TS King Middle School Earth Day Contests yielded a wide-array of student-created posters and essays about raising environmental awareness and promoting action and activities for a sustainable planet.
This year's Contests Program under the leadership of Science & Health Teacher Annemarie Ralph honored Jasmin Maddela, Lucia Zezza and Beatrice Pena for their poster creations and Diallo Smith for his essay.
Earth Day -- April 22 -- each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, proposed the first nationwide environmental protest "to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda. " "It was a gamble," he recalls, "but it worked."
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.
Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.
Historical information from Earth Day Network
Earth Day Logo by Adrienne Lay