Sierra Club convention, Feingold for Senate

I'm wrapping 2 posts in one here - one per paragraph.

Today I spent the day at the Sierra Club national headquarters with 60 other chapter delegates from across the country at the meeting of the "Council of Club Leaders."  This is like a convention where people all gather to work out their differences and propose new "rules of the Sierra Club."  It is essentially an excercise in democracy, except of course, we are all pretty much united by our belief in the "John Muir and Redwoods" goals to "explore, enjoy and protect" the planet and nature.  I also got to meet new ED Michael Brune as well as most of the national board of directors.  They are really hard working.  Especially the board always amazes me.  They do all this work for nothing except to serve the movement!  You basically can't do this and have a regular job at the same time.

In other news, I was sad to hear, through the Wisconsin delegate who attended the convention, that Russ Feingold from my home state is trailing in the polls.  This is deeply disturbing.  First, because Russ is a true blue progressive voice, who has never - or let's say much more rarely than any other politician I know - compromised his beliefs.  He was the sole dissenting voice who voted against the Patriot Act in 2001.  Secondly, Russ is such a solid debater, speaker and campaigner, that it saddens me that so many citizens of Wisconsin are buying the claims of his opponent that Russ is wrong for the state.  I took the time to listen to a good analysis of what is happening there posted on the nation online.  The idea that the changing media landscape is allowing a well heeled challenger who allies himself with the Tea Party to "dictate the message" to ignorant voters (because they don't get any news about what their current Senator is really doing) is pretty scary.  Here is what I think: if the people of Wisconsin actually took the time to understand what is going on, instead of blaming the current administration for the economic mess we're in, I cannot imagine that Russ would be challenged to win in a serious way.  And, what happens in Wisconsin is no doubt happening in many other states.  Anger is trumping reason.

Musings on the Green Mayors Forum

So last week I was in the news a bit for not inviting all the mayoral candidates to the "Sierra Club Green Mayoral Forum."  This was an interesting and unaccustomed role to be playing.  I'm usually not very public.  In fact I only joined the Sierra Club to go hiking and meet girls!!!  And I haven't exactly done a lot of either in the club, though I have certainly come to appreciate and respect what the club does (and that's why I spend so much volunteer time for them.)  Anyways, this little brouhaha was well publicized and, admittedly, self-created, since I sent out an unnecessary "sorry we're not inviting you" to the candidates, thus inviting recrimination right away, and in a very public way. Also, and this is probably the bigger error, I cc'd local blogger Zennie Abraham, who had been covering this previously, and then he promptly posted my entire email claiming I mistook him for a candidate!

There is always a silver lining, however. Zennie's blog and the attention it brought us I think drove up the interest among the public quite a bit and (I think) as a result, we were able to really pack the room last week at the Eastbay Community Foundation.   Also, partially as a result of the firestorm of attention Zennie and other local bloggers brought us, we decided to change the format of the forum to avoid nasty confrontations with the non-invited.  9 of the 10 registered candidates for mayor showed up, which I guess is a first, and the discussion that was had was interesting, though very limited by the time limits we had to impose (several candidates told us they had to leave at 7 p.m. so we kept the entire forum part to about 75 minutes and each candidate could only talk on any given issue for 2).  You can read more details about the event here (thanks to Oakland Local for covering it, by the way.)

In the end, I'm glad we did this (and big thanks to Andy Katz and Igor Tregub who were the primary event planners besides myself.)  The event generated more positive attention than negatives for the Sierra Club, and gave everyone a chance to hear the candidates talk about what their "green vision" might look like.  Next time, hopefully, we will be able to structure it so we can have more in-depth discussion.