UC Berkeley celebrates Earth Week amidst COVID-19

Climate activists around the world had big plans for Wednesday, April 22 2020, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Traditional in-person Earth-themed demonstrations and community gatherings in honor of the occasion were cancelled due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Still, members of the environmental community at UC Berkeley joined forces to create a virtual Earth Week for students to participate in while remaining safely indoors.

Sophomore Tess Gauthier, Earth Week Associate at the Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC), took the lead in transitioning as many Earth Week events as possible online, while keeping in mind the various challenges and emotional stressors that students may be facing in this unusual time.

“I didn’t want to overwhelm folks with information about adapting to a Virtual Earth Week, but still wanted to let people know that it would still exist as a community resource and space for celebration and healing if people needed it,” Gauthier said.

To begin Earth Week, SERC staff Dante Gonzales, Samantha Long, Gabrielle Ambayec, and Sarah Xu co-facilitated a Zoom event called “Understanding and Resisting Ecofascism.” According to environmental historian Michael Zimmerman, ecofascism “requires individuals to sacrifice their interests to the well-being of the ‘land.’”

Ecofascist rhetoric has been on the rise since the outbreak of COVID-19, with people tweeting comments such as “Coronavirus is Earth’s vaccine” and “This isn’t an apocalypse, it is an awakening” in response to improved climate conditions during the pandemic. The presentation argued that this way of thinking is harmful because it implies that the only way to achieve true climate mitigation is through death and violence, when in reality the root of the problem lies in the capitalist system and white supremacy.

“If we are shifting the blame... to people and populations we fail to identify and hold accountable the true perpetrators of environmental degradation,” Gonzales said.

After joining smaller breakout rooms for 20 minute discussions, participants learned how to confront ecofascism in their communities through the three step process of identifying ecofascist ideas, contextualizing the rhetoric, and explaining why resisting ecofascism is necessary and important.

On Wednesday, Pour Out Pepsi, a campaign run by the Department of Unsustainable Partnerships in ASUC Senator Targ’s office, held a virtual Earth Day Town Hall. Attendees strategized ways to effectively end Cal's pouring rights contract with PepsiCo, a major contributor to global plastic and greenhouse gas pollution, agricultural mismanagement, and human inequities. In May, Cal's University Partnerships Program will vote for either an as-is contract extension, an extension with amendments, a new proposal for a different campus-wide beverage relationship, or for no campus-wide beverage relationship. Their vote acts as a suggestion to Cal administrators, who will make the final call.

Junior Selena Melgoza and senior Mia Bea Silverberg, who co-lead the Department of Unsustainable Partnerships at Cal, have faced some challenges protesting the partnership due to California’s shelter-in-place order.

“At this point, any other semester, we would definitely be shifting our focus towards having rallies outside of California Hall, really raising our voices on campus and making our presence very visible, which we can’t do right now,” Silverberg said. “This pandemic definitely makes it easy for important votes like this to go under the radar.”

On Friday afternoon, the Community Development Committee in ASUC Senator Targ’s office hosted an online Eco-community summit. Representatives from a number of campus organizations, including the Department of Zero Waste, Housing and Dining Sustainability Advocates, and Students for Climate Action shared projects and achievements from this academic year. They also spent time honoring graduating seniors, awarding superlatives such as “Most likely to design a sustainable city” and “Most likely to radiate sunshine.”

Since January, organizers across the country had been planning what was to be the largest climate strike in history for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The three day strike, cancelled due to the pandemic, became a three day live stream event called Earth Day Live, put together by hundreds of organizations under the the US Climate Strike Coalition and the Stop The Money Pipeline Coalition. Activists, performers and artists joined the live stream with the goal of amplifying the voice of indigenous leaders and youth climate activists, calling for fossil fuel divestment and promoting voter registration.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined the live stream in a segment called “Spill the Tea with AOC” to discuss the Green New Deal, a congressional resolution which she and Sen. Edward Markey introduced last year as a plan for tackling climate change.

“This is scientifically informed legislation,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I’m not here to tell you what is politically easy, I’m here to tell you what is scientifically necessary.” 

Local live streams under the name Earth Day Live were held around the world, including a webinar for climate justice poetry and literature organized by Poetry for the People (P4P) at UC Berkeley. Shailja Patel, a Kenyan poet and activist, shared a world premiere of a spoken word piece about Big Oil titled “Uncover.” The director of P4P, Aya de Leon, read the prologue of her novel, “Side Chick Nation,” which is set in Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria.

Students in the Poetry for the People class at UC Berkeley, taught by de Leon, also shared climate-related poetry.  Sophomore Anshu Gaur read “Broken Record,” her poem about the harmful effects of extreme pollution in India and the recent emergence of blue skies.

“For the first time, generations who have only ever known the city in crisis

Are able to see, not just imagine and debate and speculate, 

but actually see that something else is possible

… 

We didn’t need to hear it from Corona

But I do hope we listen this time”

The Earth Week events didn’t stop there. The Green Initiative Fund shared a virtual gallery to highlight posters from projects that had been funded in the past year. The Berkeley Art Studio demonstrated how to make flowers and succulents out of soda cans over Zoom. Students for Climate Action hosted a virtual Earth Day happy hour and SERC hosted a presentation about how to get through eco-anxiety and COVID-anxiety. Additionally, SERC put together a document directing students to a wide range of Earth Day webinars, virtual workshops and film festivals hosted by organizations across the country. Due to the efforts of environmentalists, activists and organizers, students and community members had no shortage of ways to celebrate Earth Week.