Sierra Club is the nation's largest grassroots environmental organization. In other large cities, such as Los Angeles and Chicago, it has a thriving and dynamic presence.
However, its presence in NYC has been at best marginal. This is due to a tiny clique of longtime volunteers who have dominated both the NYC Group and the NY State Chapter of the Club ever since 1990.
Sierra Club's NYC Group has been defunct for years
While there have been over 15,000 Sierra Club members in NYC, hardly any of them pay any attention to the virtually defunct SC NYC Group. Visit their website. While there are many committees listed, there's no discussion of their activities elsewhere on the website or in their occasional newsletter. That's because the committees are inactive. If their occasional public talks brought in any new volunteers or generated any group activities, wouldn't it be reflected on the website? The webmaster frequently posts verbose essays that are unrelated to actual activities of the NYC Group. It maintains a pretense.
SC NYC Groups has been a Potemkin Village for many years - a fraudulent entity with one true purpose - to maintain its old guard - led by Jim Lane and his front man Ken Baer - in lifetime positions as Sierra Club volunteer officers. Since the 1990s, they and their cronies have also dominated their NY State Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Between 2006 and 2010, I tried to bring in new volunteers and revitalize the NYC group. Here's why that didn't work.
Ways the old guard has maintained control
- SC National has steered clear of the NYC Group for many years. Jim Lane, a self-employed attorney, sued National in the past. To avoid expensive lawsuits, National has ignored the NYC group as much as possible.
- Very few of the 15,000 or so members pay any attention to the doings of the NYC Group. Most of the a few hundred members who actually vote have known of the old guard for decades.
- The operations of the NYC Group have historically been very inefficient and dysfunctional, driving away potential volunteers. For many years, Olive Freud disrupted monthly ExCom meetings with angry rants and crazy behavior, tolerated by the old guard. This drove away most newcomers after one meeting. I and other ExCom members successfully petitioned SC National to take away her SC membership. In recent years, two other SC NYC ExCom members, Annie Wilson and Margaret Young, have had their memberships taken away by National.
Environmental activists seeking effective places to put their energy quickly realize that SC NYC is not a useful place for them. One can speculate about the motivations of the few who stay. Some are fully aware of what the old guard is about but are able to convince themselves that their presence - enabling the old guard in continuing to preserve appearances - is somehow good for the Sierra Club.
Some find value in their association with the Club. Back in 2012, Thelma Fellows, briefly chair of the NYC Group before she proved to be insufficiently compliant, proposed as the new energy committee chair one Lisa DiCaprio, an environmental studies professor at NYU and a highly dedicated activist. She was harshly rejected by the old guard, who installed their crony Annie Wilson. DiCaprio left for some time, identifies primarily with 350.org, although continues to associate with the SC in some form. It's rare for volunteers to stick around if they've been slapped down instead of welcomed. She is a rarity.
The old guard used libel and fraud in the 2009 and 2010 Executive Committee elections
This was unequivocally documented in a formal complaint to the Sierra Club's National Board. Jim Lane is a master of using Sierra Club procedure and parliamentary law to create labyrinths and confusion.
In the December 2009 ExCom election, Sierra Club members in NYC voted many new members onto the ExCom - voting out several long-serving members, including Jim Lane. Because of delays at the printer there were less than 30 days between the mailing of the ballots and the day of their counting, as required by Sierra Club National bylaws. Neither Lane, Baer or any other member of the ExCom suggested delaying the day of the ballot counting for a week, which would have put the election squarely within compliance of National regulations.
I believe but cannot prove that they knew of the technical violation but kept silent so that if they lost they could raise the issue and force National to rerun the election - which they did. In the August 2010 ExCom election, Ken Baer and Jim Lane, with the support of their faction, falsely claimed that I was wrongfully responsible for holding the December ballot at the printer because I was stalling until the candidates I recruited submitted their candidate statements. The accusation that my wrongful conduct was to blame for the delay was repeated in three locations.
Formal complaint to Sierra Club National Board documenting election fraud and libel
In October 2010 I submitted a 27 page formal complaint that documented clearly how the statements from Lane and Baer constituted libel and fraud, and their use in Sierra Club elections constituted serious misconduct under the Sierra Club Standing Rules. I requested that National immediately remove Lane and Baer's leadership privileges, in accordance with SC Standing Rules 5.10.2.
To its great shame, National dismissed the complaint. "...The Standing Rule specifically gives us discretion not to act on requests that we believe should be dealt with more appropriately by other means....We believe that working with chapter leadership will be a more effective alternative than acting serially on multiple leadership removal requests...."
In November 2010, SC Board President Robin Mann issued a stern sounding slap-on-the-wrist memo to all NY State Chapter leaders, promising close oversight and demanding civil behavior. With dissent crushed, the doings of the NYC Group and State Chapter are presumably quite civil.
The NYC Group is still under the complete control of Lane and Baer, and still does virtually nothing. What are the long term consequences for the Sierra Club brand in NYC and State? I think it's likely that volunteers, activists, and donors that might have been attracted to Sierra Club have long since found other places to bring their energy and their money.
Recent dealings with SC NYC reveal that minutes of meetings are often not recorded, and not shared with the ExCom members and the few who bother to attend meetings. Some complain weakly but are unwilling to ruffle feathers. Not surprisingly, the person responsible for keeping minutes - who usually doesn't - is none other than Jim Lane, who is ironically the procedural compliance officer for the NY State Chapter of the Club.
I share this material so that the unfortunate and shameful history of the Sierra Club in NYC doesn't complete vanish down the memory hole. I encourage environmentalists to reform the Sierra Club, if that is possible, but perhaps the wiser course is to learn from my mistake and avoid it altogether.
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