SierraScape April - May 2003
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by McNeer Dillon - Ozark Chapter Political Chairman
Are you really interested in saving the environment? Will you work for this on behalf of the Eastern Missouri Group Sierra Club? All leadership positions and volunteer jobs are currently open on the EMG Political Committee. I have been elected Ozark Chapter Political Chairman. A replacement Political Committee Chairman is needed for the EMG. A new organizational approach has been completed that will allow the committee to be more effective in its goal: to get more environmentalists elected to political office in Missouri. We will need people to do research, work on campaign tactics, recruit candidates, manage the media, do fund raising and take care of political projects such as voter registration drives.
Environmentalists have been learning about the political process in recent elections. Let me recount some of my own experience. Preoccupied with the simple goal of getting pro-environmental candidates elected to office, I accepted the chairmanship of the EMG Political Committee several years ago. I did not know a great deal about politics, and had to struggle to learn. I studied what various other political organizations did. After the experience of banging through a couple of general election campaigns, I gained some clear ideas of what is required to find and elect candidates.
It has been my experience that some Sierrans though interested in ecology and outdoor activities, tend to shun politics and generally repudiate politicians. Some think politicians are too involved with selfish, special interests and immersed in personal egotistical exercises. All politicians and parties are thought to have unworthy ulterior motives. These folks mostly seem to feel it is better to have nothing to do with them. I understand how people develop such suspicions, but I think that this is too important an arena to ignore. People have been found in eastern Missouri who really are interested in giving honest public service. We have some legislators currently in office who are trying to establish sound public policy that serves the people at large, and not just a few special interests. Integrity may be discovered more broadly distributed in politics and government than folks suspect. Within the last five years, the EMG has endorsed and the Chapter has ratified numerous candidates for state and federal offices, they have sincere desires to be good public servants.
Personally, I am pleased to have had the opportunity to contribute my part to the election of these candidates, to the improvement of our government, and to the protection of the environment. You could have that satisfaction for yourself too. Join us.
I invite all Sierra Club members to join our political team in order to elect to state and national office those candidates who are sincere public servants and who will protect the environment against those special interests abusing it. We will investigate to learn the facts, and we will work to support the campaigns of those in whom we gain confidence.
Our group needs a political team that will stay together and improve its effectiveness thorough numerous elections. We are trying to form that team now. We seek people who believe in the value of our political effort. We want to divide and distribute the workload among them fairly. The new group chairman and the sub-committee leaders will have the full help and support of the chapter chairman in getting the activities moving.
EMG members are urged to consider what they might do to serve the EMG Political Committee. This is where the true grass roots political work for the protection of the environment is accomplished. It really needs to be done. No other activity or effort of the club sets legislators in place to vote in defense of the environment
So, are you really interested in saving the environment ? Will you work for this on behalf of the EMG Sierra Club? If you are, and will give a little time to the effort, call Mac Dillon at 314-862-6239 or Penny Holtzmann at 314-644-0890.