Robin Bravender at Politico:The Sierra Club would very much like to be in the news for its efforts to fight the Trump administration on climate change, save endangered species and close coal plants.
But lately, the iconic environmental group’s internal conflict is what’s been making headlines.
It’s a green-on-green food fight that couldn’t come at a worse time for the Sierra Club as the group and its environmental allies struggle to raise cash, worry they’ll be targeted by the Trump administration and scramble to combat environmental policy rollbacks.
The green group fired its boss, Ben Jealous, in August in what quickly devolved into a bitter public breakup. Sierra Club’s board said it fired Jealous “for cause following extensive evaluation of his conduct.” Jealous had been the subject of a sexual harassment complaint although the group hasn’t specified its reasons for the ouster.
Jealous and his allies are fighting back. Civil rights leader Al Sharpton got involved, warning of “serious racial implications” of firing. Jealous says he raised concerns about racial discrimination and retaliation during his tenure. He retained attorneys at a civil rights and employment law firm and said he was fighting the decision to fire him.
This was just the Sierra Club’s latest crisis in recent years.
There was the scorching public revelation that the organization had quietly accepted donations from the natural gas industry. The club grappled with its early leaders’ troubling views on race. Managers quarreled with the staff union. Sierra Club’s leader for a decade, Michael Brune, left in 2021 amid calls for increased diversity and staff complaints about workplace problems.
