Voice of the Environment

Voice of the Environment | About

Voice of the Environment's mission is to educate the public regarding
the transfer of public trust assets into private, mostly corporate, hands.

	Ukiah office: 1330 Boonville Rd Ukiah, CA 95482 707-467-0329
	Marin office: 270 Beach Rd Belvedere, CA 94920 415-435-2007
	For two decades, Voice of the Environment has stood up for the people and our communities against the avarice of corporations and the misguided policies of the corporate-dominated state.

LETTER TO BOARD MEMBERS

STAFF | ACCOMPLISHMENTS

VOICE OF THE ENVIRONMENT STAFF President: Lewis Seiler Executive Director: Dan Hamburg Board Members: Martin Litton, Byron Belitsos, Kevin Zenzie		Ukiah office: 1330 Boonville Rd Ukiah, CA 95482 707-467-0329
		Marin office: 270 Beach Rd Belvedere, CA 94920 415-435-2007

Lewis Seiler, an environmentalist for twenty-five years, is the founder of Voice of the Environment. He is a rancher, businessman, and sculptor whose work has been shown across the country. From 1980-1990, he served as president of the Farallon Foundation which was instrumental in forcing the US government to stop dumping radioactive waste off the coast of California and resisting attempts by the US Navy to dump decommissioned nuclear submarines off the same coast. Mr. Seiler owns and actively manages a 1000-acre ranch in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana which is held in a conservation easement in perpetuity.

Dan Hamburg has been active in northern California politics and community affairs for more than 25 years.

SELECTED ARTICLES
BY DAN HAMBURG

Our Unsustainable Course
Things are going in the wrong direction.

Nader 2k!
Ralph Nader remains quintessentially, for better or worse, Nader.

Who's Protecting California's Environment?
Governor Gray Davis lacks the commitment

Money Rules
Audie Bock leaves the Greens

No Headwaters Deal
May be the Best Option

$130 Million for
Headwaters is No Deal
Charles Hurwitz swaggered down the halls of the state Capitol last week in his shiny black cowboy boots, warning that he'd be forced to cut down Headwaters Forest, or sue the government for "taking" his property rights, unless the state ponies up $130 million

Inside the Money Chase
A "successful politician" is a politician with a healthy bankroll.

Media's Bottom Line
Corporate Profits Dictate What is News

After graduating from Stanford University in 1970, he moved to Mendocino County where he was a founding member of Mariposa School, now in its 30th year of operation.

In 1976, Dan was appointed to the Ukiah City Planning Commission where he served for four years. In 1980, he was elected to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. While on the Board, he helped draft the county's first legal and comprehensive General Plan and Coastal Plan.

In 1985, Dan and his family traveled to Guangdong Province, China, where they directed the Taishan China Study Program for six years. He was executive director of North Coast Opportunities (NCO), a community action agency serving Lake and Mendocino counties, from 1986 to 1989.

In 1992, Dan was elected to the US House of Representatives from the 1st district of California. While in Congress, he authored the Headwaters Forest Act, a bill that passed the House overwhelmingly. After losing a re-election bid in 1994, he was hired as a political consultant to the newly formed government of South Africa.

Returning to California in 1996, Dan was active in the presidential campaign of Ralph Nader and in the struggle to preserve the 60,000 acre Headwaters Forest Complex. Since 1997, he has served as executive director Voice of the Environment, a foundation dedicated to halting the transfer of public assets into private, mostly corporate, control. In 1998, he participated in the 113-day occupation of Ward Valley, California. This act of nonviolent civil disobedience was successful in stopping construction of a radioactive waste dump on land sacred to the Native American tribes of the lower Colorado River.

Dan has written articles for several magazines (including The Nation, Tikkun, Harper's, Sierra, etc.) and many newspapers (including the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee, and the San Jose Mercury-News). He appeared frequently on the McNeil-Lehrer Newshour and CNN while a member of Congress, and has subsequently appeared on television and radio programs throughout California. From 1995-98, he hosted a bi-monthly public affairs radio program that dealt primarily with the need to shift the cultural and political perspectives. Among his guests were: Ralph Nader, Medea Benjamin, Dennis Banks, and Ronnie Dugger.

Dan holds a master's degree in philosophy and religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies. He has been a member of the Green Party of California since May of 1996. In 1998, he was the Green Party candidate for governor of California, polling over 100,000 votes.

Dan lives in the hills west of Ukiah. He has been married for 25 years and has four grown children and five granddaughters.

Martin Litton has been called "the great American conservationist of the 20th century." A member of the Sierra Club national Board of Directors for eight years, he was the 1993 recipient of the Club's highest honor, the John Muir Award. He has led countless campaigns to establish wilderness areas and national parks including Redwood National Park in northern California, to halt the construction of dams, highways, and nuclear power plants in environmentally-sensitive areas.† He is currently working to protect the legacy of the Sequoia National Monument.

Byron Belitsos is an award-winning book publisher and a highly experienced journalist, editor, author, and activist. He has edited and published a number of acclaimed books on health, consciousness, spirituality, and politics, including Waking Up in Time by Peter Russell, The Terror Conspiracy by Jim Marrs, and the classic self-help book, The Center Within. Belitsos is also the principal author of the acclaimed book One World Democracy

(Origin Press: 2005) and he wrote, directed, and produced the companion film, Toward a Well-Governed World. In 2009 he published A Return to Healing: Radical Health Care Reform and the Future of Medicine, of which he is coauthor. He is now working on his next book, Radical Wisdom: A Cheerful Guide to the Post-modern Apocalypse, due out in 2010. Belitsos earned a B.A. (Honors) from the University of Chicago in intellectual history in 1977. He has done graduate work in the history at the University of California (Santa Cruz and Berkeley campuses), and at the California Institute of Integral Studies, developing expertise in history, philosophy, psychology, politics, and religious studies. Belitsos was an inaugural member of Ken Wilber's Integral Institute, a founding board member of 911truth.org, and a board member of the Democratic World Federalists. He founded Origin Press in 1996, and is today its CEO and Publisher. He resides in Fairfax, California.

Kevin Zenzie served as Intellectual Advisor to Voice of the Environment from 2008 - 2009, as Full-Time Researcher from 2004 - 2009. Previously he was Outside Sales Account Manager to Stentor Inc., in South San Francisco, CA from 1999 - 2004, and a Realtor/Broker (obtained VP position in 1992) at Mutual Realtors, Wethersfield, CT from 1986 - 1999.

Kevin obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing at Central Connecticut State University and from Dean Junior College an Associate in Science degree in Liberal Arts

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VOICE OF THE ENVIRONMENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Since our founding in 1992, Voice of the Environment has . . .

. . . run fifteen full-page advertisements in the New York Times titled America Betrayed ; these hard-hitting ads have spoken that to the betrayal of our most hallowed national principles, and to the many threats to both our natural resources and our constitutional freedoms;

. . . helped defeat two bills, HR 2473 (Williams-MT) and S 2137 (Baucus-MT) that would have severely compromised 60 million acres of pristine Montana wilderness; Voice of the Environment saturated the airwaves with television in the weeks prior to congressional votes on these bills, raising in-state opposition that eventually led to their defeat; Voice also ran full-page ads in the New York Times to draw public attention to the giveaway of public funds that these bills would have allowed;

. . . inspired a national outpouring against the signing by President Clinton of the timber salvage rider, a measure that perpetuated the decimation of old growth in our national forests; Voice drew together a large coalition that included the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Wilderness Society, and local grassroots organizations that, according to the Scott Sonnen of the Associated Press, succeeded in delivering over 200,000 blocks of wood to the White House in protest;

. . . worked in the struggle to preserve the 60,000-acre Headwaters Forest ecosystem in Humboldt County, California; Voice produced television spots and New York Times ads that were signed on to by over 50 organizations, as well as environmental leaders like David Brower, Ralph Nader, and Medea Benjamin; these ads urged the Clinton administration to save the entire Headwaters ecosystem and aimed to expose the then-pending Headwaters Deal for the appalling giveaway that it was. While we applaud saving of 7,500 acres pf ancient forest, too little was saved at too great a cost (nearly $500 million); the political turmoil and litigation that continues to this day is indicative of the Deal’s many inadequacies;

. . . led the fight against the Quincy Library Group bill and managed to bottle it up in Congress, only to have Senator Dianne Feinstein use parliamentary chicanery to move it to the president's desk. We were successful, however, in encouraging Senator Barbara Boxer to withdraw her support which has helped to bring much greater public scrutiny to this ill-conceived plan and stall its implementation.

. . . worked closely with tribal leaders throughout northern California on the trial of Eugene “Bear” Lincoln, a Wailacki Indian man accused of murdering a Mendocino County deputy. After being pilloried nationally on “America’s Most Wanted” and after then-Governor Wilson offered a $100,000 reward for his capture, Lincoln is today a free man, acquitted on all charges. Without the vigorous community education efforts of Voice staff, Lincoln could have ended up on death row.

. . . worked with the Colorado River Native Nations Alliance, the American Indian Movement (AIM), EarthFirst!, Greenaction and many other groups to halt construction of the Ward Valley radioactive waste dump. Voice staff members were leaders in the 113-day occupation that forced the federal Bureau of Land Management and the state Department of Health Services to withdraw from the project. In 2001, the plan for a Ward Valley dump was finally abandoned by the state of California.

. . . with the Center for Voting & Democracy, sponsored a series of workshops and seminars to advance electoral reform including instant runoff voting (IRV), preferential voting, proportional representation and other measures to open up the political process. Our work is now culminating in the introduction of a bill before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors calling for IRV in the election of county officials.

. . . commissioned and broadly distributed several studies of logging and grazing practices on federal lands.

	The first, titled "Employment Impact of the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act" (Tom Powers, 1992) dealt with economic impacts of the NREPA in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. It made a significant contribution to changing the debate about the timber-cutting program of the US Forest Service by demonstrating conclusively, for the first time, that timber land was worth more with trees standing rather than cut. It also outlined a net loss to taxpayers of nearly $1 billion annually from the USFS program.
	A second study "Chainsaw Justice: The Forest Service out of Control" (Steve Taylor, 1995) shows what happens when a reform-minded administration runs into a brick wall of "old guard" bureaucrats, industry lobbyists, and entrenched legislators. "Chainsaw Justice" demonstrates the extent to which the USFS is politically corrupt, fiscally irresponsible, and environmentally destructive in its abject failure to protect our treasured national forests.
	A third, titled "Deranged: The Bureau of Land Management and the Plight of the American West" (Steve Taylor, 1998) details the Clinton administration's failure to commit fully to true reform of the BLM, an agency that manages more federal land than any other entity in the nation. In its refusal to take on livestock, oil, and mining interests, the administration violated the public trust, and its own campaign promises.

. . . worked successfully with northern California native communities, and with local and state government, to change the text on State Historical Marker 754 in acknowledgement of the many contributions made by those communities. This two-year process won accolades from the state Office of Historic Preservation, CalTrans, and many other groups.

. . . co-authored and worked for the passage of the Heritage Tree Preservation Act, SB 754, a bill to ban the cutting of selected species of old growth trees (Coast Redwoods, Giant Sequoia, Port Orford Cedars, Douglas-firs and hardwoods) in California on non-federal forestlands that were alive in 1850. The bill, which would help to fulfill some of the promises left unkept by the Headwaters Deal, passed the State Senate in 2003 and will go before the Assembly in 2004; tie up with the Headwaters Act.

Voice of the Environment is a 501 (c-3) not-for-profit Montana-based corporation formed in 1991.