Los Angeles Greens Host Petra Kelly's Legacy Event
By Lisa Taylor, June 2004
For Women's History Month, the Los Angeles Greens presented a special event on Petra Kelly, leader of European environmental and peace movements. In 1992, the year of her untimely death, she was the most widely known Green in the world, and arguably, still is today.
On St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 2004, the Los Angeles Greens welcomed guest speaker Claire Greensfelder, Executive Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center for Nonviolence, Equality, Youth and Ecology, in Oakland. Greensfelder collaborated with Petra Kelly through their common affiliation with WEDO, the Women's Environment and Development Organization, an international policy organization.
Petra Kelly blazed like a comet across our sky, accomplishing an amazing amount in her short forty-four years, setting the pace for the 21st century. She was ahead of her time on Tibet, on nuclear power, on electoral politics. Stated Greensfelder, "Petra saw it all. She saw the entire spectrum, from hanging banners to wearing outrageous t-shirts, to getting elected to office, to going to jail. All tactics were valuable and appropriate. It was just a matter of what time? What tactics? And she did them all. It was whatever it took to get the job done, whatever it took to get attention. She was way ahead of her time in that."
The interrelationship of issues was another way Kelly was a forward thinker. You couldn't say she was just a women's rights activist, peace activist, environmentalist, anti-nuclear activist, or a human rights activist. She was all of those things! According to Greensfelder, it was Kelly's understanding of all those issues that led to her co-founding the German Green Party in 1979. "It was a coalition of all the components and Petra being tireless, visionary, and seeing the whole nine yards."
The presentation touched on Kelly's time at American University in the United States, working on Robert F. Kennedy's and Hubert Humphrey's campaigns. Living in the U.S. for ten years, she acquired the perfect spoken English that would help make her an international media sensation. When her sister Grace died of eye cancer in 1970 at age ten, she catapulted into activism. From Kelly's classic collection of essays on environmentalism, feminism, and nonviolence, Thinking Green!:
"When Grace died, I resolved to do everything in my power to inform people about the military and civilian uses of nuclear technology and to participate in whatever ways I could to campaign non-violently against it. I vowed to dedicate my life to finding out why so many millions have become cancer patients and why we are all atomic hostages in this radioactive age."
The anti-nuclear theme carried all the way through her life. In 1970 she started working on nuclear power and weapons issues, and in 1992 the last two public events she attended were the World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg and the Radiation Victims' Conference in Berlin. Those events were in conjunction with indigenous rights and how weapons development have damaged indigenous people all over the world, an issue she became involved in towards the end of her life.
Petra Kelly came to international prominence in 1979, across Europe at anti-nuclear demonstrations, often as a lead speaker, where women were inspired by her passion and articulateness. "She never said, 'Because I am a woman...' which is why she was a brilliant speaker for them; she cared about all of these issues. She never boxed herself in one place." Those demonstrations were so huge they re-ignited the American peace movement. Kelly was the person through whom a trans-Atlantic synergy was brought full-circle.
Mark Hertsgaard, international investigative reporter, declared that if one individual could lay claim to ending the Cold War, it was Petra Kelly (not George Bush Sr. as he boasted) through her anti-nuclear work; getting elected to the German Parliament in 1983 with twenty-seven Greens and serving until 1990; to her visionary work with Eastern Europe. Greensfelder said, "She carried that banner early, she carried it high, she organized many people. Think about that--the Greens have a legacy. We have a legacy of having had an impact on global policy and we need to claim our lead."
In conclusion, Greensfelder challenged the audience to consider two things as part of Petra Kelly's Legacy: "How do we sustain ourselves as activists? One of the issues that was very hard for her and has always been a problem in progressive politics was constant questioning of leadership. What do we do with our visionaries? Do we keep them around or do we push them away? Part of the legacy is that we're human first and we're activists second. We need to value sustaining ourselves and our activism."
"For Green activists in the U.S., people often get confused that if you're a Green that means you're an environmentalist. The Green Movement already had a name here as green. I think part of Petra's legacy is maybe the Green Movement should rename itself as the New Green Movement or the 21st Century Green Movement, or something, and fuse the time with the media and redefine the Green principles, because the ten key values cover it all, they cover the whole territory."
Kelly popularized many phrases: "anti-party party," "If there is to be a future, it will be Green," and "Greens are neither left nor right, we are in front." Use them and share her legacy!
Video tapes available from www.justicevision.org
Audio archive at www.losangelesgreens.org
Lisa Taylor organized the Petra Kelly's Legacy event and she is the Membership & Volunteer Coordinator of the Los Angeles Greens.
