Sierra Club Being Attacked by Phony Environmentalists 

LARRY FAHN / Sierra Club 11feb04

This is a copy of an email by Larry Fahn, Sierra Club President

Dear Sierra Club leader:

This week three candidates for our Board of Directors, Richard Lamm, Frank Morris and David Pimentel, filed a lawsuit in the California Superior Court in San Francisco against the Sierra Club. They have also sued me as an individual, and our Executive Director, Carl Pope, as an individual.

The lawsuit is without merit and the Club will vigorously defend itself, as will the individually named Defendants. Within hours of filing the suit, and before all of the parties had even been served, the lawyers for Lamm, Morris and Pimentel had hired a high-powered corporate public relations firm (which also represents the American Chemical Council) to try their case in the media. They shot out press releases to media outlets all across the country. I have been besieged by press calls, some asking me to respond to "Governor Lamm's comparison of the Sierra Club's leadership to Tammany Hall." I have stated that such a comparison is "simply ridiculous".

The lawsuit seeks to remove three candidates—Phil Berry, Barbara Herz, and Morris Dees—from the ballot in the upcoming election, even though they are Sierra Club members and like the 3 Plaintiffs, obtained the required number of of fellow Club members signatures to appear on the ballot. The lawsuit claims that these three candidates are "fake candidates" since their ballot statements support other candidates, instead of seeking votes for themselves.

This lawsuit also mischaracterizes me as a Sierra Club staff member, with no right to speak out on the issues I believe are facing the Sierra Club in this election. It further takes the position that the Sierra Club has no right to provide its members with the names of outside organizations that are attempting to influence our elections.

The lawsuit also seeks to prohibit Club chapter and group newsletters, email and web pages from reporting on the actions of sitting members of the Board of Directors or candidates in connection with the election.

In fact, the lawsuit even seeks to prohibit Sierra Club volunteers from distributing any information about any candidate in any forum unless they distribute materials about all candidates.

We believe that Club leaders need to understand the background and the facts about this litigation.

Contrary to the Plaintiffs' claim, neither the Board, nor its President or Executive Director have expended Club resources to support, oppose or disparage any candidates. The Board of Directors has not endorsed or opposed any candidates in this year's Board election. While the Board was asked by 13 former Club Presidents to urge Club members to support only candidates put forward by the nominating committee and could have taken that step under California law, the Board agreed unanimously that it did not want to endorse or oppose any candidates or use Club resources on behalf of any slate of candidates.

The Board did decide—on a split vote—that there were important facts about this year's election that Club members need to know. This year, an unprecedented number of outside organizations, some with explicitly racist agendas, have attempted to manipulate the Club's election process. These groups sent out emails and posted website notices that urged people to join the Club for the explicit purpose of voting for board candidates who support anti-immigration and animal rights causes. We do not know if any of these groups provided financial support to any candidates.

In addition to the lack of legal merit in this lawsuit, it is quite clear that those who filed it have no understanding of the Sierra Club and how it works. This may not be surprising, since none of them appears ever to have attended a Sierra Club meeting (group, chapter, regional or national) and one of them, Governor Lamm of Colorado, joined the Club shortly before filing to run for the Board of Directors.

This lawsuit is a fundamental attack on the free speech rights of the Sierra Club and its leadership. We should all be outraged that these three candidates have sued a volunteer leader, for the purpose of muzzling me from freely communicating my own personal views on candidates for our Board of Directors.

This lawsuit challenges our organization's right to inform and communicate with our members and the right of our volunteer leaders to participate in its governance. Moreover, it is extremely unfortunate that the Club's time, energy, membership dues and other resources will now be diverted from achieving our core mission to defend and protect the environment.

This unfortunate episode is already having an impact on our ability to educate and inform the American public about how the Bush/Cheney administration is systematically dismantling more than 30 years of environmental progress. Today I was informed by the Op/Ed page editor at the San Francisco Chronicle that an Op/Ed piece I had submitted, and they were planning to run, would not be appropriate to run, now that the news of a lawsuit by Board candidates against the Sierra Club has broken. The news of the lawsuit was on today's front page.

We will be meeting with our attorneys over the next few days to determine our legal response. Meanwhile, Club leaders should have every confidence that this election will be conducted in a fair and legal fashion. The integrity and competence of our volunteer and independent Inspectors of Election are beyond reproach, and the Club's democratic process has endured for 112 years.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. We will keep you posted as to further developments.

Sincerely,
Larry Fahn, President

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