My hope is that we will leave here with a course of action that will galvanize the club and America's communities. Let's create a new Sierra Club.

The challenge is to really empower people to voice their values and concerns and get them to talk to their friends, their families, their neighbors and the people that represent them. That is really where the Sierra Club is now moving: more locally, getting individual citizens reconnected to their communities, and helping them really take responsibility for the future of the environment. Not just nationally but in communities where they live.

We pride ourselves on empowering ordinary citizens to be the Sierra Club where they live. In essence we're asking local leaders to be members of boards of directors in local organizations and to run them. We're asking them to take on administrative tasks, which has to come with the territory of being a leader, but it's not something that they initially got involved with the Sierra Club to do.

It's going to be the largest gathering of our members, activists and leaders ever. This is going to really be the first time that all of our activists are coming together to discuss where we should go and what we want to do nationwide.

It's OK that there are cultural differences. I hope this movie sparks conversations that will turn into action.

By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the healing.