To mark the 50th anniversary of the Earth Day teach-in, EcoCultureLab will be posting brief blogs daily this week, with either a report on something we are doing or a link to our favorite relevant reading, or both.
Today we link to the New York Times’ inspiring profile of Dennis Hayes, coordinator of the first Earth Day. Political organizing is an art form that has not changed all that much in 50 years - it takes vision, energy, and the capacity to mobilize resources. If the original Earth Day was initiated by a U.S. Sanator (Gaylord Nelson) and spearheaded by a middle-class white guy (Hayes), today’s ecological and climate action organizations are as diverse and global as they come. Mobilizing resources is still a challenge for many, but new media have made it easier to get the word out.
The other ingredient, of course, before dramatic change can occur is that activists’ vision must tap into affective currents that are already at large and circulating in the world, ready to vibrate and resonate along with any potential mobilizations. The world has to be ready; a spark will be nothing without kindling.
This coronavirus moment is arguably one that has turned much of the world into kindling — for something. The question is for what: will it merely be coronavirus capitalism or something else? As Bruno Latour has put it, the “incredible discovery” of the past couple of months is that
there was in fact in the world economic system, hidden from all eyes, a bright red alarm signal, next to a large steel lever that each head of state could pull at once to stop ‘the progress train’ with a shrill screech of the brakes.
Once the brakes have been applied, then what? Who will restart the economy, in what sequence, and with what, if anything, changed? Can public mobilization affect the direction of the “reset” as it’s put into play in these new conditions? And, if so, which public mobilization will have the strongest impact — with it be the gun-toting Michigan militia members celebrated and encouraged by Donald Trump, or youth climate strikers, or some mix of others?
The Nelson Institute is running an all-day conference today exploring issues related to these. Tomorrow we launch our own student eco-arts exhibition (more on that soon) and the Gund Institute has an expert panel on sustainability in the pandemic era. More will happen throughout the week. And our EcoCultureLab interns are posting about these events on Instagram.