Right-wing front groups seek takeover of Sierra Club

By Virginia Brodine

This article was reprinted from the April 25, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The stakes are high and the pressure is on as Sierra Club members vote on whether to carry that prestigious environmental organization into the anti-immigrant camp.

Ballots were due April 18 from the half-million Sierra members. They must choose between maintaining the Club's present policy of neutrality on immigration issues and a proposal to support restricting immigration.

The present Sierra executive sees over-population as a global environmental problem. The opposition calls for protecting the U.S. environment from that part of population growth that stems from immigration - never mind the problem of poverty from which the immigrants may be fleeing.

But this is not merely an internal difference of opinion. An investigation by the Political Ecology Group (PEG), a San Francisco based non-profit, has revealed an organized and well-funded campaign by anti-immigration and racist groups seeking to swing the environmentalists into their orbit. They are urging their supporters to join the Sierra Club in order to vote their way and to be able to support an anti-immigrant slate for leadership positions in Sierra.

* PEG found two foundations and eight anti-immigrant groups involved. A few examples:

The Pioneer Fund finances the Federation of American Immigration Reform which has sought to influence the environmental movement for over a decade and the Sierra Club in particular. It also finances research seeking proof of the genetic superiority of the white race.

* Weeden Foundation President Alan Weeden admits that he and his brothers have contributed "a substantial amount" of the estimated cost of $118,000 for a mailer to Sierra Club members. The foundation has also funneled $25,000 to the seven anti-immigration candidates.

* Social Contract Press has sent an anti-immigrant video to Sierra members. A Social Contract article foretells cultural disintegration and ethnic warfare as a result of immigration.

* Federation of American Immigration Reform is the largest anti-immigration group in the U.S. As long ago as 1986 its chairman, John Tanton (who also heads the anti-bilingual group U.S. English) targeted the environmental movement and the Sierra Club specifically as a constituency susceptible to its message.

* Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization was formed specifically to change the policy and the leadership of the Sierra Club. It has not disclosed its budget or funding sources.

The Sierra Club has been an important force for environmental issues and has sometimes worked with the unions, for example, in opposing NAFTA. The "neutrality" position on immigration adopted in 1996 papered over the division already present in its ranks on the question of the relationship of population growth to environmental degradation.

As the Communist Party pointed out in its pamphlet, People and Nature before Profits:

"The world and its people have to stay in balance. Some people use this fact to claim that the principal environmental problem is too many people. The principal problems, however, are really the devastation of the resources and their extremely unequal distribution."