So if you’re like me, you probably aren’t usually all that excited about Earth Day. When Earth Day first came onto the scene in 1970, it was a radical day of action: nearly 20 million people took to the street and helped birth the new environmental movement, taking conservationism out of the wilderness, retooling it with a good dose of ecology and Vietnam-era protest politics, and taking it to the streets. Since then, Earth Day has mellowed out considerably: marches replaced with trash pickups, revolution replaced with recycling.*
This year is going to be different. Earth Day Network, the appointed carriers of the holiday’s torch, have teamed up with the increasingly hard-hitting Architecture 2030 to launch a full assault on King Coal for this year’s April 22 festivities. Their idea? Get millions of people across the country to wear blue on Earth Day to signify a vote for “No Coal.”
Read more to find out about BYOBlue and how you can get involved. It’s time to reclaim Earth Day as the revolution it was meant to be.
Here’s the outreach text from Architecture 2030 about the day’s events:
Earth Day 2008 is going to be historic! Architecture 2030, along with numerous other groups around the nation, is calling on everyone to wear BLUE during Earth Day 2008 to signify their vote for No Coal. Events will be happening around the world from April 19th through April 22nd, so…
If you’re attending the Earth Day event on the National Mall in Washington, DC on April 20th, wear BLUE.
If you’re attending another Earth Day event, wear BLUE.
No matter what you’re doing for Earth Day 2008, wear BLUE.
A BLUE shirt, top, sweater or jacket…whatever. Just wear BLUE.
Then, on April 22, as a culminating action, pick up the phone, call Congress at 202-224-3121 and ask for an immediate ‘Moratorium on Coal’ - a halt to the construction of any new coal-fired power plants. Through this Call for Climate event, Earth Day hopes to generate over a million phone calls to Congress. Visit Earth Day’s website to learn more about this critical event.
Your BLUE vote will count. Fifty-nine coal plants were canceled in 2007. That’s over a third of the 151 planned. That happened before millions of people joined together to say No Coal.
BYOBlue for Earth Day 2008. Be the vote that tips the balance.
* For all you recycling lovers out there, I know, recycling really is a revolutionary act, keep it up!
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I guess I’m not convinced that ptting on one of my many blue t-shirts is really going to make much of a difference. I appreciate the bit on calling congress and demanding no more coal, but I think a more effective campaign might have been trying to get people into the streets period. Putting on a blue shirt (which I do at leat once a week already) doesn’t get me too fired up. We need to quit accepting these “half-calls” to action and focus on doing something much, much more visible and action oriented.
Do millions of blue t-shirts really constitute a “full assault on King Coal?”
We must make clear to Congress is our demand to stop building polluting coal plants, and even clearer that if a politician doesn’t get with the program on this issue, their days in office are limited.
I was excited about this until the “hard hitting” action is just another symbolic, do-nothing, feel-good nonaction. seriously, this is ridiculous. this post totally destroys the word “revolutionary.” if you want to do something revolutionary on Earth Day, take to the streets, do some blockades, and do something to PHYSICALLY STOP KING COAL.
Hey guys - these are great ideas. Yes to all of them. Two things: first, it’s good to remember that not everybody can be as invested in this struggle as the many folks who read IGHIH. An action that has a strong message but a low barrier of commitment can sometimes bring in new audiences - the soccer-mom who has always done a trash-pickup on Earth Day probably won’t go to a coal plant blockade right off the bat, but she might wear a blue-shirt and call Congress about stopping MTR. Earth Day Network has a huge network of people. Bringing them into the no coal movement will hopefully strengthen the cause.
Second, I agree (and have written about on this blog and been involved in) more direct action to take down King Coal. The big organizations need to hear this from students. Fossil Fools Day should make this stronger call to action clearer - but emails and phone calls don’t hurt either. Today, in San Francisco, youth are meeting with Earth Justice to talk with them about how to strengthen the fight against coal. If you want Earth Day or Architecture 2030 to do more, email them and tell them that. Call the organizers and say you can organize your campus or community to do a direct action if they provide you with resources and perhaps some funding.
It’ll take everything we’ve got to put the final nails in coal’s coffin. Boxing people out of the movement from the start doesn’t seem like the best move. Let them wear a blue-shirt at Earth Day. Who knows, in a few months maybe they’ll be wearing it at a sit-in next to you?
Jamie,
My fear is that this sort of thing can be dangerous to the movement because it essentially operates as doublespeak, allowing folks to think that wearing something constitutes action, resistance, or revolution. It doesn’t. We already live in a world where marketers try to make buying potato chips seem “subversive,” “dangerous,” “radical,” and thus cool, when in fact these are nothing but the capitalist system taking the allure of revolutionaries and radicals and putting it into a product that can be bought. Similarly, when environmentalists do the same thing — package the allure of radicalism into do-nothing symbolic gestures, we create a frame that limits revolutionary possibilities. We shouldn’t make our framing conditions limit more radical actions by working with the same doublespeak of capitalists and politicians.
It’s fine to lasso folks into the No-Coal movement with soft gestures like wearing blue. Great. But don’t call it radical and don’t call it revolutionary because if wearing blue is “revolution” then we’ll never have an actual revolution.
Evan
they will take to the streets and take tot the streets and take to the streets as they used to take the streets and they did took the streets to the streets.
dont u think ?