If you rambled down to Civic Center Sunday, you might have thought the crowd and the booths could just be another average day event. Then you saw a Whiskey Dome Cycle, a seal made out of all that garbage that gets thrown in the ocean, and the Luvevolution Bus!. There was Green Peace and Earth Island Institute - and that was your clue. Earth Day San Francisco, 2012.

Forty-two years ago, on the first earth day 20 million people participated in activities across the country. So many people came to Washington D.C. that both houses of Congress shut down in awe of the response. That people’s movement brought passage of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

At exactly noon today we stood in the warm sun of San Francisco and connected to rainy-day New York City for a sync up singing of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land. On stage to lead us in song – Country Joe MacDonald, Occupella, Freedom Song Network, Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus, La Pena Chorus, Jello Biafra, Liliana Herrera, ReSisters, Hali Hammer, and Christiana Johnson as our sign language interpreter, Will Scarlett with a harmonica solo, and you could feel the joy.

The last verses by Hali Hammer brought cheers:

We join together across this nation, Stand side by side for our Occupations
To tax the rich and corporations so we can sustain democracy
To keep the air clean & the rivers flowing & the redwoods standing, & the planet going
So all the children ca grow up knowing That this land’s still made for you and me!

Then Taiko drummers gave a sound salute to the earth.