Happy Earth Day!

Earth Day is Tuesday, 4/22, and it's my favorite holiday. Who doesn't love planet Earth?

With all the rampant corporate greenwashing these days (why are there Earth Day sales???), there's some cynicism around my favorite holiday, so let's revisit its origins.

Organized in response to the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill and the Cuyahoga River catching fire, Earth Day was proposed by peace and environmental activist John McConnell and was organized as a nationwide educational event in the US by Senator Gaylord Nelson and environmental activist Denis Hayes.

Earth Day's board of directors refused to take any corporate funding after turning down a check from ExxonMobil and raised most of their money from small individual donations and the support of the United Auto Workers union, which was by far the organization's biggest financial supporter.

Walter Reuther was the president of the UAW for decades and was a civil rights, antiwar and environmental activist. In 1970, he said: "Because industry has for so long polluted the environment of the plants in which we work and has now created an environmental crisis of catastrophic proportions in the communities in which we live, the UAW will insist on discussing the implications of this crisis at the bargaining table."

The first Earth Day and the related organizing to defeat the "Dirty Dozen" (candidates for the House of Representatives with some of the worst environmental track records) are considered major catalysts for a wave of environmental legislation that passed in the 1970s, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.

While Earth Day has become increasingly more corporate over the years and now seems like a bit of a dinosaur, I still love it and its origin story. Sure, it was always deeply entwined with mainstream American politics and was therefore not truly radical or grassroots, but it did show that environmental causes were the concern of workers everywhere and that organized labor absolutely can and should push for environmental protections and hold corporations accountable for polluting our home.

In honor of Earth Day, Short Wave will be donating 10% of sales on Saturday 4/26 to the North Coast Land Conservancy, a local non-profit land trust that acquires and stewards parcels of coastal habitat for long-term conservation. They have lots of volunteer opportunities and public events if you'd like to learn more or get involved.