May 13, 2013
by James Turner, Missouri Chapter Chair
Our Missouri Chapter’s work is supporting the three-point strategy announced by our Club’s Board of Directors for 2011. Let’s review the three strategies, and examples of our work in each category:
1. Confront the dominance of coal and oil on the American economy, politics, and our environment.
Our Chapter works in tandem with the Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign to support Labadie activists opposing a 400-acre coal ash landfill being pushed by Ameren in the Missouri River floodplain.
2. Cultivate an activist base that is capable and willing both to take action at the Sierra Club’s behest and also to self-organize within their networks.
We are pressing for a strong management plan for the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, and have collected almost one thousand petition signatures on-line. Communication through the Club’s Activist Network helps us to stay involved in a multistate effort to protect the Missouri
River’s ecology.
3. Build powerful alliances with those communities that have a vested interest in the success of a clean energy economy, including cleantech businesses and entrepreneurs, people of color groups, organized labor and low-income organizations.
We have conducted three Green Jobs tours of Missouri clean-tech businesses that build components for wind technology – in each case, we worked with the labor union leadership at the plant as well. Our Eastern Missouri Group is involved in community gardening in a
low-income neighborhood. Our Osage Group is supporting residents of a trailer park in Columbia who are fighting for a healthier community. Our THB group declared solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and held a press event on “the Day of 7 Billion” at the Occupy KC site.