I'm looking for some new ideas for Earth Day. My public high school puts together a Earth Week in April and we run a pretty swell ship, although I think it could be considerably improved. Usually we call out to the community for speeches in the auditorium and I've seen lectures ranging from the new bee crisis to the new wave of sustainable infrastructure around the world.
Evidently 4 million people in Australia last March blew people's minds with an electricity boycott. And I'm not suggesting that's going to solve much, but what a collective demonstration.
Dressing in animal suits is radical, but I think something demonstrative would fit the bill. This year I'd like to recommend we simply turn off the heating and electricity for April 22 and a few more things. I'm having trouble thinking of creative ideas and nothing substantive is popping up on the web when I use the google ("earth day activities").
I'm learning a bit about the history and the work of Earth Day founder, Senator Gaylord Nelson. Basically he began raising the issue in Congress at the time and ended up synthesizing it within the Vietnam demonstrations.
But this was not a protest; rather it was an awareness campaign, he later wrote. In any case, what seemed like a gamble paid off. Young students didn't see the disconnect--they took the idea and ran with it. Nelson even set up a coalition of underlings in his office to explore the possibilities. He did have some help from the New York Times in 1970 in spreading the word, but what an instrumental decision it was to make the jump and include young activists.
It sounds a lot like the January strategy Focus The Nation employed. I can dig it.
