David Brower's Letter
DATE: May 18, 1999
TO: Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
CC: Sierra Club Board of Directors and Directors-Elect,
Laura Hoehn
FROM: Dave Brower
Chuck McGrady has asked me to repudiate your
"Whither the Sierra Club?"
article, but, with no knowledge of your sources, I have no basis
for
correcting any of its data. I think the objecting members of
the Board can
repudiate these on their own, if they wish. Chuck has also drafted
a
letter that I will soon sign that calls for renewed civility
within the
Club. I stand by this call for disagreement without disrespect
and would
hope to see this idea spread beyond the Club as well. You will
not
however, soon find me challenging the right of members of the
press to
express their opinions, simply because they are inflammatory
and
controversial. I will confirm that you quoted me accurately
and I only
regret that your kindness fell heavily on me and not at all on
some others.
You know that I did not ask for your article or contribute to
it, though I
too have been unsettled by some recent (and some not-so-recent)
developments in the Sierra Club. I guess that I am able to forgive
more
easily than some, including my wife Anne, who has yet to forgive
the Gang
of '69 who fired me as Executive Director.
While I am not comfortable with many of your allegations against
past, present, and future members of the Board, we all know (or
should)
that such politicking and backstabbing is not without precedent
on the
Board of Directors, especially in recent years. In last year's
officer
elections, I thought I would win, but lost by 2 votes. I learned
from a
member of the Board that in that vote, Carl Pope lobbied against
me, saying
that my election would make him nervous. It shouldn't have,
as I said, I
am able to forgive when given the opportunity.
You correctly pointed out that this year's
election brought me more
support only in theory. Now, because of an article I did not
write, Laura
said I should withdraw my candidacy entirely. Even this is a
step up from
Phil Berry who never wanted me to run in the first place. I
have come to
expect this from Phil, who has spent the last 30 years ridiculing
most of
the things I wanted to do, most recently on sparing the National
Forests.
As usual, his wife is with him on this and when Michele was President,
she
and Carl Pope juggled the ballot statement for endorsing the
Northern
Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act so that supporters of it had
to vote No to
endorse. The measure narrowly lost in the member voting. The
following
year, unfettered by such hooliganism, the measure to call for
an end
commercial logging on public lands passed two to one. But Phil
also
ridiculed my being nominated (3 times) for the Nobel Peace Prize,
and then
I got the Blue Planet Prize (from Japan; $400K), so I won't fuss
too much
more.
Which brings us to the state of my presidential
campaign today.
Chuck says he "has" 9 or 10 votes, which doesn't leave
many for me. I'm
not greedy, all I ask is for as many as it takes (8) to give
the Sierra
Club one last shot before I close the book on my 65 years of
service.
Whatever the election results, the Club is in dramatic need of
a spiritual
and structural overhaul that allows our Board to be leaders in
helping
direct the substance, not merely the procedures of the Sierra
Club. I have
seen enough of the Club fiddling while the Earth burns to last
several
lifetimes. Several hundred lifetimes before my own, the prophet
Isaiah
made a statement that the country's largest environmental group
would do
well to address:
"Thou hast multiplied the nation, but
not increased the joy."
We have indeed multiplied the membership and the budget, but
where is the
vision, the passion, the joy? Let's quit our bitching and get
on to
creating some joy on the planet.
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