John Rensenbrink papers

John C. Rensenbrink was born in 1928 in Peace, Minnesota, on a family farm. He moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to attend Calvin College in 1946. His family moved to Michigan including his sister Kathryn "Kat" Rensenbrink Krosschell. He graduated with his BA in 1950 and went on to attend the University of Michigan and received a master’s in political science in 1951. He completed his Ph.D. in political science from University of Chicago in 1956. That same year, he began teaching at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and then Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 1959, Rensenbrink married Carla Washburne Rensenbrink in Massachusetts. In 1961, the couple moved to Maine.

Rensenbrink taught political philosophy and history at Bowdoin College in Brunswick for a year before moving to East Africa to work for the governments of Kenya and Tanzania as an education advisor. Returning to Bowdoin College in 1965, Rensenbrink continued to teach for the next three decades. In the 1960s, Rensenbrink helped found Merrymeeting Community Action (MCA), an organization that worked on anti-poverty programs in mid-coast Maine. In the 1970s, Rensenbrink ran on the Democratic ticket for a Senate seat of the Maine legislature. In the 1980s, he would campaign against nuclear power. He wrote and published “Poland Challenges a Divided World” in 1988 after spending six months in the Polish state where he followed the rise and suppression of the Solidarity movement. Rensenbrink continued to teach at Bowdoin after his official retirement, creating new interdisciplinary lessons for majors in Government and Legal, Africana, Gender, and Environmental Studies.

Inspired by the global Green Parties of Europe and Canada, in 1984 Rensenbrink joined fellow anti-nuclear activist Alan Philbrook to convene the first Green Party meeting in the United States in Maine. Rensenbrink would organize the Green Party in both Maine and nationwide alongside other progressive social movements, including peace, environmental, feminist, civil rights, and global solidary. To help address systemic injustices, local Green groups around the country began to coalesce around the original Ten Key Values that Rensenbrink and other activists felt represented the Green Party: Ecological Wisdom, Personal and Social Responsibility, Grassroots, Democracy, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Community-based Economics, Post-Patriarchal Values, Respect for Diversity, Global Responsibility, and Future Focus. In the following decades, Rensenbrink helped to organize the Maine Green Independent Party (MGIP) into the largest per capita membership of any Green Party in the US. His leadership allowed the party to prosper, becoming the second-largest party in Portland, Maine, after the Democrats. He was the MGIP’s candidate for the US Senate in 1996, losing to Republican Susan Collins. He published his book “Against All Odds, the Green Transformation of American Politics” in 1999.

Rensenbrink was a community organizer who formed various groups and organizations to help combat systemic ecological and social issues and promote a sustainable future, including Topsham’s Future, Cathance River Nature Preserve, Cathance River Education Alliance (CREA), Green Horizon Foundation, and local government committees. He helped to establish various publications that promoted the Green Party and progressive political action like the Green Horizon Quarterly and Caucus for a New Political Science newsletters. John Rensenbrink died on July 30, 2022 in Topsham, Maine.