| When Sierra Club staff member Mark Massara grabs a surfboard and paddles out to where
the big waves break, he’s not just having a good time — he’s building a
coalition, California style. Volunteer Marge Hanselman is doing the same thing when she
observes waterfowl on a Texas wetland with a director for the National Rifle Association.
Staffer Ken Midkiff works his magic over coffee in farm kitchens, and volunteer Susan
Sargent turns to the Maine religious community for allies. It raises no eyebrows
when the Sierra Club forms coalitions with the Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy or
The Wilderness Society. But the Club can often be even more effective when it closes ranks
with unlikely allies who live and breathe the same issue in a different way, whose voices
may bend the ears of decision-makers who otherwise are unlikely to listen or who are
unreceptive to a narrower range of constituents.
Such alliances aren’t always easy. Sometimes it means learning a different
terminology or putting aside personal differences. But those who’ve succeeded say the
results can be powerful. Here are some of their stories.
High Noon on the Katy Prairie
I knew when I started working with the National Rifle Association and the Houston Safari
Club that we weren’t going to be able to talk about handguns, politics or shooting
big game in Africa,” says Marge Hanselman, conservation chair for the Lone Star
Chapter’s Houston Group in Texas.
But Hanselman and others in her group knew that their work to keep the Katy Prairie
wetland from being turned into an airport would be bolstered by support from the big guns
in so-called hook and bullet organizations. So in 1996, the group set up its first booth
at the annual Houston Hunting and Fishing Show and handed out reprints of a Sierra
magazine piece by Ted Williams called “Natural Allies,” about how
environmentalists and sporting organizations should work together. That’s how
Hanselman met Bob Baer, one of 76 national NRA directors. She handed him the article and
asked him to read it.
A few days later, Hanselman and Baer met, along with the Houston Group’s wetlands
chair, Bill Stransky, and NRA Director Sue King. They found common ground: They would work
together to protect the Katy Prairie, a resting stop for geese and ducks on one of the
principal wildlife migration routes in the country.
King, a straight shooter who says, “If it’s legal to hunt it and shoot it,
I’ve hunted it and shot it,” sees the connection with the Sierra Club as a
logical one. “It’s perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain that if
you’re going to enjoy the fruits of the outdoors, you’re going to have to take
care of it.
“I don’t have a problem with people who don’t like to hunt,” says
King, “as long as no one is being extreme and saying no goose or duck should ever be
killed.”
Does King take flak from NRA members? “Oh yes,” she says, with hearty
laughter. “Some people say, ‘Are you stupid? Working with a bunch of tree
huggers?’ But I think the exchange of ideas is the best prophylactic against
ignorance and stupidity that I know of.”
King felt the heat when she decided that the Sierra Club and the Katy Prairie
Conservancy would receive the proceeds of “the world’s largest — and
richest — women’s clay shoot,” held near Houston.
In addition to that support from the organization, the NRA wrote a letter to the
Houston City Council and mayor on behalf of its 200,000 Texan members in support of
protection for Katy Prairie and has testified along with the Sierra Club in hearings to
oppose the construction of the airport.
“The Sierra Club is not against hunting,” says Hanselman. “And while I
probably disagree with many of the other NRA issues, Sue King is a strong woman and one of
the most avid conservationists I know. We work on a one-on-one basis and stick to the
topics where we agree. Together we’re working to preserve wildlife
habitat.”
Surf on Their Turf
When it comes to working with surfers as allies to protect the California coast, the
Sierra Club has an advantage: Mark Massara, director of the Club’s California Coastal
Program, grew up surfing in Santa Barbara and later became legal counsel for Surfrider
Foundation. He also founded Surfers Environmental Alliance and the National Association of
Surfing Attorneys, and writes on coastal and environmental legal issues for surfing
magazines and other publications. With his long, blond hair and a tan, he’s the
perfect interface.
Massara gained a stellar reputation in the surfing and environmental communities when,
as an attorney for Surfriders in 1991, he won a lawsuit against two pulp-mill companies
near Eureka, Calif., that were dumping 40 million gallons of toxic effluents per day into
the ocean.
“That effort gave me a working knowledge of coastal activists,” says Massara,
and that includes surfers, farmers and Native Americans from coastal tribes.
Surfers may seem like unlikely partners for the Sierra Club, and even Massara admits
that organizing them “is like herding cats.”
“But surfers bring to the cause of protecting the coast an intimate
knowledge of the California coastline and its many resources, along with a zeal for
recreation,” he says. “What we’re trying to do is get surfers to
occasionally leave the beach and go into city halls throughout the state and demand
coastal protection. You know, ‘Gidget Goes Environmental.’”
How does he do it? It’s an exchange of energy, in a way. He’s there for them,
and they’re there for him. When a hotel moved ahead on controversial plans to build a
seawall that would destroy not only the surf, but a nearby ecosystem as well, surfers in
San Luis Obispo called Massara, and he is fighting the battle with them.
Likewise, when the California Coastal Commission held a hearing on whether to approve a
Hearst Corp. proposal to build a series of resorts on one of that last untouched stretches
of coastline, the surfers were there. Massara and other Club activists had organized
aerial photos, obtained damning documents about significant Native American resources that
would be disturbed by the project and rounded up a crowd of 1,500 to show up for the
hearing. Surfers like Todd Cardiff, a welder, provided signs for protesters and wore
wetsuits to testify against the plan.
“In general, surfers are apathetic about the environment. When they get sick from
polluted seawater, they say, ‘Oh, that’s the price of surfing.’ We’re
trying to tell them, ‘No, that’s the price of pollution, and we can do something
about it,’” says Cardiff, vice president of the San Luis Bay Chapter of
Surfriders.
“Mark won that case against the pulp-mill companies, and because of that he’s
become a person of mythological stature to us,” he says. “He knows the people to
get in touch with. He has history on the issues. He knows how to work the political
angles.”
“Whether I’m working with surfers, farmers or Chumash Indians, I listen to them,
go to their meetings and immerse myself in their perspective and genuinely empathize with
their viewpoint,” says Massara. “It helps to walk a mile in someone’s
shoes.”
Finding Friends in Farm Kitchens
For Ken Midkiff, walking in the shoes of his allies means wearing coveralls and mudboots.
About four years ago, Midkiff, the Club’s Missouri state director, was asked for help
by rural family farmers to work against the pollution wrought by hog and chicken
factories, also called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which house and
dispose of the waste of thousands of animals.
To pursue partnerships with family farmers and respond to requests for assistance,
Midkiff hightailed it out of Columbia and headed to the hinterlands.
“I didn’t have these farmers and their neighbors come to my office where
I’d sit behind my desk in a suit and act like I’m the person with all the
answers,” says Midkiff. “I’ve sat in a lot of farm kitchens drinking coffee
and listening to their concerns.”
Mind you, Midkiff is a vegetarian, and the people with whom he works in these
partnerships are raising cows, pigs and chickens for slaughter.
“When they offer me a big plate of fried chicken I say, ‘No, thanks, but
I’ll have some potatoes and gravy.’ I don’t impose my values on
them.”
In these meetings, Midkiff and the farmers developed mutually agreeable solutions and
strategies to implement. They started forming local action groups of rural residents
and farmers. They dove in, writing letters, lobbying state politicians and congressional
delegates in the capitals and testifying at hearings, persistently calling for stricter
rules governing these corporate operations and the waste they produce. A crowd of farmers
working with him on the CAFO issue recently showed up at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife hearing
to support protection for a minnow called the Topeka shiner. (See Midkiff’s
story)
“Ten or 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have cared anything about the Topeka
shiner,” says Terry Spence, who runs a cow/calf operation on his 400-acre farm.
“But I stood up and testified to protect it, because when something disappears, even
though it’s just a minute little fish, something else will disappear, and it just
keeps going up the ladder. Someday it will affect humans.
“About one and a half miles from my property line is a CAFO with 80,000 head of
hogs on 3,000 acres,” he says. “Sometimes it takes reality to put things in
perspective. Those of us who work with Ken and the Sierra Club come to realize we’re
all looking for the same thing: We want to preserve our land for future generations. Some
people were skeptical about working with the Sierra Club because we didn’t agree with
them on everything in the past. But now I think you could call any farmer out here and
they’d say the Sierra Club has become a good friend, cares about us and wants to do
something about the problem.”
“It doesn’t happen overnight,” says Midkiff. “There may be some
initial skepticism and paranoia, but you work through that. You show them this is not a
one-shot deal, that you’re there for the long haul, that you’re not going to
make a big splash and get headlines, and then disappear. When the trust is there, powerful
things happen.”
Pursue and Persevere
It took two years and plenty of persistence for Maine Chapter Vice Chair Susan Sargent to
link the Club with the state’s religious community. The way Sargent sees it,
“Elected officials, the public and the media all know the Sierra Club will support
environmental legislation. You’re more convincing when you show depth for an issue,
and prove that a diverse group backs something. The Maine Council of Churches is highly
credible and they’re a wonderful voice to add to ours, especially as the conservative
wise-use movement picks up speed in our state.”
So two years ago, armed with materials on the need to protect endangered species,
Sargent met with the council’s executive director, Tom Ewell. She came away without a
commitment, but Ewell started inviting her to events and workshops organized by the
council — and Sargent made it a point to attend.
Sargent, a non-churchgoer, kept in touch with Ewell. Finally, after two years, while
both were working booths at a fair, Ewell asked Sargent to be part of the council’s
newly formed Spirituality and Earth Stewardship Program. She serves on the outreach
committee, researching environmental legislation the council can support from a
faith-based stance.
Ewell saw the logic of having the 670-church organization fight for the environment,
but he needed a compelling issue to organize around. Watershed protection was it.
The new program began with a celebration at the Damariscotta Watershed and included a
nature walk, sledding and skiing, a light meal, slide presentations and a reading.
Participants from across the region brought water from local wells, rivers and other
sources to combine in a symbolic ceremony.
“We believe that stewardship of the earth and its natural resources is essential
to the survival of all living things, including humans, and that the destruction of the
environment reflects a breakdown in the way people relate to God’s creation and to
each other,” says Susan MacKenzie, the council’s program director.
“Through this I’ve learned that sometimes you have to persevere in
order to bring a group on board, and keep communications wide open,” says
Sargent.
“Also, it’s important to consider every group a possible ally, because when
you start thinking about the environment and who’s affected by it, it’s hard to
rule anyone out. By finding that common ground, we can build powerful
partnerships.”
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