Sierra Student Coalition
A national network of student environmental activists I founded in 1991. It grew to 30,000 members across hundreds of high schools and colleges and became one of the most influential youth environmental movements of the 1990s. More than three decades later it still operates as a student-run organization, with chapters from California to Maine to Puerto Rico.
I founded the Sierra Student Coalition in 1991, while I was still in high school, because the environmental movement did not have an obvious front door for young people. There were plenty of adults telling students what to care about and almost no infrastructure that let students organize each other.
The SSC became that infrastructure. It grew into a national network of tens of thousands of high school and college students, run by students themselves rather than by adults supervising from above. We trained organizers, ran campaigns, and handed young people real responsibility instead of a newsletter.
The coalition was decisive in the fight for the California Desert Protection Act, where student phone banks helped push wavering senators to vote yes. That campaign, more than any other, taught me that youth organizing was not symbolic — it could change outcomes.