Ben Manski

Ben Manski (born July 16, 1974) is an American attorney, organizer, activist with the Green Party, Executive Director of Liberty Tree: Foundation for the Democratic Revolution and editor of the Liberty Tree Journal. Ben Manski, as a member of the Wisconsin Green Party, served as co-chair of the Green Party of the United States from 2001 through 2004. Manski also served as the Wisconsin representative on the Green Party Diversity Committee, and is a former chair of the GPUS Coordinated Campaign Committee

Professionally, Manski worked on the staffs of a number of environmental, social justice, pro-democracy, and education advocacy organizations throughout the 1990s. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Dane County, Wisconsin Board of Supervisors in 1996, losing narrowly to Scott McDonell, the Board's current chairman. A Liberty Tree Fellow, Manski currently works for the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution as Executive Director and as editor of the Liberty Tree Journal.

Manksi received his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005, and a B.A. in Sociology with a focus in Rural Sociology from UW-Madison in 1999.

Youth
Ben Manski was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 16, 1974 to economist Charles Manski and educator Kate Manski. When he was a little over three years old his family moved to Jerusalem, Israel, where he and his sister, today a Palestinian rights advocate, spent their early childhood years. In 1982, his parents decided to return to the United States, moving to Madison, Wisconsin.

Ben and his sister were strongly influenced by family traditions of political struggle, especially by the lifelong civil rights activism of his maternal grandmother and by the participation of his father’s family in the Jewish resistance movements of the 1930s and 1940s.

Education and early career
Education:
 * B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999.
 * J.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, 2005.

Early career:
 * Field Director with Greenpeace.
 * Mining Organizer with Wisconsin's Environmental Decade.
 * Executive Director with Democracy Unlimited of Wisconsin, Cooperative.
 * Midwest Field Director with Nader 2000 campaign.
 * Organizing Director with Progressive Dane.
 * National Director with Campus Greens.
 * Co-Chair of the Green Party of the United States.