Thank you, Linda Sullivan

 By Lonnie Morris

In January of this year, Linda Sullivan stepped down from the executive committee of the River Prairie Group after being in the position for over 20 years. During her tenure with the group, she served as chair of the political and lobby committees as well as chair for the statewide Sierra Club lobby committee, transforming all of them into powerful agents of change.

In the movie Garden State, Sam (Natalie Portman) offers Andrew Largeman (Zak Braff) her headphones, urging him to listen to a song she says will change his life. I don’t know if songs can change a life, but people certainly do, and Linda Sullivan is one of those people.  

Linda connected with the Sierra Club when she decided to make democracy come alive for her US History students at Lyons Township High School. Her goal was to teach about democracy and empower the students to take action on an issue of their own choosing. The first step was developing an understanding of the topic, a familiar task for both teacher and students. The next step of finding the right avenue for showing students how they could make a difference, proved more challenging.

Linda called several organizations who suggested the students hold a carwash, a bake sale, or T-shirt sale to raise money for them. But when she called the Sierra Club, the director, Jack Darin, said, “Why don’t I hook you up with an organization that can help your students do citizen science on dirty diesel truck emissions in your area. Then they can compile their research and come down to Springfield with Sierra Club and make a presentation to a Senate committee that is considering a bill to limit diesel truck emissions.” And, so they did. 

What began as a student social action project led to one of Linda’s most important roles with Sierra Club: the recruitment and training of volunteers for lobbying their elected representative on behalf of environmental legislation. It was a natural fit for her. She cares deeply about protecting the planet and wants to ensure that what she does has an impact. When looking back on her time with the Sierra Club, Linda concluded that, “Minute for minute, the absolute most effective thing you can do for the environment is lobby your legislators in district.”  

Linda brought the right skill set for heading up the lobby team. She’s a skilled researcher, a persuasive speaker, and possesses an exceptional knack for finding the right personal story to illustrate the harm inflicted on people’s health and lives by inadequate environmental legislation.

The work being done was important, and Linda loved what she was doing. She exuded a contagious enthusiasm inflected with joy at being part of something that was making a difference. She is famously known for telling volunteers at the annual briefing on the bills they’d soon be discussing with their representatives that “The absolute most fun you can have saving the environment is Lobby Day in Springfield.”  

After the lobby team was assembled and regular visits to their legislators were being made, the laws Sierra Club supported began to pass. The dirty diesel truck emissions bill Linda worked on with her students passed. A clean energy and energy efficiency bill passed in 2007, and the years-long effort on behalf of the Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA) finally succeeded in 2017, solidifying Illinois’s commitment to a clean-energy economy. 

Linda brought the same enthusiasm with similar results to her work as the chair of the River Prairie Group’s political committee. The committee under her leadership vetted and endorsed the best environmental candidates for state and federal offices.  Sierra Club endorsed Sean Casten for his strong commitment to tackling climate change in his 2018 challenge to the incumbent Peter Roskam. Linda worked tirelessly throughout the election season putting together teams of canvassers for knocking on doors and recruiting volunteers for staffing numerous phone banks. The effort paid off. 

Casten’s victory was a huge win for the environment. Roskam’s dismal lifetime record on the environment, captured by a League of Conservation Voters rating of 9%, was replaced by Casten’s 97% rating earned during his first two years in office.  

I’m a better environmentalist because I met Linda Sullivan and have benefited greatly from what she taught and modeled for me. She has made a difference in the lives of all of us: friends, colleagues, volunteers, and all the people who are now breathing cleaner air.