Earth Day

So there are plenty of ecologically minded people around here. Yet Earth Day, April 22, flopped badly. It was planned months in advance, and was to represent a wide variety of organisations. 42 groups had applied for booths. The highlight was an address by Senator Gaylord Nelson. Workshops, films, music, theatre, panel discussions, life style exhibits were planned. But only the panel discussions and speeches took place. Nelson's headliner speech, given in the vast King Auditorium, was heard by about 50 people. Why was this? The week prior to the festival, anti-R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Training Corp) demonstrations on campus turned into a mindless violence perpetrated by marauding bands of rockthrowers, vandals, and arsonists. About a hundred people were arrested. All you had to do was to choke on the air during a tear gas (or was it CS?) fight to realise that man is succeeding beyond his wildest dreams in destroying his environment. The Student President was arrested on a trumped up charge of "inciting to riot". The Berkeley chapter of the SDS was banned from campus but continued to hold illegal rallies, giving the cops an excuse to clobber anyone in sight. At the same time a Santa Barbara student was shot and killed in riots around the new temporary Bank of America in Isla Vista. Because of these events, an ad hoc committee coordinating the teach-in and fair issued a statement saying that "The spirit of the fair is considered out of context with recent events and could easily be exploited by factions that presently create and control the tensions and violence on this campus." Only the speeches were given but somehow these didn't seem very relevant after the confrontations and few people felt like braving possible tear gas attack to go to a lecture on what the Government is doing to clean up the air. The only group that was undaunted by the cancellation of the fair was the Ant-Farm Guerilla Fair which staged a simulated hydrogen bomb disaster on Earth Day.