The Environmental Activist’s Paradox: Unite or Divide?

-by Josh Schlossberg, National Coordinator/Colorado Advocate, Eco-Integrity Alliance

As someone who’s tried his best to take on the roles of environmental Advocate and Organizer for over twenty years, there’s a paradox with which I’ve yet to come to terms.

The Organizer’s task is to bring people together in hopes of creating a groundswell to protect the natural world. This means finding common ground with a variety of viewpoints to Unite.

Meanwhile, an Advocate needs a strong stance if they’re going to achieve any worthwhile goals in reversing—or even slowing—the eco crisis. This means having a clear mission that doesn’t allow a forever “splitting of the baby” nor simply defending an unacceptable status quo. So, the goal of the Advocate is to Divide those who promote meaningful environmental protection from those who don’t.

The pitfall of the Organizer is choosing feeling good over doing good, a virtue signaling that might raise awareness on already well-known issues but rarely makes any progress and sometimes does more harm than good. The risk of the Advocate is being so “radical” and/or combative that they’re pointlessly “tilting at windmills” or pushing away potential allies who might have a more middle-of-the-road approach or be turned off by controversy.

This is the Activist’s Paradox. Is it possible to both bring people together under a big tent while at the same time sticking to one’s guns to create positive and lasting change?

In other words, isn’t there an inherent contradiction between the job of the Organizer—Uniting—and the Advocate—Dividing?

Dividing

There’s no question the Advocate’s Dividing role has its downsides. Not only is it stressful to always feel like you’re in a fight, but if taken too far can isolate you from your peers, harm your cause, or even set back your movement.

Some consider Eco-Integrity Alliance “divisive” because of our philosophy on environmental advocacy. We base it off the legendary eco activist David Brower’s (1912-2000) views that: “Compromise is often necessary, but it ought not to originate with environmental leaders. Our role is to hold fast to what we believe is right, to fight for it, to find allies, and to adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or our friends to win, then let someone else propose the compromise, which we must then work hard to coax our way. We thus become a nucleus around which activists can build and function.”

Oddly, this basic stance practiced by so many successful social movements over the decades makes us an outlier across much of the environmental landscape. You know, such controversial opinions as public lands—our last best ecosystems and wildlife habitat which provide less than 4 percent of timber and 2 percent of beef—should be off limits to industrial extraction.

I think it’s clear that decades of our movement shying away from “line in the sand” conservation in favor of collaboration with the Extractors not only hasn’t slowed the degradation and destruction, by nearly every metric it’s coincided with an ever-worsening ecological unraveling. The soft approach may or may not have been worth the experiment, but now that we know it’s failed, isn’t it time to try something different?

So, yes, Eco-Integrity Alliance and our partners and allies refuse to shy away from Dividing not because we’re a-holes (usually), but because we believe it’s the only way to make any progress. Thanks to that choice, we’re regularly attacked or blacklisted by elected officials, government agencies, well-funded “working lands” NGOs, and anti-environmental media.

Yet, at the same time, Eco-Integrity Alliance has an equal focus on grassroots organizing, where, like a conductor, we try to join the individual voices of those who share common ground into one big loud chorus.

Because we won’t step away from Dividing, there are some who privately support our general message and even engage with us behind the scenes but publicly exclude us, avoid any official affiliation, or sometimes throw us under the bus when pressured to do so.

Obviously, Eco-Integrity Alliance could attain greater status, support, and funding were we to abandon our Dividing principles and align more with the industries, governments, and NGOs degrading ecosystems.

But, for those of us who will not scrap our values—otherwise what’s the point of doing this work—how might we juggle the necessity of Dividing with the importance of Uniting?

Uniting

There’s no question that bringing people together is essential for any successful movement. Without it, you turn into a lone wolf lost out in the wilderness who, sooner or later, risks starving to death or being taken down by a rival pack. Some Advocates to whom Dividing comes natural might forget that we cannot reach our goals without public engagement and support.

On that note, I’d like to give a recent example where these two values—Uniting and Dividing—came into conflict with Eco-Integrity Alliance.

A little over a year ago, I crossed paths with a Uniter who makes a living promoting “enviro 101” issues, mostly by talking about them/posting on social media. While timely, relevant, and often important, the topics they usually choose already tend to be very popular, are supported by the largest and best-funded mainstream orgs, and are rarely controversial within environmental circles.

The first I heard of this Uniter was when they hosted an in-person enviro event in my area. While they didn’t invite anyone from Eco-Integrity Alliance nor our grassroots allies, I was contacted by a staffer for a large org to help with his presentation on the biggest logging sale in Colorado history in endangered species habitat, Roadless Areas, and old growth forest, part of a national fake “emergency” targeting 112 million acres—59 percent—of National Forests.

Since Eco-Integrity Alliance was the only group taking on this imminent threat as a campaign (the larger org’s main contribution at that point was signing onto comments written by one of our grassroots partners), and there was a complete media blackout, I was grateful to have the chance to get out the word, plug new people into our campaign, and invite them to our next “action hike” to the area.

This presentation happened to be the only one at the event tied to a local campaign that attendees could engage with. But it gave me hope that these different roles—social media Uniter, large org staffer, and grassroots Advocate/Organizer—could tie together our unique strengths for the greater good. Indeed, I had every reason to believe this might be a turning point for Colorado’s enviro movement.

After the event, I let the Uniter know how much I appreciated being able to sound the alarm on the unprecedented threat. I told them I was interested helping with future events, from presenting to organizing. In the lead up to our hike—which the Uniter attended along with dozens of others—they did one social media post, which we shared around and thanked them for.

Unfortunately, once again, no legacy media attended the hike, and this was where the cause really needed the Uniter’s social media reach. Unfortunately, they made no further posts.

Still hoping to collaborate, weeks later I asked them on my podcast to share tips for success on social media, which many grassroots advocates—myself included—struggle with. They declined.

Months passed, and as the media blackout continued, I reached out again to the Uniter but didn’t get a reply. Only months later, when the biggest logging sale in Colorado history was surpassed by another, even larger scheme—bringing the total to a half-million acres in the Front Range Rockies alone—did I put out an SOS to all my enviro contacts, including the Uniter. They replied that they’d look into it, but I never heard from them again.

I’ll admit, I was disappointed—and yes, a little annoyed—that the Uniter, who had gained such broad public reach by focusing on enviro 101 topics, was choosing to stay silent on the biggest threat to Colorado’s wildlands and wildlife in a century, especially when it most sorely needed the signal boost during a media blackout.

Fast forward to this spring where someone let me know the Uniter was hosting a repeat of the previous year’s event, the theme of which was—fittingly enough—to bring people together. Maybe it was out of obligation to the cause, or simply about my own bruised ego, but I decided to contact the Uniter one last time to ask if Eco-Integrity Alliance and/or our allies could be part of things.

Knowing the psychology of Uniters, I made sure to give them an easy out so they could save face if they chose to decline. So, after asking if there was room for us at the event, I added how I understood if they were trying to avoid the more “controversial” stuff. Perhaps I could’ve framed it differently, or worded my message better, but since there hadn’t been any previous conflict between us, I was hoping to be up front to find out if there was any path forward for working together.

Their response was that there wasn’t any room for Eco-Integrity Alliance or our allies to present or even have a table (!), but we were welcome to pay the admission price to attend.

In retrospect, I probably should’ve dropped it at that point. But I’d seen so many other Uniters sidestep this single-largest menace to public lands that I was genuinely confused what the heck was going on. I decided—perhaps unwisely—to earnestly, in good faith, and politely reach out one last time in hopes of learning the truth.

I’m not going to share the response from the Uniter, but let’s just say I no longer feel like I’m in the dark about what’s going on.

Reflection

Any time something goes wrong in my advocacy and organizing I try to learn from my mistakes. In this case, maybe there was a defensiveness or even unconscious (or conscious?) accusation in my communications to the Uniter which came from a place of bewilderment or hurt, compounded by decades of a mainstream environmental movement increasingly selling out. Perhaps, I could’ve labored more over my exact wording so nothing was misconstrued or just paid to attend the event without having any opportunity to advocate or organize.

It’s possible that this Uniter—accurately or not—saw Eco-Integrity Alliance and our grassroots allies as simply too obsessed with Dividing to be a part of their event that was themed around bringing people together. But if that had been the case, then why not invite someone else to cover the largest extraction scheme of the century threatening millions of acres in Colorado and hundreds of millions across the nation, rather than leaving it entirely off the agenda?

What if the Uniter’s reaction to simply being asked if they’re open to tackling certain threats had nothing to do with the messenger or how the message was conveyed but the message itself? Was it possible that their intentional choice to ignore the wooly mammoth in the room created painful cognitive dissonance in their mind that was only exacerbated by polite communications?

Despite any missteps I might’ve taken and my own shortcomings, I now accept that this had never been personal at all. This was about the Uniter’s decision to “unite” as broadly as possible at all costs, even if it meant ignoring the most grievous local threat to the natural world and not just excluding but cutting ties with the only advocates and organizers willing to tackle it.

Could it be that both Uniters and Dividers sometimes use environmental issues to call attention to ourselves rather than using ourselves to call attention to the issues? And shouldn’t we at least sometimes remind one another—privately and kindly—to be guard against those impulses for the good of the movement?

Integration

So, what can an Advocate and/or Organizer glean from the above?

I think it’s clear that too much of a focus on Dividing can fail to win the public support needed to convert a strong stance into on-the-ground reality. While a sole fixation on Uniting can end up doing little more than maintaining the status quo or even providing greenwash cover for more ecological destruction (if not outright pushing for it).

For the last few decades, the majority of the environmental movement converged on the Unite-at-all-costs approach. And facing everything from forest, grassland, and desert degradation and destruction; water, air, and soil depletion and pollution; threatened, endangered, and extinct species; regional and global climate crises; etc., isn’t it (past) time to admit that’s not working?

Yes, the corporate or government foundation grants and other donors that demand support for industrial extraction—or at least steering away from too staunch a resistance—can keep an organization afloat. But who dedicates their lives to protecting the natural world only to give nearly all of it away?

So how about this for a solution to the Activist’s Paradox? We embrace BOTH Dividing and Uniting!

First, let’s separate the wheat from the chaff by consciously Dividing our movement. I know it sounds uncomfortable, scary, or possibly counterproductive. But let’s be honest: how strong can an ally be if they refuse to even work with those suggesting that our last best wildlands and wildlife on public lands—which have both the legal and cultural framework for protection and provide only a fraction of “natural resources”—be off limits to extraction? Even if they themselves won’t preach such gospel, for them to be worth partnering with they must at least be willing to team up with those of us who do, right?

But what if this Dividing means we burn bridges with the majority of our movement? It’s a fair and serious question. But let me respond with another: What’s the point of a bridge to nowhere? Isn’t it a better use of our scarce time, energy, and resources to focus on Uniting those who DO share our values? Quality over quantity?

Maybe I’m wrong, but what if with this rock-solid mission and crystal-clear vision, we can once again create a bold and exciting movement that will attract people from all walks of life to physically, emotionally, and yes, financially invest in our campaigns? And then we Divided-but-United folks can finally take the measurable steps needed to genuinely and permanently protect the ecosystems that sustain not just our species but all life on Earth.

What do you think? Is Uniting more important than Dividing? Vice versa? Or do we have to do both in order to stand a chance of slowing—much less reversing—the ever-worsening eco crisis?