One tenth of Americans joined the first Earth Day
History
Long before environmentalism became a partisan lightning rod, a massive coalition of students and Republican leaders united to clean up a nation choked by smog.
The first Earth Day wasn't a quiet celebration of nature, but a massive political upheaval sparked by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, which dumped three million gallons of crude into the Pacific. Senator Gaylord Nelson realized that if he could harness the raw energy of anti-war protests for the environment, he could force the government's hand. On April 22, 1970, twenty million Americans walked out of their jobs and schools, effectively turning one-tenth of the country's population into a single, vocal lobby.