The Volokh Conspiracy
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The Sierra Club Went Woke, and Now Is Going Broke
A heavily reported expose on one of the nation's environmentalist organizations in the New York Times
The Sierra Club is one of the oldest and most well-known environmental organizations in the country. It was founded in 1892 and became a powerful political force in twentieth century environmental politics.
In recent years, however, the Sierra Club has been losing members, money, and support. A major reason for this is that the Club, like many progressive non-profits, sought to embrace a broader social justice agenda and, in the process, alienated parts of its core environmental support, according to an extensive investigative report in the New York Times.
The story begins:
The Sierra Club calls itself the "largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country." But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration.
The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit. . . .
"Sierra Club is in a downward spiral," a group of managers wrote in a letter reviewed by The New York Times to the club's leadership in June. . . .
While the Sierra Club's leadership disputes the Times' analysis, the story makes a compelling case that as the Club's attempted to become more "woke"--to integrate broader concerns about racial justice, gender equity, and so on--it lost focus and support, drove away longtime supporters and volunteers. But according to the Club's leadership, the real problem is that those concerned about the environment became complacent after Joe Biden was elected, and the ability of supporters to give to the organization was hampered by broader economic conditions.
As the Times recounts, after Trump's first election, the Club sought to broaden its base by appealing to a wider range of progressive policy concerns, as well as to make its own operations more equitable. Among other things, it supported and buttressed the employee union, which increased the organization's labor costs substantially. But that was not all.
It issued an "equity language guide," which warned employees to be cautious about using the words "vibrant" and "hardworking," because they reinforced racist tropes. "Lame duck session" was out, because "lame" was offensive. Even "Americans" should be avoided, the guide said, because it excluded non-U. S. citizens.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the group called for defunding the police and providing reparations for slavery.
The club even turned on its own founder, John Muir, with Mr. Brune saying the environmental icon had used "deeply harmful racist stereotypes" in his writings about Native Americans and Black people in the 1860s.
Mr. Mair, who had been the group's first Black board president, wrote a rebuttal defending the founder. The Sierra Club refused to publish it, and censured him when he published it elsewhere.
"Do we want to still be the Sierra Club anymore?" Mr. Mair said he thought at the time.
This was apparently a reasonable question, as the organization, for a time, seemed more focused on investing in priorities other than environmental protection.
Jim Dougherty, an environmental activist and Sierra Club director, said he had raised objections to a 2019 budget that called for the equivalent of 108 full-time employees to work on a "national equity investment." Most of those were not new hires; rather a refocus of the responsibilities of many current employees.
The club said that was meant to address the "problematic lack of diversity and inclusion in the environmental movement and to make the Sierra Club a welcoming and supportive place to work for all employees."
"I said, 'We have two F.T.E.s devoted to Trump's war on the Arctic refuge, and we have 108 going to D.E.I., and I don't think we have our priorities straight,'" Mr. Dougherty said, using the acronyms for "full-time employees" and "diversity, equity and inclusion."
Mr. Dougherty said no other board members agreed, and the budget passed.
In another instance, a prominent volunteer who pushed for greater wildlife protection efforts was challenged by a Club staffer who reportedly told her "That's fine, Delia. But what do wolves have to do with equity, justice and inclusion?'"
While the Club's membership is overwhelmingly liberal, those who donated to the organization tended to rank environmental concerns well above combatting racism or other social justice concerns. And when the organization sought to take a stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict, all it did was sow further discord among its ranks.
The Sierra Club has faced internal dissension and difficulty before, including when there were internal fights over immigration (because, in the view of some environmentalists, people are the problem). Refocusing on its core mission may help it recover its balance, but there's little question it (like most major environmentalist organizations) will remain a progressive organization, generally aligned with the Democratic Party. This is something I wrote about thirty years ago in my first book, and one of the dynamics that I believe hampers greater environmental progress. In this regard, it appears that listing further to the left is a losing strategy.
[Note: Post has been edited to clean up some awkward phrasing.]
