More than 100 employees of the Sierra Club have accused the organization’s leader of failing to “articulate any concrete strategy” to fight the Trump administration in a letter to the leading environmental group’s board of directors.
The 117 individuals — mostly at the manager level, and calling themselves the “majority” of the organization’s non-unionized staff — said they were expressing a vote of no confidence in a letter on Monday, claiming that Executive Director Ben Jealous has not provided “any vision, leadership, or inspiration.”
“There is a widespread impression that Mr. Jealous may not be familiar with the Sierra Club’s work at all,” the letter writers wrote.
The environmental organization is one of a handful of large legacy advocacy groups devoted to protecting long standing environmental rules. The organization received a significant financial boost over the course of the first Trump administration from donors interested in funding challenges to the president’s policies, like rollbacks on pollution rules and the shrinking of national monuments.
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But over the course of the last two years the group has conducted three significant rounds of layoffs, and some close to the movement have argued that the organization’s strategies are no longer working.
The latest round of layoffs — affecting about 30 employees — were announced about three weeks ago, and Jealous was not present on the call, one of the letter’s signatories told NOTUS. Those deputies who announced the layoffs on the call suggested that the organization’s federal political arm may be eliminated in the future, the person said. The call and the layoffs were one of the primary motivations for Monday’s letter, this person said.
In a statement to NOTUS, the Sierra Club said Jealous and the board of directors were “firmly aligned” in increasing transparency and opportunities for feedback.
“We are reviewing the letter with unknown signers, but we are clear eyed that the difficult decisions we have made to keep the Sierra Club in line with its fiscal reality are necessary to maintain the organization’s strength and effectiveness,” said Patrick Murphy, the president of the organization’s board of directors. “We will not be distracted – we will continue to advance our mission and grow transparency and our effectiveness. Ben and the Board of Directors have been firmly aligned in increasing the transparency of the budget process and providing new avenues for feedback and opportunities to have questions answered. We remain committed to doing so, including hearing from those who signed this letter.”
Clean energy and infrastructure advocates have split with the Sierra Club and similar organizations in recent years over disagreements about whether environmental protections stifle development of renewable energy.
The Trump administration’s attacks on environmental rules have only further heightened those divides, causing some advocates fighting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to critique the Sierra Club and similar organizations for getting in the way of progress.
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.
This story has been updated with a statement from the Sierra Club.
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