David Brower & Martin Litton, Photo: John Loeffler On May 3, 1969, after hours of bitter debate, the Sierra Club fired David Brower. The organization’s first paid staffer, Brower had transformed the Club from an exclusive, politically timid, white male hiking outfit of 2,000 members. But the old guard didn’t like the direction that Brower, its executive director, was taking the staid organization: toward political confrontation, grassroots organizing and attacks on industrial pollution, nuclear power and the Pentagon. This kind of green aggressiveness in the face of entrenched power alienated funders, politicians and, eventually, the Internal Revenue Service, which, after Brower’s...
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