Greenaction Mourns the Passing of Marie Harrison
Greenaction Board of Directors
Our board is made up of grassroots leaders from communities on the frontlines of the movement for healthy communities and environmental justice. We have a dynamic, dedicated, and diverse board that guides our organization’s work and helps keep us accountable to the communities we work with and for.
Alfredo Figueroa
Alfredo is a leader of the Sacred Sites Protection Circle, working to protect Indigenous sacred and culturally significant sites from destruction and desecration. He co-founded Escuela de la Raza Unida in Blythe, California, and was co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union in the Coachella and Palo Verde Valleys. Alfredo was co-founder of the Colorado River Ward Valley Coordinating Committee. Alfredo was a founding Board member of Greenaction.
Teresa Johnson
Teri is a mother and advisor to Children for a Safe Environment in Phoenix, Arizona. Teri got involved when her daughter passed away after growing up in a contaminated community. In 1987, Teri and her surviving daughter formed Children for a Safe Environment. Teri was a leader in the epic statewide fight that defeated plans by the State of Arizona and the company ENSCO to build a hazardous waste incineration and landfill facility in the low-income town of Mobile, Arizona. Teri has been involved in the Indigenous Environmental Network starting with the first Protecting Mother Earth conference at Dilkon in the Navajo Nation in 1990. Teri was a founding Board member of Greenaction.
Zoe Lee-Park
Master of Environmental Science, 2024
Yale University School of the Environment
Zoe Lee-Park is a scholar-activist. She is the daughter of Korean
immigrants. Her grandmother was one of the many poorer Asian women who
were recruited to work in toxic garment, textile, and electronics
factories. Inspired by her grandmother’s resistance, and by the many
community members with whom she has worked, Zoe has centered her
academic research on environmental justice, eugenics, and women of
color. Zoe holds a Master of Environmental Science from the Yale School
of the Environment, and she is currently pursuing her PhD in
Jurisprudence and Social Policy at the University of California,
Berkeley. She has worked in federal and state government, as well as in
grassroots organizing. Zoe seeks to provide insights about law’s limits
and potential. She will serve her loved ones in all her work.
Lori Thomas Riddle
Board Co-Chair
Lori is the Director and co-founder of the Gila River Alliance for a Clean Environment (GRACE), a grassroots tribal member organization on the Gila River Indian Community reservation in Arizona working on environmental and sacred site and cultural protection. Lori was a leader in the fights that closed the Romic toxic waste plant and the Stericycle incinerator on the reservation. Lori and her family were poisoned by living on a site contaminated by pesticides.
Ophelia Rivas
Tribal Affiliation: O’odham
Ali Jeg’k Cmmunity, (Little Clearing)
O’odham Lands, Mexico and U.S
Organization: O’odham VOICE Against the WALL
O’odham Rights Cultural and Environmental Justice Coalition
I am an O’odham woman, grandmother and orignal O’odham seeds gardener. I have been honored to
work with our Elders both ceremony people and community people in communities in Southern
(Mexico) and Northern (U.S.A.) O’odham lands advocating for O’odham Rights and Human Rights.
Stiving for dignified solidarity with all Nations.
Dauntless efforts;
O’odham Righs and Human Rights advocate over 35 years
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights testimonial in Jamaica, 2020
United Nation Indigenous Observer. 2002-2004
World People’s Conference on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth, Indigenous Working Group
co-president on the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 2010
Woman on the Border Award,Tucson, Arizona, 2010
National Indigenous Congress, Mexico, life member
Jane Williams
Executive Director of California Communities Against Toxics and was a co-founder and original Board member of Greenaction.
Honorary Board Members
Esperanza Maya
Esperanza is a co-founder of El Pueblo Para Aire y Agua Limpio/People for Clean Air and Water of Kettleman City and helped lead the successful fight to stop the incinerator proposed by Chemical Waste Management. Esperanza was a co-founder of California Communities Against Toxics and was a co-founder of Greenaction who served on our Board of Directors for over 22 years.
In Memoriam: Honorary Board Members
Judy Brady was a cancer activist, cancer survivor, and writer who works to unite cancer survivors with community and environmental health and justice organizations to stop cancer by stopping pollution. Judy was a founding Board member of Greenaction.
Tessie Ester was a co-founder of the Bayview Hunters Point Mothers Committee for Health and Environmental Justice, President of the Huntersview Tenants Association, and a leader in the victory that closed the polluting PG&E Hunters Point Power Plant.
Mamie Harper was Chairwoman of the Mohave Elders of the Colorado River Indian Tribes and was a leader in the victory against the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump. Mamie and the Elders worked to protect their tribe from a hazardous waste company operating illegally on tribal lands that emits toxic contaminants into the air, threatening the health of the people and desecrating an adjacent sacred site. Mamie was a founding Board member of Greenaction.
Mary Lou Mares was a co-founding Board member of Greenaction and a
co-founder of El Pueblo Para el Aire y Agua Limpia/People of Clean Air
and Water of Kettleman City.
Mary Lou helped mobilize her community to defeat plans by Chemical Waste
Management/Waste Management to build a commercial hazardous waste
incinerator in her Central Valley farmworker town of Kettleman City,
California – one of the epic victories in the history of the
environmental justice movement.
Marie Harrison was a long-time Bayview Hunters Point community leader and served on Greenaction’s staff from 1999 through 2017. When her illness made it impossible for her to continue on staff, Marie joined our Board of Directors until she passed in 2019. Marie led the campaign that closed the PG&E Hunters Point power plant and watchdogged its cleanup. Marie co-founded the Huntersview Mothers and Fathers Committee and helped mentor its members as they expanded from Huntersview Public Housing to a community-wide group, the Bayview Hunters Point Mothers and Fathers Committee for Health and Environmental Justice. Marie helped found and coordinate our Bayview Hunters Point Environmental Justice Task Force, and helped design and implement our model Diesel Education and Emissions Reduction Project.