C-WIN C0-founder

Dorothy Green

C-WIN co-founder Dorothy Green was a prime mover in California’s grassroots environmental movement. Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1929, Dorothy moved to California and attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where she majored in music and played cello in the university’s orchestra. She later transferred to UC Berkeley, finishing her undergraduate degree in 1951. She married her husband, Jacob Green, the same year she graduated, and the couple had three children: Joshua, Avrom and Herschel.

The Greens settled in Los Angeles, and by the early 1970s Dorothy was deeply invested in local environmental issues, particularly those involving water quality. When her brother discovered untreated wastewater pouring into Santa Monica Bay, Dorothy founded Heal the Bay, a seminal activist group comprised of local citizens who shared her outrage over Southern California’s lax water quality regulations. She soon proved herself as both a fierce advocate and savvy publicist, leading beach rallies, testifying at public hearings, and engaging journalists. Her unwavering commitment to grassroots organizing and talent for pressuring public officials eventually led to the upgrading of Santa Monica Bay’s wastewater treatment plant and stopped the dumping of raw sewage into the South State’s coastal waters.