Fight the power

Former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown seeks the Green Party’s ’08 presidential nomination

Former Black Panther Party leader to speak on case of Ohio death row inmate

by Rick Claypool

published April 4th 2007

Noted author, activist and sole female Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown will speak at the University of Toledo on April 5. Brown's talk will focus on raising awareness of the plight of Siddique Abdullah Hasan, an inmate on Ohio's death row who numerous activists and attorneys say is an innocent political prisoner.

Brown, who is seeking nomination as the 2008 Green Party's presidential candidate, took a moment to talk with TCP about the death penalty, activism, music and politics from her home in Atlanta.

TCP: How effective have campaigns been for people in circumstances like Hasan's? What has been accomplished?

Brown: I'll be honest with you: the situation is bleak. The most hopeful areas have been the day to day campaigns that have been waged using DNA evidence to overturn wrongful convictions. But in the larger sense, you have people like the Angola 3 in Louisiana and Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald in LA, who was in the Black Panther Party and originally sentenced to death, but that was turned into life. He has been in prision since 1969. There are innumerable cases of people who have been politically conscious or who have come to consciousness and have had their terms extended for that consciousness.

Mostly, [campaigns] just go to bettering conditions for people in prison or coming out of prison. The situation in the United States today is far worse even than it was in the 60s and 70s, given that this country now has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. I think that is a tragic reflection of the overall situation today.

TCP: Given that background, is there movement today to overturn the death penalty, or are lawmakers moving more toward trying to make executing people more humane?

Brown: This is a country that has invaded another country and killed innocent people and called them "collateral damage." The president, George Bush, has admitted that at least 30,000 Iraqi civilians, unarmed, who have not raised up any opposition to the United States, have been slaughtered by the U.S. invasion. Anybody who can tell you about "casualties," that you can kill 30,000 innocent people, and then talk about the legitimacy of the death penalty -- it's mind boggling that we're even having this conversation.

The death penalty does not represent anything except a political decision for the United States of America. The whole thing is immoral, but more importantly it is an outrage against any intelligent and civilized society, particularly this society that is willing to murder people elsewhere, and then want to kill people here for the alleged murder of one or two people. The whole concept of the death penalty is duplicitous coming out of the mouth of this country.

Also, it is politically motivated, not only because of war, but because of that fact that you would be hard put to find one white person on death row for killing a black person in any part of this country, period. We know that there is a political aspect to this, so the death penalty is illegitimate, because it's not consistent with the values of this country to kill randomly with impunity. The other part is that you won't find any rich people sitting on death row.

So the point I'm making is that the death penalty can't be argued in the context of how and what and whether it is to be meted out. It has to be eliminated, because it's a part of a political agenda that goes to the oppression of black and poor people in America.

TCP: You've had interesting conversations with people who are quite comfortable with the status quo. How do you raise political consciousness in people who don't believe that they're in any way oppressed?

Brown: Well, they might not be oppressed in their little circle of life. I'm not trying to talk to Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell or Clarence Thomas or Bill Cosby. I'm talking to the people that have been so marginalized, we don't even remember they exist. For example, there in Ohio you have hundreds of thousands of ex-felons walking around right now trying to figure out how they won't go back to prison, or people who are ex-felons who have found a job, but who are afraid to even vote. This is how the former secretary of state [Ken Blackwell] was able to seize Ohio for George Bush, because a significant sector of the population, the ex-prisoner population, has been totally disenfranchised and marginalized.

I don't have to talk to Condoleeza Rice. I've got thousands of ex-prisoners who I can talk to. I know, once they're made aware of their own rights, they're going to be very frustrated to find that all these years, they haven't been voting because they haven't been properly informed by the secretary of state or the department of corrections or any other group.

Part of what one has to consider is organizing those people who have been disenfranchised or marginalized and who remain oppressed, which is a great majority of America. That is to say, whatever few blacks may have a job somewhere, or those few who have achieved some notoriety as singers and dancers, they don't count. I'm talking about millions of blacks who are living at the bottom of life in America. I can add into that the millions of Latinos. I can add into that the millions of poor whites, especially in Ohio, where you have a tremendous convergence of whites in Appalachia, blacks in the ghetto and Latinos in the fields. That's a tremendous number of people whose voices have been unheard, who have been suppressed. Once [they are] enlightened or informed about their situations, [they] will take action. My hope is that change will come through partnership of the oppressed.

TCP: How do you respond to people, like Bill Cosby, who lay most if not all of the blame on the lower classes themselves.

Brown: You can't. If we were to look at Bill Cosby and examine his life, you would find far worse things than somebody "buying $500 sneakers." I don't know what the hyperbole was with what he was trying to say, but it was so extreme that it didn't really go to any issue. Even when I listened to Barak Obama at Selma, [Ala.], where everybody converged at the Edmund Pettus Bridge where so much blood had been shed [on "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965], he said, "Pookie" -- as a symbolic term -- "'Pookie' also needs to take some responsibility [for social ills]." My position would be that Obama doesn't even know Pookie, much less tell can he talk about what Pookie ought to be doing.

If he wants to talk about who ought to be doing something, I would reserve my rage not for Pookie, but for an evildoer named George Bush. Let's talk about where the real big issue is, and let's not talk about the fault of the people who respond in "inappropriate" ways to an inappropriate situation. If you live in a cesspool, then I don't know how anyone can expect you to rise up clean and whole. How did you get there? You got there from a variety of longstanding and continuing forms of oppression and racism. When you say, "Look, there's a crack mother. She should be taking care of her children," my answer is, I can talk about how crack got here and the whole CIA connection reported by Gary Webb [in his book, "Dark Alliance"]. But I can also say, "What's your point?" Yes, we can talk about the dysfunction of Pookie, but in the meantime, what conditions are we creating to change the dynamic so Pookie doesn't have to be the kind of person who sells dope to survive.

What kind of a country puts people in harm's way in Iraq and pays them what amounts to $2 an hour when you consider how many hours they put in? What kind of a country would sit here and talk about war and pay its own soldiers less than minimum wage? They're going to come back and try to find jobs in rural America, where there aren't even any jobs anyway.

The dynamic is such that we can't look at this group of people or that behavior -- we have to change conditions so this isn't the country with the largest incarceration rate in the entire world, the only country that puts children in prison as adults. The only country that does this and refuses to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I look at the "Big Bad Wolf" first. Then we can talk about what the other little responses are and how the Pookies of the world survive in George Bush's barbaric universe.

TCP: Last month, you announced that you're seeking nomination as the Green Party's presidential candidate. How is your plan a distinct alternative to what Democrats and Republicans are offering?

Brown: It's distinct on every single issue in terms of ideology and my concerns. I'm concerned for not just health care, but the fact that there are people in this country not only hungry; not only without housing, but without decent housing, and without decent medical care. Of course, [my position on] the war and the environment distinguishes me.

But what's the point of this campaign? That is to say, is this just something to do, because you know the Green Party candidate is really not going to win? My aim in running is to try to galvanize those disenfranchised populations of ex-prisoners, poor Latinos, poor whites, blacks living in the hood -- everyone from gang members to Shaniqua, who Bill Cosby can't stand -- and pull all those people into meaningful activity under the banner of the Green Party to begin to vote in their interest. It doesn't matter if the Democrats would have Hilary Clinton, who is just a stand-in for Bill Clinton (or, as I like to call her, "Bill Clinton's wife") or whether it's John McCain or whoever the Republicans nominate. That dynamic is not going to change.

What can change is the nature of the U.S. Congress, which did in fact vote for the war and did in fact vote for Clinton's "three strikes" crime bill, which put so many millions more in prison. In fact, Congress voted for the "welfare reform bill," which criminalized poor people, especially poor women. That population can make change with the ballot by engaging in a political agenda that the Green Party represents and the machinery that it has to get into Congress or these governors' seats or state legislatures to start making change.

If we had Green Party members in the Ohio state legislature, I guarantee you that the death penalty would go down the tubes. But you got all these Democrats and Republicans united on this agenda which is antithetical to anything humane, and it's certainly one that serves a reactionary political philosophy. My goal is to bring some folks into activism through electoral politics and the electoral machine so that they can make the kinds of changes that will at least get us out of this incredible morass we're in as a society that is maintaining war abroad and poverty at home.

TCP: Are you saying that you see a new opportunity for and resurgence in left-wing activism and organization in America today?

Brown: Absolutely. The spark, signal and claring call came in the last election, which was the mass rejection of Bush's policy and Bush by the masses of people in America, which really means the majority of white people -- because we already know black people weren't voting for Bush. For the majority of people in this country to have rejected Bush is a huge opening for progressive thinking in mainstream America. I haven't seen this since the '60s. We have to seize the time and make this move while we can. We know that Nancy Pellosi and Hilary Clinton and the other girls and boys in the Democratic party do not present any meaningful alternative to the Bush policy. Americans aren't so stupid that they see them as that. This is an opportunity for the use of a national campaign to organize and galvanize people to realize that they can make a change with the ballot, and that can come sooner, rather than later.

TCP: I'm glad you referenced "Seize the Time," because I do want to link political activism and music. Hip hop has an increasing political influence -- I'm thinking of the Hip Hop Caucus Institute -- and I'm wondering how music will play a part in your campaign.

Brown: As a person who has a political agenda, I'm always looking for ways to move that agenda. I'm a great believer that art can inspire, educate and raise consciousness in people. However, art is not action.

I don't believe there's a hip hop movement, because there's no ideology or organizational effort behind it. It represents a certain generation of people who have come up with a certain type of music. Most of the artists, with the possible exception of Trick Daddy, are not talking about a thing I'm interested in. It would be great if some of these hip hop artists would be politicized, just like [it would be great if] gang members would be politicized, but they do not represent a movement at this point. They do represent the potential to urge and raise consciousness.

[P-Ditty's] "Vote or die" piece, as shocking as it was to me, was very effective in getting a lot of young blacks to vote in the election of 2004. While Bush did win, I know in Atlanta that people became engaged in the electoral process because of P-Ditty, of all people. They actually registered to vote, and they voted. So I do think it's a useful forum for political discussion.

TCP: Imagine a disenfranchised young person asks you what exactly he or she can actually do to make a difference right now. What do you say?

Brown: At this moment, I'm urging people to get involved in the political process and vote. We can be AIDS workers or homeless workers all day long -- I know plenty of people who are doing great work in certain communities -- but it's not changing the dynamic that has created homelessness, the isolation of severely disabled people, the poverty that causes people to sell drugs, and so on. Given the circumstances and what we have to work with, the best thing to do is to get involved in the political process under the banner of an existing political party, and there's only one out there that has the machinery in place at this moment. I could start another party, and there's a million others out there, but they're not on the ballot in twenty-some states. The Green Party is, and it can be made to live up to its own ideals.

I think people can get involved, register people to vote, and take over. I'll use [Green Party Mayor] Jason West in New Paltz, New York as an example. He's the fellow who started marrying gay couples. What West did was simply register all the university students who were going to school there to vote in the area, as opposed to letting them vote with their absentee ballots and sending the votes back home. They became registered voters where they were going to school. He used the student vote to take over the city. Why is that so important? Well, it's important because now you have this incredible progressive coaltion running a very well-to-do city in New York.

If you can expand that in your mind, maybe we wouldn't have to put up with Rudolph Guiliani versus Bloomberg in New York City. I don't know how you can have so many Democrats there and they keep electiing Republican mayors of New York. Or you could imagine expanding that even further to Congress, where you had not one person except for my friend Barbara Lee (D-Ca.) in the whole Congress, who voted against that war in the first round.

I tell young people, I want to see you, 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds, hip hop sagging, blue hair and tongue-ring wearing [people] -- I want to see you in office, because you're complaining about what is happening, but a lot of what is happening is done through legislation. I want to see you seize some of these spots and begin to hold the line. That's what I tell people they can do. I'm talking about you, Shantray. I'm talking about you little Krystal from the holler who's using too much crystal meth. I'm talking about you getting your people together and taking over these various legislatures.

In Lone Oak, Kentucky, the Governor of Kentucky [Paul Patton, D.], after Clinton forced through that welfare reform bill, told all those people living in the holler that they we're gonna have to get a job, that there wouldn't be any more welfare. Where are they gonna work in the holler? Nowhere, because there's nowhere to work. You're lucky if there's running water up there. People asked where they were going to work, and they were told they were going to have to move. They said, "This is where we live. This is who we are. We've been living on this land for a long time. We don't even know how to live anywhere else." So [Patton] says, "Well, that's too bad. You better come on out, get a job at McDonald's in the city so you can be a legitimate human being." What I'm saying is that if you had people in Appalachia who were really representing the people of Appalachia, then you would have had a whole different dynamic in terms of welfare reform alone.

We've got an opening here that we didn't have two years ago, and that opening can be walked through by people who no longer see themselves outside of what happens to them, who can begin to see themselves as capable of controlling their destinies and the resources that affect their lives by controlling the ballot and engaging in the process.

TCP: Is there a common thread or something you learned when you lead the Black Panther Party that continues to guide and motivate you today?

Brown: You cannot unlearn or un-know something. Once you realize that there is poverty and oppression, you can't go around saying you don't notice it anymore. I've seen it. I know it. But I also understand the dynamic and the nature of the oppression of so many people in this country, particularly black people. How could I ever not deal with this? I have struggled on my own. I have gone through periods just trying to take care of my daughter and survive myself. I went back to law school, but I was in survival mode trying to keep my head above water. I'm able to use all of this history now. I think that this is a good time, and there's no time like the present. So that is what has carried me through.

My last book was about a kid named Michael "Little B" Lewis, who was 13 years old when he was arrested and ultimately convicted for murder as an adult, and he was sentenced to life in prison. I'm still trying to work to get him out. The point is that seeing him in 1997, a kid in a neighborhood in which everyone is either on crack or selling crack, where he literally had no place to live, nobody even had a dream for him anymore.

If it had just been him, then I could have concurred with the social service organizations who said he was a boy who had "slipped through the cracks," as if there's some big safety net for the children of the world and this is one little exception. The fact is there are millions of Little Bs. I saw one more case like this, of a 13-year old being held up as an indicator of why black people are not free, and I wept. I felt ashamed that I had lived this long, because I'd felt that we could really change the world. Not only haven't things changed -- we've gone two steps backwards. That's what motivated me to realize that all those people that I knew personally, along with all I know of, all those who gave their lives in the interest of freedom to find that there are millions of Little Bs living like dogs in the streets of Atlanta, a place that likes to call itself "Black Mecca." The only thing I could do was get up and get back involved in another effort to make change. That's what motivates me.