Strength and Sustainability:the Sierra Club Bay Chapter brings people together in unexpected ways

This column features insights and perspectives from Sierra Club members who have made recent contributions to Strength & Sustainability, our local San Francisco Bay Chapter's major-gifts program. The goal of Strength & Sustainability is to strengthen, sustain, and leverage our local Chapter's role as a long-standing leader in shaping environmental policies and practices.

This month's Strength & Sustainability column comes to us from Dr. Py Driscol. Py is married to Michael Bornstein, director of our local Bay Chapter. Together, Py and Michael are founding members of the Strength & Sustainability program. In addition to providing direct financial support to the Strength & Sustainability campaign, last December Py and Michael hosted a reception at their home to invite friends and colleagues to join them as major donors to the Chapter. Their guests generously responded with more than $6,000 in gifts.

Michael and I met at a Sierra Club event to protect San Francisco Bay, and less than five years later, we are married and have two beautiful children. We are not the first Sierra Club couple, and we won't be the last. Our story represents what the Club does so well bringing people together.

I had just come back from an amazing Sierra Club trip to Bhutan and wanted to get more involved, so I came to the Chapter Bay Protection event. The airport was pushing a multi-billion-dollar plan to build two new runways into San Francisco Bay that would have devastated habitat and wildlife; the Sierra Club was working for smarter, faster, less expensive alternatives.

Michael's presentation made a compelling case that good environmental policy and good economic policy go hand-in-hand. He also emphasized that people coming together in support of creative alternative solutions have the power to make great things happen. After the event I sent Michael a short note... the rest is history.

Both Michael and I have chosen professions that allow us to work with people. I am an attending physician at Highland Hospital, Alameda County's public hospital in Oakland. Michael has done grassroots and environmental organizing for 20 years. We both agree that working with people and contributing to our community are what brought us together.

Michael started working with the Sierra Club at the end of 1999. He wanted to work with a group that shared his commitment to grassroots environmental organizing. Since then, the Chapter has mobilized thousands of volunteers to win important campaigns to protect San Francisco Bay, preserve thousands of acres of critical habitat and open space, win needed funding for public and alternative transportation and make a real difference in the lives of millions of Bay Area residents. I am impressed by the commitment of the Chapter volunteers and staff and their ability to achieve so many critical environmental victories just by getting people involved.

The wonderful success of the Bay Protection effort is a great example. Political insiders and environmental allies said that the airport expansion was a done deal but over four years, through thousands of hours of educational efforts, community outreach, grassroots lobbying, and working to elect local environmental champions, Sierra Club volunteers turned the decision around.

Today we have an even greater opportunity. Energy and global warming is the challenge of our time. The Bay Chapter is committed to practical solutions, such as Community Choice energy. Community Choice allows local ratepayers to invest in solar and wind power simply by paying their normal electricity bill. Just days ago, after six years of organizing and campaigning, Chapter activists were able to celebrate a major Community Choice victory in San Francisco. The Board of Supervisors is moving forward with a Community Choice plan that will provide clean, renewable power for half of the city's energy needs_without raising energy rates! With San Francisco's example, we now have an amazing opportunity to pass similar clean-energy efforts around the Bay.

Our local Bay chapter is working on this one community at a time, one person at a time. And when I say "we", I don't just mean Michael and his staff. I mean all of us. Every local Bay Chapter member's active participation strengthens our collective power to generate and implement smart and sustainable energy solutions.

That is why Michael and I have decided to back up our commitment with a donation to the Strength & Sustainability campaign. We have both seen first-hand the effectiveness of Sierra Club activists and volunteers working to protect our communities and our environment. In the last six years, our local Chapter has won over 70% of our campaigns, and we have done it by investing in people.

The Bush administration is never going to make the bold changes necessary to convert to renewable power. Michael likes to say that the winds of environmental change blow through the Golden Gate. If Washington is not going to take the lead, then that responsibility is ours, and the time to act is now.

When we look out over the Bay, Michael and I are reminded of that first time we met. We are proud that we both took a chance and invested our time and our money in something that needed to be done.

The path to a clean-energy future may be difficult and steep, but that is nothing new to the thousands of Sierra Club members who have made protecting our natural world their personal responsibility. Knowing that we're working together with all of you makes us feel hopeful that we can make great things happen. That is why we are renewing our financial commitment to the Strength & Sustainability program. Please join us.

To make a contribution, host a fundraising party at your home, or find out more about how to support the local Sierra Club Bay Chapter, please contact development director or call (510) 848-0800, ext. 309