Since John Muir was the person that pushed President Roosevelt to declare Yosemite a National Park, the Park needs to be closed—since it represents a racist!
The silly rantings of the President of the Sierra Club show how every aspect of our lives are viewed with a racial prism—true or not. So, if we take down monuments, change names of schools, why not close down the Parks promoted by Muir. In fact, since Muir founded the Sierra Club, that means the Club needs to pay reparations and go before the press and admit it si a racist organization—including the black members of the Board (who obviously are white supremacists in disguise).
These folks need to grow up. Do they want to be on the Board of ANTIFA or the Board of an environmental group? Want to kill support for the Parks—make the Sierra Club an affiliate of ANTIFA.
‘It’s just wrong’: Internal fight over Sierra Club founder’s racial legacy roils organization
An internal battle over the allegedly racist views of the Sierra Club’s founder erupted in public view.
By ZACK COLMAN, Politico, 8/16/21
An internal battle over the allegedly racist views of the Sierra Club’s founder, which the executive director apologized for amid the racial justice protests following George Floyd’s murder last summer, erupted in public view ahead of the leader’s announcement he would step down from his post atop the powerful, 129-year-old environmental organization.
The long-simmering feud concerns whether Sierra Club founder John Muir’s reputation and thoughts on race were indeed racist as they were depicted last year by Executive Director Michael Brune, who announced his resignation Friday. Brune allegedly did not initially consult with Black members of the organization’s board of directors as he prepared his public statement, with the board later blocking a proposal to challenge Brune’s characterization of Muir’s views in the organization’s own magazine, according to two board members and a former board member who volunteered on a task force analyzing the founder’s writings. This eventually prompted the dissenters to take their concerns public.
Those who spoke with POLITICO about the disagreement discussed the internal tensions and the events leading up to Friday’s resignation announcement.
As the nation convulsed in the wake of the killing of Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a white policeman, Brune implored in a public July 22, 2020, post that his group must “take down some of our own monuments, starting with some truth-telling about the Sierra Club’s early history.” He chastised Muir, the storied conservationist who influenced President Theodore Roosevelt and helped spur the National Park Service, for his “derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes.”
But the post’s contents and framing of Muir are a misrepresentation, Aaron Mair, a Sierra Club board member and its past president, told POLITICO.
Mair, who in 2015 became the first Black president of the Sierra Club board, said the push overlooked years of organizational work on environmental justice, including committees that reviewed monuments and leaders who were racist. He said Brune did not consult him or the other two Black board members before pushing ahead on what he called a “revisionist” and “ahistorical” account of Muir’s writings, thoughts and life.
“For it to be framed that the Sierra Club just only a year ago decided to come clean — it’s just wrong,” Mair said. “This stuff did not come out all of a sudden under the outgoing executive director.”
Sierra Club spokesperson Maggie Kash said in an email that Brune’s resignation was not related to the internal dispute. Brune did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Board President Ramon Cruz noted the group’s board of directors “overwhelmingly approved” the organization’s “current position on the historical context of our early founders.”
“They are each of course entitled to their own opinions, and the Sierra Club Board of Directors has encouraged and will continue to foster an open and civil discourse about historical figures, as well as environmental policy,” Cruz said in a statement.
In his blog post, Brune touched on criticisms environmental justice groups have made about older wilderness-focused organizations like the one Muir helped found. They have been viewed as historically antagonistic to places of cultural, racial and ethnic value, with the concept of preserving land for nature led by white Americans wielding institutional power coming at the expense of marginalized people and groups and their land.
Chad Hanson, a historian and Sierra Club board member, said the board of directors normally would have been consulted for an action akin to Brune’s July 2020 post. But he said that did not happen, noting that even Muir historians rejected the portrayal of him as a white supremacist.
Kash, the Sierra Club spokesperson, rejected that account. She said Brune consulted with board leadership prior to publishing the blog post even though that step was not required, adding the team that wrote the post referenced expert research and Muir’s own writings.
