We are very excited to announce former State Senator Kevin de León as Keynote Speaker for our David Brower Dinner this fall. The annual gala celebration and awards ceremony will take place on the evening of Saturday, September 21st at San Francisco's Delancey Street Town Hall. To hear Senator de León's address and to support the work of your local Sierra Club chapter, purchase tickets or sponsorships online here, or call Matt Bielby at 510-848-0800 ext. 321.
- Ed Bennett Lifetime Achievement Award: Helen Burke
- Phil Burton Profile in Courage Award: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Chief of Staff Dan Bernal accepting on her behalf with brief video by the speaker)
- Trailblazer Award: John Sutter
- Youth Award: Oxford Elementary's Zero Waste Classroom and the Heirs to Our Oceans Club
- Dave and Pat Michener Outings Leader Award: Steve Bakaley
Here's more information about Senator de León and the evening's inspiring honorees:
Former State Senator Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) was the first Latino elected President pro Tempore in more than 130 years. Born to the very humblest of beginnings and confronted with a multitude of obstacles, Kevin emerged to become a civil rights organizer, and an accomplished state lawmaker.
In the Legislature, de León was known nationally for trailblazing legislation. His first ballot measure upon arrival in Sacramento was to allocate funds to the creation of new parks in underserved communities, helping make enjoyment of nature more accessible to Californians. De León later authored a bill requiring the California Air Resources Board spend at least 25% of cap-and-trade revenue to benefit low-income communities disproportionately affected by pollution. In 2014, his Charge Ahead California Act created a rebate initiative to make electric cars more affordable for working class families. Later, in 2017, de León sponsored a law (that was passed in 2018) which requires California generate 50% renewable electricity by 2026 and 100% by 2045.
De León also co-chaired Proposition 39, which closed a corporate-tax loophole and provided $2.5 billion in revenue for energy-efficiency upgrades in schools. Mr. de León is a proponent of California's high speed rail project, and has spearheaded the cleanup of hazardous pollution caused by the Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon. Mr. de León led the California delegation to the UN's Climate Talks in Peru and Morocco, and accompanied Governor Brown to Paris in 2015 to help showcase California's environmental accomplishments.
Helen Burke is the winner of the 2019 Ed Bennett Lifetime Achievement Award.
This year marks Helen Burke’s 50th year of Sierra Club membership. Since she moved to Berkeley in the early 1970s, Helen has served in many Club leadership roles at the local and state levels. In 1977 she was elected to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors. Helen’s ongoing volunteer work with the Club includes tireless advocacy on behalf of East Bay parkland and park users.
Helen served four terms as an elected member of the East Bay Municipal Utility District Board of Directors. When she was first elected in 1974, Helen was the first woman and first environmentalist to serve on the board. Although initially outvoted 6-1, she was eventually able to push through a rate re-structuring that encouraged conservation.
In 1986, Helen began a 16-year career in environmental planning at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Among her efforts, she coordinated community relations at Superfund hazardous waste sites; developed a plan for waste minimization efforts at a State agency regional office; developed and implemented an enforcement program to reduce exposure of young children to lead-based paint; and managed a successful stakeholder consensus-building process to reduce sediment in runoff from going into Coyote Creek in the South Bay.
Helen has had an active retirement. In addition to her work with the Sierra Club, she continued her passion for planning and community service by serving on the Berkeley Planning Commission (including one year as chair) and the Downtown Area Planning Committee. She also chaired the Creeks Task Force for two years to develop revisions to the 1989 Berkeley Creeks Ordinance that were ultimately adopted by the City Council.
In addition to her ongoing environmental activism, Helen’s retirement has afforded her the opportunity to develop as an artist. Her paintings, which have won awards, express the joy she finds in nature.
John Sutter is the 2019 winner of the Trailblazer Award.
Born and raised in Oakland, where he still lives, John Sutter developed an appreciation for nature as a boy when his parents took the family on trips to the Sierra. Those early trips paved the way for a six-decade career championing environmental protection and the expansion of open space, parks, trails, and the San Francisco Bay.
In 2016, as a member of the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority Governing Board, John helped shepherd through Measure AA, the parcel tax to fund shoreline projects that will protect and restore the Bay. This was just the latest victory in a decades long crusade to preserve the bay; In 1965 he was appointed to serve on the first San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, created to protect the bay from filling and to expand public access to the shoreline.
One of the many features of the Bay Area that John helped preserve is the 741-acre Martin Luther King Regional Shoreline in Oakland. He was also one of the first to begin advocating for the Gateway Regional Park now planned for the foot of the Bay Bridge; John was working toward that goal as far back as 1967!
John’s career in public service included terms as an Alameda County deputy district attorney, an Alameda County Superior Court judge, a member of the Oakland City Council, and a board member of the East Bay Regional Park District. He was also a co-founder of the group now known as the Greenbelt Alliance.
The 2019 Emerging Voices Youth Award goes to Oxford Elementary's Zero Waste Classroom and the Heirs to Our Oceans Club.
The students in Oxford Elementary’s Room 22 have virtually eliminated disposable products in their classroom. Their conservation efforts extend outside the classroom, too, to the school cafeteria’s “waste-free Wednesdays”; According to class calculations, those efforts have spared more than 3,000 plastic disposables this year. Ms. Omania’s students, along with their peers from other schools, also advocated for the new Berkeley Unified School District sustainability plan.
This school year the third graders combined their conservation efforts with a lesson in civics, advocating successfully for Berkeley’s Disposable-Free Dining Ordinance. At a city council meeting in December, the students wore waste-decorated vests they’d created and gave speeches on the urgency of sustainability.
Teacher Jacqueline Omania is a recipient of the prestigious 2019 Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators, presented by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is winner of the 2019 Phil Burton Profile in Courage Award.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has represented San Francisco in Congress for 31 years. The Congresswoman became the first woman elected to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives 2007, and in 2018 she became the first person in more than 60 years to reclaim the speaker's gavel.
As Speaker, Pelosi has made the climate crisis her flagship issue, enacting comprehensive energy legislation in 2007 that raised vehicle fuel efficiency standards for the first time in 32 years and making an historic commitment to American home grown biofuels. In 2009, under her leadership, the House passed the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act — a comprehensive bill to create clean energy jobs, combat the climate crisis, and transition America to a clean energy economy. The legislation was blocked by Republicans in the United States Senate, but sent a strong signal to the world about the United States’ commitment to fighting the climate crisis.
A leader on the environment at home and abroad, Pelosi secured passage of the “Pelosi amendment” in 1989, now a global tool to assess the potential environmental impacts of development. In San Francisco, Pelosi was the architect of legislation to create the Presidio Trust and transform the former military post into a national park.
She has repeatedly voted against efforts to increase offshore oil drilling in protected areas, and she voted to block an amendment that would allow for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Hike leader Steve Bakaley will receive the Dave and Pat Michener Outings Leader Award for his contributions to the Sierra Club SF Bay Chapter’s outings program. Steve has delighted countless members of the public on his fabulous hikes throughout the Bay Area, which he advertises especially for “mellow, tolerant hikers.” For 25 years, Steve acted as Chair to the Activities Committee, where he helped build the Bay Chapter’s outings program by recruiting and training many of his hike participants as fellow hike leaders.
