Students are voting yes for OSPIRG for many reasons; the big one is that all too often, big-money special interests are allowed to pollute the Willamette River, rip off consumers, raise tuition and corrupt our government.
OSPIRG stands up to these special interests and gets results. By joining professional staff with the idealism of college students, OSPIRG works statewide to make a difference. There’re lots of ways we can do that, and the best example is our recent work to protect our national forests.
In 1997, OSPIRG joined a number of environmental groups in an effort to protect our national forests. At the time, President Clinton’s plan was in its early stages — the plan merely proposed to stop road building in a limited number of forest areas, and the Northwest’s forests and Alaska’s Tongass National Forest were not included in the original proposal. The idea was that if the environmental community joined together, we could really protect a significant chunk of pristine national forests forever.
On campus, students began to educate and organize around the issue. After a year and a half of organizing, President Clinton proposed his second draft plan for forest protection. This one included the Northwest, but it didn’t stop logging or mining in places such as the Mt. Hood National Forest and the Willamette National Forest, so the fight continued.
OSPIRG field director Tiernan Sittenfeld began working closely with decision-makers on state and national levels to show support. Students stepped up their organizing on campus; they held call-in days, released reports and worked with other student groups and student leaders to call on the president to do as much as he could to protect our forests.
After another seven months, the president released his third draft plan — this one was even better — but it still didn’t protect the Tongass. So we still weren’t done yet. We had 30 more days to influence the president’s final decision, so once again we took to the streets and educated the public just a little bit more. We gathered an additional 50,000 public comments nationwide, we met with the president’s staff and when the final plan came out, it was nearly everything we could have wanted. It permanently protected 58.5 million acres of forest, 1.9 million acres of which were here in Oregon. We saved the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
It was four years of hard work and a good example of what students and staff working at the statewide level can do. The hard part is what comes next: Our current administration is working to counteract the work we all have done. In order to fight to stop these problems, we need your help.
Over the next two weeks, people may have questions about what we do, how we do it and how we’re funded. Don’t hesitate to call us, e-mail us, whatever. If you want more information about the work we do, visit www.OSPIRGyes.com, our Web site. It has everything from campaigns to budgets to recent articles.
We’re happy to answer questions, and we’re confident we can make a difference over the next couple of years. Now more than ever, we need to stand up for our environment and consumers. Vote yes for OSPIRG.