Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 22, 1991 TAG: 9104220183
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As attendees milled around the park grounds waiting for speakers to take the stage, demonstrators called an informal news conference.
"They can bring in some big national speaker to talk about the ozone layer, but they won't let us talk about problems in our own back yard," said Floyd-based Pete Castelli, regional director for the national Citizen's Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste.
"They can't see the trees for the forest."
Castelli said he and other grass-roots activists were snubbed intentionally by Earth Day organizers.
Originally scheduled to be an Earth Day speaker, Castelli said he was told by city parks and recreation officials not to talk about controversial area issues, including the proposed Bradshaw Valley trash train, the Kim-Stan landfill in Alleghany County and the Superfund site at Dixie Caverns.
"In censoring us, they essentially uninvited us," Castelli said. "It's indicative of how the environmental movement has been compromised on a larger level."
But while Castelli was not an official Earth Day speaker, he and other grass-roots environmentalists made sure they said what was on their minds, tracking down reporters.
"There's still a lot of work to be done cleaning up Kim-Stan," said Donna Tucker, one of the founders of Citizens for a Cleaner Environment, the group that led efforts to close down the dump. "We need to keep this out in the open; people need to know we still have problems."
Added Bill Carter, who was with the anti-trash-train group called Bradshaw Residents Against Contamination of the Environment: "People are selling T-shirts here and jewelry over there, but how many people are really interested in the real Earth Day? What's the deal here?"
The deal, according to city recreation programmer Tom Clarke, is that city officials wanted to make sure Earth Day was a "positive festival."
"When the city sponsors an event, it works hard to meet the needs of a variety of people," Clarke said. "We have to strike a balance; we can't really take a stand on these local issues one way or the other."
Michelle Davis, who helped coordinate Earth Day along with other members of the Roanoke Environmental Alliance for our Children's Heritage, explained that Roanoke County originally had offered to provide a park site for Earth Day, but later backed out because it, too, thought the celebration might become too controversial.
"The city has been really helpful" in providing a site and helping coordinate Earth Day, Davis said. "But I don't think it's right to censor people to the point where nothing can be said about local issues.
"We need to stop being so afraid of hurting someone's ego. The truth has to be told."
by CNB