Sierra Club Executive Director Resigns Amid Upheaval Around Race, Gender, and Abuses
The century-old environmental giant is trying to deal with its failures and the changing times, according to an internal report.
Alleen Brown
August 19 2021, 6:51 p.m.
During a summer of extreme heat, wildfires, and floods, the largest environmental organization in the U.S. announced last Friday that its executive director will step down, effective at the end of the year. The resignation of Michael Brune, the head of the Sierra Club, comes amid the fallout of an internal report, the executive summary recommendations of which were obtained by The Intercept, that describes an organizational crisis likely to upend the Club’s volunteer-led structure.
The internal reckoning around race, gender, and sexual as well as other abuse allegations coincided with a more public confrontation with the legacy of the Sierra Club’s once-revered founder John Muir, who expressed racist sentiments and traveled in circles that included eugenicists. Following the racial justice uprisings during the summer of 2020, the Sierra Club disavowed Muir. At the same time, discontent was brewing inside the organization over less symbolic issues, leading to the internal report.
The report, prepared for the Sierra Club by the consulting firm Ramona Strategies, describes a series of recommendations developed as part of a “restorative accountability process,” based on dozens of interviews and hundreds of pages of documentation. The sharply worded executive summary describes how the organization of nearly 900 staff members fostered a culture lacking accountability for abuse and misconduct, especially when it came from the Club’s 4,000 volunteers, some of whom act as managers for the organization’s employees. The report, which was commissioned after a volunteer leader was publicly accused of rape, underlined that employees and volunteers from historically marginalized groups were most vulnerable to abusive behavior.
“We began that restorative accountability process to understand and examine where we failed our people so we can do better as an organization, as an employer, as an advocacy group and progressive partner,” said Ramón Cruz, the Sierra Club board president, in an interview. “We have made a commitment to follow through on these changes.”
https://theintercept.com/2021/08/19/sierra-club-resignation-internal-report/