Green Education and Legal Fund Inc. is a 501(c)(3)nonprofit dedicated to promoting the green values of nonviolence, ecology, democracy and justice.
Organized in 1998, the purposes of GELF include:
- to conduct research and education in furtherance of the green principles of ecology, grassroots democracy, non-violence, social and economic justice, decentralization, community economics, feminism, respect for diversity, personal and global responsibility, and future focus;
- to provide training and education to individuals to enable them to increase their participation in the democratic process of governance, including developing alternative democratic models for increased citizen and community input into economic and political decisions that impact upon their quality of life;
- to develop and promote alternative models for organizing economic activity, including but not limited to cooperatives, worker ownership, community supported agriculture, monetary systems and Green business principles.
GELF has helped with issues such as calling to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant, composting, waste reduction, toxic wastes, opposing generic engineering of our food system, mobilizing opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, and supporting full public campaign finance reform.
GELF has sponsored the Green City Project, which envisions how to rebuild communities based on principles of sustainability. It completed reports for the City of Troy on solid waste, pesticides and composting.
Mark Dunlea, Chairperson
Mark stepped down as Executive Director of Hunger Action Network of NYS in 2014, for which he had worked since 1985 as the first staff person. He has been a community organizer (e.g., ACORN) and long-time anti-poverty, food justice and peace advocate. He authored one of the first reports exposing the dangers of garbage incineration in 1985. Mark is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Albany Law School. He is a member of Common Farms, an intentional community in Poestenkill where he and his wife, Judith Enck, built their own passive solar home in 1985. He is a former member of the Poestenkill Town Board.
Mark is active in PAUSE, People of Albany United for Safe Energy. While living in Brookyn, he was a member of the steering committee of 350 NYC and the People’s Climate Movement NY. He helps coordinates statewide campaigns for 100% clean energy by 2030; a state carbon tax; and, divesting the state pension funds from fossil fuels. He was co-founder of New York and national Public Interest Research Group; Green Party of NY; Capital District Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild; Social Justice Center; and Hudson-Mohawk Independent Media Center. Mark is an avid gardener. He has hosted various public affairs radio shows for 15 years with local Pacifica affiliates (WBAI, WRPI); he is currently a member of the news collective at WOOC in Troy and is helping to start WOOA in Albany.
He is author of Madame President: The Unauthorized Biography of the First Green Party President.
Steve Breyman, Board Member
Steve is an Associate Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Steve Breyman has a background in international relations, comparative politics, and political sociology. He most recently served a one-year post at the U.S. State Department Office of Euro-Atlantic Security Affairs in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance as a William C. Foster Fellow.
The fellowship with the U.S. State Department was a return to Breyman’s roots – he completed his dissertation on the West German anti-nuclear weapons movement of the 1980s – in European arms control.
He is author of Movement Genesis: Social Movement Theory and the West German Peace Movement and Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and US Arms Control Policy.