SC NYC Group Defunct - Former Leaders Deservedly Expelled

In 2016, Sierra Club's National Board pulled the membership of SC NYC Group's most prominent leaders - Ken Baer, Jim Lane and Diane Buxbaum - for 3-5 years.  In practice, they've been expelled.  It's unlikely that these septuagenarians will come back in five years as candidates for re-election for the NYC ExCom.  

To prevent their story from being swept under the rug, it's important to have it posted here.  They led a clique that dominated Sierra Club's New York City Group for many, many years, enabled by Machiavellian attorney Jim Lane's mastery of Sierra Club procedures.  Details on this blog.

Club rules enabled proportionate representation of regional Club groups on state Chapter steering committees.  Even though most Sierra Club members in New York City were not active with the local group, the fact that 10 or 15,000 New Yorkers wrote annual membership checks to the Sierra Club enabled the NYC Group to get additional representatives named to the New York Chapter steering committee, effectively controlling it.

When Sierra Club National changed those rules, removing the advantage that enabled several big city groups around the country to dominate their chapters, Lane, Baer, Buxbaum and Don Hughes apparently conducted a national campaign to have have other chapters resist the new National rules.  I say apparently, because I don't have any inside information and found out about their status months after they were effectively expelled.

Most of the folks on the NYC Group ExCom were members of Lane and Baer's clique, or were deemed sufficiently cooperative to be allowed on. (No disrespect to Lisa DiCaprio, a dedicated and highly qualified environmentalist, who finally managed to get on.)

Now, the Sierra Club NYC Group really does seem to be defunct.  And that's okay. If New Yorkers want to get involved with environmental projects, there are many active groups from which to choose.

Because the Lane and Baer clique didn't mind that little was done as long as they and their friends were in control, there's effectively no one left. The Group has been effectively dead for years, their expulsion removes some of the remaining pretense.

It's too bad that National didn't act back in 2010.  I gave them evidence that Lane and Baer had used fraud and libel to manipulate Group elections.  

National could have removed them way back then, and recruited new members to run the NYC Group.  Instead, Robin Mann, National president at that time, chose to give Lane and Baer a wrist slap. Perhaps National Board members remembered their past history when this latest transgression came about, and were less forgiving.

While Sierra Club National is now under very progressive, proactive leadership and is a mighty force, the local franchise of the brand, Sierra Club NYC, has long had a poor reputation, and it's too late to rehabilitate it. That turkey is long since burnt.

While some National and NY State Chapter leaders might have an interest in reactivating the Sierra Club NYC Group - they probably have higher priorities.