Green Corps Organizer Mary Nicol, sixth from left, and Alaska Coalition partners thanked Rep. Bass, fourth from left, for his leadership in protecting the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling. (Photo by Catherine Corkery.)

Every year, neighborhoods, cities and college campuses across the country come together to celebrate Earth Day. It’s a time of year when we like to take stock of the environment and the environmental movement. The thing that invigorates me this Earth Day is the group of bright and innovative leaders that Green Corps is training. In this edition, I think you’ll find that we all have something to celebrate this Earth Day—a new generation of leaders who are standing up to attacks against the environment as they launch their careers as environmental advocates.

For more than 10 years, the oil and gas industry has lobbied to exploit the last pristine wilderness area on Alaska’s northern slope. And every year, Green Corps has served as the grassroots field team to help defeat these efforts. In the winter of 2005, pro-drilling forces in Congress and their allies in the Bush administration were pushing to include Arctic drilling in the federal budget. Drilling proponents hoped to use this back-door strategy to avoid drawing public attention to the issue, well aware of public opposition to drilling in the Refuge. This was potentially the last stand for the Arctic Refuge.

With Congress set to vote on the budget that would open the Refuge to drilling, the Green Corps organizers knew that it would take people power to prevail. Launching massive grassroots and media campaigns in critical states like Illinois, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Michigan and New Hampshire, Green Corps organizers mobilized public outcry—with the goal of gaining the support of key House Republicans.

In New Hampshire, Green Corps organizer Mary Nicol’s work to persuade Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH) to help resulted in one of the turning points of the campaign. Historically not a champion on environmental issues, Rep. Bass needed to hear from his constituents if he was going to vote to protect the Arctic. Mary recruited over 200 citizen volunteers, including 52 activists who took an 18 hour bus ride to attend the Arctic Refuge Action Day in Washington, D.C. Using the skills she learned in Green Corps’ classroom training, Mary secured 35 stories about the Arctic Refuge in New Hampshire media outlets and signed on the New Hampshire Council of Churches to her campaign.

Responding to the public outcry on the issue, Rep. Bass became a champion in the fight to protect the Arctic Refuge, circulating a letter to fellow Republicans in the House about the need to prevent drilling. His letter gained the support of 23 Republican colleagues, successfully blocking Arctic drilling from inclusion in the House budget.

Other Green Corps organizers helped to bring thousands of concerned citizens to the Arctic Refuge Action Day in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 20—the largest environmental lobby day organized in U.S. history. The Action Day brought together 5,000 citizens to the U.S. Capitol.

Due to the overwhelming public outcry mobilized in large part by Green Corps organizers, the Arctic Refuge became the key issue blocking the federal budget process, and ultimately, the Senate also voted to block Arctic drilling in December. The campaign was a huge victory, drawing media coverage in The New York Times, Washington Post, and countless other news outlets.

As a senior at University of California at Berkeley last year, Andrew Adams was sure that he wanted to work on the front lines of the environmental movement. He knew that by joining Green Corps, he’d have the opportunity to lead the charge against the Bush administration’s impending rollbacks to important environmental laws and regulations.

And this spring, Green Corps helped Andrew put his vision and energy to work defending the Endangered Species Act.