“The Sierra Club is a new member of the Oakland community, so we think it’s important to partner with organizations that have deep roots and history in our new home,” said Mike Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “Our goal is to be a good neighbor and thoughtful ally to progressive organizations in and outside of the environmental movement.
“One of our core values at Sierra Club is that all people deserve a clean and healthy environment to call home. Right now in Oakland displacement is forcing longtime residents out of their homes and severing the social connections that help to create thriving, sustainable communities. Displacement also contributes to increased suburban sprawl, longer and more polluting commutes, and a greater disconnect between communities and the land. There is a deep and fundamental connection between the Sierra Club’s work to advocate for a clean and healthy human environment and CJJC’s work to keep people in their homes and communities.”
This new partnership will begin with CJJC conducting a training session on CJJC’s work addressing gentrification and displacement issues for Sierra Club and Sierra Club Foundation employees, and continue with a shared exploration of the environmental implications of displacement and gentrification. The partnership will also include a one-time grant of $25,000 from the Sierra Club Foundation to support CJJC’s charitable work to prevent evictions, stop foreclosures, and push back on illegal rent increases.
“Gentrification and displacement have created a crisis for our communities, from East Oakland to the Lower East Side. They have also created opportunities for new alliances, new unity, and a social movement much bigger than any one issue, or organization. The Bay Area is known nationally as ground zero of housing speculation and racial wealth inequality, but it is also a center of community-led innovation and progressive solutions. Partnership with the Sierra Club will help us uplift this important work, and engage a much broader set of people in the project of building healthy, stable communities,” said Maria Poblet, executive director of Causa Justa.
“Drawing a connection between protecting the environment and the everyday lives and experiences of people in their communities is mission critical for us,” said Allison Chin, interim executive director of the Sierra Club Foundation. “As we begin to understand the environment as more than just our national parks and wild lands, but as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the places we live, we have an even greater responsibility to engage with the human environment and ensure that this environment, too, is inclusive and sustainable.
“We are proud to support CJJC’s important work to protect the sense of place and community that is under threat from the forces of gentrification and displacement, and we look forward to exploring, in partnership with CJJC, ways that the Sierra Club and Sierra Club Foundation can be full partners in that work.”
Sierra Club Foundation
The Sierra Club Foundation promotes efforts to educate and empower people to protect and improve the natural and human environment. The foundation partners with individual and institutional donors to align financial resources with strategic, measurable outcomes; provide flexible funding for innovation; build capacity in the environmental movement; and create partnerships with a broad spectrum of allied organizations around shared values and goals. As the fiscal sponsor of the charitable programs of the Sierra Club, the foundation provides resources to the Club and other nonprofit organizations to support scientific, educational, literary, organizing, advocacy and legal programs that further our goals. For more information, visit www.sierraclubfoundation.org.
Causa Justa
Causa Justa :: Just Cause is a multi-racial grassroots housing and immigrant rights organization building community leadership to achieve justice for low-income San Francisco and Oakland residents. We have offices on both sides of the Bay. For more information, visit www.cjjc.org.
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 2.4 million members and supporters. In addition to helping people from all backgrounds explore nature and our outdoor heritage, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.
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