On Saturday, April 26, Sunnyside Environmental School (SES) collaborated with the small artist collective Making Earth Cool to celebrate its second annual Earth Day parade and ceremony. Held in the Sunnyside neighborhood, the community gathered to raise awareness for the ongoing climate crisis.
The event started at 11 a.m., with paraders meeting in the SES schoolyard to assemble puppets, make last-minute costume additions, and learn about the 11 non-profit organizations that had set up booths. Iris Borden, an eighth grader at SES, explained that her class had been promoting the event for a few weeks. “We made costumes at school for the parade,” she explained. Borden and a few other students also volunteered at the parade. Environmental and community education is the “main focus” of SES, said Borden. These teachings were apparent as Borden remarked, “The Earth can survive without us, but we cannot survive without it!”
Around 12:35 p.m., community members got in formation for the parade — bikers with Bike Bus PDX taking their place in the front and those on foot towards the back. Large puppets floated above the parade: animals, planets, and trees made of cardboard, papier maché, and silks. Many paraders held signs with messages about climate justice. Nora Colie, one of the main event organizers and a founder of Making Earth Cool, explained, “The idea [behind the parade] is that a lot of people won’t even know it’s coming.” Her goal was to create a large, colorful mass of people and props that would turn heads and provoke thought, in turn raising awareness for the Earth. “Hopefully it stop[ped] people in their tracks,” Colie expressed, expanding that, “[The] goal is to talk about how incredible to Earth is, and use comedy and science so that people remember to care about it, and then [they’ll think], ‘Oh shit, we gotta do something.’”
Colie’s inspiration for the Earth Day parade — in character for the longtime advocate for the Earth — came from a similar campaign to raise awareness for a different cause. “Years ago, there was a measure on a ballot [to protect] lower-income people [from losing] their health care,” explained Colie, in reference to Measure 101, which focused on protecting the Oregon Health Plan, and was overwhelmingly supported by Oregonians. Up for vote in 2018, the measure inspired protests all over Portland in its support, Colie explained. “I thought, ‘[why should we have] another protest? How about we have a parade to get people to vote [for] this measure?’” So, Colie and a group of friends chose the Sunnyside neighborhood and held a parade to raise awareness of the measure, which was being voted on in a special election. “People came running out on their porches just to see what [was] going on. It’s a different way to grab people’s attention,” Colie remarked.
Years later, after she had started Making Earth Cool, Colie decided she’d like to hold funeral processions for the Earth. She and her group dressed in black, Victorian mourning dresses, made a hearse, papier machéd a giant Earth, and walked the streets with a bagpipe player. “Some people took off their hats in salute,” Colie said. “One of the times we did it, this woman came out on her porch. She [shouted], ‘What are you guys protesting this time? I’m so sick of this!’” In response, Colie soberly explained that they were mourning the Earth. “She burst into tears. And at that moment, I knew what we were doing was right, and that it was effective,” recalled Colie.
The next procession was held on Earth Day, and Colie decided that it shouldn’t solely be a funeral procession. “This is a day to celebrate the Earth,” Colie stated. That day, some dressed in mourning uniforms, others in colorful outfits, and the parade’s centerpiece — a hearse — was decorated like a float. After this new and improved procession, Colie and her collective conceded that parades were both a way of getting attention and “really fun, too.”
The 2025 parade, a blur of colors and puppets, made its way through the neighborhood streets near SES and eventually ended with paraders dispersing back to the schoolyard. Though the parade was over, there was still more planned in celebration of the Earth. At 7 p.m. that night, an Earth ceremony was held in The Groves Church near the school. “We celebrate no gods, it’s just nature,” Colie explained. Attendees at the ceremony participated in rituals, meditated, and “[created] community around [the] never-ending grief of knowing that climate change is really scary, [and celebrated] how incredible this place we live is.”
Students, their families, and members of the Sunnyside community were brought together this Earth Day not only to celebrate but to protest the climate crisis. As Colie explained, “We know that [climate] change is here, and a lot of things are going to start looking worse, but we have to continue to have hope.”
