I was pleased to be a part of the Sierra Club Board of Directors’ historic effort in May 2015 to approve our multi-year Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) plan. One of the significant points about adopting DEI at this time was to ensure that the Sierra Club moves forward to engage and encourage the entire organization to value and learn from our nation’s rich, diverse mosaic of people and cultures. This is critical if we are going to be serious about our organization’s core mission to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth.
No one race alone can speak for all human experience or determine what constitutes fair, adequate, and inclusive stewardship of the environment. Moreover, no one group of people speaks for all species or living things that do not have voices to speak for themselves. We all do. In order to enjoy and restore and protect these resources, we must struggle and build new communities of respect and awareness of our interdependence. In short, we must build a new inclusive environmental movement.
The Pope just last week identified that our capitalist and colonial heritage of exploiting natural resources, people, lands, water, and air for the benefit of a few is neither sustainable nor morally responsible. In fact, it has led to a degradation of the people, species, and the planet.
Our current society has created a culture of privilege for the few at the expense of the many -- and at the expense of the planet. To correct that, we must break down barriers of race, class, and social privilege or entitlement to build a movement that is inclusive, diverse, respectful, and truly welcoming to people of color and First Nations. We must move beyond the paradigm of one group’s perspective on the environment -- and environmentalism -- to build a movement that is transparent, inclusive, and representative of all Americans’ perspectives.
The Sierra Club’s DEI Plan and organizational cultural shift will provide individuals, groups, and chapters with guidance to help them articulate and advocate for justice and fairness in local and state policy settings, as well as adapt local strategies that recognize the concerns and needs of local partners.
The tragic events in South Carolina last week illustrate how warped perceptions of one race, people, or culture directly and deeply affect others’ right to live, enjoy, and share our planet. Our nation, and by extension the Sierra Club, has long delayed serious, meaningful, and open conversation on being open-minded, accepting, and respectful of other races, groups, and their right to share this planet.
Like our nation, the Club has failed to connect with these communities to understand how they often face the front-line impacts of pollution and environmental degradation created by a governing and regulatory framework from which their voices are being blocked by “voter ID” schemes that have historically denied these communities a say in shaping their lives. The Club has not been immune to this culture of privilege and the advantages that privilege conveys to one segment of America at the expense of all others.
The problem is not simply privilege; it is also the failure to recognize that conscious and unconscious perceptions and beliefs about race, economics, land use, and politics can have deadly impacts. (The Charleston shooter was a 21-year-old whose actions were anchored in his beliefs about African Americans.) Charleston is a reminder of how deep we must dig -- as a nation, a people, and a Club -- to deprogram our communities, culture, and society of class privilege so that racism and all its associated evils are recognized and dismantled.
This journey to build a diverse and inclusive environmental movement is not optional, nor should it be perceived as a distraction from our environmental work. DEI is more than the work; it is the work ethic! Without these ethics and values our work cannot be done. This is part of that deep population morality, respect for others, and stewardship of the planet that the Pope spoke of.
The Pope has reminded us that we have built a nation -- or more correctly, many nations -- whose power happens to be rooted in injustice to others and the destruction of our planet. We as environmentalists must tear down these exploitative constructs that view people and nature as raw materials for the benefit of the few and move to create new constructs in nurturing new sets of relationships that value nature and mankind so that we can save the planet.
We are really shaking off our colonial ancestors’ attitudes that were not sustainable at the founding of this nation, and have proven to be unsustainable even now. In fact, it is this colonial privilege and attitude of entitlement that has held back the Club from being a true population- and planet-mobilizing resource. Our skills and resources are now being called upon with unprecedented urgency to solve the climate and extinction crisis and to restore our democracy and redress the legacy of exclusion.