Reading Room


Earth Day Co-Founder to Speak at Tracy Event

Posted Thursday, March 21, 2019

By Marylia Kelley and Raiza Marciscano-Bettis

Earth Day is about saving our planet. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) was inspired to create Earth Day as a national day of environmental action after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Senator Nelson first announced the concept to the media as a “national teach-in on the environment.”

Representative Pete McCloskey, a Republican, joined Senator Nelson as co-chair to create the first Earth Day in 1970. McCloskey represented the San Francisco Peninsula and Silicon Valley in Congress over the course of eight congressional terms. Together, the two recruited Denis Hayes from Harvard to serve as national coordinator for the first Earth Day.

This year, the Tracy Earth Day celebration is honored to welcome Pete McCloskey as its keynote speaker. Also speaking will be Raiza Marciscano-Bettis, the Tracy bilingual community organizer at Tri-Valley CAREs. In addition, she will offer Spanish translation for Rep. McCloskey’s remarks.

Tri-Valley CAREs is co-sponsoring the 2019 event with the Tracy Earth Project. There will be a festival of non-profit tables, a poster contest, seed plantings and much more (see the flyer below).

Tri-Valley CAREs will offer a game for kids as well as literature in English and Spanish about environmental pollution and cleanup activities at the Site 300 high explosives testing range. Site 300 is located on Corral Hollow Road just west of Tracy, and is used primarily to develop nuclear weapons.

Tracy Earth Day is Saturday, April 27, 2019 from 9am to Noon at the Civic Center Plaza, 333 Civic Center Drive in Tracy. For more information, send an email to [email protected] or give us a call.