When did you become politically active?

I was 12. My party was the Peace and Freedom Party. And when I was 14, turning 15, I’m telling adults you got to register in this party so people can vote against the war.

But you served in the military, right?

I was drafted in June 1972. I was 19. When my number came up, I enlisted in the Marine Corps, but they never ordered me to active duty. They knew about my antiwar activity before I went in the Marine Corps, they had a little file and they had little pictures of me at demonstrations. They said, ‘Why do you want to be a Marine?’ I said, ‘My draft number came up and you’re the best.’ That was my story and I stuck to it.

So how and when did you go Green?

I had been involved in Clamshell Alliance. We occupied the Seabrook nuclear power plant site. We got 1,414 people arrested. That kind of put the antinuclear movement on the map. We had people come from all over the country and it’s right after the Vietnam War movement — a lot of activists looking for something to do. A woman named Charlene Spretnak and a physicist named Fritjof Capra wrote a book called “Green Politics,” which really didn’t capture the German Greens — it was kind of her new-age take on it — but then people said you’ve got to start a party. So they invited people and I was one of the people who got invited. That was in St. Paul, Minn., in August 1984.

You first ran for office in 1993, for Syracuse Common Council. Why did you run?

The Syracuse Green Party chapter already existed when I got to Syracuse in 1991. In 1993, it decided it was time to run in local elections. They figured their work on the issues they were concerned about in the city was being taken for granted by the elected officials, who gave them lip service but no action.

So they asked me to run for councilor-at-large. Then every year, the local Greens would ask me to run again. Running every year was never a plan, it just evolved.