Mark Dunlea

Mark Dunlea has been an environmental activist for half a century since co-founding both NY and National PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) while a student at RPI and Albany Law School.

After law school Mark spent more than 35 years doing community organizing for ACORN and the Hunger Action Network of New York State, working on issues such as single-payer healthcare, economic justice, welfare rights, corporate accountability, , and food sovereignty. He has also been active in the peace movement.

For the last decade, Mark has worked full-time on climate advocacy. He helped coordinate the successful campaigns to divest both the NYC and NYS public pension funds from fossil fuels for 350NYC. He is the “convenor” of PAUSE (People of Albany United for Safe Energy), the 350 affiliate in the Capital District. He has been active with Extinction Rebellion and observed his 65th birthday by getting arrested at three climate protests. Last spring he taught climate advocacy at Bennington College in Vermont.

Mark is chair of the Green Education and Legal Fund, which works to promote the green values of ecology, nonviolence, grassroots democracy and social and economic justice. He works with Lights Out Norlite to help shut down the only commercial hazardous waste incinerator in NYS. He wrote one of the first reports opposing garbage incineration in 1985 and in 1980 was the coordinator of a national campaign in the presidential election pushing the candidate to oppose nuclear power and for solar power. He was one of the core organizers of the 200,000-person No Nukes rally in 1979 in NYC.

Mark Dunlea has been a radio show host for more than 20 years.

He is the author of Madame President: The Unauthorized Biography of the First Green Party President.

Mark was a co-author of the initial Green New Deal proposal in the U.S. in 2010, Mark was the national campaign manager for Jill Stein’s 2016 Green Party presidential campaign. Mark is a former Poestenkill Town Board member and the Green’s nominee for NYS Comptroller in 2018

Mark and his wife, Judith Enck, in 1985 built their own passive solar home in Common Farms, an intentional community based on sustainability principles in Poestenkill NY.