HOWDY NABER

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

HOWDY NABER

Today there are Restoration Advisory Boards (RABs) or similar bodies
overseeing cleanup at more than 250 present and past Department of
Defense installations. Those boards have had widely different
experiences, and thus members have diverse attitudes, not only toward
the responsible military components, but to the regulatory agencies as
well.

Furthermore, by design RABs include a diverse sample of representatives
from host communities. For example, at Moffett Field, we have not only
environmental activists, but representatives from at least three local
government agencies, the League of Women Voters, and the local business
community. The Navy's most persistent critic, in fact, is the
representative of the electronics companies who are also responsible
parties at the site.

At CAREER/PRO we try to serve the entire RAB constituency. That's why
our communications are open. Our workshops and forums are inclusive. We
take part in various national policy discussions, but we always make it
clear that we are not the elected representatives of RAB members or
other community groups. In fact, we usually work to bring in a range of
environmental and environmental justice representatives to each forum or
group to which we are invited.

Several years ago, when I helped form what is now the Military Toxics
Project, we took a different approach. We systematically sought out
grassroots environmental activists in communities around contaminated
military bases. We created a collection of networks led by those
activists. While in some issue areas those networks focused on national
policy, the group working on base closure and environmental restoration
did not. An inclusive effort to expand organizing in those issue areas,
as well as conventional munitions, foundered when one (at the time)
board member, Saul Bloom of ARC Ecology, objected to MTP basing an
organizer in San Francisco. MTP continues to bring together dedicated
activists, and it is effectively addressing key issues such as depleted
uranium weapons, but it has not become a visible presence within
national discussions on cleanup or base closure.

The RAB Caucus approach, as we have observed in California, was somewhat
like the MTP approach. The caucus organizers sought out dissatisfied RAB
members, so most of the participants were those who were unhappy with
progress at their installations. The caucus did not represent the full
breadth of RAB constituencies. The group in fact behaved like a
conventional caucus, coming to meetings such as the California Base
Closure Environmental Advisory Group with proposals from the caucus as a
whole, generated at the "meeting before the meeting." Sometimes I agreed
with those proposals, but I felt that the caucus sought to speak for
constituencies it did not represent, including groups at the table -
that is, on the Advisory Group - that were not, for one reason or
another, included in the caucus.

All three approaches are valid. In particular, it's important at times
for community activists to get together beyond the gaze of the
government agencies with which we must work. We do that in Silicon
Valley. That's what ISIS organized before the regional RAB workshop we
co-sponsored in New England.

But any national subset of RAB members should be seen as just that: a
group of people who get together to share common experiences and develop
common proposals, not to represent RAB members as a whole, until we can
devise a system of determining fair representation.

I have long favored what Sam Goodhope calls the National Advisory Board
on Environmental Restoration (NABER) concept, a representative body of
RAB members that would offer national policy advice to the Department of
Defense and its regulators. The military has been unwilling to sponsor
such a body, and no one else has the resources. California's version
collapsed for lack of funds. To get any federal agency to support such a
body on the national scale, we need to demonstrate the value - to the
government, not just to the communities - or wait for a dramatic change
in Congressional leadership.

Short of that, we view CAREER/PRO as a vehicle through which others -
even those who disagree with us - can communicate, organize, train, and
influence national policy. Over Aimee's objections, I have reserved an
acronym (RABBI) for any national organization that may emerge, but we
are reluctant to support a body that doesn't have the resources (time,
money, etc.) to be fully representative of RAB members across the
nation. In fact, we aren't sure that regular national meetings are the
best way to spend such resources should they become available.

Finally, for those people who don't follow our work closely, CAREER/PRO
has a style that, at least at this time in history, we believe serves us
and other base neighbors well. Locally, regionally, and nationally, we
are as willing to cooperate with the military, private industry, and
other institutions as we are to confront them. Sometimes the interests
of the military cleanup bureaucracy overlap with those of citizens -
such as when Congress is trying to cut funding - and sometimes they
differ. The Department of Defense is an immense institution, with many
people on the inside who are every bit as much "enviros" as those of us
on the outside. The Department should be criticized when it does the
wrong thing, and praised when it gets things right.

>From what I have observed over the last several years, ARC Ecology
prides itself on maintaining an more adversarial relationship with the
military. Without diving into a debate about when it's best to fight and
when it's best to switch, it should be clear that any national
organizational decision that RAB members make has political
underpinnings. No one attending an ARC-sponsored caucus or
CAREER/PRO-sponsored workshop or forum should be unaware of those
organizational differences. It's not that RAB members or other activists
have to choose one over the other. There is plenty of room for both. But
the two organizations are proceeding differently.

Lenny

Lenny Siegel
Director, SFSU CAREER/PRO (and Pacific Studies Center)
c/o PSC, 222B View St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/968-1126
lsiegel@igc.org