Althouse: "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...."

November 7, 2025

"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...."

"'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.'... Internally, the club’s commitment to a progressive workplace curdled into a culture of allegations and investigations.... Delia Malone, an ecologist and volunteer for the club’s Colorado chapter, said she heard from attorneys hired by the Sierra Club, seeking to interview her as part of an investigation against her. 'I said, "What’s the claim, and who made the claim?" And they said, "We can’t tell you that,"' Ms. Malone said. Ms. Malone thought that someone else in the chapter had filed a complaint. She recalled an incident when a club staff member had scolded her for saying that the club should lobby Colorado’s legislature for more protections for wolves. 'One of the staff said, "That’s fine, Delia. But what do wolves have to do with equity, justice and inclusion?"' Ms. Malone said...."

From "The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart. The environmental group gave up its singular focus on climate change for a broader agenda. The ensuing internal strife left it weakened as it takes on the Trump administration" (NYT).

32 comments:

boatbuilder said...: "Any organization not explicitly right wing sooner or later becomes left wing." The Sierra Club has been a watermelon for a long, long time.; 11/7/25, 12:07 PM
ChrisSchuon said...: I must have missed when the Sierra Club's "singular focus" became climate change. Oh well, "social justice" claims another already zombified institution.; 11/7/25, 12:22 PM
Dude1394 said...: Another group that the democrat communists have destroyed.; 11/7/25, 12:27 PM
Aggie said...: "... 'One of the staff said, "That’s fine, Delia. But what do wolves have to do with equity, justice and inclusion?"'..."

And nowhere does the article mention 'Institutional Capture'. But it is a recurring theme of our time, representing the corruption of purpose and values, the hollowing out of the mission and replacement with entirely different institutional drivers - in this case, having nothing to do with the founding, fundamental purpose of the Sierra Club. No mention of that - just the drama of leadership turnover and the pestilence of zealotry.; 11/7/25, 12:34 PM
Kai Akker said...: ---- 'People are a huge part of our environment.'

Ah.

And what a mistake when she did not follow the suggestion to change her name to Deliah Malonzani.; 11/7/25, 12:36 PM
rehajm said...: Notice they’re still here. In better times things that failed went away in favor of new things suited to meet the current needs.; 11/7/25, 12:43 PM
Lewis said...: Environmental groups lost me when they went climate change stupid. Suddenly, it was acceptable to cover large expanses of land and ocean with solar panels and bird/bat/whale killing ugly wind turbines even while acknowledging that it wouldn't do a thing to stop the climate from changing.; 11/7/25, 12:58 PM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: There's nothing wrong with the Sierra Club that couldn't be made better by rubbing a potato on it.; 11/7/25, 1:09 PM
Enigma said...: The Sierra Club was recently a group of limousine liberals -- city people who wanted nature to stay natural, public, and under central control. This followed the early creepy capitalistic development of Yosemite (pre-National Park) and the Grand Canyon. Their founder, John Muir, was a tree-hugging proto-hippie long before hippies existed. Muir worked with "conservative" Teddy Roosevelt back in the day.

My father spoke about observing a Sierra Club outing where they rode horses and trampled nature more than the non-club ordinary people. Britannica reports that Muir was also a racist and white supremacist too:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Muir; 11/7/25, 1:13 PM
Iman said...: Tree-hugging, villainous scum.; 11/7/25, 1:13 PM
Hey Skipper said...: You can't imagine the depth of my disappointment.; 11/7/25, 1:21 PM
robother said...: It was a trick question by the staffer: as Delia discovered, wolves have a lot to do with diversity, equity and inclusion.; 11/7/25, 1:30 PM
NMObjectivist said...: I keep thinking the Democratic Party is in failure mode. But they keep not failing.; 11/7/25, 1:31 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/7/25, 1:53 PM
wildswan said...: The Israelis have done a lot to "make the desert bloom." They've planted 240,000,000 trees which has altered the climate for the better inside Israel. They have a lot to share with those truly concerned about the environment. Apparently that no longer includes the Sierra Club.
Yet when the Sierra Club and the environmental movement as a whole was founded in the US in the time of Teddy Roosevelt it was working on principles which those founders had learned from indigenous people. The founders were members of the Boone and Crocket Club and had all spent time hunting and camping as young men 1880-1920. These expeditions were all led by indigenous guides from area tribes at a time when tribal life was disturbed but still existent. Around the campfire at night these guides inculcated the values of the indigenous outlook on nature. Later when these young men assumed positions of power they founded the conservation movement on those values. One such man was Henry Stimson, first Secretary of the Dept. of the Interior. He began the sytem of national parks. Another was Madison Grant. He founded major conservation organizations which disseminated the indigenous views and thus created support for Stimson's actions. So the Sierra Club is renouncing working for the values of indigenous peoples in both Israel and the United States with respect to nature in favor of working for social justice a la Marx in the big cities. They are doing this because they drink in the raw, unfiltered, mental sewage of the large social media providers. They consider that that provides them with advanced moral insight.; 11/7/25, 1:54 PM
n.n said...: Yes, wolves select equitable Diversity, thereby normalizing quota Diversity, which is species inclusive, the very model of social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere, and a delicious meal, a novel deal with Democratic election.; 11/7/25, 1:55 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: The Sierra Club lost all credibility when it took a $100 million dollar bribe from a Liberal Jewish Billionaire to stop talking immigration and its negative impact on the enviroment.

That was in the late 90s. The Sierra Club then became a plaything of Leftist causes. Like Climate change.

Now they're arguing about Israel and Genocide in Gaza. In other words, some Leftists want to push ANOTHER leftwing cause that has zero to do with the Enviroment. Only this time the Leftists who are Zionists are getting hysterical over it.

Too bad, but the Sierra Club was done 20 years ago.; 11/7/25, 2:03 PM
gilbar said...: so, in the olden days;
the Sierra club was against things like dams in National Parks..
Then, they decided that The Important Thing was pretending that compact fluorescent bulbs would Save The World..
Then, they decided that DEI was All That Mattered..

NOW; they've decided that THE JOOZE MUST GO!!
rcocean must be proud!; 11/7/25, 2:08 PM
John Henry said...: Sierra club really embraced that sweet, sweet, natural gas money to lobby against coal. But then Chesapeake Energy stopped funding.

Who is the sugar daddy paying them to endorse DEI?

Sierra Club may not be for sale but you can certainly rent them for a while.

John Henry; 11/7/25, 2:36 PM
Rosalyn C. said...: They haven’t figured out that Islamic terrorism is based on racism. And it must be Israel‘s fault that the Palestinians decided that no Jews would be allowed to live in a Palestinian state and the Jews should be removed from Israel. The progressives are convinced that even though 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs and Israel is fully multicultural, Israel is the racist.
The stupidity and hatred gets boring after a while.; 11/7/25, 2:40 PM
Lazarus said...: That is not the current policy of many Palestinian factions. Consider that Israeli policies haven't exactly been above such accusations. The goal early on was to create a Jewish state by driving out most of the Arab population. "Fully multicultural" Israel is a result of past ethnic cleansing.; 11/7/25, 2:46 PM
Tina Trent said...: Yes, George Soros pushed the Sierra Club into one of their DEI silos in the mid-90s. I was at the table at the time, though soon to be purged, and it was very ugly.

They never knew what hit them.; 11/7/25, 2:47 PM
Tina Trent said...: Aggie, Institutional Capture indeed.; 11/7/25, 2:49 PM
G. Poulin said...: I'd love to sic the Ents on the Saruman Club --- oops, I mean the Sierra Club.; 11/7/25, 3:41 PM
Rosalyn C. said...: Re: Lazarus represents the typical attack on Israel, the assymetrical judgements. On the one hand some non-powerful Palestinian voices are advocating peace and coexistence, so we should excuse or ignore the goals and charters of the factions who do hold power and are still insisting that Israel must be destroyed (eventually if not immediately). At the same time we should dismiss the present situation in Israel and focus criticism on debatable claims of ethnic cleansing which resulted from the 1948 war.

FYI during the existential war of 1948 the expulsions and departures of Arabs "were uneven, influenced by timing, local choices, external pressure, and diplomacy. There was no uniform, statewide order to expel everyone, and by the war’s end, both practical and political reasons led the new Israeli government to keep — and later formalize citizenship for — those who had stayed." from Chatgpt.

Yes there were discussions of population exchanges prior to 1948 but that was not a formal policy, rather became a military necessity after hostilities had broken out. The largest Arab population centers were not affected at all however.

Large scale population exchanges have happened previously: India/Pakistan and Turkey/Greece, for instance. The difference with these conflicts is they had already established states to come to agreements. While Israel was ready to become a state in 1948 the Arabs/Palestinians were not. They were represented in 1948 by the Arab Higher Committee which was led by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, famously anti-Jewish, as well as other Arab states. Al-Husseini spent most of WWII in Berlin, was hosted by Hitler and Himmler. The Mufti organized Bosnian Muslim troops for the Nazis, broadcast propaganda to the Arab world, tried to prevent Jewish immigration to Palestine. His nephew was Yasser Arafat, btw.

Finally, " 'Fully multicultural' Israel is a result of past ethnic cleansing." I'm not sure what this means other than a snide and grudging acknowledgement that Israel not only survived the many wars against its existence but has created a vibrant and tolerant society. Let's ignore the current intolerant and oppressive societies created by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. They are victims, nothing is their fault.; 11/7/25, 4:25 PM
Bob Boyd said...: "one of the Sierra Club's four board members just pled guilty to stealing almost $250 million...'

https://x.com/AndrewCFollett/status/1986877012431282221; 11/7/25, 5:55 PM
Lazarus said...: Fatah and other parties claim that they only want a return to the 1967 boundaries. They may or may not live up to that, but it ought to be taken into account, not simply ignored in repetitions of hasbara.

The history of earlier wars was complicated. Israeli efforts to push out Palestinians naturally met resistance. We grew up believing that Israel was "fighting for its life." Things looked different in other parts of the world. The Arab habit of overdramatization didn't help. Israeli officials, though, have admitted that things weren't exactly as they said at the time.; 11/7/25, 6:24 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: From Google:

The tech billionaire is David Gelbaum, who famously pledged a $100 million gift to the Sierra Club on the condition that the organization would not speak out against or try to limit immigration. Gelbaum, a large contributor to environmental causes, set this stipulation around the mid-1990s to influence the Sierra Club's stance on immigration, ensuring it wouldn't become an anti-immigration group.

The condition: He offered a $100 million donation to the Sierra Club with the explicit condition that the group refrain from taking an anti-immigration stance.

The timeline: This arrangement was made in the mid-1990s.; 11/7/25, 7:18 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: In 2023 the Sierra Club foundation spent $90 million on "Programs". $40 million was to "stop coal" and "Find green solutions". $17 million was to "stop drilling" on public land. $21 million was for "educating the public" about issues relating to protection of the natural and human enviroment (aka why we need green energy).; 11/7/25, 7:33 PM
Rosalyn C. said...: Israel gave up the Sinai and Gaza for peace, but I guess that doesn't count for anything. Who remembers that far back?
Had Israel been defeated in any of the various wars they had to fight the Jewish population would have been annihilated and then the story would have been "Israel was fighting for its life but lost." (Sadly, sniff sniff /s)
Things always look different in places where Muslims are the majority and adamantly believe that the whole world must and will become Muslim, that Palestine is Muslim land forever ever since it was conquered by Muslims in the 7th century. That viewpoint does tend to prejudice the mind. They conveniently pretend not to know that the Quran says the land of Israel belongs to the Jews.
That doesn't mean Israel has never done wrong things, it has and does make mistakes. The double standard of expecting perfection from Israel reminds me of the people who trash the US for all its mistakes and sins. They accuse the US of causing everything bad in the world but they give a free pass to our enemies who are the worst violators of human rights in the world. They accuse the US of being the oppressor while the dictatorships are the victims. The only free democratic society in the Middle East, Israel, is called "racist" but the regional oligarchies and oppressive regimes are given a free pass because they have brown skin. Progressives ignore everything except race and call that justice, correct?; 11/7/25, 8:13 PM
Peachy said...: Hating Jews and placing new leftist alliance juicy lips on radical Islamic Male domination's ass - is all the rage on the asshole left.; 11/7/25, 9:47 PM
Ampersand said...: Eventually, it will become obvious (even to college graduates) that the business of doing good is a snare and a delusion. Unfortunately, the arrival of this obviousness will be preceded by the undeniability, and irreversibility, of decline. So it goes.; 11/7/25, 11:49 PM