While reading an issue of Ballot Access News late one evening, I was saddened to learn of John Rensenbrink’s passing. I became one of John’s long-distance friends, in the late 1980s, when he was overseeing the Green Party’s SPAKA (Strategy and Policy Approaches in Key Areas) process. My wife and I hosted him at our house, a few years later, when he visited Columbia, Missouri. Although I’m not Dutch, we shared a common connection in that we were both alums of Dutch Reformed colleges.

While we differed on some things, theologically and politically, we also shared some common values and I always found John to be a man of integrity and a perceptive political scientist. Through the years, I was grateful to have the opportunity to see my articles published in Green Horizon. John was a careful and helpful editor. As a manuscript reader, he played a key role in getting my first book published and I did the same for his last book.

John Rensenbrink will long be remembered for his principled and eloquent advocacy on behalf of grassroots democracy, decentralization, ecological wisdom, social justice, and nonviolence.

Jeff Taylor
Political scientist and Iowa State Senator