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A 'hostile' takeover bid at the Sierra Club
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In a recent letter to the Sierra Club's current board of directors, 13 past presidents of the group expressed "extreme concern for the continuing viability of the club."
Your tired, your poor, your environment
The combination of birth rates and immigration mean the US has the highest population growth of any developed country. This includes one million legal immigrants, plus an estimated 700,000 illegal immigrants, each year. Without change, predicts the US Census Bureau, the country's population could double this century - and nearly 70 percent of that increase would be immigrants.
America has always been a land of immigrants, but their numbers swelled after 1990 when the Immigration Reform Act opened the country to the families of many immigrants.
Ten years ago, Californians overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure (later declared unconstitutional) denying social services to illegal immigrants.
Since then, xenophobia linked to the war on terrorism, plus continuing concern over the cost of providing government services to immigrants, have added to tension. The immigration dispute within the Sierra Club reflects this, but it also predates it. Some members have pushed the club to confront immigration as a part of overpopulation and to take a stand; others have said it should remain neutral.
A fraught and fractured membership
Hallmarks of the Sierra Club since its founding in 1892 have been grass-roots activism and a democratic structure right up to the top. This can mean political effectiveness at all levels of government. But it can also lead to internal squabbles over policy, organization, and management.
At the moment, the membership has fractured into subgroups over the immigration issue. Through special websites, newspaper columns and letters, and e-mails to members, the two sides accuse each other of unethically - maybe even illegally - trying to manipulate the board vote, which will be conducted through March until mid-April.
Recently, three "reform-oriented independent candidates," as they call themselves, sued Sierra Club president Larry Fahn, CEO Carl Pope, and other "old guard" directors for abusing their positions by influencing the election. On Tuesday, though, the three board candidates - Mr. Lamm, Frank Morris and David Pimentel - dropped the suit.
"I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that their attempts to demonize some directors and candidates remind me of the McCarthy era 50 years ago," says UCLA physicist Ben Zuckerman, a longtime Sierra Club member and advocate of immigration control who was elected to the board two years ago.
It's not lost on either side that John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, himself was an immigrant from Scotland.
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