June 20, 2017
Editor’s Note: As our own Aaron Mair, a Schenectady, NY, resident, has just finished his term as president of National Sierra Club Board of Directors, he continues to promote the Sierra Club as a leader in environmental protection and as a bulwark against recent initiatives to backslide on our national commitment to fight climate change. We offer him a heartfelt thanks for his tireless work on behalf of the Sierra Club and the environment during the past two years, and we wish him well in his future endeavors — we know that our environment will be a better place for it.
People’s Climate March
Which Side Are You On?
(with a tip of the hat to Pete Seeger’s lyrics)
by Aaron Mair
Aaron Mair in front of the Sierra Club contingent at the People's Climate March, Washington DC (photo courtesy of Aaron Mair) |
John Muir used the simple organizing and mobilizing tool of a humble outing to inspire President Theodore Roosevelt to protect a national treasure — Yosemite — and commemorate it as a national park. This tried-and-true tool proved effective when we had a functioning democracy and a national government that respected science. Today we have a Congress and White House that are seeking to dismantle (or as they put it, “deconstruct”) not only government, but also long-standing laws like the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gives presidents the power to designate national monuments on federal lands to protect natural, cultural or scientific features. Now we must march and work in concert with other environmental and justice-focused groups to build a movement to resist this government threat to environmental protection.
President Obama used the Antiquities Act to not only preserve wilderness acreage, but also to heal our country’s cultural disconnect over how Native Americans, blacks, Asians, Hispanics and the labor, faith, justice and LGBTQ communities all have sacred symbols, places and spaces that need to be preserved for the enrichment of the common good for generations to come. The current attempt by the Trump administration to dismantle the newly designated Bears Ears National Monument represents more than the threat of losing wilderness and open space — it represents the perpetuation of a longstanding assault on Native American sacred space.
The designation of Bears Ears as a national monument is a shining example of how far our nation and the environmental movement have come in building national awareness of errors committed in the past in the name of conservation, but which all too often came at the expense of the deep cultural connection Native Americans have with the land. President Obama recognized this, and used the Antiquities Act not only to protect North American landscapes, but to help heal historic wrongs and atone for past errors (however well-intentioned).
Why, then, would the Trump administration attempt to reverse this 111-year-old covenant to protect America’s environmental heritage? Simple! It is the corporate campaign-finance influence of the oil, coal, gas, uranium and mineral extraction industries that seek to dismantle our environmental, public health, natural resource and labor laws for the sake of their shareholders.
The People’s Climate March was about community stakeholders standing up to the polluting interests of dirty-energy shareholders. In the past, our movements did not see, fully comprehend or factor in the connection of the human condition at all levels of environmental protection. We do now. From the threat of defiling Bears Ears by re-opening its sacred sites to natural resource extraction to the burning of gas and coal that is killing our climate, we are collaborating with a groundbreaking coalition of environmental justice groups, labor allies and the frontline communities that are most vulnerable to the climate crisis and Donald Trump’s pro-polluter policies.
While Trump and his minions attempt to dismantle the progress we’ve made, the world is moving away from dirty fuels toward clean, renewable energy, a healthier earth and a booming clean energy job market. But President Trump and his allies in Congress have purposely turned a blind eye, and in the administration’s first 100 days have demonstrated that they pose a very real and serious threat to our public health, environment, worker’s safety and public health. It is clear that for this administration, profits come before people.
This is precisely why the Sierra Club joined on April 29 with frontline communities, justice-focused collectives and environmental justice, labor, civil rights, faith-based, indigenous and youth groups in taking to the streets in Washington, DC, and beyond, to march for climate, jobs and justice. We marched to resist the Trump administration’s assault on American values and stand up for clean air, clean water, family-supporting jobs, protecting all of our communities and investing in our future.