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THE SIERRA CLUB GRASSROOTS NETWORK YEAR-END GRANT REPORT
01/01/2017 – 12/31/2017
Your Team: Wildlands/Borderlands Grassroots Network DC Lobby Week
Your Name: Harry Romberg
Your Contact Info: Email: [email protected] Telephone: 206-365-9302
Total Grant Funds Received in 2017: $12,000
I. GOAL AND PROSPECTIVE OUTCOMES Please include the goals and outcomes from your team’s proposal.
These goals were copied directly from our application. It should be noted that they were
compiled before we knew what issues or contacts would be most relevant at the time we were
in DC or even who our lobbyists would be or what relationships they may already have
fostered. However, our anticipation was pretty good and most of these issues were indeed
relevant topics.
• Lobby members of Congress in support of Wilderness and good public lands legislation and against bad measures – Goal Met
• Lobby members of Congress for permanent authorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and full funding thereof – Goal Met
• Lobby members of Congress in support of the Endangered species Act and other protective measures and against legislation which may weaken it – Goal Met
• Lobby members of Congress in support of the Antiquities Act – Goal Met • Lobby members of Congress for good border policy and against bad borderlands
legislation, likely a particular area of focus in the new Congress – Goal Met
• Lobby members of Congress for sensible energy development where we will emphasize disastrous impacts to our public lands from fossil fuel extraction – Goal Met
• Depending on funding (which affects how many people we can invite and therefore the number of meetings we can schedule), assuming we invite the full 12-14 person
contingent, we should be able to schedule 60 to 70 meetings. – Goal Met
• We will seek to develop or enhance relationships between both Sierra Club DC staff and the local lobby team members and their Chapters with Senate and House Members (and
their staff). This will be useful not only on the specific lobby topics but also in the future
on a broader range of issues. – Goal Met
• Meet with public land agency leads who o Can provide useful information to our local and national work. o Need educated on our local and national work. o We need to build relationships with locally and nationally.
– Goal Not Met – Meeting with public land agency leads during this
administration is exceedingly difficult because Sierra Club as a whole does not
have the access they customarily are given, and our individual members do not
have the relationships with current leadership that they have had in the past.
Quite unfortunately, the value of such meetings under this administration would
be extremely limited.
Our organizational goals for lobby weeks always include recruiting from a wide range of
states either where there are particularly relevant issues or where those states have members
on important House or Senate Committees. We recruited 14 people from 10 different states
(see below) targeted by the Lands Team as especially critical to our work. As well as being
geographically diverse, our lobby team was age, ethnically, gender and Sierra Club tenure
diverse.
II. MOST SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENT Describe in one concise paragraph your most significant project accomplishment. It is important
to state precisely the Sierra Club’s role in achieving the accomplishment and to explain its
significance.
It is difficult to quantify the significance of any particular aspect of the Lobby Week. It can
rarely be determined that this effort singularly moves (or defeats) legislation but we DO
influence individual members of Congress on the issues we raise. One of our main purposes is to
increase the effectiveness of the Club’s Lands Team by members of Congress and their staff
seeing people from their state lobbying with Lands Team members on issues the Lands Team
pushes all the time thus realizing that the Lands Team actually represents a segment of their own
constituents. Our lobby frequently introduces Lands Team members to higher level staff
members, particularly in swing and opposition offices, and sometimes the members themselves.
That has helped the Lands Team establish relationships and grow their sphere of influence.
That said, we had 61 scheduled meetings (and at least a dozen more unscheduled), including
member meetings with 3 Senators and 9 House members. Shortly after our congressional
meetings, several targeted Congressmen who hadn’t already signed on to the legislation to
reauthorize and fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the new Congress (but had in the
last Congress) finally did so.
We also feel that by introducing our own lobby team members to this effort, we increase their
comfort level in continuing a dialogue with their members of Congress post lobby. The
knowledge and skills gained during the lobby result in people going home knowing that they
CAN have a conversation and represent their views – and those of the Sierra Club – to their
members of Congress. That is very empowering and important to our ongoing lands protection
work. Thus, we believe that lobbies increase participant activism now and in the future, though
this is difficult to quantify.
Accomplishments we feel of particular importance include that this lobby week was a prelude
which helped to set up subsequent lobby efforts. There was a Borderlands lobby conducted a
few months after ours as well as another Borderlands lobby week scheduled for this November.
Our effort also supplemented ongoing efforts to reauthorize and fund the Land and Water
Conservation Fund, led by Wildlands volunteer Vicky Hoover in conjunction with numerous
staff and the Lands Team. We built momentum for the coalition Land and Water Conservation
Fund lobby that took place two weeks after our lobby. All of these efforts are built upon past
work and will continue until our goals are accomplished.
III. PROGRESS ON OTHER OUTCOMES Describe other notable project outcomes in a few paragraphs. Describe what you did and how
you did it so that an audience with no prior knowledge can understand it (committees are named,
acronyms spelled out). State the result of the work, along with its current status at the time of the
report.
We lobbied against 2 Congressional Review Act administrative rules approved by the previous
Administration that the Republican Congress was trying to repeal.
• The Predator Rule in the House, providing for congressional disapproval would eliminate the final rule submitted by the Department of the Interior relating to Non-Subsistence
Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife
Refuges in Alaska.
• The Methane Rule, which advances common sense measures to reduce methane emissions on public and tribal lands through preventing wasteful leaks, venting, and
flaring of gas and dangerous pollutants.
The former ended up passing (meaning that the rule was rescinded) and the latter was defeated.
• We lobbied in support of the reauthorization and funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
• We lobbied against the Border Wall in particular the new Administration’s efforts to fund and build it. In particular, we lobbied against HR837 and HR739.
As noted earlier, these efforts supplemented subsequent lobbying and other efforts.
• We lobbied in support of our National Monuments and against changes to the Antiquities Act, in particular Bears Ears. At that time, the Zinke directive was not yet in place but
this helped lay the groundwork for later efforts as well.
• We continued to lobby for designation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as Wilderness (or at least against efforts to drill there) as well as other potential Wilderness
areas.
• We lobbied for treating wildfire as a natural disaster, treating it just like any other natural disaster, making federal disaster funds available instead of draining the Forest Service’s
budget every year to fight fire and so that they can’t do the rest of their job.
• We also generally lobbied against expected attacks on the Endangered Species Act. • We lobbied for a clean budget that protects key environmental programs like the Land
and Water Conservation Fund, the National Park Service and other public lands and
wildlife.
None of these issues were really new, although the change in Administration made them more
urgent than ever. In great part, they are ongoing efforts.
A number of our lobby week volunteers who weren’t already engaged in lobbying at that time,
were able to attend a briefing session on the re-introduced land and water fund reauthorization
bill.
In addition to items mentioned in section II above and IV below, in at least one case in
Washington, this lobbyist was invited to a local gathering organized by the Congressional staffer
when she visited the district.
Also in Washington, a House member who had not yet co-sponsored the Land and Water
Conservation Fund legislation in this Congress did so subsequent to our lobby week reminder.
This likely happened elsewhere as well but was not reported.
IV. GRASSROOTS CAPACITY - How many people have you engaged? How have you built your team/support for your issue/project?
• # of people on your Core Team:_3_
o Please attach a list of your Core Team members
Harry Romberg (WWT)
Jill Workman (WWT & Borderlands)
Julie Shipp (WWT & Borderlands)
• # of additional leaders (someone who has spoken for the team, helped coordinate a team
efforts or mobilized other volunteers):_14___
As all participants spoke for the Sierra Club with their Senators and Congressional
Representatives, we consider them to be leaders. In addition, many of them have
participated in other Sierra Club activities, including the November 2017 Wildlands training
in Seattle. This, in this report, we have identified them as both activists and leaders.
• # of activists (someone who has invested an hour or more of time in an event or activity
related to the Team):_14___
• # of members on Team’s page on the G.N. website (if applicable): All of the attendees
are or were subsequently made members of one or more of the G/N teams associated with
this lobby week effort (Wildlands or Borderlands)
• # of Facebook likes (if applicable): We established a Facebook Event under the
Borderlands Team’s Facebook page again this year and alerted all of our participants but
it was not clear that anyone engaged by this method or of its effectiveness. We may
revisit this if we get future grants.
• # of email list (e.g., listserv, Google Group) participants (if applicable): All members and
the team leads for Wildlands and Borderlands and relevant staff members were included
on a listserv specific to this lobby week and volunteers have been contacted since the
event. This listserv was used to distribute materials leading up to and subsequent to the
lobby week. Most of these folks were added to the Wildlands and/or Borderlands
listservs subsequent to the event.
2017 Lobby Week Volunteers
Lance Holter HI
Sarah Loftus ME
Alvaro Melara IL
Natalie Mermuys NV
Rosemarie Pavel CO
Arthur Rahn TN
Harry Romberg WA
Catalina Ross AZ
Tom Schlipmann IL
Julie Shipp TX
Lana Sutton TN
Susan Thomas AZ
Jackeline Trevino TX
Jill Workman OR
One of our lobby week volunteers, Sarah Loftus, subsequently became a Lands Team intern,
furthering her involvement. She also had a letter to the editor published shortly after our lobby
week, http://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/10/letter-to-the-editor-presidents-border-wall-an-
ecological-economic-threat/
Meeting with Rep. Schneider (IL-10)
One of our IL lobbyists, Alvaro Melara(third from left above), has subsequently become an in-
state staffer for Congressman Schneider.
All of these volunteers were invited to apply for the October 2017 Wildlands training in Seattle.
Three applied and were accepted (Alvaro, Catalina and Susan). The Wildlands Team’s
Mentoring Sub-Team is reaching out to those who are new to lands work to invite them to
participate in our Mentoring Program.
V. LOOKING AHEAD Conclude with a brief paragraph discussing the project’s future direction and upcoming
challenges. Explain how the recent accomplishments have prepared you(us) to take advantage of
future opportunities.
Given continued Grassroots Network support, we hope to continue an annual lobby week. We
find that doing so increases Sierra Club visibility in congressional offices and in some cases the
relationships developed by individual participants also helps to enhance the work of staff who
interact with those offices on a regular basis. It is also an incentive for local activists who feel
empowered by the experience and hopefully become more active in the Sierra Club or feel
rewarded for work they’ve been doing. Relationships formed during lobby weeks have helped
the Sierra Club locally and nationally make progress on our initiatives and win tremendous
victories in land protection. Increased networking due to a wider knowledge of people and
issues is an additional result.
VI. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Please feel free to attach any additional information relevant to this project, for example, photos
of events held, informational materials produced, links to news stories/media your work
generated, etc.
For the past several years, we have been trying to increase our capacity by recruiting Sierra Club
members in DC to act as volunteer hosts to some of our lobby team members. Jim Dougherty
has been particularly helpful in this regard, having helped us find several hosts. In fact, this is
the first year we have been able to house our entire lobby team with volunteers, thus avoiding
hotel stays. This year, we also had two volunteers who now have helped us for 3 years (Rick
Nunno and Payton Chung).
In another encouraging development, after having talked with their lobby week guest and
attending our thank-you dinner, one of our hosts expressed interest in participating as a lobbyist
in a future lobby week.
On the first day of every lobby week, the Land Team spends a half-day training us on the issues
we will be lobbying on as well as providing lobby tips, particularly for those new to the Hill.
Even for those of us who have lobbied before, this is always a helpful reminder and orientation
to current issues before Congress.
This year, we again had a Team thank-you dinner that we try to host every year. Those invited
include those lobbying, our volunteer hosts and anyone from the Lands Team who can join us.
Natalie & Jill lobbying on the Senate side
The Borderlands Team lobbying Congressman Vela
Borderlands Team in the halls of Congress