Sierra Club endorsements!

I find the whole tone of this string depressing and making me wonder about any real value of this "conversation". I also find it laughable that the Sierra Club doesn't know or won't say how many members it has in Carrboro. C'mmon guys, either you know and won't share or national won't tell you. Which is it? It just ain't that hard to sort addresses by town and count them up.

Felicitaciones to all the 3 Carrboro candidates endorsed by the Saw Club (Sierra Club) excellent picks. It must be hard to pick candidates on an town full of active environmentalists. However, I am surprised they did not Endorsed envirnmentalist leader Ed Harrison of Chapel Hill. It makes me question their criteria and objectivity of the selection committee.

John Herrera For OneCarrboro
www.votehererra.com

Congrats to all who received the Sierra Club endorsement, and thanks to Tom Jensen for conducting that worthwhile exercise.

I still maintain that commercial development and environmental protection are not incompatible objectives. If this constitutes a losing stance, then Carrboro can't win.

My deepest felt congratulations to all who have received this fantastic honor!!

I think in my heart that this is the most important endorsement a candidate can receive, not just for its influence on election day, but because of what it represents. The environment is a limited, priceless resource that can never be compromised. I am proud of all of you, endorsed and non-endorsed, who work tirelessly to improve air and water quality, and who fight unceasingly for the protection and conservation of our natural habitats.

Mark, Jackie, and Randee: I am looking forward to learning more about how to be an advocate for the environment.

OK, here come my sour grapes (I'm no Herrera or Marshall!):

Dan, would you have us believe that the local Sierra Club members (you know, the ones who show up) have little to do with the local endorsement process? Here is how it works (according to Capowski on the web site): ‘Each election season, the Orange-Chatham Group's political committee reviews candidates for local offices and recommends endorsements to the state chapter.'

Being the astute observer that I am, I had a strong hunch that Joe Capowski's OP quote in June was the writing on the wall for Chilton:
“Best of luck Mark. I'd vote for you (again) if I lived in Carrboro.”

The Capowski/ Eastholm connection does not escape me either.

Alas, congratulations to all the winners--- especially Randee, who most deserves it!

I hope that people will not read too much into this particular endorsement. A Sierra Club endorsement today does not mean nearly as much to me as it did 30 years ago. The endorsement has become far too political. I miss the old Sierra Club.

I'd be very interested to hear more about the Carrboro mayor's endorsement since Mark and Alex agreed on every single issue that was presented to them.

Joe told me in advance I wouldn't be getting the endorsement, so there are no sour grapes on my part, but I'd love to hear more from those on the committee as to their thoughts on the differences between the two candidates.

Congratulations to everyone who received the endorsement. For some it is truly deserved. I hope in future elections the local Sierra Club will recover some of its lost credibility by not allowing individual campaign advisors and those with personal vendettas against individual candidates to serve as reviewers.

Tom,
A Sierra Club endorsement is gold because voters (in these parts) associate the name with all that is good. Candidates know this and, unfortunately, some candidates will do what they have to do to get the endorsement. That's the ugly part.

I personally disagree with you. I don't believe the Sierra Club has flawless credibility, and I don't think a Sierra Club endorsement means what it used to mean. I really do believe that the right political connections can mean more to candidate reviewers than the right record or a profound regard for the environment. Your point about opportunities for participation though is well-taken. If all Sierra Club members bothered to become knowledgeable and vote, there would be less room for abuse or suspected abuse.

Unlike you, I don't think of the Sierra Club as the great organization that you seem to. Last year's national fight to turn the club into an immigration organization was an indication to me of just how ugly and sordid the politics of the club has become. It is truly a shame that this club is the target of such blatant political manipulation these days. This isn't all sour grapes; mostly it's the truth.

Oh Dan!

Tom,

If you think "disagreements with the process are pretty lacking," you're hanging out with a limited set. And if more people knew the environmental credentials of people denied your endorsement because of your quantitative restrictions, there would be more disagreements.

Stonewall, for example (per Kleinschmidt on 2001 CH mayoral race), is perfectly willing to endorse more candidates than slots available.

What's more, Groundswell Sierra -- the establishment group that thankfully fought off the take-over attempt at the national level -- last spring endorsed one more candidate than slots available on the Sierra Club board. Talk about hypocrisy. It's time for the national organization to review its process of winnowing out more local candidates than it should.

Suggestion: Your endorsements could have two orders, one based on institutional (not to say necessarily elected) experience in environmentalism, and one based on observed intent yet untested.

Dear Dan Coleman and Tom Jensen
Local Sierra club: to whom it may concern:

I am just curious to know how many people (elegible voters) who leave in Carrboro does the Sierra club represents. Also I would like to know how many people of color are members of the local chapter and how many of those are are Hispanic or immigrants? Of your club, how nany people of color are in positions of leadership? ie. Boad of Directors, Selection committees, etc. and are there any those a member from any prominent immigrant group of our community?

Thank you for your work and will appreciate your information. Depending on your responses I may decide to join the Local Sierra club. Mean while I will continue to send my contributions to NRDC, Green Peace, WWF, TNC, CI and many others who inspire me to support them.

John Herrera, For Onecarrboro

TOM:

OUCH THAT HURTS..... Do not get defensive on me, I am just trying to get to know you. so, the answers ARE none and not too many AND, I AM VERY WELCOME TO JOIN YOUR CLUB!! RIGHT? SINCE THIS IS A CHEAP SHOT IN PUBLIC I FEEL THE NEED TO GET THE RECORD STRAIGHT AND RESPOND IN PUBLIC. I HOPE ANY OTHER ISSUES YOU MAY HAVE WITH ME FEEL FREE TO CALL ME 933-4765 OR WE CAN TALK FACE TO FACE IN PRIVATE AT A MUTUALLY CONVINIENT TIME.

FYI I APPRECIATE YOU MOVING THE APPOINMENT 1/2 HOUR EARLIER, DURING THE DINNER TIME AND BATH TIME OF MY THREE KIDS. AT THE ONLY TWO VERY INCONVINIENCE TIMES 6:30 PM AT WEAVER STREET AND DURING MY WORK HOURS IN DURHAM. I OFFERED TO DO IT BY TELEPHONE OR IN THE WEEKEND OR AFTER THE BOARD OF ALDERMAN MEETING, BUT YOU GUYS DID NOT CARE TO CONSIDER ANY OTHER OPTION. I AM SORRY I MISSED YOU TOO. I DID ARRIVED 25 MINUTES LATE, WASTED MONEY HIRING A BABYSITTER AND THE VALUABLE READING TIME OF MY KIDS BEFORE GOING TO BED. I SPENT THE NEXT HOUR LOOKING FOR YOU, AND SINCE. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE ..ALSO I WAS HOPING TO SEE YOU AT THE FORUM TO MEET YOU AND RESCHEDULE. I GUESS YOU WERE NOT THERE EITHER?

I AM WONDERING TO KNOW WHAT THE QUESTIONS YOU ASKED WERE, I IMAGENED EACH CANDIDATE WAS ASKED EXACTLY THE SAME QUESTIONS? DO YOU MIND SHARING THEM WITH ME? i WILL ANSWER THEM AND POST THEM ON MY WEBSITE. IF YOU THINK YOUR MEMBERS MAY CARE TO KNOW WHAT I THINK. CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTION FOR THE FUTURE. THIS IS THE KIND OF INSENSITIVITY AND OVERSIGHT THAT SOME GOVERNMENTS AND SOME COMMUNITY GROUPS HAVE WHEN TRYING TO DO OUTREACH TO THE COMMUNITY. I AM EXCITED TO GET THE RESIDENT'S OUTREACH AND LEADRSHIP ADVISORY BOARD OF THE GROUND, SOON AFTER RE-ELECTION SO THAT WE CAN SHARE HELPFULL CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE WITH ALL GROUPS AND PEOPLE INTERESTED IN DOING EFFECTIVE OUTREACH TO UNDER-REPRESENTED PEOPLE WHO HAVE VERY VALUEABLE IDEAS TO SHARE IF WE CARE TO BUILD ONE SUSTAINABLE CARRBORO THAT VALUES DIVERSITY BECAUSE IT IS TRULY DIVERSE.

JOHN HERRERA FOR ONECARRBORO

Tom:

Grow up! I gave you may telephone number 933-4765. I am doing the Chamber interview another day, they were very accomodating and flexible. Tom, I am not attacking the Sierra club. just asking legitimate questions, I have not drawn conclussions yet. I really hope you send me the questions. not just for you, but if you care in providing your members truthfull information and not gossip. I got top go to the airport.

John Herrera for OneCarrboro

The group of Sierra Club folks who worked on these endorsements had as much integrity as any I've seen in local politics. Their commitment to the environment was fierce and uncompromising.

I hope John H got some sleep. Telling Tom to 'grow up' is incredibly undignified. Like Jason, Tom has shown great maturity and savvy throughout these discussions. In a community in which students are such a vital component, we should not be telling them to grow up, we should be welcoming them and applauding their involvement.

Tom,

I respect your decision to recuse yourself from the Chapel Hill endorsements. The endorsements would be more credible had Joe C and Dan C done the same. Their failure to do so not only calls into question the endorsements themselves, but reflects poorly on the other members of the executive committe, two of whom I know and respect.

The other factor weighing against credibility in my opinion is the lack of any criteria for the public to use in understanding the endorsements. By providing a list of names only, you and all the other committee members must become apologists for a non-transparent process. As an example, take the choice between Mark C and Alex Z. Two prominent Carrboro environmentalists, Allen Spalt and James Carnahan, have both endorsed Alex. What was it about the data collected by the Sierra Club that would challenge the opinions of those local environmentalists?

I seem to recall Joe C saying that the Sierra Club would NOT explain its endorsements, but providing the criteria upon which the endorsements are made would not violate that practice and make the process somewhat more transparent. Transparency should be the goal of any political process in a progressive society, don't you agree?

Tom,
May I have you email, and discuss privately?

Dan:

Thank you for your cancern about my well being, I did got some sleep. Dan, I am begining to see your personal style to interpret reality and people's comments, it sounds like an amateurish Carl Rove. Please do not offend the intelligence of any person in this forum. People who can read this comments can see clearly what have been said. Progressive students and people young and old who are looking for healthy, dynamic, DIVERSE, open and welcoming organizations, will question and stay away from this kind of leadership style and clubs. Cortesy and respect are very simple concepts to understand. My 6 year old son, understands them, he knows what I mean when I ask him to call me directly if he has something important tell me. I extend the same kind of advice to you too. my telephone is 933-4765. Reasonable can arrive at reasonable conclusions.

John Hererra For OneCarrboro

Terri (et al),
I did recuse myself from the endorsements for CH
Town Council as I have been an advisor to campaigns
in that race.

Thank you for the clarification Joe. I respect your decision as I do Tom's.

Joe,
>Will there be public written explanations explaining why candidates were either endorsed or not endorsed?
>May I see the interview questions candidates were asked, and candidate responses?
>Also, why did you tell Katrina in advance that she would not be getting the endorsement?

Dan,
Did you recuse yourself from any endorsements? If so, which ones?

I hadn't been reading the forum very often becase I've been busy lately, but I apparently missed a doozy here.

Alderman Herrera, I am appalled by the childish way that you responded to Tom.

I'm sorry you didn't get picked for the kickball team, but caps-lock, misdirection, exclamation points, misinformation and flimsy excuses don't add a lot to your cause. It is unfortunate that sometimes public duties conflict with homelife, but that happens. By refusing to show up at forums without providing good excuses, you indicate that whatever demographic holding the forum is unimportant to you. You also demonstrate an unwillingness to be "inconvenienced" by the people that you serve. Heaven forbid the town needs you at bath time -- it seems to me that long nights, late dinners, and making compromises are a part of public service.

Telling a student who has acted more maturely than you to "grow up!" demonstrates overwhelmingly that you would rather take cheap shots based on stereotypes of students as immature to distract from your own childish behavior. Your schoolyard comebacks instead of apologizing for failure to appear are telling. Showing up is half the battle -- you've certainly lost that half.

If anyone ever questions why we have so little minority participation in this town, this thread is a great illustration of the unfortunate reality. John Herrara congratulated the Carrboro selections and noted his surprise about Ed Harrison's omission. Dan Coleman turned around and told him to worry about his own campaign before launching into yet another diatribe against Ed. John followed up with a request for demographic information on the Sierra Club. The response came from Tom Jensen who started the spiral down into nastiness for whatever reason.

Tom brings his youth to the table and John is a non-native English writer/speaker. Their responses deserve some degree of mature understanding. Unfortunately, John seems to be taking all the heat. Not a particularly progressive way of communicating cross cultures folks.

And might it also help to explain why so few citizens will even bother voting? A turnout of 18% might be huge. At some point, the laws of Physics will kick in and ...

This thread is not an illustration of why we will have low turnout. It's also has a lot less to do with bad cross-cultural communication and more to do with bad communication in general.

As a candidate for public office, Herrera is in charge of communicating his qualifications for office, his message, and his interest in his constituents. It's a little difficult for him to do that if he's not at forums, misses interviews and is antagonistic toward student leaders.

Having seen non-native speakers/writers who are able to do communicate these things effectively, I have a hard time writing it off on the "cross-cultural communication" line.

Mary asked me these three questions:

>Will there be public written explanations explaining why candidates were either endorsed or not endorsed?
>May I see the interview questions candidates were asked, and candidate responses?
>Also, why did you tell Katrina in advance that she would not be getting the endorsement?

The answer to the first two is that personally I would be happy
to make them public and I am now trying to find out what the
Sierra Club procedures are that relate to this.

Pertaining to the third question: I did not tell Katrina in advance that she would not be getting the endorsement.

I want to make this general statement. We knew before
we started the endorsement process that
the local Sierra Club endorsements had the potential
to be controversial, and that it was likely that some
candidates or their supporters who did not receive
endorsements would challenge the process. As a consequence
as political chair, I demanded a high level of rigor and documentation. I can understand that non-endorsed candidates may be unhappy because ultimately
all endorsements come down to the votes (i.e., personal
opinions) of a group of people. But the process was
sound and no Sierra Club member who wished to participate
was rejected.

Finally, I agree with Tom Jensen when he stated
above that Sierra Club
national issues that pertain to immigration
played no part in any of our endorsements.

When people feel detached from the political process for whatever reasons - real or imagined - they tend not to vote.

It's true, Joe did not actually say I wouldn't get the endorsement. he said 1- I wouldn't like forum, and 2- that he didn't think I could say anything that would impress the committee. I made the assumption he meant I should not expect an endorsement.

That's fine. I didn't expect it and didn't get it. I'm still curious as to how one decides between the two mayoral candidates, who didn't differ in their answers in any real sustantive way.

I'm sort of surprised John is upset. He didn't make the interview. He closed with a statement that he though we'd spent enough money on the environment, and now we should spend money on "people". I think that's probably an honest answer from his perspective, but that certainly isn't going to win you any votes at the Sierra Club.

On we go into the home stretch of campaign season.

I am confused. Did Joe C participate in any way in the candidate interview process and/or endorsement discussions? I can't figure that out from the comments posted here.

Joe,
Thank you.
Let me know if the information makes it to the Sierra Club website.
Also, my statement about immigration controversy was in relationship to the national organization. My point was that the Sierra Club, of which we have been guardians of for years, is no longer the impeccable environmental group that it used to be. Transparency is extraordinarily important to me at all levels of club organization.
Quite honestly, I wish the local club merely gave a seal of approval to all candidates with good environmental records. Choosing amongst 'green' candidates comes down to personal preference which should be left to the voters, not to a small political committee which could easily be loaded with friends of a particular candidate.

There really isn't any way to get around dissent over endorsements. But when all that is presented is a list of names, with no explanation, there also isn't a way to question the selections without it sounding like sour grapes. It's rather instructive to read a 2003 forum called Do Endorsements Matter. They were able to debate the lack of an Indy endorsements as a contributor to the ouster of an incumbent based on the substance of the commentary since the Independent explains their decision for and against each candidate.

I'm not sure there wasn't an explanation. At least one of the articles in the papers covering the endorsement listed reasons cited by the Sierra Club for their endorsement. Perhaps there were reasons in the press release. Has anyone seen it? I haven't.

Thanks for posting those Tom.

Two days ago I left these two questions unanswered until
I could find out the Sierra Club's regulations on them.

>Will there be public written explanations explaining why candidates were either endorsed or not endorsed?

The press releases that Tom Jensen has posted do answer
one half of the first question, why candidates were endorsed.
The Sierra Club does not publicly state why candidates are
not endorsed.

>May I see the interview questions candidates were asked, and candidate responses?

The interview questions and the candidates' responses are not
public, were not presentated to the candidates as
public, and the Sierra Club does not disclose this information.

Obviously the questions asked at the three forums and the
candidates' responses there were public -- they were on
TV.

I realize that some of you will be unhappy with this. But I
remind you that the endorsement recommendations to the
state Sierra Club were made by the local executive and
political committees. The executive committee is elected
by all local Sierra Club members. We boldly advertised for
members of the political committee to all local Sierrans,
and accepted all who applied.
So while some of the information remains confidential, participation was open to all Sierra Club
members who chose to participate.

Dear amigos:

I hope we can end with a positive conclussion on this topic of discussion. As Alderwoman Gist remainds us all, "this is just the price you pay for democracy" DTH 10/14/05.

This is a very simple process and not a big deal. I never question the Sierra club. I only ask questions that any potential member would need to ask in order to get to know the organization. I only congratulated the candidates and continue to do that. no har feeling there are a lot of good and people of great intergrity in the Sierra club. ( this is not attack I am sincere and I apologized if I offended any one personally for asking this) Since the questions are not public information, but are use for a public purpose to inform citizens to make educated descisons in our open democratic process I think it will strengthen their descisions. I do not care how people voted, I trust they did it objectively and respect the secrecy of that process. But the questions I assume were formulated but a committee with key knowledge of the important issues to the environmental community, and my scientist research methods tellms me that when survey people to obtain comparative information all candidates should have been asked the same questions on the issues , off course there could be room for an open question that will be left for the public to make their own judgement. Since the Sierra Club, does not share the questions, for whatever reason. I am asking all the candidates who got interviewed to share with us what questions were ask.

Please share the following short an to the point:
1- How many questions were you asked? and what where they?
2- date, time and place of the interview meeting
3- duration of interview, and who the interviewers were?
4- Are you a member of the Sierra club?

I belive in a progressive community like ours, this should be embrace and is expected. It can only help increase support and credibility for any organization. I still have not giving up my hope to join the Sierra Club. I really respect their commitment and work to protect the environment.

So, interviewed canditates is up to each one of you to share with us the answers. Please do not interpret this as an attack on the Club or any particular individual. This is also not about being mad, but about an opportunity to learn and be educated. One's again I reaffirm my sincere congratulation to all the endorsed candidates, as well as the not endorsed canditates who care about the environment.

Peace,
John Herrera for OneCarrboro