From: Dale McMillen <dmcmillen@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Date: 03 Jan 93 20:08 PST
Subject: Re: NEWS ABOUT THE GREENS
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1678600016:cdp:1678600020:000:9645
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!dmcmillen    Jan  3 20:08:00 1993


From: Dale McMillen <dmcmillen>
Subject: NEWS ABOUT THE GREENS

/* Written  6:23 pm  Oct 21, 1992 by igcnewsdesk@igc.apc.org in igc:green.general */
/* ---------- "Greens mourn Petra Kelly" ---------- */
I took the liberty of posting the origal story with the correct format.
It should be more readable for all users now.

George Gundrey
(reply to ggundrey)
/* Written  3:58 pm  Oct 21, 1992 by socalgreens in
igc:green.general */
/* ---------- "USGreenIWG/PKelly" ---------- */ From: Southern
California Green Assembly <socalgreens> Subject:
USGreenIWG/PKelly

International Working Group of The Greens/Green Party USA 300
Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA. 94133

contact: Charlene Spretnak (415) 725-7878 (fax)  Ross Mirkarimi
(415) 931-9761
	      Greens Clearinghouse (816) 931-9366     Mike
	      Feinstein (310) 392-8450

		Greens mourn the loss of Petra Kelly

Greens from around the United States and the world mourn the loss
of German Green Party co-founder Petra Kelly, who was found dead
in her apartment October 19th.

Kelly was an inspirational force in the growth of the European
Green Movement during the 1980's. Her charismatic speeches during
the Western European anti-nuclear movement during the early 80's
helped propel the German Green Party to significant levels of
political power and caused Kelly become an international figure.

Kelly combined ecology, feminism, and spirituality together with
an acute and forceful economic and political analysis. Whether the
issue was the environment, human rights, women's' rights, or
nuclear power, Kelly sought to oppose hierarchy by finding new
forms by which society could better self-govern. She stood for the
power of non-violence, and emphasized models of "shared power" and
"empowerment" rather than "the power over".  As the German Green
Party attempted to embody this philosophy in the early 80's, Kelly
coined them the "anti-party party".

Kelly was the chair and spokesperson of the German Green Party
from 1980-83. In 1983 she organized the Green International
Tribunal against First Strike and Mass Destructive Weapons in East
and West. Later that year she was elected to the German
Parliament, and was reelected again in 1987.  During her
parliamentary years, Kelly was a member of the Parliamentary
Foreign Relations Commitee, its Sub-Committee on Disarmament, as
well as a member of the Assembly of the Western European Union and
the Council of Europe. In the late 80's, Kelly became deeply
involved in the Tibet liberation movement, speaking around the
world, at times together with the Dalai Lama. In 1985, Kelly
published a collection of her writings about her vision for the
Green movement, Fighting for Hope (Boston: South End Press, 1985),
a book about her vision for the Green movement. This past year,
Kelly took a strong role in criticizing the growth the German
Neo-Nazi movement.

The successes of Kelly and European Green Parties also inspired
change in the United States. After the West German Green Party won
27 seats in the German Parliament in 1983, a formal U.S. Green
movement was founded in 1984 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Today that
movement has evolved into significant and growing political force.
There are already 41 Green office holders in 12 states; Greens
have statewide ballot status in Alaska, Arizona, California,
Hawai'i, and New Mexico; and in 1992 more than 100 Green
candidates around the country are running for office.

Background on Petra Kelly

Petra Karin Kelly was born of German parents in the small Bavarian
town of Gnzburg in 1947 and raised in a German Catholic convent
school. She then spent1961-70 living in the U.S. Just as Kelly and
the German Greens influenced the development of the U.S.  Greens,
Kelly herself was influenced by politics of the U.S. during the
1960's. During her college years in Washington, D.C., she worked
in the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy and became friends
with Hubert Humphrey. She was also drawn to the civil rights
movement and the non-violent, civil disobedient tactics called for
by Martin Luther King. By the time she returned to Europe in 1970,
Kelly had been involved for years in the antiwar movement and had
also been influenced by the feminist movement.

After Kelly returned to Europe in 1970, her half-sister died of at
age ten with cancer in one eye. Kelly felt her death was the
result of excessive radiation during treatments in the late 1960's
which caused her to lose her nose and nearly an ear.  Kelly
subsequently founded and chaired the Grace P. Kelly Association
for the Support of Cancer Research in Children, a European group
that studies the relationship between chidren's cancer and
environmental factors, especially radiation.

In 1972, Kelly earned a Master of Arts degree in political science
from the University of Amsterdam before taking the position of
administrator in European Health and Social Policy questions
within the European Community (EC). She held that post until her
election to the German Parliament in 1983, which necessitated
countless all- night commutes to various cities in West Germany
for her central participation in founding the Greens and achieving
their early electoral victories.

It was during these years that Kelly developed her wholistic
worldview.  She first was a member of the Social Democratic Party.
But like so many others in the mid-to- late 70's she left the
party in her search for a new politics that could incorporate her
values. It was this search that led her to help found the Greens.

During the 1980's Kelly not only served to publicize the Green
movement to an international audience, but she played the role of
an ideological lighting rod within the party. As the West German
Green Party rose to higher and higher levels of government, the
possibility presented itself in several German states of joining
together with the Social Democratic Party in coalition government.
Arguing against compromising Green principles to political
expediency, Kelly stood against the "realos" within the Party that
wanted to abandon the Party's stances for unilateral disarmament,
West German neutrality, and the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw
Pact blocs.

At the 1987 International Green Conference in Stockholm, Kelly
expanded upon this, saying "the Green Parties will survive into
the next century if we do not make compromises when it comes to
life and death questions. It is not a matter of a little bit of
cancer, a little bit of malnutrition, it is not just a little bit
of death or a little bit of deterrence or a little bit of
injustice. It does not help us in any way if we accept lower and
"safer" levels of radioactivity and dioxin. We must speak out
clearly and courageously that there are not safe levels...just
repairing an existing system cannot be the solution for the Green
Parties. Our aim is non-violent transformation".

Kelly was just as vocal about what she perceived to be a lingering
male dominance within the German Green Party. Although she coined
the term "anti-party party" for the German Greens, by the late
80's she was concerned that old patterns of power and dominance
remained within the party. Her numerous public critiques of this
problem, often delivered in foreign countries and receiving
significant press, did not always endear her to the rest of the
Green Party. In an interview in New Frontier magazine in 1989, she
explained why this issue remained so crucial for her. "There is a
profound relationship between the fact that women and children are
attacked, beaten and raped, and the fact that nuclear war and
ecological catastrophe threaten our planet." The desire of Green
women, she added, is to "restore a balance, a harmony between the
feminine and the masculine."

Kelly had significant influence presenting these views in the
United States. In the early 80's she appeared on various newsshows
like "Meet the Press", "The Today Show", and "The MacNeil-Lehrer
Report". In 1986, Kelly was broadly exposed to U.S.  audiences
through the publication of Green Politics: the Global Promise, by
Charnel Spretnak and Fritjof Capra (Santa Fe, Bear & Co.), a book
about the West German Greens in which her role in the party was
covered in depth. In 1990, Kelly was the keynote speaker at the
national conference of the National Organization for Women.  There
she argued strongly for a new political party in the United States
based upon Green values, particularly one that sought to establish
different ways of sharing power internally as well as in society.


Ironically, Kelly's notoriety proved to be a double-edged sword as
far as how other Greens saw her, particularly those within
Germany. Although Kelly was credited with popularizing the Green
movement in an unparalleled manner, some Greens perceived her to
be too strongly attached to the limelight and in so doing, to be
in conflict with the very values that she spoke so strongly in
favor of.  This "Kelly paradox" ultimately has proven to be very
instructive for Green Parties around the world as they seek ways
in which to both empower society as a group and in our differences
as individuals.

On one of Kelly's last trips to the United States, she spoke with
great concern about the for the planet. At a major symposium in
Santa Monica, CA on October 27, 1990 she enumerated a long list of
ecological and social problems and the lack of responsiveness of
the world's governments to them. She closed by saying "we need a
concept of ecological security in an interdependent world. We need
ecojustice, which is nothing less than taking seriously the entire
destiny of humanity and the planet on which we live".