I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety
of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country,
evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere,
and everyone noticed except the political establishment.
The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the
nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but
the politicians were not.
After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped
for some idea that would thrust the environment into the
political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea
that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation
speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time,
anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had
spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly,
the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots
protest over what was happening to our environment?
I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental
concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war
energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a
demonstration that would force this issue onto the political
agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.
At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced
that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots
demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone
to participate. The wire services carried the story from
coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like
gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries
poured in from all across the country. The American people
finally had a forum to express its concern about what was
happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they
did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months,
two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage,
managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.
Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969,
The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill
reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental
events:
"Rising concern about the environmental
crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity
that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over
the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental
problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide
environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of
Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."
It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success
on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities
had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office
staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries,
etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John
Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space
for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office
with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator
of activities.
Earth Day worked because
of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We
had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million
demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities
that participated. That was the remarkable thing about
Earth Day. It organized itself.
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