1917 -2004

Biography

Declaration of intention

Lucile Green, daughter of missionaries in Shansi province, China, and widow of Arthur Isitt, passed away at her home in El Cerrito. She is survived by sons Sidney and Nelson.

Lucile studied philosophy at Yenching University in Peking, was a Phi Beta Kappa and earned a B.A. from Pomona College in California, a Master of Arts in philosophy from Claremont College, and in 1956 a Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University.

She rose from instructor at Ohio State to professor at Merritt College in Oakland, where she taught for 20 years.

Lucile was a volunteer activist par excellence. She has been a Delegate to the First World Constitution Convention (1968), President of the Association of World Citizens and active in its World Citizen Assemblies, Chair of the Academy of World Studies of San Francisco, co-founder of the World Government Organizations Coalition (now called the Coalition for Democratic World Government), Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association, co-chair of the Action Coalition for Global Change, and an advisor in its early days to Philadelphia-II (which promoted a national initiative as a precursor to a world initiative). We're proud to note that as an advocate of world government, she was a founding Member of the Board of Directors of the World Federalists of Northern California (now the Democratic World Federalists).

Lucile co-edited The Worried Woman's Guide to Peace through World Law (1965) and authored Human Value in the Atomic Age, The Human Spirit in the Atomic Age, and an autobiographical Journey to a Governed World (1992), a title acquired after appearing in a film by Byron Belitsos, entitled Toward a Governed World. Prof. Green dreamed of a People's Assembly within the United Nations and promoted the San Francisco People's Assembly. In 2004, this became Citizens for a United Nations People's Assembly, which held a preparatory conference in June of that year and is planning for a major conference in San Francisco in June 2005.

Lucile Green was a member of the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Berkeley, and, reflecting her vision of giving democratic representation to the peoples of the world, was awarded the Gandhi Medal for Peace, Non-Violence, and Truth (1982) and the American Humanist Association Distinguished Service Award. ---

By John O. Sutter

Eulogy to lucile

By Tad Daley

So Lucile Green, it turns out, passed from this mortal plane on the same weekend as Johnny Carson. Lucile's death, of course, received far less coverage and attention than Mr. Carson's. She did not dominate the Sunday radio talk shows. She did not receive a special tribute from Jay Leno. She was not eulogized by President Bush.

But who will turn out to be more influential in the long run?

Lucile's life work was about democratizing and empowering and reimagining our structures of global governance for a more just and sustainable and hopeful human future. She focused much of her efforts on the specific goal of creating a directly elected "peoples assembly" -- an imaginative idea that would allow citizens to directly elect someone to serve as their voice at the largest, global level of human affairs. And she never wavered in declaring that her overarching ambition was to fill the minds of women and men with the flame of hope that it is within the power of the human imagination to envision abolishing war itself. A Unitarian minister friend of mine says this is no less than "the biggest idea in the history of history."

Does anyone have any doubt that a thousand years from now, if humanity hasn't destroyed itself and its cradle planet, we will live in something like a Federal Republic of Earth, a World Federation, a single unified human community? This will, indeed, be the biggest achievement in the history of history. And our descendants will recognize NOT just those who actually made it happen in, oh, the 27th, or 23rd, or maybe even the 21st Century. They will recognize those who came before them. Those who carried the torch when few others were doing so. Those who maintained the courage of their convictions in the face of ridicule, derision, and seeming irrelevance.

Lucile Green was a voice in the wilderness. Lucile Green for many decades was willing to preach to the heavens about a Big Idea that was in utter eclipse, a Promising Vision that wasn't on the contemporary public policy agenda, an Ultimate Goal that wasn't remotely on the mainstream radar screen.

But in a thousand years, the stuff that the mainstream talks about today will be utterly forgotten. And the visions that Lucile Green talked about right up until her dying day will reign historically triumphant.