You might not realize this, but the movement gave birth in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
A motley crew of 17 activists, hippies and lawyers...got together and decided that they had to do something for the environment.
On September 15th 1971, they got together a crew and set sail on a "rickety 20 foot boat" and headed to Amchitka Island to somehow try and stop the nuclear testing by the US military. The vessel was mainly funded by a concert put on by Joni Mitchell and James Taylor at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver - attended by 10 thousand people.
In the wake of the Cold War, a powerful 5.1 megaton hydrogen bomb, 250 times more powerful than the one used on Hiroshima, was set to go off in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.
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| Photo of our protest from my 1971-1972 High school Yearbook And yes, I am in that crowd somewhere... |
The feeble but brave protest stirred up support from our then Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, the rest of Canada - and the New York Times.
There was a protest march in many places across the country.
I know in our high school, we were let out early from classes to march in the streets and to the US/Canadian border to protest Amchitka.
To us, it was more than just a day off. We really believed in what the newly formed Greenpeace was doing. We were concerned about our environment and our future in this world. We believed that we could move together to make a difference.
We wanted change for our future.
An article in our newspaper states:
The resultant continent-wide kerfuffle brought on by Greenpeace forced U.S. authorities in 1972 to cancel further tests.
It was a proud moment for Greenpeace.
It was a proud moment for us, as students, even though we probably actually made very little difference - we were still a small whisper among many that - collectively - was heard all the way to the White House.
It stirred up something in our generation that has carried on to present day.
Hopefully each subsequent generation will realize that what we have now took work and attention and they must also carry on and fight for what is right.
The Greenpeace blog says: "Let Greenpeace Day act as a reminder that as the anthropologist Margaret Mead once put it: ‘Never doubt that a … group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has’
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*The name came to being when one of the "hippy" members said "Peace".....and someone else replied ... "Well, then let it be a Green Peace". More or less, that's the story.
Greenpeace is the most visible and widely known environmental organization in the world with a $320 million budget and 3 million dues-paying members.
2 comments:
Viva Greenpeace!
They are in my Will.
Mine too! :) That and the SPCA...
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