EARTH DAY MARCH
Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Nationwide
April 22, 1970
We are going to make people understand that the kind of thing that comes from air pollution and water pollution are the same kinds of things that cause racism, that cause poverty, that cause hunger in this country.
—Arturo Sandoval, Earth Day national committee member, march organizer
Each year, new species of animals are added to the endangered species list. Man in his arrogance appears to think that he can escape that list.
—Senator Gaylord Nelson
TOGETHER WE MARCH TO SAVE OUR ONLY HOME
During the 1960s, groups rallied around a variety of issues, but in April 1970 one in ten Americans came out in support of the same cause—protecting the environment. For many years, the environment had fallen low on most lists of concerns. There were no laws banning toxic waste disposal in rivers and streams, there were few protections for forests and wildlife, and cars and factories were free to pollute the air. Across the country, various groups who did focus on the environment channeled their energies into very specific issues and, unfortunately as a result, only reached small clusters of concerned citizens.
Then in January 1969, when three million gallons of oil flooded into the ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in the most disastrous oil spill in history at the time, thousands of birds and marine life died. Soon after, in June of that same year, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire because of toxic waste coating the surface of the water. It was not the first time the river had caught fire, and it would not be the last if the government did not step in to stop factories from using the river as a free and legal dumping ground for their waste. The country started taking notice.
Although a number of Americans were troubled by these well-publicized events, many were still largely unaware of the devastating effect humans themselves played in the problems facing the environment and so weren’t moved to action. But Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin was. He proposed a nationwide teach-in on the environment. Teach-ins, which were started during the anti-war movement to educate students and the public about the war in Vietnam, took their lead from civil rights sit-ins of the 1950s and ‘60s. Senator Nelson believed teach-ins over the course of one day in communities across America would be an excellent way to educate the general public on the importance of conservation and taking an active role in caring for the planet.
Americans agreed. The first Earth Day was set for April 22, 1970. Senator Nelson wanted the main energy of the day to come from communities, highlighting the specific issues concerning their areas. That was exactly what university student Arturo Sandoval, one of the main committee members overseeing Earth Day, had in mind too. He wanted the public and politicians to understand that environmental awareness had many layers. It was not just about picking up litter and conserving water, but about understanding why these issues persisted.
While other communities planned rallies and cleanups or planted trees, Arturo organized a march through his Barelas neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico. News crews followed behind him and three hundred other Mexican Americans as they traveled down dirt roads and by adobe houses through one of the poorest areas of Albuquerque, where a sewage plant polluted the air and water. Arturo and the other marchers wanted people to be aware that families in lower income communities are more likely to be exposed to harmful pollutants in and around their neighborhoods. They hoped awareness might begin to bring about change. The march wasn’t the largest that day, but it was a crucial reminder of the interconnectedness of human issues and those of the natural world, highlighting how our actions and the suffering of others eventually affects each of us.
In addition to Arturo’s march, through events organized by one thousand communities, ten thousand schools, and two thousand colleges, an estimated twenty million Americans let politicians know they supported the protection of the environment. In large part due to the energy of these average Americans on the first Earth Day, over the next few years the US government put in place some of the strongest protections for the environment yet, including the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which protects human health and promotes healthy environments.
Although many strides were made in the 1970s, we are still grappling with a multitude of environmental issues—plastic, air and water pollution, waste management, and global climate change. But Earth Day continues each year, reminding us that we can make strides to save the planet, just as they did.
CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY MARCH
New York, New York
June 28, 1970
Now we’ve walked in the open and know how pleasant it is to have self-respect and to be treated as citizens and human beings.… We want to stay in the sunlight from now on.
—Dick Leitsch, LGBT rights activist
TOGETHER WE MARCH TO LOVE WHOM WE WANT
The year 1969 wasn’t the first time police had raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and it wouldn’t be the last. But it was one of the first times patrons fought back.
Like many other marginalized communities in the United States and abroad during that period, the LGBTQ community experienced discrimination and hatred in public spaces. Gay people were not always free to be themselves socially, and they often faced economic discrimination. Almost every state had laws against same-sex relationships, people of the same sex dancing together, or wearing articles of clothing meant for the opposite sex. But unlike at some establishments, there were never signs outside the Stonewall that read, “If you are gay, please stay away.” Stonewall Inn was a haven for the gay community, but it also accepted patrons often shunned by that community—homeless teens who’d run away or been kicked out by parents for being gay, transgender people, and gay people of color. Especially for them, the Stonewall was home.
So, on June 28, 1969, when the police raided the bar for the second time in a matter of days, patrons had had enough. Many felt their place of refuge was being targeted not simply because it served alcohol illegally after having been denied a liquor license because it was a gay bar, but simply because of who its patrons were. Instead of running for cover as they often did, patrons decided to speak up and defend the bar that welcomed them in.
Soon police found themselves overwhelmed outside the bar by angered Stonewall regulars and their supporters in the community. It took hundreds of police several hours to clear the crowds, but for six days the LGBTQ community came back to protest by holding hands, dancing together, and kissing in public—something most had never dared do in the open. For many, it was a turning point for the LGBTQ rights movement.
Stonewall spurred a group of committed gay activists, already fighting for equal rights, to become even more vocal and forceful in their demands for change. A year later, they got together to plan a memorial parade in New York City. It was a day for remembrance and for demanding fundamental human rights and protection against police harassment and employment discrimination. But it was also a day of liberation, about finally being seen rather than hiding.
When the march began, a few hundred people started off from Christopher Street, holding a Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day banner. Even though many gathered on the sidewalks to gawk or show support, initially the street itself was not filled with marchers. However, as they progressed up Sixth Avenue toward Central Park chanting, “Say it loud, we’re gay and proud,” people started to shed their fears and apprehensions and join the movement. By the time the procession reached Central Park, it stretched fifteen city blocks. People held hands, waved, laughed, and chanted. Police turned their backs on the marchers to show their disregard, but the LGBTQ community and their supporters were determined to keep going in order to help cause social change for them. Never before had so many gay and lesbian people gathered together in public for a common cause.
Within the first few years aft
er the uprising and parade, hundreds of gay and lesbian organizations formed around the country to further build the movement, increasing the visibility necessary for change. A decade later, large corporations finally created policies against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, and in 2015, the US Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal nationwide. Although much was accomplished, there is still work to be done in support of LGBTQ rights, and this one-time event to encourage gay pride has become a yearly month-long celebration held all around the world to continue this work. The Christopher Street Liberation Day parade, now known as the NYC Pride March, attracts millions of people worldwide each year. In the US, June is now LGBTQ Pride Month. What started as a small rebellion in one New York bar helped spark a globally visible movement in large part because people stepped out of the shadows together.
THE LONGEST WALK
San Francisco, California, to Washington, DC
February 11 – July 15, 1978
On this walk I learned that people with a belief in something can overcome mountains.
—Lehman Brightman, American Indian Movement, one of the organizers of the Longest Walk
TOGETHER WE MARCH TO PRESERVE OUR CULTURE AND OUR LANDS
In the 1970s, while the LGBTQ community marched for their future, Native Americans fought to have treaty agreements and other legal promises of the past protected. Since Christopher Columbus and other colonizers first stepped on the shores of what is now called the Americas, First Peoples, who have always inhabited these lands, have been in an ongoing struggle to preserve their rights to it.
When European settlers first arrived, Indigenous communities allowed them entry, and taught them how to farm and survive. But colonists kept coming. They illegally claimed more and more land that already belonged to millions of original peoples, citizens with their own independent governments. By the early 1800s, Indigenous peoples, lumped together, were further brutalized by the federal Indian Removal Act and ordered to sign away their rightful territories and relocate to areas far from their beloved homelands, where they could be corralled and controlled. Indigenous peoples resisted and were forcibly removed from their homes, farms, and communities. They were marched at gunpoint by the US military across mountains and rivers on “long walks.” There was little food, clothing, and shelter; thousands died in the harsh winters. White settlers moved into their homes and took over their thriving farms and businesses.
The lands that Indigenous people were forced onto began to be called reservations; more treaties were signed. Some treaties in the late 1800s acknowledged that these lands were indeed sovereign nations and were to be governed by Indigenous peoples. However, the US government never honored any of the five hundred treaties, although Indigenous peoples upheld their end of the bargain. Over the next two centuries, Indigenous lands were decreased more and more.
In 1978, when eleven bills were brought before Congress that threatened Indigenous peoples’ sovereign rights once more, many Native Americans refused to let it happen again. If these bills passed, they would limit Indigenous peoples’ water, fishing, and hunting rights, as well as the First Peoples’ ability to self-govern. First Nations activists knew the media would not bring attention to these bills without impetus, and they needed to act. Organizers recalled the cruel and forced “long walks” of their ancestors and felt another “long walk” would be just the venue needed to educate the world about the injustices.
Supported by more than one hundred tribal nations and encouraged by the Black Power movement and similar protests of the period, the American Indian Movement (AIM) organized a three-thousand-mile spiritual walk from the West Coast to Washington, DC, to raise public awareness of these bills, to get a meeting with President Carter, and to connect with who they were spiritually and as a cultural people. Similar to the farm workers of Delano, they wanted to educate people along the way about the conditions indigenous people faced, the “long walks” they’d been forced to take, and the strength of their cultural heritage. They also hoped the walk would bring the various tribes, which were spread across different reservations and urban areas, closer together, uniting the voice behind their demands.
They started with two dozen marchers, but thousands of supporters joined them along the way, some walking across only one state, others keeping stride with the dedicated group for days. They braved blizzards and tornadoes as well as blisters and sore muscles. A caravan of pickup trucks and station wagons drove the elderly and the very young, while also providing shelter and relief for others who needed it during the journey. They held informational rallies and slept in tents, school buildings, gyms, churches, or fairgrounds. They carried no posters, only banners, flags, staffs with eagle feathers, and a sacred pipe as they crossed some of the original Indigenous routes through Utah, Kansas, Illinois, West Virginia, and Maryland. And people from many different backgrounds marched in support with their First Nations brothers and sisters, like the Japanese Buddhist monks who made the trek, adding their drums and prayers to those of the Indigenous marchers.
After five months of braving the elements, lack of food, and aggressive shouts from opposition, the marchers arrived in DC to cheers, whoops, and honking horns. The two dozen original walkers had blossomed to more than two thousand participants. Even though they did not get to meet with President Carter, they deemed the walk a success. Almost two dozen dedicated marchers completed the entire journey, which had increased their Indigenous pride and energized their movement, and the eleven bills did not pass in Congress. Many marchers believe the walk led to the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in August 1978, which preserved their cultural rights and protected their religious traditions. Indigenous Americans are still fighting to preserve their lands and improve their communities and have held the Longest Walk several times since 1978. It is a shining example that marches don’t end after the last step, and we must continue to stand together to protect vulnerable communities.
CAPE TOWN PEACE MARCH
Cape Town, South Africa
September 13, 1989
Nothing, nothing can overwhelm the spirit of a people that yearn to be free. They are unstoppable.
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu
TOGETHER WE MARCH TO END RACIAL SEPARATENESS AND A DIVIDED NATION
Just as Native Americans were forced from their ancestral lands in America, in 1913 many Blacks in South Africa were forcibly stripped of most of their land and their ability to make a livelihood, despite being the majority in the population. In most areas they were also not afforded the right to vote to change the laws and rulers who oppressed them.
After World War II, things worsened. The all-white National Party, made up of Afrikaners, an ethnic group descended from Western Europeans, came into power and established even more racial segregation through an “apartness” that became known as “apartheid.” By 1950, Black Africans, mixed race (called “Coloured” at that time), Indian, and Asian peoples all stood separate from whites under the law. Much like segregation in the American South, soon signs labeled WHITE ONLY appeared in all public areas.
Since they did not have a true voice in government, Black South Africans had formed their own organizations to combat injustice, including the African National Congress (ANC); as apartheid was established, the ANC was at the forefront of the resistance. Threatened by the strength of this resistance and the unrest, the Afrikaner government banned the ANC and similar organizations, and arrested leading activists including Nelson Mandela.
By 1989, with pressure building from the outside world and within the country, the National Party began to fracture, but anti-apartheid groups became stronger, joining together to form the United Democratic Front (UDF). For more than three years, the country had been in a state of emergency, banning political protests in an attempt to tamp down the voices calling for equality. But the people protested anyway. All over the nation, groups from different backgrounds boarded buses and had picnics on the beach together, while Blac
ks also went to white-only hospitals to be treated. They all defied apartheid laws in a civil and organized defiance campaign. In response, a peaceful march was broken up by police using a water cannon, and just days later more than twenty people were killed when police broke up an election-day demonstration. But Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace laureate, was not deterred, saying, “We are going to defy until freedom comes.” When he called for another march, people across the country were willing, despite the ongoing violence.
On September 13, 1989, more than 20,000 people of all ethnic groups showed up to march in Cape Town, defying the ban and apartheid. They were ready to march without permission, but after increasing threats of global isolation, financial losses because of international sanctions, and the unyielding fight of the people, acting President de Klerk relented and allowed the protest.
At that time, the march may not have seemed historic in certain parts of the world, but in South Africa it was the first anti-apartheid march to be given permission by the government in three years and the first near Parliament in over twenty years. Religious, civic, and community leaders led by Archbishop Tutu organized the event, while people of all backgrounds, including hundreds of white people, were on hand to show they did not want to be separated. Leaders representing different organizations locked arms, leading the way from St. George’s Cathedral to City Hall. The march was a call for peace and equality, an inclusive governing body, the release of imprisoned activist leaders, and a lift on the bans against anti-apartheid organizations meeting. The people wanted a new, nonsegregated, and just South Africa. This time there were no growling dogs or police in riot gear with tear gas. The government did not want a show of violence while the world watched again. Instead the flag of the outlawed African National Congress (ANC) waved overhead as the crowd chanted for new leadership along the mile-long route.
Together We March Page 4