Biography

Ken Pentel

The earth we depend on is in jeopardy and the existing decision-makers are on a very destructive path,² says Ken Pentel in explaining his decision to make another run for the office of governor of Minnesota. When I started on my political journey in 1979 it was based upon the understanding that health care was needed for all. Then I moved to Los Angeles and was faced with air quality alerts, beaches closing because of toxic pollution, and nuclear power plants being built on fault lines. Our planet was being desecrated. Back in Minnesota in 1986, I began to work with Greenpeace, canvassing door-to-door, doing grass roots organizing, speaking and lobbying to protect the oceans, endangered species, local organic farms, efficient renewable energy, and our health.

In the early 1990s Ken worked with the Prairie Island Coalition in its effort to prevent above-ground storage of high-level nuclear wastes on the flood plain of the Mississippi River near Red Wing. After key members of the Minnesota legislature crumbled before NSP lobbyists and approved the storage casks in clear violation of the wishes of a majority of both voters and legislators, Ken admits that he lost trust in the political system. Nevertheless, in 1996, when Ralph Nader announced his willingness to be a presidential candidate for the emerging Green Party, Ken found it a clarion call my ears could not resist.

Since then Ken has run for governor in 1998 and again in 2002. Those campaigns, plus his years of statewide organizing for the Green Party, have made him the best-known Green in Minnesota. ³Over the last twenty years,he says, I have spoken to tens of thousands of Minnesotans in all parts of the state, and I know the issues I have organized around are primary concerns to a majority of our citizens. In my travels I have learned that the will of the people is not being translated and the problem is our government.

As a watchdog for the Green Party during the 2006 legislative session, Ken was appalled by what he saw at the Capitol. He concluded that as long as massive amounts of money continue to flow through the system, it maintains the buying of public office and business-as-usual politics. The cloud of money leads to a culture of low ethical expectations and irrelevant political parties. Furthermore it results in big government, big taxes, higher cost of living, and over-all injustice. He points to a report from the Center for Public Integrity which ranks Minnesota fourth among the states in the absolute amount of money spent on lobbying. In per capita spending it leads all the rest.

Another ugent need he sees is to have more honest representation through instant runoff voting (IRV) and proportional representation. We need a multi-party system that encourages people to vote consistently with their values. Economically, he argues that Green policies will lead to a reduction in the over-all cost of living and a better, less stressful quality of life. This can be achieved by promoting durable goods over disposable goods, eliminating energy waste, going to a single-payer health care system, and investing in local communities.

My main goal as governor of Minnesota,he says, is to establish an honest democracy and an economy which is linked to ecological healing.

(More...)

Click here to download a high-resolution photo of Ken

Danene Provencher

"I am passionate about making the planet a better and more sustainable place for my child and all future generations," says Danene Provencher. The Green Party candidate for lieutenant governor, who has been a single mother for 23 years, joins Winona LaDuke in saying: My activism is an extension of my parenting. That activism goes back as far as the 1970s, when Provencher helped with the Southern Landowners Alliance of Minnesota, a branch of the powerline protest movement.

Provencher has been a small business owner for many years. She has been active with the Green Party of Minnesota since 2000, when she was a volunteer in the Nader/LaDuke campaign. In 2001 she organized the GPMN local in the third congressional district and in 2002 ran for Mound City Council, receiving 26 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Her support for Ralph Nader led her to spearhead a successful drive to get him on the Minnesota ballot in 2004, and she continued as organizer of his campaign in the state. That experience has been especially valuable to the Green Party this year, when, as a member of the Coordinated Campaign Committee she played a major role in the cooperative effort to gather petitions that resulted in placing five statewide candidates on the ballot.

She is in the Green movement for the long haul. It took the womenıs suiffrage movement 72 years of hard work to give us the right to vote, she says, and social change does not happen in two- or four-year electoral increments. We hope to regain our major party status and build the Green Party of Minnesota through local activism and by staying on course with the values and issues we hold dear.

If you want peace, health care, economic justice, and a more sustainable way of life, then vote your hopes and help us build a movement that will preserve the planet for the future, she urges. I am proud to participate in the democratic process by running on the Green Party ballot line in Minnesota this year. I am also honored to be the running mate of Ken Pentel and to be an active part of the Green global movement that is gathering force in more than ninety countries worldwide.

(More...)

Click here to download a high-resolution photo of Danene