intensifying global warming."

Shaking the President’s Hand at White House Conference on Conservation

By Tiffany Saleh, Mission Outdoors Outreach Representative

"Connecting people to our lands is personally important to me," said President Obama at the White House Conference on Conservation, held on March 2 at the Department of the Interior. The conference, convened by the President and his cabinet, was titled Growing America's Outdoor Heritage and Economy, and involved leaders in the conservation community in a discussion about progress made by the America's Great Outdoors (AGO) initiative and strategies for growing that success.

I was honored to receive an invitation to speak during a conference breakout panel on youth and outdoor education. In attending the conference, I was glad to see a continued focus on connecting people to the outdoors, the prime focus of Sierra Club's Mission Outdoors program.

Since the inception of the AGO initiative two years ago, Mission Outdoors has taken this opportunity to not only educate leaders about the growing divide between people and nature, but to encourage this issue's inclusion as a major pillar of the administration's conservation platform. We organized youth leaders to attend the listening sessions, developed for Sierra Club's vision document recommendations about reconnecting youth with the outdoors, worked with our partners at the Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK) to support the First Lady's Let's Move Outside initiative, and much more.

That's why I was so happy to hear the administration emphasizing over and over the importance of getting outdoors, not only for individuals, but for the conservation movement and the American economy. 

The Inner City Outings Kids Are Alright

"This trail is so … naturey. There's so much going on all around us!" says a middle schooler.

"This is the most fun day I've ever had outside," says another.

"When I grow up I'm going to make a forest," says a first grader.

These are among the things often heard by Liz Wheelan, chair of Inner City Outings in Dallas, while leading trips for kids who never experience the outdoors. For years she has written down quotes as she's heard them.

"The kids say it better than I do," she says.

Inner City Outings encompasses 50 volunteer-run groups across the country that lead more than 800 trips and affect the lives of 14,000 kids each year. These kids commonly live in high-crime areas and rarely see the outdoors beyond their neighborhoods. Whether it's backpacking, whitewater rafting, or camping at a place they'd never heard of before, kids who experience ICO trips learn of a whole other world. And they take the memories with them.

"One of them actually mentioned ICO in his valedictorian speech and how that had helped him become more self confident and see things outside of Dallas," Liz says. "It still makes me teary. I can't imagine kids not having the outdoors. That's why making it possible for them is the best use of the time I have."

Liz grew up in Northwest Illinois in Rock Island, next to the Mississippi River. Her town sat adjacent to a state park, where she would visit frequently as a respite.

Volunteers Clean Up Park for MLK Day

Sierra Club and a coalition of groups are reporting that Monday's 6th Annual MLK Day Clean-Up of Pope Branch Park in the Ward 7 neighborhood of Washington, DC, was a great success.

Irv Sheffey, Sierra Club Environmental Justice Associate Field Organizer in DC, (pictured below in the center) says more than 80 volunteers turned out to remove trash and debris from the park and surrounding neighborhood - and they removed more than 6,000 pounds of trash. He's pleased with how popular and effective the clean-up has become.

"Each year we see more and more improvement in the cleanliness of the park and I attribute it to the quality of care demonstrated at (the MLK Day event) and one we hold in the spring," Irv says. "The community and the river are the direct beneficiaries of that effort." The Pope Branch Creek near the park is a tributary of the Anacostia River.

Irv says he's also happy at how many more volunteers turn out at every clean-up event, despite cold weather or distance for them to the neighborhood.

"These were 82 volunteers from all around the neighborhood, city, and region. I'm always amazed at the volunteers who come out to help in polishing this little gem of a park in southeast (DC). These are people, some coming from afar, who could have chosen to be home, spending time with their families, watching TV, and generally keeping warm. They chose to be out in our community making a difference in the spirit of Dr. King, proving his legacy lives on."

Photos by Dolly Davis

Juan Martinez Appointed to Sierra Club Foundation's Board of Directors

On December 19, the Sierra Club Foundation announced that Juan Martinez, above, has become the newest member of its Board of Directors. At 27, the native of South-Central Los Angeles becomes the youngest member of the Foundation's board.

"It's an honor to be part of an organization where I've gone from being a participant to now sitting on the board," Martinez says. "The Sierra Club deals with environmental issues, but ultimately these are human issues. The environment affects people's lives, and we can improve people's lives for the better. I hope to represent the heartbeat of the environmental movement on the Foundation's board."

Martinez first became involved with the Sierra Club as a participant in Building Bridges to the Outdoors while in high school in South Central L.A. He worked his way up to the position of youth volunteer coordinator, and went on to join the Sierra Student Coalition's executive committee and helped construct the organization's policy.

"The Sierra Club is a big part of my personal story and a significant part of my life," Martinez says. "So many of my friends and mentors are part of the Club. I feel I can point to almost anyplace in the country and find people who are part of this tribe and the fight to improve the way of life for ourselves and future generations."

That's Martinez at center, below, as part of the Sierra Club contingent at the 2009 Breaking the Color Barrier in the Great Outdoors conference.

Maryland Offshore Wind Town Hall Promotes Clean Energy & Green Jobs

The Sierra Club filled the room at a recent town hall meeting in Maryland about offshore wind energy. The event was held in the Hillcrest Heights community of Prince George's County, a predominately African American community just a few miles upwind of the GenOn Potomac River coal plant in Virginia. [The GenOn Potomac plant was recently scheduled for closure, thanks largely to the work of the Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.]

"The town hall event drew a diverse crowd," says Sierra Club organizer Chandler Sherman, "from lifelong Sierrans to Prince George's residents who, having never heard of offshore wind energy before, wanted to bring cleaner air and jobs to their community." That's Sherman at left, above, with Maryland State Delegate Aisha Braveboy and fellow Sierra Club organizer Chris Hill.

"Organizing in my communities, communities of color, is key to moving Maryland and our country beyond coal and into clean renewable energy, says Hill. "I'm so pleased to see that this was a true grassroots community-based town hall." Below, new Sierra Club members sign postcards to protect Chesapeake Bay.