People & Places

Comments (13) Best Political Activist - 2010

Panagioti Tsolkas

Panagioti Tsolkas has his fingers in so many pies, it's a wonder he hasn't keeled over from diabetic shock. Tsolkas, who says he got his first taste of political activism in tenth grade, when he and fellow students stood on tables in a "spontaneous refusal" to continue taking the FCAT, has become an expert in the decade since at staging much taller stunts. He likes being up in the air: Acting with the Lake Worth Global Justice Group in 2004, Tsolkas mounted a giant tripod on Dixie Highway to protest a luxury condo being built in downtown Lake Worth. In 2009, he led an affinity group protest from the roof of a building on Dixie Highway and Banyan Boulevard in West Palm, where he hung a banner decrying FPL's plans for expansion into prized wetlands. Last year, he helped organize an action against FPL's West County Energy Center construction site that involved 25 activists tying themselves together to blockade Palm Beach Aggregates' rock mining operation. Tsolkas did 14 days jail time for his trouble (he still has more to serve). Now, Tsolkas is involved in a campaign to pass Slow Growth Amendment 4; he runs the Night Heron Grassroots Activist Center in Lake Worth, hosting lectures, art shows, classes, and afternoon tutoring sessions for kids; he plays key roles in the PBC Environmental Coalition, Everglades Earth First!, and the Green Party, with which he recently cowrote a green paper on Florida energy policy. How he found time this year to tangle with his Lake Worth Neighborhood Association, Tropical Ridge, is a mystery. But he managed to prod it into a new level of professional conduct: The association has a new set of bylaws and rules governing elections now, along with a renewed sense of the demographic it serves — association members had to shift their seats slightly left to make room for the radicals.

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