In Memoriam: Remembering and honoring a few recently deceased friends and allies
Four highly influential, deeply beloved figures who had a profound impact on us sadly passed on recently, and we wanted to add our voice to the vast choir of those expressing their sorrow at the loss of these great leaders and gratitude for all they gave us.
Gloria Steinem and Carl Anthony both spoke at Bioneers; Peter Buckley was an invaluable friend and very longtime behind-the-scenes supporter and ally; and while Wendell Berry never spoke at the conference, his worldview has had an enormous influence on us and on so many of the people whose work we have highlighted over the decades.
Gloria Steinem (1934—2026) was one of the greatest activists for the full equality of women. We won’t recapitulate the details of her life, which are being recounted far and wide across the media landscape at the moment, but there are a few aspects of her persona that bear emphasizing because her legacy doesn’t just lie in her considerable achievements but in the leadership-style she modeled for all of us.
Truly remarkably, as a major public figure she listened to criticism and took it to heart when it rang true. So she was extraordinarily adept at making allies out of some pointed critics, and while resolute and unwavering on core ethical positions, she never made enemies unnecessarily. She was also very good at working cooperatively and nurturing others’ leadership abilities, not at all possessed by the need to dominate those she worked with. Exceptionally poised, centered, unflappable (and funny!), she didn’t get thrown off balance even during very challenging moments. She was lucid and realistic about political situations, but even when the movement faced painful defeats, she kept her eyes on the long game: the idea of abandoning the struggle was unimaginable to her. The fight for women’s rights has been waged for centuries, and though we have far to go, during her lifetime enormous gains were made, thanks in no small part to her immense contributions.
- Watch a talk Gloria gave at the Bioneers Conference in 2011
- NPR: Gloria Steinem, trailblazing journalist and activist, dies at 92
Note: Sadly, another world-renowned, extremely influential and important feminist leader and thinker, a longtime close associate of Gloria Steinem’s, Robin Morgan, author of the classic, Sisterhood is Powerful among countless other accomplishments also just passed away.
Carl Anthony (1939—2026), a towering figure in the Environmental Justice Movement, may have done more than anyone to drive home the inextricable link between the exploitation of the poor and people of color and the degradation of our ecosystems.
The only African-American student when he entered Architecture School at Columbia, he became a professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and later co-founded the firm, Anthony, Fleming & Assoc., in Oakland. Appointed to the Board of Earth Island Institute by its founder, David Brower, Carl co-founded (with Karl Linn) the Urban Habitat Program, a groundbreaking initiative to cultivate multicultural leadership in environmental justice movements, and, with Luke Cole, he produced Race, Poverty and the Environment, a highly influential quarterly magazine.
Later a Fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he went on in the early 2000s to shape national conversations on the environment and equity as Director of the Ford Foundation’s Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative in New York. When he returned to California, he co-founded Breakthrough Communities, Oakland, a project that built on the many strategies and environmentally equitable programs he had funded during his time at the Ford Foundation.
Carl served on numerous boards and commissions, including the Berkeley Planning Commission, the Presidio Council, the San Francisco Planning and Research Commission, the Gamaliel Foundation, the EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the President’s Council on Sustainable Development.
Carl Anthony was a visionary leader, a great scholar, activist, educator, and mentor to many of us, and we strongly recommend his 2017 book, The Earth, The City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race, in which he shares a lot about his personal trajectory as well as his wisdom.
And for more about him:
- Urban Habitat: Rest in Power, Carl Anthony
- Forever Missed: Stories, Tributes, and More
- Oaklandside: Remembering Carl Anthony, architect who brought racial equity analysis to environmental movement
- Urban Habitat: Earth Day and Carl Anthony’s Legacy
Peter Buckley (1947—2026) was a genuine visionary who had an enormous impact on many organizations and people but whose relentless energy went into creating vital, lasting projects and institutions that would contribute to the common good with no interest in attracting attention to himself. An attorney and then a highly successful entrepreneur, he became an extremely effective philanthropist in several domains, from education to activism to land conservation to green building, and he founded or co-founded some truly groundbreaking initiatives and institutions.
Among his many achievements, Peter envisioned and tirelessly led the building of the one-of-a-kind David Brower Center and served as its President from its opening until his passing. The building itself pushed all the limits of cutting-edge green design, way beyond the highest levels of LEED certification, but its even greater accomplishment was how it became a truly uniquely dynamic hub for dozens of cutting-edge, extremely influential environmental and social justice organizations working under the same roof, as well as a nexus of progressive cultural life in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationally.
In 1995, he co-founded (with Zenobia Barlow and Fritjof Capra) the Center for Ecoliteracy which has had a huge impact on food and nutrition in schools in California and nationally. He also co-founded Greenwood School, a K-8 school with an environmental emphasis, in Mill Valley, California.
Peter was also an important leader in land conservation in the U.S. and internationally and in regenerative farming initiatives, serving on the board of Doug and Kristine Tompkins’ Conservation Land Trust that created mind-bogglingly immense national parks in Chile (Including Corcovado National Park), backing the work of The Land Institute, and co-founding with his wife Mimi a remarkably biodiverse agricultural enterprise, Front Porch Farm.
Peter was a dear friend to many of us in the Bioneers community, and we are deeply indebted to him for having generated so many long-lasting resources that will help sustain us and many generations to come in our quests to achieve a far greener and fairer world.
Wendell Berry (1934—2026)
It is hard to find someone who was more beloved by broad swaths of eco conscious and progressive folks across the U.S., most of them modern, cyber-literate urban dwellers, and therein lies a paradox because Wendell Berry was probably the most exalted voice for genuine “old-fashioned” rural values of the last couple of centuries.
A celebrated, award-winning poet, essayist, novelist, activist and teacher who wrote some 50 books and had taught English at NYU and then at the University of Kentucky, Berry was certainly a sophisticated intellectual, but in his own eyes he was above all someone who farmed a Kentucky hillside for 50+ years in the county where his family had lived for eight generations (according to some accounts, his great, great-grandfather bought 500 acres of land there after serving in the army in the War of 1812).
He used mules instead of tractors for plowing, railed against the destructiveness of industrial agriculture and was a tireless conservationist and advocate for local, rural communities and for commitment to one’s land. In the 1970s and the early 1980s he edited and wrote for Rodale Press, specifically for its publications Organic Gardening and Farming and The New Farm.
He was also a deeply principled activist, who over the years protested the Vietnam War, Nuclear Power, Climate Change, and, closer to home, mountaintop removal by coal corporations, and was even, reluctantly, arrested once or twice.
What made Wendell Berry such an exalted and loved figure, besides, of course, the brilliant authenticity of his writing, was his absolute integrity and honesty, his unshakeable ethical compass, something that resonates in an America shaped by narratives such as Gary Cooper’s character in High Noon and that is at times associated with “small-town” values espoused by conservatives, but that those on the right very rarely live up to. This genuine 8th-generation Kentuckian turned out to be a far better exemplar of the highest octave of traditional, land-based values than any conservative while being on the right side of so many of the battles for the soul of our civilization. There has never been anyone quite like Wendell Berry. He will be sorely missed, but his wisdom and elegant poems and prose will resonate for many generations.
For more information:
- The Berry Center was established in 2011 to put “Wendell Berry’s writings to work by advocating for farmers, land-conserving communities and healthy regional economies.”
- Kentucky Lantern: Kentucky writer, farmer and advocate Wendell Berry dies at 92
- NPR: Beloved writer and environmentalist Wendell Berry has died at age 92
- Bill McKibben | The Crucial Years: Two Men
- Wendell Berry | E. F. Schumacher Lecture: People, Land, and Community
For a list of Berry’s books:
