The Sierra Club Was A Product of the Progressive Era. Today's Progressives Have Done A Lot of Damage to It

 

In 1892 John Muir, one of the most well-known naturalists in American history founded the Sierra Club. Muir is known for his campaign to create Yosemite one of the first national parks.

Its successes are among the most significant in 20^th century history. After escorting President Theodore Roosevelt through it in 1903 the Sierra Club managed to get Yosemite established as the second ever national park. In 1916 The National Park Service was created as a result of it. It has been a bipartisan organization ever since the New Deal and expanded from 7000 dues paying members in the 1930s to over 4 million by 2016. Its record for legislative expansion has led to such legislation as the Wilderness Act in 1964, stopped dams being built on the Grand Canyon, passage of the Environmental Protection Act, the Water Pollution control act, and the Clean Air Act . Unlike the overwhelming majority of left-wing organizations it has strong support in rural areas, in large part because the club attracts people who join the club for recreation and use of public lands.

And in the battle against fossil fuels, few groups have had more effect in the 21^st century then the Sierra Club. Most notable is their 'Beyond Coal' campaign which set a goal to close half of all coal plants in the U.S. by 2017. Since 2010 187 coal plants have been closed. It has prominent alliances with certain parts of organized labor.

On its Wikipedia page The Sierra Club is listed as being a product of the progressive movement in the 1890s and has been considered a fundamentally left-wing organization. But in one of the sad ironies of history it is now facing a severe crisis at a time when it may be more needed than ever because of its attempt to reach many of today's so called progressives.

There have been times when the Sierra Club has been too extreme in its positions for its own good, particularly in this century. In 2008, several club officers quit after the organization agreed to take money to promote products from Clorox. In 2013 it engaged in civil disobedience against the building of the Keystone pipeline. It has split between whether solar power should be the way of the future and it has engaged in many lawsuits against affordable housing that have been accused as NIMBY movements. But its real problems began in 2019 when it made the decision to embrace more advanced issues involving racial justice and more left wing issues.

This was not the first time it had faced problems from within . It has increasingly been shifting its argument on immigration which had always been a contentious field. The clubs position was that overpopulation was a significant issue and that it was too far from the main goal. However at one point donors threatened to withhold donations if they didn't change their position on immigration. Then in 2004 when an election was held on moving towards a restriction policy, groups such as MoveOn became involved and their positions were denounced.  At this point the Sierra Club supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and opposes a border wall, neither of which would seem to be priorities for an environmental group.

There's an argument that after the 2018 elections the left needed organizations like the Sierra Club to keep doing what they were doing rather than by having the  Sierra Club go to the left. Considering how important the Green New Deal was to AOC and the Justice Democrats; it was more likely they were going to need the help of organizations like The Sierra Club when the Democrats regained power.  And considering that the organization had historically endorsed Democratic candidates for President, there was no question whose side they were on. Yet despite in 2019 the Sierra Club decided to widen its mission parameters from strict environmental to social justice issues. They've been paying the consequences ever since.

The biggest problem came after the George Floyd protests and the so-called reckoning with systemic racism. Considering that this was the most successful progressive organization in American history the fact the Sierra Club was forced to list its history as committing the crime of existing in the 19^th century is the kind of thing that almost cries out for satire. To be sure the organization favored the needs of white people to the exclusion of people of color but that was the Supreme Court had basically made it the law of the land during this period and the fact that Muir and prominent members were related to the eugenics movement is not surprising. Nevertheless the act of then executive director Michael Brune to disavow the groups founder as it did in 2020 is the kind of action that one is used to among so many conservative Republicans for discarding their founding members for not being sufficient to the right.

The groups also hired an enormous number of new members that were there to fight for issues of diversity and inclusion, including the Black Live Matters movement. One such member Aaron Mair was censured for his actions. The increased wages of the salaries have hurt them and the new equity language guides became a bigger problem for members. And at one point the Progressive Workers Union, which became part of the group, threatened a strike because it had failed to be a progressive workplace. (When the New York Times wrote an article highlighting these issues and others, the Progressive Workers Union chose to attack the Times.)

Furthermore when Biden was elected in 2020, the coalition that was being built fell apart with the election of Biden in 2020. After that more problems came in, most notably how outings in Israel were canceled by the progressive workers union. The PWU has chosen  to argue that Israel's genocide is an environmental issue which takes an incredible amount of contortions. (They don't help their cause by referring to what happens in Palestine as "U.S. Backed" ) Tellingly the PWU only chooses to defend its own actions, and like all left wing organization chooses to say it’s the victim. Unfortunately it has bigger problems than that.

In January of 2023 the former President of the NAACP Ben Jealous became the new executive director, the first African-American to hold the job. Jealous was a notable progressive who is described as a Democratic socialist. He ran for governor of Maryland in 2018 and in a heavily Democratic state lost by almost 12 points to incumbent Larry Hogan. His leadership of the Sierra Club was considered a disaster, including multiple restructures, increased layoffs, allegations of unfair labor practices and union-busting were filed against him. In the spring of 2024 the PWU gave him a vote of no confidence.

This past April Robert D. Bullard, an African-American known as the father of environmental justice and a prominent member of the Sierra Club publicly requested his name be removed from the award the club gives of environmental justice. He cited unmet promises and a failure to protect the predominant Black Shiloh community. Jealous was reported to refer to him and community members as 'snakes' and called for a vote of no-confidence. Last July Jealous took a leave of absence and the following month a unanimous vote was taken to terminate his employment. Al Sharpton condemned it for its 'serious racial implications'. However by that point reports had come out of horrible behavior by Jealous by his staff, undermining his colleagues, a lack of transparency on organizational issues and fostering a toxic work environment. He is also subject to complaints for sexual harassment and bullying. No notes if Sharpton has spoken about it since then.

Furthermore in June 2021 an executive summary of reports by consulting firm Ramona Strategies describe widespread problems involving harassment, workplace discriminations and abuse of senior leadership. Much of these charges came after the expansion of the mission and led to the resignation of Michael Brune, the long time director considered vital to 'the Democratic party's green base." The biggest problem became clear in June of 2022 when tensions erupted over the Club's legacy where volunteers accused leadership of eroding grassroots power in favor of professional staff and DEI reforms.

 All of this chaos comes at the worst possible time considering the renewed attacks on the environment by the Trump administration which have become increasingly harsh almost from his inauguration. The environment needs groups like the Sierra Club more than ever and they are weakened from infighting and a movement away from its fundamental mission statement – which was once called 'laser focused'.

In a world where by and large progressive lobbying groups are far less successful then those on the conservative side, for more than a century the Sierra club was a model for all such groups to follow. They had their flaws to be sure, but by staying focused on a single mission at a time – the environment – it had become a standard of how-to do something. Just six years after trying to embrace the far left in its tent it has become seriously damaged – and that's before one considers how much they may have isolated many of their conservative supporters by embracing the kinds of radical issues that so many Americans say are damaging the Democratic party during the last decade.

Leadership has made it clear that at this point they don't think they could have done anything different. This is a horrible mix of bravado and the typical unwillingness of pushing back against the left when they take positions that others might feel as too polarizing. Considering just how important issues like climate change and environmental justice are listed among the concerns of the young today,  there was a strong argument that if the leadership had stayed the course they would not be facing at least some of these deep seated and systemic problems at a time when groups like this are increasingly vital.

More than anything else the left's decision to consistently argue that the Sierra Club  - an organization founded in the Progressive Era –  has not been living up to its mission statement should prove once and for all that this current breed has no understanding of what a progressive truly is.  That they chose to turn on a group that had existed long before they were born doing the kind of work that they argue all groups should be doing as a given should make it clear that they can't and won't be satisfied until their needs are absolutely met. The fact that its attempts to 'reckon with systemic racism' chose them to pick a leader who could say with a straight face that a man who had been a founder of a movement he had worked for was not sufficiently loyal shows the generational insistence on past leaders never having gone far enough is terrible: that this standard for ideological purity involved two African-Americans proves that not even within the constructs of its own racial identity can these obstacles truly be overcome.

In this country the cause of reform has just as frequently delayed by infighting within the movement as the power structure that resists it: the battle between the side that values realpolitik as opposed to ideological purity has in almost every movement delayed the cause of change by years, if not decades. For over a century the Sierra Club was successful beyond most causes because it was focused far more on grass roots political activism. Only when it began to move more to the left has it suffered from increased infighting and divides that will take significant time and energy to overcome. And considering that its primary cause is environmentalism that time may cause more significant damage then possible to its long term goals.

It is conceivable given the current administrations policies the recovery time may be less significant then with other movements.  Regardless of this what has happened over the past several years to the Sierra Club must unfortunately stand as yet another in a long line of examples as to the very real risks when any establishments attempts to embrace the far left at the expense of one's own goals. As one can see there have been no tangible gains or rewards when the Sierra Club chose to do so and the damage has been deep and perhaps irrevocable.