This Day in History: 1972-05-04

Greenpeace On this day in 1972, the “Dont Make a Wave” committee of Vancouver, formed to protest US nuclear testing in Alaska, becomes Greenpeace. Among its thousands of dramatic protests, Greenpeace activists have infiltrated nuclear test sites, shielded whales from harpoons, protected fur seals from clubs and blocked ocean-going barges from dumping radioactive waste.

These dramatic tactics were inspired by a confrontational, non-violent philosophy rooted in the Quaker concept of bearing witness and also in the nonviolent interventions of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. The organization’s strict adherence to non-violence has led some groups who long for a more muscular activism to break away from Greenpeace. (Photo is courtesy of Rex Weyler).