Home National news Earth Day is April 22, Nashville celebrates Saturday, April 23

Earth Day is April 22, Nashville celebrates Saturday, April 23

by PRIDE Newsdesk

                                                                  Larysa Jaye will perform at Nashville Earth Day.

Nashville Earth Day 2022 takes place on Saturday, April 23 from 11 AM to 6 PM at the Bandshell Area of Centennial Park. This free family event brings the Nashville community together to celebrate our planet, inspire positive environmental change, and support sustainable small businesses & nonprofits. Nashville Earth Day will feature engaging & educational activities from a variety of exhibitors and vendors, including local growers & makers, nonprofits, sustainable small businesses, and state/metro government agencies.

There will be free live music, Kidsville activities, and local food vendors. Kidsville will feature a creative box play area to build your own structures and a Nashville Earth Day passport activity to use at the event. Plus, head over to the Storybook Walk trail around Lake Watauga to view our featured book, “Tidy” by Emily Gravett.

Nashville Tree Foundation with sponsorship from Amazon will distribute 500 trees at the event, on a first come first serve basis. The trees include red maple, white oak, sweetbay magnolia, American yellowwood, and flowering cherry. Explore recycled, reused, up-cycled, organic, and all-natural products and offerings from sustainable local growers & makers, nonprofits, small businesses, and state/metro government agencies.

Savor the tastes of delicious food provided by local vendors. Small World Yoga will offer a 45-minute class that will run from 11:30 AM to 12:15 PM and will be located in front of the event stage. Space is limited.

Nashville Earth Day 2022 Lineup Schedule:

11:00 AM: Event Begins

11:30 AM: Yoga with Small World Yoga

12:30 PM: Raihanna Estrada

1:15 PM: Larysa Jaye

2:00 PM: Gustavo Moradel

2:55 PM: Josh Okeefe

3:55 PM: Striking Matches

5:00 PM: Aaron Lee Tasjan

Nashville Earth Day is presented and underwritten by many generous sponsors. Attendees are encouraged to bike to the event. Attendees can also take the bus to Centennial Park via the Metro Transit Authority bus routes from West End #3, Charlotte #10, or the University Connector #21.

ABOUT EARTH DAY

Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. In the decades leading up to the first Earth Day, Americans were consuming vast amounts of leaded gas through massive and inefficient automobiles. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of the consequences from either the law or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Until this point, mainstream America remained largely oblivious to environmental concerns and how a polluted environment threatens human health.

The stage was set for change with the publication of Rachel Carson’s New York Times bestseller Silent Spring in 1962. The book sold more than 500,000 copies in 24 countries as it raised public awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment, and the inextricable links between pollution and public health. Earth Day 1970 would come to provide a voice to this emerging environmental consciousness, and put environmental concerns on the front page.

Senator Gaylord Nelson, the junior senator from Wisconsin, had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States.  Then in January 1969, he and many others witnessed the ravages of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California.  Inspired by the student anti-war movement, Senator Nelson wanted to infuse the energy of student anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a teach-in on college campuses to the national media, and persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair.  They recruited Denis Hayes, a young activist, to organize the campus teach-ins and they choose April 22, a weekday falling between Spring Break and Final Exams, to maximize the greatest student participation.

Recognizing its potential to inspire all Americans, Hayes built a national staff of 85 to promote events across the land and the effort soon broadened to include a wide range of organizations, faith groups, and others.  They changed the name to Earth Day, which immediately sparked national media attention, and caught on across the country.  Earth Day inspired 20 million Americans — at the time, 10% of the total population of the United States — to take to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate against the impacts of 150 years of industrial development which had left a growing legacy of serious human health impacts. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment and there were massive coast-to-coast rallies in cities, towns, and communities.

Groups that had been fighting individually against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife united on Earth Day around these shared common values. Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, urban dwellers and farmers, and business and labor leaders. By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other first of their kind environmental laws, including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act.  Two years later Congress passed the Clean Water Act.  A year after that, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act and soon after the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. These laws have protected millions of men, women and children from disease and death and have protected hundreds of species from extinction.

As 1990 approached, a group of environmental leaders approached Denis Hayes to once again organize another major campaign for the planet. This time, Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting environmental issues onto the world stage. Earth Day 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It also prompted President Bill Clinton to award Senator Nelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest honor given to civilians in the United States — for his role as Earth Day founder.

As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focused on global warming and a push for clean energy. With 5,000 environmental groups in a record 184 countries reaching out to hundreds of millions of people, Earth Day 2000 built both global and local conversations, leveraging the power of the Internet to organize activists around the world, while also featuring a drum chain that traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa. Hundreds of thousands of people also gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC for a First Amendment Rally.

30 years on, Earth Day 2000 sent world leaders a loud and clear message: Citizens around the world wanted quick and decisive action on global warming and clean energy.

As in 1970, Earth Day 2010 came at a time of great challenge for the environmental community to combat the cynicism of climate change deniers, well-funded oil lobbyists, reticent politicians, a disinterested public, and a divided environmental community with the collective power of global environmental activism. In the face of these challenges, Earth Day prevailed and EARTHDAY.ORG reestablished Earth Day as a major moment for global action for the environment.

Over the decades, EARTHDAY.ORG has brought hundreds of millions of people into the environmental movement, creating opportunities for civic engagement and volunteerism in 193 countries.  Earth Day engages more than 1 billion people every year and has become a major stepping stone along the pathway of engagement around the protection of the planet.

Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national, and local policy changes. Now, the fight for a clean environment continues with increasing urgency, as the ravages of climate change become more and more apparent every day.

As the awareness of our climate crisis grows, so does civil society mobilization, which is reaching a fever pitch across the globe today. Disillusioned by the low level of ambition following the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and frustrated with international environmental lethargy, citizens of the world are rising up to demand far greater action for our planet and its people.

The social and cultural environments we saw in 1970 are rising up again today — a fresh and frustrated generation of young people are refusing to settle for platitudes, instead of taking to the streets by the millions to demand a new way forward. Digital and social media are bringing these conversations, protests, strikes, and mobilizations to a global audience, uniting a concerned citizenry as never before and catalyzing generations to join together to take on the greatest challenge that humankind has faced.

By tapping into some of the learnings, outcomes, and legacy of the first Earth Day, EARTHDAY.ORG is building a cohesive, coordinated, diverse movement, one that goes to the very heart of what EARTHDAY.ORG and Earth Day are all about — empowering individuals with the information, the tools, the messaging and the communities needed to make an impact and drive change.

Be a part of Earth Day and help write many more chapters—struggles and victories—into the Earth Day book.

EARTH DAY HISTORY BY DECADES

1970 — The first Earth Day mobilizes 20 million Americans to call for increased protections for our planet

1990 — Earth Day goes global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries

2000 — Earth Day leverages the power of digital media to build millions of local conversations across more than 180 countries

2010 — Earth Day Network launches A Billion Acts of Green® and The Canopy Project. Earth Day 2010 engages 75,000 global partners in 192 countries

2020 — Earth Day 2020 marked 50 years with global activations that aim to mobilize a billion people worldwide for transformative action for our planet

ABOUT LARYSA DAYE

Singer-songwriter Larysa Jaye brings a twist to the Acoustic Soul Music scene. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, her newly released single, “Birmingham”, is quickly touching hearts across the country.

Growing up as a pastor’s kid, born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, Larysa, and her family moved around a lot. Her love for music began at an early age playing violin & tenor sax then finding her voice through Acappella choirs and musicals.

Moving to Tennessee in 2002, being surrounded by a thriving music scene, her love for the industry emerged. At 23, Larysa began taking her guitar to open mic nights throughout the city each week. Doing all that she could to get her voice heard. Singer-songwriters like Chris Stapleton, Tracy Chapman and Jazmine Sullivan continue to inspire her journey forward.

Legendary producer Billy Smiley saw Larysa on YouTube in 2011 and reached out. In 2021 the two of them wrote, recorded, and released multiple tracks in studio in Franklin, TN.

Larysa has an exceptional ability to captivate her audience. Taking you on a journey through song, sharing lyrics about what she has gone through in her life. Her vulnerability, the opportunity to share her story, and her powerhouse vocals, have carved out a unique niche as a singer-songwriter.

Having performed at the Nashville Soul Music Festival, 31st Anniversary Martin Luther King Convocation, The National Museum of African American Music, Nashville Airport along with various corporate and public stages throughout the US, Larysa continues to pursue her dream of a long-lasting music career. She has also sung background vocals for artists Carrie Underwood, Lauren Daigle, Danny Gokey and even collaborated with Christian Artist and DC Talk Alum Kevin Max.

Momma to 4 – Kadyn (15), Kingston & Shakira (twins – 11), and Sydney (4), her family is everything! Her bubbly, fun-loving, witty personality radiates both on and off the stage. She is quickly becoming a much sought-after entertainer.

Larysa takes the stage at 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, 2022, at the Centennial Park Bandshell for Earth Day.

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