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)
3 Comments
Harold
4/4/2022 08:35:41 am
It seems to me that the crux of the battle against the grassroots was the outside consultant's recommendation that leadership within the Club so it could be "controlled" by staff. In other words, instead of being led by the volunteers, we volunteers would be considered Kindergartners that need to be " trained" and "motivated" and "empowered." That is directly contrary to the Sierra Club's culture from the beginning, where we volunteers are the the ones that created the Sierra Club, worked for it with unfettered dedication, and only intended to hire staff to assist us with the administrative tasks - not to be our nannies!
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4/4/2022 09:01:40 am
EXCELLENT AND BALANCED PIECE ON THE BATTLE WITHIN THE SIERRA CLUB. My own opinion is clear. I fully support Aaron Mair, my friend Michael Dorsey and the petition slate for the Sierra Club's Board of Directors.
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Janet Wood
4/4/2022 11:31:29 am
Most of the current Sierra Club Board of Directors (and several candidates) seem to have developed a bloated sense of self-importance with their patronizing and condescending attitude toward grassroots volunteers. They have led themselves to believe that they are somehow charged with the benevolent task of “empowering” the grassroots. NO—YOU DO NOT EMPOWER THE GRASSROOTS VOLUNTEERS! WE ARE SELF-EMPOWERED THROUGH OUR PASSION, COMMITMENT, AND "BOOTS ON THE GROUND" EXPERIENCE! Without US there is no Sierra Club. YOU are merely administrators and need to start behaving in such a way.
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