50th anniversary of Earth Day
Fifty years ago, on April 22, 1970, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day. A day for people to come together and raise awareness of environmental issues. The first Earth Day saw clean ups and protests take place across America and over the years the movement would spread across the globe, growing in size to include events such as concerts and day long ceremonies.
The following excerpts are from The Advocate newspaper article dated April 24, 1970, written by Associated Press writer Henrietta Leith who visited Union Square, New York, the day before the scheduled clean-up of the square by young environmental activists. She returned to the square the day after, on Earth Day, as the hours-long cleaning was winding up. Here's what she saw, before and after.
UNION SQUARE SHINE COMES AS ACTIVISTS SCRUB ENVIRONMENT
BY HENRIETTA LEITH
Tuesday
NEW YORK (AP) - It's just another day in Union Square park, gray and drizzly.
As you come out of the subway, you pass a shuttered newsstand piled high with trash, its awning hanging in ragged strips. Nearby a broken black umbrella is stuck in the bushes and an old metal chair, paint peeling, has been shoved between two shrubs.
The grass of the park is littered with cigarette butts, paper bags, beer and soda cans and bottles, the broken neck of the wine bottle under the sign that says, "No alcoholic beverages in this park." Soda straws lie near their abandoned paper wrappers.
[...] Workmen are up putting up the Earth Day speaker's platform on 14th Street, and a half-dozen shabby derelicts have taken some of the scrap lumber and started a fire with it in a wire trash basket, and they're huddled around the fire.
[...] The monument to the Declaration of Independence is grimy, its handsome bronze bas-relief figures streaked green and white.
A whole section of stone is missing from the inscription around the monument, so that a couple of words are missing from the Thomas Jefferson quotation, which should read: "How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of and which no other people on earth enjoy."
Children from the Convent of the Sacred Heart School in New York City sweep with brooms, April 22, 1970 as they clean a monument in the city's Union Square. The children came out in force in observance of Earth Day. (AP Photo).
Wednesday
NEW YORK (AP) - As you come out of the subway at Union Square the first thing you notice is dazzling sunlight, turning the grass and the evergreen shrubbery bright green. Huge, multicoloured banners wave in the gentle breeze all over the park.
Under the bright banners are hundreds of kids. [...] A dozen girls are pushing big brooms along the paths, and other girls are using huge shovels to scoop up trash.
Many children wear gauze masks over their mouths and noses, in silent protest against pollution of their air. Others are handing out leaflets with the program of the day, still others selling Earth Day buttons.
You notice with surprise that the ragged awning strips no longer hang from the old newsstand, the bags of trash on its roof have vanished. The green paint looks cleaner.
The broken umbrella is gone, and so is the metal chair.
The paths are no longer gritty underfoot, and as you walk along them it is hard to spot a single cigarette butt on the grass, much less a can or bottle.
[...] Nearby the grass is so inviting that a woolly lamb brought in by one of the girls is chomping it busily.
At the Declaration of Independence monument, the green patina is still on the bronze, but it looks much cleaner.
There is still a gap in Jefferson's words, but one suspects that these kids will see that the missing stone is replaced.
Because one suspects this might be the first generation of Americans to really appreciate those "precious blessings."
Hundreds of young people listen to Earth Day speakers after cleaning up the park, while atop the equestrian statue one young man is putting the finishing clean-up touches on a statue at New York's Union Square Park, April 22, 1970. (AP Photo)
Dinah Campi demonstrates against pollution in Miami, Fla., dressed in an American flag while participating in Earth Day activities, April 22, 1970. (AP Photo/Toby Massey)
A woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty poses on a float full of trash during Earth Day observances in Florida in 1970. (AP Photo)
Denis Hayes, Head of Environment Teach-In, Inc., the Washington organization coordinating activities for Earth Day on April 22, poses in the group's office in Washington on April 8, 1970. Teach-ins on the environmental pollution crisis are planned for school campuses across the country that day. (AP Photo/Charles W. Harrity)
An estimated 7,000 people jam a quadrangle at the Independence Mall in Philadelphia, during Earth Week activities celebrating the eve of Earth Day, April 22, 1970. (AP Photo)
Kenneth Opat is squirted with oil pistols by Dorothy Goldsmith, left, and Rita Webb, at Tulane University in New Orleans as students tagged Louisiana's oil industry with the "polluter of the month" award, April 22, 1970. The demonstration was part of the first observance of Earth Day. (AP Photo)
Part of a crowd observing Earth Day, including a youngster wearing a "Let Me Grow Up" sign on her back, relaxes on a hilltop in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, Wednesday, April 23, 1970. The crowd, made up mostly of young people, was estimated at more than 20,000 people. (AP Photo)
A Pace College student in a gas mask "smells" a magnolia blossom in City Hall Park on Earth Day, April 22, 1970, in New York. (AP Photo)
The planet Earth is surrounded by ignorance, greed, apathy and self interest, April 22, 1980 during Earth Day activities on the Capitol steps in Atlanta. The actors circulated through the crowds quietly shaking hands while speakers spoke in celebration of ecology. (AP Photo/Harvey Georges)
A couple of anti-nuclear demonstrators wear masks and haul a giant peanut-like float in Washington, Tuesday, April 22, 1980 in connection with celebration of Earth Day. (AP Photo/Wilson)
Youngsters from the Washington area celebrate Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22, 1980 by hoisting an inflated whale on the Mall, near the Capitol, in the background. (AP Photo/Wilson)
Earth Day Coordinator and Palo Alto, California resident Denis Hayes at a dump site in Palo Alto, California on April 5, 1990, as he displays burlap sacks filled with empty glass bottles and metal cans that local residents use in a weekly recycling program. Hayes urges all people to recycle as an alternative to dumping. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Students form a train under a cloth to represent a worm at a gathering in Hong Kong, April 22, 1990, to mark Earth Day and promote awareness of environmental pollution. Organizers say the students were publicizing pollution threats to worm life. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Children celebrate Earth Day in New York, Friday, April 20, 1990 as they stand on the steps of the Museum of Natural History showing off a mile-long banner decorated with the handprints of children from across the nation who have pledged to honor the earth. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
South Korean children carry pickets calling for environmental protection in Seoul as the country marks Earth Day, April 22, 1990. Several hundred people gathered in the steady rain to celebrate the day. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-Joon)
New York City police arrest a demonstrator during a post-Earth Day protest in the Wall Street district, April 23, 1990. Police closed part of Wall Street to traffic and most pedestrians, and arrested 173 demonstrators who staged a protest aimed at disrupting business in the financial center. (AP Photo/Osamu Honda)
Thousands of Southern Californians gathered on the beach in Santa Monica, Sunday, April 22, 1990 to celebrate Earth Day. The crowds listened to speeches by political figures, celebrities and were serenaded with "This Land Is Your Land" by Peter, Paul and Mary. (AP Photo/Julie Markes)
A flag of the earth waves over the crowd on the west front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sunday, April 23, 1990. Over 100,000 people attended the rally in the nation’s capital to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first Earth Day. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson)
Members of an environmentalist group wear clusters of wasted cans as they attend a rally observing the 26th Earth Day in downtown Seoul, Monday, April 22, 1996. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
The dome of Wat Phra Dhammakaya temple in Pathumthani province looms in the distance as Buddhist monks and faithfuls gather Thursday, April 22, 1999, for religious services honoring Earth Day in Thailand. (AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong)
Some 1,500 Los Angeles area schoolchildren spell out a giant “SOS,” with the “O” representing planet Earth and North and South America, during the sixth annual Earth Day Adopt-A-Beach cleanup project, at Dockweiler State Beach in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 22, 1999. Nearly 6,000 children cleaned up beaches in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Text from The Advocate Union Square Shine Comes as Activists Scrub Environment by Henrietta Leith
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