That's not coincidence. The leader of the first Earth Day was not a politician, as the movement has greenwashed Democratic U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson into being, yet credible journalists and an alarming number of commenters will invoke the Earth Day site or some anonymous Snopes blogger or even Wikipedia(!) and claim the primary sources from 56 years ago are wrong.
Students had just rioted at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Denis Hayes, student body president and avowed communist, was not taking orders from a politician. He wanted revolution. In the New York Times coverage of Hayes they referred to him as the "Angry Coordinator of Earth Day" and include details of his suite of offices and reference his communist talking points but never once mention Nelson.
Dedmoroz Lenin doesn't bring gifts to people on Earth Day, he takes stuff. Image by Grok
Earth Day was set for the 100th birthday of the first leader of the Soviet Union; Vlad Lenin, a homicidal communist dictator who immediately killed off the leaders of the other soviets, murdered the royal family and their children, then canceled elections when it looked like they were going to go badly for him. He desperately needed to get Russia out of World War I and handed over Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, claims to Finland, and the rest of the Baltic provinces to Germany to exit the fight. Leaving those grimy capitalists France and Great Britain holding the bag.
He then had a stroke of good luck. With no eastern front to worry about, the Germans rampaged across France that spring - no trench warfare by then, entire French and British divisions were eliminated - but they had made the mistake of torpedoing U.S. transports, and American General "Black Jack" Pershing stopped the Kaiser's war machine cold at the Marne. With just two divisions of American soldiers. Then 10 more American divisions showed up, then 10 more, and by October it was over for the Germans. With Germany conquered, Lenin got all his land back.
And he cared about the environment, according to his followers later. By taking land away from owners and placing it under state control, he was protecting nature.
Yet we know that wasn't it. U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt had created national parks long before Lenin did in 1919, but American environmentalists liked that people were banned from Lenin's Astrakhan National Forest Preserve, and they liked his statements that capitalism ruined nature.
Which is why April 22nd was important to Earth Day leaders. Under them, environmentalism had already stopped caring about people of color and inner city sewers. They were marginalized and the narrative become about polluted rivers and using government to block development. By 1970, white people were in charge of the agenda and they wanted government acquiring more land to block development. It had become what critics called "watermelon environmentalism" - green on the outside and red on the inside.
The idea to have Earth Day on Lenin's 100th birthday was not subtle. They were asked numerous times why this event to protect the future of children and get them involved in caring about Gaia had to be on that particular Wednesday in April rather than on a weekend, or during the summer, when kids could actually attend. There was no answer that didn't get a laugh out of objective people.
That is why the Los Angeles City Council was divided on the event and it only passed by one vote when it included the statement expressing concern "the April 22 date was chosen … and expresses its hope that in the future a different and more desirable date may be selected.”
Credit: Los Angeles Times. Low resolution capture under fair use.
Has that really changed? Not much. Environmentalism is still run by white people, but mostly white lawyers now. It still overwhelmingly exploits young white women and it is still partisan. They even create offshoots to promote the political agenda. When Republican President Trump was elected there mysteriously sprung up a March For Science on the exact same April 22nd, even though Obama had been awful for science and no protests occurred.
Their logo was oddly reminiscent of past symbols from an extinct communist country, the one that inspired the first Earth Day. And the people behind it were a lot like Denis Hayes of 1970.
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