• STATEMENT ON THE SIERRA CLUB 2022 ELECTION RESULTS •
by Aaron Mair and Michael Dorsey The 2022 election for the Sierra Club’s Board of Directors election concluded on April 27. The Club’s Inspectors of the Election reported that, beyond ourselves, Cheyenne Skye Branscum, Allison Chin and Cynthia Hoyle have been elected to three-year terms on the volunteer board. We congratulate our new, fellow Directors. A total of 52,924 members voted in the election, exercising one of the most important responsibilities of membership – helping continue our legacy of a democratically elected board. We are proud that many members voted. We are also concerned that the overall voter turnout percentage was a paltry: 7.61%! An exceptionally large, super majority of the Club's eligible voting members, mirroring worrisome patterns across the country, simply did not vote. Sadly, the sitting Board majority, and even some senior managers, attempted to manipulate the election process. The unscrupulous behavior was repeatedly admonished by the Inspectors of Election. Our election, despite this conduct, is a wonderful testament to the legitimate grassroots power of the thousands of members that voted for us. We are humbled and most grateful for their support. We ran in order to change the current direction of the Board majority on a number of key issues. We look forward to an opportunity to restore and reinvigorate many of the key principles for which the Sierra Club has stood: wildlands protection; bold actions to overcome the climate crisis; strengthening the grassroots chapter and groups against deleterious, misaligned top-down structures; supporting the independence of chapter-led outings, and supporting Inspiring Connections Outdoors (ICO); and fighting for increased transparency of the Club board of directors and management decisions. During the election period we were concerned by incidents and posturing by some in senior management and the Board—incidents that were publicly described as antisemitic. Bigotry has no place in the Sierra Club. We are completely opposed to any antisemitic efforts and will work to expose them and remove those from the Club that endorse them--and all other forms of bigotry. We believe one of the Club's best assets is our grassroots leadership. Sadly entire chapters and urgent environmental campaigns have been suspended or even shut down without due process. We will work to stop these efforts and deliver with integrity, professionalism, and support for the Grassroots. The Sierra Club must advocate for our values, and promote protection for wild places and major funding for expansion of community and rooftop solar, not provide green cover for environmental rollbacks that undermine climate solutions and billions in subsidies for logging activities and polluting industries that compete with solar and harm the environment and communities. We look forward to a productive journey over the coming years--with you and for the planet. Thank you, Aaron Mair & Dr. Michael Dorsey
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Two of the four independent "Grassroots Choice" candidates for Sierra Club Board, Aaron Mair and Michael Dorsey, were elected today, thanks to all of your help and hard work gathering petition signatures and campaigning. Based on a vote count carried out by Election Services Co., the independent firm that manages the Sierra Club annual board election, the Inspectors of the Election report the following results: The Inspectors report the final results of the 2022 Sierra Club Board of Directors election as follows: The five candidates elected: Allison Chin 34,717 - 13.85% Cheyenne Skye Branscum 34,187 - 13.64% Cynthia Hoyle 28,865 - 11.52% Aaron Mair 28,637 - 11.42% Dr. Michael K. Dorsey - 24,186 - 9.65% Ten members ran for the five board seats up for election. Three of the winning candidates were nominated by the nominating committee, and two of the winning candidates - Aaron Mair and Dr. Michael Dorsey - ran by petition. Aaron Mair is the only incumbent candidate who won re-election this year. Notably, this is the first majority-female board of directors in Sierra Club history, as well as the highest number of people of color serving on it. Another first is that the Sierra Club has now just elected its first tribal citizen to its board of directors, Cheyenne Skye Branscum. The new board of directors will meet for the first time on May 19-21, 2022, when they will select a president and other officers. Current board members who were not up for re-election and so will continue this year are the following. (Date listed indicates end of current term as a Director.) Ramon Cruz 2023 Ross MacFarlane 2024 Rita Harris 2023 Patrick Murphy 2023 Tony Fuller 2024 Chad Hanson 2024 Debbie Heaton, 2024 Marion Klaus, 2023 Natalie Lucas, 2023 Meghan Sahli-Wells, 2024 Three current board members, Mike O’Brien, Oliver Bernstein, and Dave Scott, are termed off the Board and so not eligible to run as a candidate this year. The remaining candidates who ran this year, but were not elected are the following: Brian Gomez (incumbent) Maya Khosla (petition candidate) Shruti Bhatnagar (nomcom candidate) Kathryn Bartholomew (petition candidate) Herve Jean-Baptiste (nomcom candidate) Valid returns via internet: 15,266 Valid returns via mail: 37,658 Total valid returns: 52,924 (Invalid ballots: 555) Total Ballots Distributed: 695,607 Valid ballots returned: 7.61% Steven Krieg Chief Inspector of Election, for the Inspectors
The Sierra Club Tehipite Chapter unanimously endorses the slate of Aaron Mair, Maya Khosla, Dr. Michael Dorsey, and Kathryn "Kate" Bartholomew.
The Tehipite Chapter, headquartered in Fresno, California, incorporates Yosemite National Park and surrounding national forests in its boundaries. The Tree Speech Podcast has just run two episodes on the topic of "Considering John Muir." One of them features candidate Aaron Mair: Since 1983, Lee Stetson has presented dramatic live enactments of John Muir in Yosemite National Park. He is often asked to provide Muir "voice overs" for films on Yosemite, national parks, or John Muir, including in Ken Burns' acclaimed PBS series "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." Aaron Mair is an environmental justice pioneer who has worked over the last 40 years in the spaces of health, environment, climate change disparities, and wilderness protection. He is an urban environmental activist and a regional and national environmental justice organizer and strategist who has advised two presidents and Congress, served on the national board of directors of the Sierra Club as its 57th president, and as the New York State Atlantic Chapter Chair. Here is the article that Aaron co-wrote for Earth Island Journal: "Who Was John Muir, Really?"
The Los Angeles Times, in its April 14, 2022 issue, reports:
Internal conflicts are roiling the Sierra Club, with big consequences for the future of the American climate movement. Members of the nation’s largest environmental group are currently voting for their board of directors, with a slate of insurgent candidates challenging what they say are the club’s efforts to minimize the role of grass-roots volunteers, who have historically played a major role in shaping the organization’s agenda, Jimmy Tobias reports for HuffPost. The election has also become a sort of referendum on the legacy of the club’s founder, John Muir, and whether the famed environmentalist was irredeemably racist. Many Club leaders and staff received an email message today from our Grassroots Choice Volunteers asking to to
Please Vote for Grassroots Choice in the Board of Directors Election! We are grateful to our volunteers for sending out this message! We have had some questions about how our volunteers were able to send this message to so many Club leaders. Here's the reason, as stated at the bottom of the message: You are receiving this email because you are listed in the Sierra Club’s Web Interactive Leader Directory (WILD), which any Club member may use to communicate with Club leaders about Club elections (Standing Rule 5.6.1(h)(iii)); Board Election FAQ). Please feel free to share the link above with your Sierra Club friends. As Grassroots Candidates we are running for Board Member positions because the real power of Sierra Club (SC) is that it is powered by volunteers in all walks of life - traveling the great outdoors, protecting wild places and taking actions in places where decision makers need to be heard.
About the two separate slates... One was selected by a nominating committee rubber stamping the current often misguided direction of the club leadership majority; the other, we independent "Grassroots Choice" candidates, who were able to run as we were petitioned by well over 500 Sierra Club members. The Huffington Post wrote a story about this year's Sierra Club elections that is worth reading. It seems like a fair and well researched assessment. Our position, challenges to be overcome and particular interests can be found throughout this website. While we independent candidates come from very different walks of life, we are united in serving as a voice resisting the consolidation of decision making and authority concentrated at the National SC level. We are loyal to the grassroots spirit of volunteerism that has been at the heart of SC for decades. So far, 11 chapters have taken action on endorsements of Board candidates, and 9 of the chapters have primarily or exclusively endorsed us, the Grassroots Choice petition candidates. Several large SC chapters have exclusively endorsed 3 or 4 of the petition candidates (Atlantic, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Loma Prieta, and Kern Kaweah), or have endorsed 3 or 4 of the petition candidates plus 1 (Angeles, Tennessee, New Jersey) or 2 (Michigan). Stephen Montgomery, Kern-Kaweah Chapter Chair, said "we voted unanimously to endorse four petition candidates; Aaron Mair, Kathryn Bartholomew, Michael Dorsey, and Maya Khosla," and went on to explain "It is the view of our ExCom that the Club culture is drifting away from the founders’ vision of a bottom up volunteer organization. While it’s true that we need and use professional expertise, the direction of how that expertise should best be used be held by the board. That board must reflect the values we hold dear, the values of volunteerism and member-up management, not top down “do what you’re told” directives from an upper management." - Maya Khosla Long - running author of "Nature News," a San Francisco Bay Area publication by Jake Sigg, has endorsed our candidates.
In this "Special Issue of Nature News About the 2022 Sierra Club Election", Jake writes: "This is the most contentious Sierra Club election in Club history, and it is imperative to participate.... I mean to address primarily members of the Sierra Club who are unaware of the clash of values presented by this election... I trust all Sierra Club members will vote for the Petition candidates and no Board-nominated candidates." Read more.... In this article in Huffington Post, published April 3, 2022, journalist Jimmy Tobias explains how the Sierra Club’s board election has become a fight over not just the racial legacy of its founder but also the future of the club’s structure and mission.
The intense internal conflicts that have roiled the Sierra Club for the better part of a year will come to a head April 27, when the organization’s roughly 780,000 members finish voting for five candidates to sit on its 15-person board. The election features a group of insurgent petition candidates vying against a slate the majority of the current board supports in a fight over the future of America’s most iconic environmental organization. The four petition candidates, who had to gather signatures to get on the ballot, are running on a platform to “save the Sierra Club” from a board that they contend has engaged in “top-down,” “ideologically-driven” governance, while “censoring and silencing” the club’s grassroots volunteers. Note this statement in the article: "All four petition candidates, some of them fearful of being sanctioned for speaking to the press, made clear that statements provided for this article represented their personal opinions, not the views or policies of the Sierra Club itself." Notably, several other persons interviewed by Mr. Tobias for this article asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, [Editor's note: Is this the kind of Sierra Club we want?] Read the complete article on Huffington Post (off-site link) Board Candidate Aaron Mair has sent the following to Steven Krieg, the Club's Inspector of Elections, responding to the Inspectors ruling that even though our slate of candidates were not notified until 11 days later that the other slate were planning to send a mailing of Club members - in violation of Club rules - nonetheless concluding that -- due to a "fait accompli"-- the mailing by the opposing slate was not unfair: "Once again, the loose application of the Club Election rules and standards to partisan members of the Board (like Mike O'Brien) and how the "The Club's Executive Office" (which has a partisan endorsed union interest in the outcome of this election) conveniently failed to follow Club rules in this matter that amounts to serious harm to ALL independent candidates. This appears to be a mailing to the Club's most active voters in past elections who will be impacted by this one sided mailing. It is quite clear from The Sierra Club's deliberate mismanagement election to advantage their endorsed candidates throughout this process. Merely waiving the requirement and rules does not and will not cure the impact of this partisan BoD factional mailing because any effort by the independents literally would arrive to eligible voters by THE LAST WEEK of elections!! By then, most ballot holders will have voted. When connecting the string of rulings made over the past month, it is clear Mr. Krieg, that this process has failed the independent candidates & the Club's Volunteers." The Inspector of Elections Ruling is attached.
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