Editing Earth Day (section)

=== The Dirty Dozen ===
The staff of Environmental Teach-In resigned immediately after Earth Day, and most moved directly to a new organization, Environmental Action, with a tax status that permitted lobbying and a more activist stance.<ref name=":1a">{{Cite news |title=Earth Day Theme Continues in U.S. – Antipollution Activity Goes Beyond One-Day Event |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/04/24/354875132.html?pageNumber=28 |work=The New York Times}}</ref> EA immediately confronted a problem that had been looming in the background throughout the campaign. Some of the staff had been drawn to the movement through science and culture and felt that politics was inherently dirty, and government was irredeemably compromised. This group believed that by living lives of voluntary simplicity, employing tools like those that filled the resolutely-nonpolitical ''[[Whole Earth Catalog]]'', they could force the world to adapt to them.  Their theory of change was modeled loosely on the southern African Americans who sat at segregated lunch counters, drank from segregated lunch counters, and sat in the front of the bus, it ignored the role of strategic litigation<ref name=":3a">History.com Editors,{{Cite news |date=October 27, 2009 |title=Brown v. Board of Education |url=https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka |access-date=February 19, 2021 |publisher=history.com}}</ref> [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|federal legislation]], and electoral politics<ref name=":5a">{{Cite news |title=History of Federal Voting Rights Laws |url=https://www.justice.gov/crt/history-federal-voting-rights-laws |access-date=February 19, 2021 |publisher=justice.gov}}</ref> in cementing lasting change.

Other staff members had worked in the Robert Kennedy, Gene McCarthy, and various congressional campaigns before Earth Day. They believed that lasting progress could only come through institutional change. The year 1970 was a congressional election year. They had just organized the largest demonstration in the nation's history to support environmental values. Former Lindsay organizer, Steve Haft, summed up this faction's attitude at an Environmental Action staff meeting, "We had 20 million people in the streets in an election year, and you plan to sit out the election?  Are you nuts?"{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}

To square the circle, Hayes proposed that the group not endorse any candidates but that it try to defeat 12 of the worst. If having a terrible environmental record became a political liability, it would inevitably lead to better environmental legislation.  Haft was selected to coordinate the Dirty Dozen campaign.  With just $50,000 to defeat 12 incumbent members of the House, the odds were long.<ref>{{Cite web |date=April 22, 2018 |title=An Organizer of Earth Day Looks Back on How It Began |url=https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94645/founder-earth-day-looks-back-how-it-began |access-date=April 22, 2021 |website=www.mentalfloss.com |language=en}}</ref>

To improve the odds, the group selected candidates who not only had lousy environmental records—which were plentiful—but who also had won their most recent race by a narrow margin; who were on the wrong side of an important environmental issue in their districts; and who lived in areas where talented Earth Day organizers resided. In the end, seven of the original Dirty Dozen were defeated—five Republicans and two Democrats. And the first to fall was George Fallon, chairman of the hugely powerful House Public Works Committee.<ref name=":6a">{{Cite news |title=The Dirty Dozen Rides Again? |url=https://legal-planet.org/2019/10/28/the-dirty-dozen-rides-again/ |access-date=February 19, 2021 |publisher=legal-planet.org}}</ref>

Representative Pete McCloskey, Earth Day co-chair, credits the Dirty Dozen's defeat of key congressional leaders with the unstoppable wave of environmental legislation that immediately followed: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and others.<ref name=":7a">{{Cite news |title=Former Congressman Pete McCloskey Authors New Book Titled The Story of the First Earth Day – How Grassroots Activism Changed the World |url=https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200421005879/en/Former-Congressman-Pete-McCloskey-Authors-New-Book-Titled-The-Story-of-the-First-Earth-Day---How-Grassroots-Activism-Changed-the-World |access-date=February 19, 2021 |publisher=businesswire.com}}</ref>