John Rensenbrink

John C. Rensenbrink (August 30, 1928 – July 30, 2022) was an American political scientist, philosopher, journalist, conservationist, and political activist. He initiated many organizations, the most prominent of which are the Maine Green Party; the Green Party of the United States (1984–87) for both of which he was a principal founder; and the Cathance River Education Alliance (2000), a hands-on ecological education project for local schools, schoolchildren and high school students in mid-coast Maine.

Early life and education Rensenbrink was born in 1928 in rural Pease, Minnesota, one of seven children of Dutch-American farming parents. His mother, Effie (Aafje Kooiman), was born in the Netherlands; his father, John Rensenbrink, was the eldest son of Dutch immigrants.

Rensenbrink and his brother Henry operated the dairy farm upon their father's death in 1943. Unable to attend high school, Rensenbrink took a correspondence course conducted by the American School in Chicago. He left the farm in 1946 to attend Calvin College, an evangelical college in Grand Rapids, Michigan; his mother and siblings moved to that city the following year. Rensenbrink studied history, English and philosophy at Calvin and was editor of the college newspaper during his junior and senior years. He graduated with a BA in 1950. He then enrolled at the University of Michigan wher he focused primarily on political philosophy, and received a master's degree in political science in 1951. This was followed by a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Amsterdam from 1951 to 1952. Thereafter, he studied at the University of Chicago, concentrating on political philosophy, American politics, and constitutional law, and completed his Ph.D. in political science from that university in 1956. His Ph.D. thesis was entitled "Technology and Utopia: the Structure of Freedom".

Academic and other professional work Rensenbrink began teaching at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1956. After a year at Coe teaching history and international relations, he taught political philosophy and American government at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, for four years (1957–61).

Rensenbrink quickly made plans to seek early retirement (which was accomplished in 1989) and threw himself into Green Party organizing in Maine and in the United States. A meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota was followed by regular monthly meetings of what was first called the Committees of Correspondence, later changed to Green Committees of Correspondence, with a Clearing House in Kansas City headed by Dee Berry. Working with the Clearing House, the annual gathering of a Green Assembly, and the Inter-Regional Committee that had formed, Rensenbrink headed a three-year project to produce a Green Policy Program, generated from the over 300 grass roots groups that had sprung up in the early years. The Program was completed and approved in September 1990, at the annual meeting of the Green Assembly in Boulder, Colorado. Thereafter, Rensenbrink, with others, formed the Green Politics Network whose aim was the eventual creation of a national Green Party of associated state Green Parties. The result was the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP), which, from 1996 to 2001 grew to include all of the state Green parties and then morphed into the Green Party of the United States in 2001. Rensenbrink has continued to be active in the USGP's National Committee and annual Conventions and Presidential campaigns and in its International Committee, which he had founded in 1997 as part of ASGP.

Together with several other concerned and influential citizens of Topsham in 2008, Rensenbrink helped defeat at the polls a proposal to replace Topsham's Town Meeting form of government with a council form of government. Following this they persuaded the town Select Board to create a Topsham Government Improvement Committee. This committee, chaired by Rensenbrink, produced a Report recommending improvements in Topsham's Town Meeting, some of which have been instituted with others pending.

Rensenbrink, as part of his goal to help develop an international community of strong ecological and politically alert activists from among Greens and Green-minded people, established the Green Horizon Foundation in 2002, and continued as its president. Among its projects, it publishes Green Horizon Magazine, which got its start in 2003. Rensenbrink was its chief editor together with co-editor Steve Welzer of the New Jersey Green Party. The foundation also conducts a website and does book publishing.

Death Rensenbrink died on July 30, 2022.

Selected awards

Praxis Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Role of Scholar and Activist, presented September 2, 1994, by the American Political Science Association's Organized Section on Transformational Politics Award presented in 2004 by the Maine Green Independent Party "For 20 years of outstanding service to the Green movement in Maine and the Maine Green Independent Party." Award presented in 2006 by the Cathance River Education Alliance "In appreciation for co-founding CREA." Portrait painted by Rob Shetterly – Arranged by the Maine Green Independent Party on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the party, May 2009. The portrait is part of the series of paintings by Rob Shetterly on "Americans Who Tell the Truth."

Publications How Change Does and Does Not Take Place: Maine Case Studies of Innovation in Education Reform Programs, ERIC Document, Resources in Education, Arlington, VA; Document Number ED 127664, 1977 The Theory and Practice of Undistorted Communication, Analysis of the State Town Meeting Project 1990, Maine Humanities Council, Portland, Maine. Poland Challenges a Divided World, Louisiana State University Press, 1988 The Greens and the Politics of Transformation, Preface by Jay Walljasper R&E Miles Publishers, 1992 Against All Odds, the Green Transformation of American Politics, foreword by Ralph Nader, Leopold Press 1999 Ecological Politics: For Survival and Democracy, Lexington Books, 2017

Selected articles "A Study in Praxis: the Caucus for a New Political Science." New Political Science, Winter 1980 "Beyond Polis and Cosmopolis: Green Pathways to a New Universalism." In Dialogue and Universalism, Vol. V, No. 5, Warsaw, 1995. "Security, Democracy, and World Governance." In The Global Greens, Edited by Margaret Blakers. The Green Institute, Canberra 2001 "The Dalai Lama on Suffering and Compassion, an Ontological Critique." In Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of the International Society for Universal Dialogue. Published by Skepsis, Athens 2004. "Dialogue and Being – An Ontological Investigation." In Dialogue and Universalism, Vol XXIII, No. 3/2013.