Coronavirus & Earth Day

For several months between December and March, Edmonds picked up his pace of coordinating and participating in multiple groups. He was very involved with climate activism, but spent time with social justice groups as well. But most importantly to him, Edmonds prioritized time with his son over everything else.

With the momentum created by student groups in 2019, he thought Earth Day 2020 was sure to make a big splash with thousands, if not tens of thousands, coming out to the streets in New York City alone. Edmonds saw the value of this opportunity to get more people into his group.

     But then, the coronavirus hit New York City.

“I don’t think it’d be an understatement to say that at least a majority of humans right now are going through a lot,” Edmonds said. Just like most people, he was disappointed that mass gatherings were to be cancelled, but soon picked himself back up to adjust to the new situation.

     “I’m empowering myself right now and trying to empower others and say, we actually have a huge amount of power right now, a power that we don’t usually have,” he said. “We have the power to do greater harm and greater good. People are a lot more vulnerable right now.”

     He pointed out that the societal system was being challenged and he saw it not working. “All the systems that we’ve built, infrastructure and supply chains. Something like this is going to happen eventually anyways, that can be really bad,” he said.

     He created a group called Mass Autonomous Planting wherein, instead of protesting on Earth Day, everyone would plant trees in their own homes or their communities. He wanted to keep his original idea of creating self-sustaining communities and said this would be one step in the right direction of having people grow their own food.

     “That’s all we really can do is just plant a large amount of fast growing trees and food producing trees that will give us our food locally,” he said. He added that everybody should be planting hundreds of trees every year in order to realize the world that he was envisioning.

     In the Signal group with just over 50 people, he posted photos of himself and his son planting peach trees at home. People responded with photos of themselves volunteering in neighborhood gardens and growing plants in their Brooklyn apartments. Its members started giving out seeds to neighbors and encouraged others to follow suit. What started as a solo protest back in October for a mass protest in May blossomed into an online movement with participants across the United States.

     Eventually, Extinction Rebellion’s chapter in Washington D.C. answered his call and put out a notice that it would launch a planting campaign starting on April 22nd. The campaign is offering to deliver tree seeds to anybody needing them.

     Moreover, several grOups are offering gardening classes, such as the Permaculture Action Hub that is offering an online mushroom cultivation workshop and some neighborhood gardens, like the Phoenix Community Garden, started intensifying food production.

     For Edmonds, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, April 22nd, is not the end of his journey. It’s the beginning. Whether he will take a more radical route as he has done in the past or continue on this online route remains to be seen, but for now, he has planted his seed, ready to create a virtual community of environmentalists for Earth Day.