Tulsa’s biggest Earth Day celebration
Earth Day Celebration

Sierra Club Exec. Director MICHAEL BRUNE & Jamaican roots reggae artist PREZIDENT BROWN slated for Tulsa’s biggest Earth Day Celebration.

TULSA’S EARTH DAY CELEBRATION features nationally prominent environmental speakers, an Electric Vehicle Village, educational booths & demos, regional & nationally touring musical artists, environmental art, family activities, local cuisine and more. The event takes place at Guthrie Green, an internationally recognized urban park utilizing geothermal wells and solar panels, with satellite programming at Philbrook Downtown and the Woody Guthrie Center. Earth Day is the most widely recognized annual environmental event in the world, demonstrating support for environmental protection. The first Earth Day took place in 1970. Today 193 countries participate.

SPEAKERS include MICHAEL BRUNE, Executive Director, Sierra Club. One of the world’s leading environmentalists, Brune is the author of Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil & Coal. Other speakers include 350.org leader BILL McKIBBEN (via video), Ponca activist & actress Casey Camp-Horinek, community organizer Ashley Nicole McCray, OK Sierra Club Director Johnson Grimm-Bridgwater, Cherokee actress-model-activist Amber Valletta (via video), North Tulsa activist Reverend Gerald Davis and more.

MUSIC includes sets by Wheat Penny, Susan Herndon, Randy Crouch, and Jamaican reggae artist PREZIDENT BROWN, who closes the evening with a deeply authentic, positive-vibrations roots reggae from the Islands.

ENVIRONMENTAL ARTISTS include Joel Daniel Phillips, Rich Barlow and Peggy Weil, whose 88 CORES video project is based on core samples from the Greenland Ice Sheet. 

FEATURING ALL DAY LONG Environmental booths, Electric Vehicle Village, speakers, music, environmental art, local cuisine, circus arts, family activities, more.

SCHEDULE

1:00-1:45 – Art talk/exhibit @ Philbrook Art Museum Downtown (next to Guthrie Green). Free admission all day. Curators lead a discussion on how artists explore complex environmental issues.  These works of art are expansive, filling the entirety of Philbrook Downtown’s main floor. Artists Richard Barlow, Joel Daniel Phillips, and Peggy Weil explore receding arctic ice, how Oklahoma and Southern California were altered by the burgeoning oil industry of the 1950s, and time travel through 110,000 years of deep arctic ice.

2:00-2:30 – Climate Reality slideshow by Booker T. Washington High School student ISABELLA KOSTER @ Philbrook Downtown (next to Guthrie Green). See An Inconvenient Truth slideshow updated with material on how Oklahoma is affected by climate change. Refreshments served.

(schedule is approximate & subject to change)

PREZIDENT BROWN will cap Tulsa’s Earth Day Celebration with a performance of positive-vibes roots reggae. Born Fitz Cotterell in the hills of Jamaica, he would grab the microphone and chant at schoolyard and country dances. The most formative influence on Prezident Brown was producer and sound system operator Jack Ruby, who took the talented young singer under his wing, re-named him Prezident Brown, and appointed him resident M.C. of his Hi-Power Sound System, traveling worldwide. As a solo artist, Prezident Brown boasts one of the most spiritually devoted hits in reggae history, “To Jah Only.” Prezident Brown is an artist driven by a sense of mission and purpose which dictates that he “edutains”: heightens the consciousness of a people as much as he entertains. We can’t think of a better Earth Day artist.

TULSA EARTH COALITION is comprised of many of Tulsa’s most active environmental and social justice organizations: Green Country Sierra Club, Carrie Dickerson Foundation, Tulsa Talks Climate, Tulsa Read for 100, All Souls Green Team, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Hope Green Sanctuary Team, Transition Tulsa, TYPros Sustainability Crew, University of Tulsa Students For Sustainability, and TU Earth Matters. In addition, many more earth-friendly organizations will be participating.

General inquiries, please contact Michael Koster: 505-670-0755, ThirstyEarFest@gmail.com

For an educational booth, contact Nancy Moran: 918-857-1206, tulsareadyfor100@gmail.com

Thanks to Philbrook Museum of Art, Chimera, Woody Guthrie Center, and Tulsa Earth Coalition for their contributions to Tulsa’s Earth Day Celebration.