Javier Sierra
On Monday April 18th, I joined Sierra Club President Aaron Mair, Washington D.C. Chapter Chair Matt Gravatt, Virginia Chapter Leader Charles Strickler, and over 300 other concerned citizens as we risked arrest on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in defense of a functioning Democracy. This followed a week-long series of arrests when, in total, more than 1,400 people were arrested in an act of civil disobedience to call for a functioning Democracy. I strongly believe that we will not achieve the types of sweeping changes we need in our society to adequately combat climate change, until we have a functioning Democracy. And a functioning Democracy necessarily means that all people have access to the ballot box, and that their votes will count. Unfortunately, right now, that simply isn’t the reality in the United States. Forces like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been pushing state laws for years designed to systematically disenfranchise millions of Americans. In fact, the communities disproportionately suffering from the toxic effects of fossil fuel pollution and the dangers of the climate crisis are also disproportionately affected by these attacks on our democracy. And at the same time, corporations have been allowed to pour an obscene amount of money into elections, through PACs and Super PACs, buying politicians to do their bidding and scaring others into staying silent on critical issues like climate change.
I have seen this corrupting influence of money over our Democracy first hand throughout the decade I’ve lived in DC. I worked alongside many of our partners to try and pass comprehensive climate legislation for years, and saw how beholden many of our elected officials are to the corporations that helped elect them - making any bold legislation -- any bill that would truly change the way we power our country -- essentially impossible to pass through Congress. And in the nearly decade-long fight against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, I saw how terrified some members of Congress were to go up against the unendingly deep pockets of the American Petroleum Institute. And working with the Sierra Club’s Victory Corps program, which allows staff to go out and join campaigns to help elect progressive leaders, I saw the very real impacts of voter suppression laws that hinder many American’s ability to vote at all - thus hindering our ability to elect leaders that will stand up for progressive change.
Making change in this country is not impossible in the money-drenched, corrupt situation in which we find ourselves - in fact, we’ve seen that if we can get enough people out in the streets, making enough noise to demand change, we can overcome even the most powerful foes. For instance, we’ve seen the President respond to the growing call for action on climate change. But it sure would be a lot easier to get the job done, to enact laws that would usher in the clean energy solutions that we know are technologically possible, if Congress could muster the political will to back them - and getting big money out of politics and allowing people access to the voting booth would do just that.
We’ve made this case to our elected officials in meetings, in letters, in telephone calls from constituents. And, unfortunately, Congress has failed to act. That’s why 1,400 of us decided to take this call for a functioning Democracy to the next level in an act of civil disobedience. I was proud to stand alongside President Mair and leaders like Cornell Brooks of the NAACP and Annie Leonard of Greenpeace in this act. There is a growing movement afoot, a movement uniting our progressive causes, where we’re stronger than the sum of our parts. And I’m so proud the Sierra Club is part of it. We can avoid catastrophic climate change and protect communities and our planet from the most devastating impacts - if we stand together and demand that our leaders act. And securing a functioning democracy would get us well on the way to a safer and more just world.