At the Sierra Club, a Focus on Race, Gender and the Environment, Too

A debate about John Muir and racism thrust Ramón Cruz into a new leadership role.

The New York Times / Feb. 18, 2022

As protests after the killing of George Floyd convulsed the nation in the summer of 2020, the executive director of the Sierra Club wrote an explosive blog post about John Muir, the storied conservationist who founded the environmental organization.

Muir, the executive director wrote, had made “derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes.”

That blog post, and the internal debate that followed, led to the executive director’s departure last year. And while the Sierra Club now has an acting executive director, many of its public leadership duties have fallen to the president of the board, Ramón Cruz.

Mr. Cruz, who is from Puerto Rico, has spent decades working in the environmental movement. He was arrested while protesting the Navy’s use of the island of Vieques as a training ground, and has held roles at the Environmental Defense Fund and the Partnership for New York City.

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