Earth Day 2003 Rocks Fresno

EARTH DAY 2003 ROCKS FRESNO
By Mike Rhodes

If you were there, you know. The Fresno Earth Day Festival was a raging success. Thousands of people, good vibes in the air, good food, and lots of politically progressive and environmentally oriented booths made this the best Earth Day so far. What made the Fresno Earth Day Festival such a great event and is it in danger of becoming a victim of its own success?

To find out more we talked to Fresno Earth Day Festival organizer Jeremy Hofer. Jeremy has been working on Earth Day events in Fresno for the last 4 years and has been extremely instrumental in restoring it as an important people’s environmental day in this community. I remember an Earth Day about 10 years ago, held at the Fresno Zoo, in which PG&E had a booth. They were talking about “our friend, nuclear energy.” That was a low point for progressive Earth Day celebrations in Fresno.

For four years now Fresno has celebrated Earth Day without the hucksters from PG&E and other large corporations controlling the politics of the event. Held at Fresno Courthouse park, the event is powered by solar energy (thanks to Offline Energy), and put together by a group of community organizers. Jeremy says that the diversity of the organizing committee was one of the essential ingredients to the events success. “The most important thing is to include diversity in your group. Try to include people from different cultures, male and female young and old. We had Native Americans, artists, musicians, and each member brought in more people to the festival.” This year’s Earth Day Festival in Fresno was a reflection of the organizers diverse backgrounds and that diversity was an important ingredient in the success of the event.

The Fresno Earth Day Festival organizing committee got started earlier than usual this year. By November 2002 they were already meeting and discussing the pros and cons of corporate sponsorship. In order to expand and move beyond reaching the “usual suspects” a key decision was made to seek alliances with corporate media and aggressively pursue other corporate sponsorships. These two decisions were decisive in the expansion and diversity of this year’s event. Whole Foods was an early supporter and provided valuable resources by sponsoring a community support day where they gave the Fresno Earth Day Festival a portion of the proceeds they made that day.

“This was the first year that we really focused on sponsorship,” Jeremy said. “In order to throw a good festival we need money. The sky is the limit in getting sponsors and that is one of the challenges. It depends on how much you want compromise your politics.” But Jeremy does not believe that the group had to compromise their politics to make Earth Day 2003 a success. “Our mission is not necessarily political,” he says. Earth Day is “a community festival in celebration of the earth and to raise awareness around the preservation of our natural resources. We never modified our program because of any of our sponsors.” Jeremy said that the organizing committee “did go through some soul searching about whom to invite and spend the sponsor’s money on.” With speakers like Kevin Hall speaking about air quality and Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange talking about globalization the politics of the Fresno Earth Day Festival seemed decidedly progressive. Not political? You decide.

While past Earth Days relied on KFCF 88.1 FM and the Community Alliance to bring out the crowds, this years organizing committee sought to “expand the circle” of people attending the festival. Jeremy said that they were tired of just “preaching to the choir” and made a conscious decision to get corporate media to sponsor the event. KSEE TV channel 24, Alice 102.7 and CSUF radio station KFSR signed on as sponsors and heavily promoted the festival. Jeremy sees this collaboration as critical to the events success but is concerned that some people in the progressive community might have problems with building an alliance with corporate media.

Another concern about continued expansion of the Fresno Earth Day Festival is that it could get too big. The crowd at this year’s festival was around 2,000 which most people felt was about right. But, would you have the same feeling if there were twice as many people? This year everyone could get close to the music and dancers and the whole event had a very intimate feel. There is some concern that bigger would not necessarily be better. Small is beautiful.

The progressive community in Fresno can learn a great deal from the experiences of the Earth Day Festival organizers. Their emphasis on diversity is exemplary. Their ability to reach out to new constituencies by using the corporate media was obviously successful and even the use of corporate sponsors gives us a way to bring in the resources needed to reach out beyond the usual suspects. Some caution should be given to the self censorship that could come from trying to attract corporate sponsors and there is the potential that future Earth Day Festivals events could get too big.

The Fresno Earth Day Festival organizers are to be congratulated on a job well done. While there are still issues to work out in making next year’s event a success we can all be thankful that PG&E, The Gap, and the Bush Administration are not in control of Earth Day festivities in this community.

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