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Earth Day Was Born in Protest

Now protest may have put Greenpeace USA on the brink of extinction.

A gas mask is held aloft at the inaugural Earth Day protest in New York City, New York, on April 22, 1970.

This week, people at hundreds of locations in scores of countries celebrated Earth Day, with activities ranging from tree plantings and trash pickups to conferences and art exhibits. Not many of those people, however, seem to have attended protests, though that is how Earth Day came into being. In 1970, huge, nonviolent protests across the United States drew an estimated 20 million people, an eruption of mass sentiment that President Richard Nixon felt threatened his reelection chances so acutely that he created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed far-reaching environmental laws.

It’s important for journalists to understand the role of protest, partly because our coverage shapes what society as a whole knows about the controversies in question. Of course, we should not become the mouthpieces of protesters, but rigorous reporting does not equate to being a mouthpiece. Our civic role is to ascertain and share the facts as best we can so the public and policymakers can make informed judgments.

Probably no environmental organization in the world is more associated with the tactic of protest than Greenpeace. Nonviolent protest has been part of Greenpeace’s DNA since the group’s founding in 1971, when activists sailed a boat into a prohibited area off the Alaskan coast to obstruct US nuclear bomb testing. Since then, Greenpeace has grown into a global operation, with branches in 55 countries that employ direct action, research, and public advocacy against fossil fuels, species extinction,........

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