RIP: John Rensenbrink

Sam Smith – I was about to share my deep sadness about the passing of John Rensenbrink when I read a fellow Green Party member’s message that borrowed from labor activist Joe Hill’s last note to a friend: “Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!"

It sounded just like something John might have said. After all, he had helped to start the Maine Green Independent Party and later the national Green Party among other groups and he knew not only the importance of organizing but how to do it. When he invited me to an initial national Green gathering and I said I didn’t think I was good enough to be a Green, he replied, “That’s okay . We’re going to have a Libertarian there as well.”

When I later designated myself chair of the Big Mac caucus of the party, dedicated to all wishing to be Green without being perfect, John didn’t mind that either. After all he had experienced the true variations of life, He had been raised a member of the conservative Dutch Christian Reform Church. As a teenager, he and his brother had run a dairy farm after his father’s premature death.  As Wikipedia notes:

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.

Rensenbrink's first foray into politics was a letter-to-the-editor at the age of 14 praising Minnesota's political leader Harold Stassen. The letter appeared in the Minneapolis Star Journal. It was the first of many letters to the editor in that newspaper during the next several years. While in college Rensenbrink participated in a popular campaign to unseat the mayor of Grand Rapids. Shortly after, at the University of Michigan in 1951-52, he joined the Young Republicans, but found himself disgusted with the politics of Joe McCarthy. Rensenbrink left the Republican Party and became a Democrat after listening to the speeches of Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president in 1952.  

In other words, he was introduced early to the complexities of belief and politics and learned how to deal with them.. He went on to teach such matters at Williams and Bowdoin colleges.  

A few days before his passing, I happened to be examining in which states the Green Party had been most successful and found to my amazement that Maine had 32% of all the elected Green officials in the country, including a constable in one town and a sewer board member in mine. Thanks in no small part to the inclusive politics of Rensenbrink, Maine was the first state with a Green Party, not to mention giving me one of my favorite role models.