More than three years ago, Ryan Grim of the Intercept wrote a story chronicling how many left-wing advocacy groups were being torn apart from the inside by the arrival of woke social justice advocates in their midst. Often these were younger staffers who had some commitment to whatever cause the group supported but who also had an endless capacity to find fault with their own co-workers behavior. Leaders of these institutions said wokeness had taken over everything else they were doing. Here's a sample.
“So much energy has been devoted to the internal strife and internal bullshit that it’s had a real impact on the ability for groups to deliver,” said one organization leader who departed his position. “It’s been huge, particularly over the last year and a half or so, the ability for groups to focus on their mission, whether it’s reproductive justice, or jobs, or fighting climate change.”…
“My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife. Whereas [before] that would have been 25-30 percent tops,” the former executive director said. He added that the same portion of his deputies’ time was similarly spent on internal reckonings.
Today, the NY Times has published a story about the Sierra Club which suggests nothing has improved in the past three years.
The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country.” But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration.
The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit...
“Sierra Club is in a downward spiral,” a group of managers wrote in a letter reviewed by The New York Times to the club’s leadership in June.
It would be convenient if the Sierra Club could blame all of this on President Trump, but as the article makes clear, Trump actually boosted the group's fundraising and outreach significantly.
In 2016, the club was at the height of its success, leading what many in the green movement consider the most successful environmental campaign put on by anyone in the 21st century: “Beyond Coal.”...
Then Mr. Trump was elected. Fund-raising jumped by $2 million in the two weeks after Election Day. The number of volunteers surged. By 2019, the club’s internal records counted 4 million “champions” — a group that included dues-paying members as well as supporters who had donated, signed petitions or participated in events.
So what happened? How did the Sierra Club go from the height of its power in 2016 to broke and struggling in 2022? They decided to expand their mission to include a bunch of other left-wing causes.
The club agreed to expand the number of staff covered by an employee union, and to raise union members’ salaries by an average of more than 30 percent over five years. Even the union was surprised...
At the same time, the club asked its supporters to agree with positions farther from the environmental causes that had attracted them in the first place.
It issued an “equity language guide,” which warned employees to be cautious about using the words “vibrant” and “hardworking,” because they reinforced racist tropes. “Lame duck session” was out, because “lame” was offensive. Even “Americans” should be avoided, the guide said, because it excluded non-U. S. citizens.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the group called for defunding the police and providing reparations for slavery.
The group is supported by dues paying members and those members let the Sierra Club know they were not thrilled with the new direction. A 2020 survey found that their core supporters believed in racial justice but still ranked it last in a list of priorities. But that message apparently didn't get through. The woke employees kept running with whatever the latest thing was. In 2020 it was BLM and social justice. Next up was anti-Zionism:
In 2022, a group of union members asked the Sierra Club to “follow [its] values of antiracism and justice” and cancel sightseeing trips it operated in Israel, in protest of the country’s treatment of Palestinians.
“Palestine is an environmental issue from our standpoint,” Erica Dodt, the president of the Progressive Workers’ Union, which includes Sierra Club employees, said in an interview. “People are a huge part of our environment.”
By 2022, the Sierra Club was going broke thanks in part to those big raises. Ben Jealous was hired to turn things around, starting with several rounds of layoffs that cut about 10% of the staff. But he also hired some "longtime associates" which angered the union and led to talk of a strike.
On top of all of this, Trump was reelected in 2024 and this time the group saw no bump in donations or commitment. On the contrary, their donations continued to slide. Meanwhile, internally, the fighting between Jealous and the union continued to escalate. This summer, the Sierra Club fired Ben Jealous. Despite having Trump once again as a universal enemy, the group seems adrift. A board member told the Times he felt good about where the group was now and couldn't see anything he would have done differently.
Commenters agree the group's problem is a lack of focus inspired by the woke mantra that all struggles are connected.
The Sierra Club fell victim to a major problem on the left wing: they insist that every social problem is interconnected and all must be solved at the same time. In reality, the opposite is true. Every issue is distinct and requires its own analysis and approach, and fixing issue A relies on working with some people who don’t necessarily agree with you on issue B.
Another one from a former Sierra Club supporter.
I was a member of the Sierra Club when I lived in California many decades ago. It's singular focus on environmental issues was simple, clear and effective.
I'm currently a member of a labor union. All I want from it are better working conditions and a good pay package.
But my labor union has made the same mistake the Sierra Club made by wading into social justice issues.
When you do that you water down the core mission and create conflict and confusion.
What labor union member would argue against better working conditions and higher pay? But not every union member, same as with every Sierra Club member, is on the same page when it comes to social, political and cultural issues. Result? Conflict. And unnecessary conflict to boot.
Social justice issues need to be addressed and there are organizations to do that. The lesson is to know what your core mission is and to stick to it.
And from a former volunteer who got turned off by the social justice focus that took over the group.
I was a volunteer with the Sierra Club's ICO (Inner City Outings, renamed Inspiring Connections Outdoors) program in Portland, OR for twelve years until I moved abroad in June. Several times a year I led hikes with high school students from majority non-white school districts into Oregon's majestic wilderness. On one of my last hikes I counted students from Vietnam, Cameroon, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala and Micronesia. For most of them, it was the first time they had seen the snow. I always considered my one and only mission to be bringing underserved communities into the fold of the environmental movement in the most enjoyable way possible. No scolding, no proselytizing, just deep connection with the wilderness.
I remember one particular volunteer Zoom meeting towards the end of the pandemic when each participant was required to state his or her (excuse me, their) pronouns and also name the indigenous people who once occupied their present location. This is when it struck me that the Sierra Club had lost its way. Not only did the organization begin slashing funds for its wilderness outings, but now the social justice noise machine was drowning out the club's core mission. What a shame.
Another testimonial to the fact that this is now the norm.
I was helping a friend with a presentation for a group dedicated to a very specific cause. Of the 20 slides in the presentation, 14 (!) were devoted to some aspect of DEI or proper pronoun usage, and only four were devoted to their actual cause.
In my experience, the people most devoted to DEI are well off and annoying white people.
They come into an org and claim, with no evidence, that we can’t solve any issue without solving nebulous racial justice issues, and making sure everyone has their pronouns in their email signature.
And when good people then leave-those spots are filled with even more strident social justice people, and the org loses its mission, loses its values, and loses supporters.
What a shame.
There are dozens more like this from people who stopped supporting the group and who say the article's explanation is accurate. People really don't like being talked down to, even if you are ostensibly on their side on the issues. Wokeness is just a big turnoff to a lot of people, wherever it takes over. Here's hoping the left continues to not understand this.
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