Camp Counselor Carmel's Interview with Rock the Earth

09/23/2014

Carmel: What is Rock The Earth all about? Rock The Earth: We are an environmental nonprofit. We are based out of Colorado and we work across the country to support and protect areas being threatened by things like drilling, mountain top removal and industries that impact the environment. We have a team of 7. How long has Rock the Earth been making a difference? We were founded in 2001 in Pittsburgh and then we moved to Denver. So we have environmental lawyers who volunteer and work on litigation in order for us to protect those areas throughout the country and our way of reaching out to people is by going to different concerts and music festivals in order to create a better group of environmentally concerned music fans. What kind of bands do you work with? A bunch, actually! For example last year we were on tour with Dave Matthews Band, Tom Petty, Allman Brothers, Gov’t Mule, Black Crowes, Michael Franti and Spearhead, and Keller Williams too. [caption id="attachment_20256" align="alignright" width="300"] Rock the earth in Summer Camp’s Program[/caption]So what we do here is we educate and advocate on some of the cases we are working on and then for a way to raise money for the litigation and education we have items you can receive for signing up for a membership with Rock the Earth. Then if you donate, you can get a bunch of different things like t-shirts, CD’s, Grassroots hats and lots of things like that. What does a membership entail? A membership starts at $25 for a year and it is tax deductible. You can get an item like a poster or CD that was donated to us by the artist. You can get discounts on different music festivals throughout the country and discounts on a bunch of environmentally friendly companies that we have partnered with. Each summer Rock the Earth has their own tour poster, which is on recycled paper and we have one every year. The tour posters are part of the membership where as the larger posters are a $75 donation. We have Jim Pollok who does the posters for Phish, we have Justin Hampton who does the posters for Tool and then we have Gary Houston who I believe did the poster for the Dead. So there are only 500 copies of them and we ask them to incorporate the elements. So every poster has air, earth, water and fire. Do you go to festivals year round as well? We start here at Summer Camp and go until November. Every summer for the past ten years we have been on tour so we have a crew consisting of a tour coordinator and two volunteers or interns that go around the country and tour with bands. We set up our tents and educate people at concerts. What is your favorite part about volunteering for Rock the Earth? Just getting people involved and find out how aware people really are and then to given them even more information. You know, everyone has their different environmental issues that they are passionate about and it is great to have some good conversations about those things and learn so much from other people. It is really great to be a part of a good community of people.