Another Earth Day, and world ecosystems continue to face imminent danger from humanity’s ecological overreach/war/profit/consumption/destruction and climate systems rapidly reaching the point of fossil-fueled no-return to the old predictable stable planet we once knew. Following the original 1970 theme of a national teach-in, promoting awareness of the acute problems, we must pose solutions to advance environmental sustainability, building movements to work toward its implementation.
In this EcoJustice Radio show, we explore the profound connection between humanity and Mother Earth with original Earth Day organizer and energy expert Morey Wolfson and Coastal Attorney and early California Coastal Commission advocate/member/chairman Mel Nutter.
We also hear from wisdom keeper Wendsler Nosie Sr., poets Andrea Gibson and Allen Ginsberg’s original 1970 Earth Day poem. Indigenous activist Lydia Ponce provides an Earth Day blessing. Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh provides instructions on walking the land meditation. Native American activist David Buffalo Horse Starnes spoke in 1972 about how to keep connected to the ground in an urbanizing landscape.
They all share insights on how nature serves as our greatest teacher and the importance of respecting our environment. Tune in to KPFK Los Angeles 90.7 FM on 22 April at 1 pm to listen to this show!
Earth Day — April 22 — marks the anniversary of what many consider the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. After witnessing the ravages of the Santa Barbara oil spill and the burning of Cleveland’s toxic Cuyahoga River in 1969, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed a national teach-in in the spirit of the student anti-war movement. By promoting public consciousness about air and water pollution, he and his co-founders advanced environmental protection onto the national political agenda. The movement now in its 56th year remains as relevant and necessary as ever.
Here are some of the voices we feature on this show. We start with Wendsler Nosie Senior of Apache Stronghold. He has been advocating for the protection of sacred sites, in particular Oak Flat (known in Apache as Chi'chil Biłdagoteel), located in Arizona’s vibrant Tonto National Forest where Native Americans have gone to worship, pray, and conduct religious ceremonies since forever. Resolution Copper, a joint venture of two foreign companies, plans to mountaintop-remove what is estimated to be the largest copper ore deposit in North America at Oak Flat.
The best teacher to wake you up is Mother Earth. The best teacher is the water, the trees, the wind. To look outside and say, this is real.
Without this, you can’t live. That’s when your true religion starts. Because we’re intertwined together. You know we need them as much as, you know, they need us.
But with respect, we work together, we help each other. So I just say that to the people out there, you already have it. You don’t have to look for it, but go there and greet yourself.
Go in there, go there, and then as you’re in those deep sleeps, it will begin to talk to you. Because the wind speaks through the trees, when the trees make the noise. And then in a deep sleep, then it’s translated, Then it gives you visions.
There’s times that the wind will hit the tree and it’ll sound like somebody talking to you. That’s what we lost because we were colonized. And we’re all forced to live in this capitalist world. So if I could leave that for anybody around the world, don’t forget that. Because it was everywhere. Not just here among Native people, it was everywhere. And the only reason why we know it is because they’re trying to make us like them. Where we turn off the volume and we hear nothing from Mother Earth. And we look at it as a commodity, we look at it as a resource, we sell it. That’s what they want to teach us. Scary.
— Wendsler Nosie Sr., Apache Stronghold from Arizona
Andrea Faye Gibson was an U.S. non-binary poet and activist, named Poet Laureate of Colorado in 2023. They passed away at the age of 49 in 2025. This poem says all you need to know about Earth Day…
Do you know sometimes when gathering nectar, bees fall asleep in flowers?Do you know fish are so sensitive, snowflakes sound like fireworks when they land on the water?Do you know squirrels plant thousands of trees every year just from forgetting where they left their acorns?Do you know sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift apart?Do you know whales will follow their injured friends to shore, often taking their own lives, so to not let their loved ones be alone when they die?None of this is poetry. It is just the Earth being who she is. —Andrea Gibson
Lydia Poncé (Mayo/Quechua), amazing social justice and environmental activist, has a show on KPFK called Be A Better Relative. She shared with us an impromptu Earth Day Blessing.
Happy Earth Day.
As happy and joyous as we can be, standing together, united against insanity,
the fact that we are using technology that’s using up all the water is just to say, yes, water is life and AI is death.
But on the upswing of everything that we’re doing, we know that we need to protect, defend and honor Earth Mother.
And she gives us everything we need.
And I don’t see how we can go another year, another two years without putting a stop to the extraction.
And the only way that we’re going to do that is standing united and definitely with the same plan.
It’s simple. Protect, defend, and honor our Earth Mother.
Anything else is just so, so, so not being a better relative.
I just need you all to know with a loving heart and good intentions to find something to do today different.
Do something out of your comfort zone.
Be daring. Be willing to speak up and speak out.
And hold your head up high.
Because we are Earth Mother’s children and we’re all related.
Just some people don’t get invited to the dinner on Sunday, right?
All right. With that I say happy and the best Earth Day.
We can make it possible to stop this extraction, stop the poisoning and do everything we can to be gentle and to be graceful and to be respectful of our Earth Mother.
Many blessings.
— Lydia Poncé
There’s a lot more shared in the show, but I wanted to leave you with Allen Ginsberg’s poem delivered at a 1970 Earth Day Event.
Earth pollution is mind pollution, consciousness pollution identical with filthy sky dirty thoughted usereries simultaneous with capitalist metal dust in watercourses, the murder of great and little fish, same as self disperchment, masturbatory thought control mace repression. Ah, identical with DDT extinction of the bald eagle. Mother’s milk poisoned as father’s thoughts are poisoned. All greed stained over the automobile body designing table. What can poetry do? how flowers survive. how man say right mind, hear his own heart’s music, Feel cock joys, taste ancient natural grain bread and sweet vegetables. Smell his own baby body’s tender neck skin. When 60% of state money goes to heaven on gas clouds burning off water machine smokestacks. When violence floods the state from above. Flowery land raised for robot proliferation. Metal rooted and asphalted down six feet below topsoil. Then when the bomb carrying children graduate from grammar school, sex drenched gymnasia, terrified of arming finance meat bones busted by the cops for grassy hair who can prophesy peace or vow any futurity for any but armed insects?
Happy Earth Day!
