By Jordan Holaday, Sierra Club Florida
Escaping into our great public lands here in Broward County is how I unplug and relax on most weekends. I joined Sierra Club’s Outings to Resistance in Big Cypress National Preserve at the end of January expecting another weekend camping in one of Florida’s most extraordinary landscapes. I came home with something more: a renewed conviction that our parks and public lands must remain places of belonging, reflection and natural wonder, not prison camps.
That weekend, Sierra Club activists, environmental-justice organizers and immigrant-rights advocates from across the country gathered in the Everglades to experience the beauty of this remarkable ecosystem and to stand against the harmful idea that a wild and sacred place can be used as a backdrop for fear and punishment.
The message was simple and urgent: Parks are for people and nature, not prisons.
In Big Cypress, we hiked through sawgrass prairies and bald cypress domes, paddled through mangroves and camped under a massive sky full of stars. We shared stories, built community and deepened our connection to one of the most iconic landscapes in the world.
I am incredibly lucky to affectionately call this space my backyard. As a volunteer leading hikes through this space, I have seen the impact that experiencing the Everglades so directly has with those I take out there. It leaves one inspired, humbled and even more determined to protect it.
I have braved all sorts of weather in Big Cypress, from balmy winter nights to mosquito-clouded summer evenings, but this weekend in particular had a painful contrast on our minds. As temperatures dropped to freezing overnight and we gathered around a warm campfire with friends, we could not forget that people detained just miles away in what many have called “Alligator Alcatraz” were enduring harsh and inhumane conditions. The reality is clear that protecting our environment cannot be separated from protecting human dignity.
At the event, speakers reminded us of a truth that should guide all of our organizing: There can be no environmental justice without racial justice. Too often, the same systems that exploit land and pollute water also target Black, brown, Indigenous and immigrant communities first and worst. If we want a healthier Florida, we must be willing to stand in solidarity with those communities and challenge injustice in all its forms.
The Everglades is not empty land waiting to be misused. It is a living ecosystem filled with life, history and meaning. It is a place where our families should be able to explore, learn, heal and reconnect with the natural world. Our public lands should never be turned into symbols of cruelty or exclusion.
For me, Outings to Resistance was a reminder of what Sierra Club is at its best: a people-powered movement rooted in love for wild places and the belief that those places must be defended alongside the people most harmed by injustice.
I hope more South Floridians will get involved. Join a Sierra Club outing. Speak up for the Everglades. Stand with frontline communities. Help build a Florida where our parks unite us instead of divide us.
The Everglades teaches us that everything is connected: our water, our wildlife, our communities and our future.
Let’s act like it.
Jordan Holaday, of Fort Lauderdale, is the outings program manager for the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club. This opinion piece was originally published by the Sun Sentinel, which is a media partner of The Invading Sea. Banner photo: A sign pointing toward Alligator Alcatraz (iStock image).
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