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BY MENGHAN JIN

In print | Published April 29, 2010

Over 150,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington D.C. this Sunday to honor Earth Day 2010 and to support environmental movements at The Climate Rally, an outdoor event comprised of speeches, free live music and interactive booths organized by Earth Day Network. Among the attendees were several Swarthmore students, all of whom are or have been involved with Earthlust: Natali Cortes ’13, Sachie Hayakawa ’13, Camille Robertson ’13, Erin Curtis ’13, Ariel Martino ’11 and Kaz Uyehara ’10.

“The sheer number of people that came was impressive, even if they were there for different reasons,” Curtis said. “It’s important to show the government that we have that sort of impetus behind us.”

The rally featured speeches by important figures in the environmental movement across all spheres, such as James Hansen, world renowned NASA climatologist; Reverend Jesse Jackson; Robert Kennedy, Jr.; and film director James Cameron, as well as prominent musical acts such as John Legend, The Roots, Sting, Passion Pit and Joss Stone, among many others.

“The main goal of the Climate Rally was to show that the community of environmentalists is galvanized, mobilized and strong,” said Nate Byer, Campaign director of EDN.

Taking advantage of the free student bus to Washington D.C. provided by EDN, the six students left campus early Sunday morning and spent a whole day in Washington D.C. enjoying the free entertainment and nice weather at the biggest climate rally ever to take place across the globe.

“Just on a conceptual basis … regardless of the content of the rally, just being at the rally was very important to me. It’s like a physical means of showing support,” Uyehara said.

George Lakey, research associate at the Lang Center, and seven additional students stopped at the rally after spending the weekend in West Virginia experiencing both the social justice and environmental issues of mountaintop removal.

At the rally, EDN also brought together some of their partner environmental organizations and green businesses. Organizations had booths set up around the Mall promoting their causes.

“They had a lot of booths and tents set up with organizations … celebrating a lot of accomplishments over the past decades, trying to show what their organizations are doing now,” Cortes said. “I thought that was a good entry point for some families that maybe were walking around the Mall and got kind of sucked in.”
Some students found that the presence of some of these booths took away from the political depth of the rally and that there was no sense of urgency.

“I felt it was kind of posed and almost commercialized; there were a lot of booths giving away free stuff — organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, companies that make reusable bags,” Curtis said. “There was a lot of emphasis on lifestyle choices and I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t more political.”

Though Curtis said that the focus of The Climate Rally for students was a bit unclear, she also said that the rally did draw in a diverse group of people — families, students and activists alike.

“The target audience for this rally is general public — trying to build public support to pass legislation,” Uyehara said. “It’s more of like a pep rally with informational handouts. It was meant to draw in people.”

EDN, an international network consisting of members from thousands of organizations, including NGOs and local governments, has worked to expand and diversify the environmental movement for decades, said Lisa Swann, Vice President of Communications and Marketing. Ever since organizing the first Earth Day in 1970, EDN has created new organizations and coordinated numerous other events in 192 countries across the world.

“We’re trying to get people to rally to the cause of climate legislation,” Swann said. “Our current goal is to seek passage of comprehensive climate legislation in Congress in 2010.”

To date, no climate change bill has been passed in Congress. Just last week, a climate bill authored by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was pushed to the side to give priority to an immigration bill.

According to Byer, since the climate bill has yet to be presented in the Senate, The Climate Rally did not aim to gather support for a particular legislation.

“This is not a time to show blind support for things we haven’t seen; this is a time to stand together and be loud and say, ‘This is a nation we care about. We represent lots of communities with lots of ideas,’” Byer said. “The last thing we’re going to do is drive support for a bill we haven’t even seen.”

Partner organizations of EDN present at the rally all utilized unique ways of drawing in rally-goers to their booths, Curtis said.

Representatives of BlueAvocado, an advocacy group specializing in making fashionable reusable bags, were handing out their products for free. They also had on display a large mound of plastic bags that they called “Schlumpy,” symbolizing the amount of plastic bags a family used in a year, Cortes said.

There was also an “Avatar” booth where representatives were handing out free Sycamore tree seeds to promote their Home Tree Initiative in which they plan to plant one million trees in 15 countries around the world between now and the end of the year, Byer said.

“‘Avatar’ is obviously about conservation, about respecting indigenous communities, about respecting the environment,” Byer said. “We are extremely fortunate to be working with a movie that has such a positive message.”

According to Byer and Swann, the rally was a success. If climate legislation is not passed this year, they hope to hold another rally on the National Mall next year.

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