San Jose State students, faculty and community members gathered on Tower Lawn Wednesday to celebrate and spread awareness for the environment at the annual SJSU Earth Day resource fair.
An Aztec performance, fashion show and various organizations from SJSU and the city of San Jose advocated for the theme of Earth Day 2022: “Invest in Our Planet.”
SJSU Interim President Steve Perez spoke about the importance of creating a sustainable earth for “every living creature.” He said SJSU has a vast history of activism regarding Earth Day.
“We have over 150 years of history, and it’s history we can be unbelievably proud of. It’s a history of activism. It’s a history of change,” Perez said during the event. “It’s a history of promoting things that are good and necessary and Earth Day is right along with those things.”
The founder of Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson, was a 1939 SJSU alumnus. He helped popularize the holiday in February 1970, according to SJSU’s Office of Sustainability website.
Two months before the first Earth Day, students who attended SJSU pushed a brand-new Ford Maverick from a car dealer's lot in Los Gatos to the center of campus where it was buried in a pit near the Student Union to protest the use of fossil fuels.
Perez said SJSU is in the top 6% nationally of sustainable college campuses this year.
At the event, there were many booths to promote environmental awareness to SJSU and the broader San Jose community.
Ann Jasper, program manager of City of San Jose Department of Transportation’s Walk n’ Roll, was energetic as she promoted safe roads for drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists.
“We’re out here just kind of spreading the word to walk and bike, not just for the environment but also for just personal health and alleviate all the traffic that we have in the Bay Area,” Jasper said.
She said after two years without in-person outreach, it felt really nice to talk to people again.
The South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to cleaning creeks and rivers in the Santa Clara Valley, promoted the diverse array of animals that inhabit Guadalupe River and Los Gatos Creek while passing out fliers and promoting sign-up sheets for local volunteering events including trash cleanups.
“It's good to have the word out about what's going on with our Earth. Everybody should be interested in it. We all live in it. And I'm very grateful that [the university invited] us out here,” said Joshua Lopez, an intern for South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition. “This is a lot of fun and it's good to meet all these new people.”
The event also featured a fashion show by the SJSU Environmental Resource Center that highlighted sustainable fashion choices and secondhand clothing.
The Environmental Resource Center is the student-run activist section of SJSU’s Environmental Studies Department and pushes for sustainability efforts on campus according to its website.
The fashion show was emceed by San Jose mayoral candidate and SJSU global studies junior Marshall Allen Woodmansee as he introduced student models while they walked the runaway with outfits bought at thrift stores or passed down from family members.
Jackelin Solorio, fourth year spatial arts major, said if people purchase less clothing, they can ease the negative effect clothing has on the planet.
“A lot of the clothing that we have with fast fashion is just in and out and it ends up being in landfills,” Solorio said. “Clothing made correctly and with love can have multiple lives.”
The event also featured a traditional Aztec dance performance by the non-profit San Jose-based Aztec dance group “Movimiento Cultural de Anahuac,” that incorporated three separate dances, two of which were dedicated to the planet for Earth Day.
The Aztec dancers dressed in colorful regalia with feathered headdresses and beaded ankle bracelets and twirled to the piercing beat of two Aztec drums.
“The first one is called ‘Tlalnantzin,’ that's Mother Earth, the second song was ‘Náhuatl,’ which is the Earth itself,” said Ariana Briones, one of the four dancers.
Briones said she believes as a society, people get too caught up in the stresses of their lives and forget that they came from the earth.
“The Earth gives us life and sustenance… so I think Earth Day is really important to celebrate, [remind] ourselves of our gratitude towards the Earth and what we can do better each day in our lives to make sure that it's healthy for future generations” Briones said.
Sean O'Connell, third year environmental studies major, works at the Environmental Resource Center and described organizing the event as “busy.”
O’Connell said growing up he spent a lot of his quality time in nature which influenced his environmentalism.
“If I’m going to be living here for the next at least 70 years, hopefully, I just want to take care of the place I’m in. I want to be able to pass it onto the next generation,” O’Connell said. “So people can see how I see nature versus how humanity has kind of forsaken it.”
