Earth Equity News

Peter Camego Dies - Helped Found Green Party. By Rachel Gordon, SFChronicle, September 16, 2008. "Third-party political activist Peter Camejo, a perennial candidate for state and national office who helped pioneer the financial market niche of socially responsible investments, died Saturday. He was 68. Mr. Camejo, who had been battling a recurrence of lymphoma, died at home in Folsom [California]. He helped found the California Green Party in 1991 and ran three times for governor of California. He also ran as independent Ralph Nader's vice presidential running mate in the 2004 presidential election in which President Bush won a second term. In 1976 he ran for president as the Socialist Workers Party candidate... 'Peter used his eloquence, sharp wit and barnstorming bravado to blaze a trail for 21st century third-party politics in the U.S.,' Nader said in a prepared statement, which described Mr. Camejo as a 'politically courageous champion of the downtrodden and mistreated of the entire Western Hemisphere'... Active in the Free Speech Movement and in protests against the Vietnam War as a student at UC Berkeley in the late 1960s, Mr. Camejo landed on then-Gov. Ronald Reagan's list of the 10 most dangerous people in California. School officials eventually expelled him, two quarters shy of a degree. The spark of activism stayed with him as he became a leader in the movement to give voice to third-party candidates. He fought for universal health care, election reform, farmworker rights, living wage laws and against the death penalty and abortion restrictions. His forum was often electoral politics, where he challenged Republicans and Democrats alike... Mr. Camejo earned his living as a financier and helped start an investment firm, Progressive Management Asset Inc. in Oakland. Clients can arrange their portfolios so that their investments, for example, are not linked to animal testing, weapons or sweatshop labor. He created the first environmentally screened fund -- the Eco-Logical Trust -- for a major Wall Street firm, Merrill Lynch. He also founded the Council for Responsible Public Investment... He said the poverty he saw as a youth in [his native] Venezuela [before moving to the U.S. at age 7] drove his passion for social and economic justice."