POINTBLANK
"DISHONEST, INACCURATE, AND DOWNRIGHT SHAMEFUL."

By Gordon Swenson, Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club

I am a life-long Utahn and a long-time Sierra Club member and volunteer. In the 1970's I worked on the opposition to the Kaiparowits Power Plant and on the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area Master Plan and wilderness proposal. Currently, I am a mentor in the Utah Chapter Adopt-A-Wilderness Program. I have been the Sierra Club's representative of BLM field inspections in Garfield and Kane Counties, relating to the R.S. 2477 litigation, and have worked on various other R.S. 2477-related projects, including 25 to 30 field documentation's of actual or potential county R.S. 2477 claims.

I have read your diatribes against the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club over the past several months, and have found them to be dishonest, inaccurate, and downright shameful.

Your basic argument is that you want to form a Sierra Club group so that you can work on issues. Fine, there are plenty of issues to work on. The Utah Chapter Adopt-A-Wilderness Program still has many unclaimed wilderness units needing adopters. There are always EAs needing comments, scoping meetings needing participants, timber sales needing scrutiny, grazing allotments needing monitoring, and brushfires needing to be put out. In your articles you have listed a whole series of issues local to Moab, which you say need work.

So work on them. You can do that without an official group. There is no Sierra Club rule that says that you can't work on issues until you have formed a group. It is common to do issues that work directly through Sierra Club chapters. My own Sierra Club issues work has always been directly for the chapter. Sierra Club groups require additional bureaucracy, and have many functions in addition to issues work, such as coordinating program meetings and outings. You have made it clear in your diatribes that outings are your lowest priority anyway.

The only one of your Moab group issues which involves any controversy within the chapter is the Glen Canyon draining. As to that the Glen Canyon Institute, with the cooperation of the Sierra Club's Colorado River Task Force, is already handling the serious work of the Citizen's Environmental Assessment. I'm sure that they'd welcome volunteers. To the extent that your main goal is to make more noise than the GCI, you are already doing that through the Glen Canyon Action Network and your newspaper, notwithstanding any futile attempts by the Utah Chapter ExCom to get you to turn down the volume.

So what's the problem? You are making all of the noise that you want regarding Glen Canyon. If you really want to work on any other issues, then work on them. If you, Mr. Orr and Mr. Sleight would take the energy that you have applied to chapter-trashing and attacks on the motives and integrity of long-time activists over the past several months, and apply that energy toward issues work instead, then you could accomplish a lot.

If you don't know what to do or how to proceed, there are plenty of people both inside and outside the chapter who would be very happy to offer specific suggestions, and there are even books available to help you get started.

The first salvo that I can recall in your attacks on the Utah Chapter was the statement in your paper--August/September,1999, before the first vote on group formation--that the Sierra Club:

"sometimes seems more interested in doing upscale and expensive outings for rich and trendy yupsters than really fighting for issues."

I have two comments on that:

(1) The reason that the Sierra Club members who come to Moab are rich and trendy yupsters is that the people who come to Moab are rich and trendy yupsters. Sierra Club members who aren't rich can't afford to spend much time in Moab, and those who aren't trendy don't belong there anyway. If you dislike or despise the people who keep the Pack Creek Ranch and most of your advertisers in business that's fine, but don't confuse them with the rest of the world or with the rest of the Sierra Club either.

(2) Your salvo quoted above and Mr. Sleight's threats, made before the first ExCom vote on group formation, were probably a large part of the reason that the group approval process didn't go smoothly. It is basic common sense that when you want permission to form a group within some organization, you don't start off by announcing your dislike and contempt for that organization. Your editorial comments, and some of Mr. Sleight's verbal ones, left people in Salt Lake asking: If they dislike the Sierra Club so much, then why don't they form a group in some other organization, such as SUWA or the Earth Island Institute? I'm still asking that question, and I still don't know the answer.

If you are interested in really fighting for issues, then stop whining and do it. You can fight for issues without an official group, and I'm sure that the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club will welcome your efforts.

A Brief Understated Reply from the Publisher:

Gordon, you accuse me of being a shameless liar and then you fail to mention a SINGLE factual inaccuracy in the "Sierra Clubbed" article. You complain that I pick on "trendy yupsters," and then you accuse me of pandering to them. And then you actually, in print, admit that the opinions of an independently-owned and operated publication led the chapter ExCom to oppose a group in southern Utah. Last I heard, a free press was still an essential and basic freedom in America.

As for issues, Mr. Swenson, you can break your arm patting yourself on the back for all the hard work you've contributed to Utah lands; the truth is, NOBODY has been as devoted to Utah land "issues" as Ken Sleight. He's been defending the canyons of southern Utah for 45 years. Ken should have been welcomed as a hero at your chapter meetings instead of shunned and villified.

I am proud that The Zephyr has dealt responsibly over the last 11 years with a plethora of "issues" as well--including the behavior of the Utah Chapter ExCom. And for the record, this publication gives its full and unqualified support to the vision, goals and agenda of Rich Ingebretsen and the Glen Canyon Institute...JS


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