An Honest Broker

When OCR was founded I was given some wise advice by sacred tree-monkey Julia Butterfly Hill. Hill had become a celebrity on account of her particular act of courage – which she attributed to her deciding what she wanted to do as she was doing it. As a young woman of 23, unburdened by the equivocations of having lived a longer life – and in the humility of her encounter with “Luna,” a 1000 year old redwood tree, she committed two years of her life to saving the tree from corporate greed.

I don’t know what Ms. Hill had in her God-given medicine bag that had directed her toward this mission, but when I met her she was gently trying to shed the heroic mantle which all of us had gratuitously adorned her. The burden for her had become holding up the fabric of dreams that so many people had hung onto her branches. Her noble intention was to assist those dreamers in an effort she called “Climb Your Own Tree.” She was encouraging activists, prospective visionaries, and just normal folks to find what ignites them and take the unencumbered courage to – climb their own tree.

I encountered Ms. Hill in an unlikely dive-bar in my neighborhood – me seeking liquid solace after a long, excruciating day of trying to figure out how to ask for money to support my work. She was staying in the neighborhood and had stepped in for a quick “nightcap.”

Improbable encounters like this remind me that there are larger forces at work. Julia came in and sat right next to me (me wearing my cloak of mild despair) to teach me two lessons that became key components to our success.

Firstly, that the sacred missions we are on are not “us” as individuals, wrestling with our particular relationship to social (and financial) approval; rather they are a gift that inhabits our mind, body, and soul, which like all true gifts, needs to be given away – improved upon, and made better through our stewardship.

Secondly she gave me a navigation tool that, once I understood I was not on my own set of tracks, has proven indispensable in defining how OCR does our business.

Somewhere in the arc of most businesses we come up with a “mission statement” – about the aims and goals of the enterprise, and a “vision statement” that calibrates the aims and goals with values, and how the mission should be navigated. It is quite common for business to reassess their vision statement on a regular basis to make sure it remains relevant to the mission. I’ve been in many of these affairs. They often involve a flip-chart, colored felt pens, sticky-notes, and a facilitator.

Ms. Hill suggested that I forego this process and instead consider where our business would be in 30 years – when I am long gone. How do we want to be known? Once we find that answer, we use it as a beacon in the horizon, aligning all of our actions to that light. By way of this process, all decisions should build upon that distant, but true vision; uncompromised by the Sturm und Drang of daily challenges and the times we are in.

After a little consideration I decided that I want OCR to be known as “an honest broker of scientific and policy information.”

I bring this up because there is a lot of Sturm und Drang going about these days. So while I never intended to provide “political commentary” on policy issues, the very pediments of our work are being dismantled, and getting all technical about ‘exposure metrics’ and ‘sound propagation models’ risks becoming meaningless.

If “Incidental Harassment Authorizations” are approved willy-nilly, the National Environmental Policy Act is rendered a toothless document, and the Endangered Species Act is administered by voracious corporatists, I must respond.

Through all of this I promise to keep the “honest broker” beacon on our horizon.

Photo: Last Light by Paul Esch-Laurent