Travel News

On the Air: John Francis, Planet Walk

Locations in this article:  San Francisco, CA

walkEvery year, just around Earth Day, John Francis gets ready to walk. He retraces his old steps, the millions of them that he took in the 22 years he gave up motorized transportation.

Things have changed since Francis, 60, made the decision to walk everywhere as a protest to a massive oil spill that polluted San Francisco Bay in 1971, but his message remains the same. He walked everywhere he went — including treks across the entire United States and much of South America — hoping to inspire others.

Soon after he stopped riding in cars, Francis also stopped speaking. For 17 years, he communicated only through improvised sign language, notes, and his ever-present banjo, while earning a Masters and a Ph.D. in land resources along the way.

In 1982, Francis founded Planet Walk (https://planetwalk.org), a not-for-profit grassroots organization that promotes environmental consciousness and education. Now he lives with his family in Point Reyes Station, California, and continues to walk across the country, albeit on a smaller scale, but his ideology is unbowed – that change comes from within.

“That was one of the biggest epiphanies that I’ve had was that, you know, environmentalists like to look at the industrialists or at the developers and say, ‘They gotta change. If they would change, everything would be all right.’ But really, we all have to do that. We all need to look at ourselves. We need to re-imagine ourselves,” said Francis.

When Francis stopped speaking and riding in automobiles, he had no idea what a difference his convictions would make, if any, he said.

“There was no environmental movement during that time his ideas were on the cutting edge. It occurred to him years ago the schism between environmental justice socialism and racism is all the same,” said his Planet Walk colleague Suzanne D’Coney.

Many people, including his family, thought he was crazy, but Francis felt the need to keep moving forward. After many serendipitous encounters and hard work, Francis was recruited by the U.S. Coast Guard to write oil-spill regulations and by the United Nations Environment Program to serve as a goodwill ambassador. Universal just optioned the rights to his autobiography to eventually make into a movie based on his life.

He continues to spread his ideas through his Planet Walk, speaking engagement around the world, and yes, by putting one foot in front of another.

“When we get beyond that bend in the road, we see opportunities that we didn’t see while we were sitting on the fence. We see opportunities that we couldn’t have imagined,” Francis said.

By Cara Tabachnick for PeterGreenberg.com

Listen to John Francis this weekend on Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio. Visit our radio page to check your local station and times.

Photo credit: Planet Walk

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Previously by Cara Tabachnick for PeterGreenberg.com:

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