Elaine Brown
by Diane White diane@dlighten.com
In an open letter to the Green Party, highly respected author, lecturer , and champion for black, brown, poor and oppressed people all over the world, former Black Panther Chairperson Elaine Brown withdraws from the Green Party Presidential Race.
Elaine Brown was an irreplaceable asset to the Green Party. During her 2005 campaign for Mayor of New Brunswick, GA Brown inspired an influx of black and brown voters into a political party marred by a reputation for being a bunch of "white tree hugging hippies" out of touch with "urban" America. Announcing her intentions to seek the Green Party presidential candidacy in February of this year, Brown was poised to bring about a much needed change. Her commitment to the disenfranchised, her organizing experience, her reputation and her belief in the 10 key values espoused by the Greens were a perfect match for the party, so it would seem. But alas, there are the "Greens" and there's the "Party", not necessarily one in the same.
The failure of party leadership to properly deal with a slanderous letter written and circulated to the Steering Committee by a paid staff member and subsequent attacks on Brown supporters who were appalled by the racially inflammatory contents of the letter was surely the "straw that broke the camel's back".
For the record, Elaine Brown is well known to the "grassroots", she is an icon with a proven track record. It was Elaine Brown who called for the debate in California. Elaine Brown is to the third-world as Ralph Nader is to this country. The Green Party is a "big" head without a body.
Renounces Green Party Membership
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OPEN STATEMENT TO THE GREEN PARTY
As of today, I am no longer a candidate for the Green Party nomination for president of the United States, and I hereby resign from all affiliation with the Green Party. I believe the leadership of the Green Party of the United States has been seized by neo-liberal men who entrench the Party in internecine antagonisms so as to compromise its stated principles and frustrate its electoral and other goals. They have made it impossible to advance any truly progressive ideals or objectives under the umbrella of the Green Party, and, thus, rendered it counterproductive for me to go forward as a Green Party candidate or member.
I believe this small clique that has captured control of the Party has transformed it into a repository for erstwhile, disgruntled Democrats, who would violate the Party’s own vision and sabotage the good will and genuine commitment of the general membership. Indeed, these usurpers foster a reactionary agenda, supporting partisans in and backers of the Bush wars and disavowing the Party’s more progressive tenets in favor of promoting high-profile participation in the politics of the establishment.
This became clear to me almost from the moment I announced my candidacy in February of 2007. I intended using my campaign to bring large numbers of blacks and browns into the Party, particularly from the hood and the barrio—as would come to be reflected in the lists of supporters and delegates I’ve submitted in connection with my candidacy. As I asserted I would use the respect I enjoyed as a former leader of the Black Panther Party to do so, some in the hierarchy seemed utterly fearful of the prospect of a massive influx of blacks and browns into the Green Party. Soon, there was wide circulation of false rumors that I was a one-time “government agent,” which was intended to discredit my history in the Black Panther Party so as to undermine my potential influence.—And, since then, I have had to devote significant time and energy to addressing these lies.—What this effort revealed, though, was how the Green Party, while advocating “diversity,” remains dominated by whites. Indeed, the Party is able to count less blacks, browns and natives in its membership than our national population percentages and certainly less than the Democrats themselves.
In effect, the present Green Party leadership promotes a kinder, gentler capitalism, a moderated racism, an environmentally-sustainable globalism, which I cannot support. They are dedicated to the underside of the Party’s platform, which falls short of repudiating the capitalist state, source of all the social ills the Party would address. They equivocate by promoting “an economic alternative to corporate capitalism and a socialist state,” advocate a “re-formulation” of the IMF, NAFTA, so forth, and advance the institution of “stakeholder capitalism.”
On the other hand, they demonstrate a willingness to override the best of the Party’s platform. My sharp criticism of high-profile Party members’ support for the “three-strikes” crime laws, the sole basis for the inhumane mass incarceration of people in the United States, particularly blacks—the repeal of which the Party’s platform advocates—has been met with outright enmity. And, to divert attention from this and other critical issues, the leadership has employed chicanery in their promulgation of defamatory lies about me—which they finally extended to character assaults on my supporters and critics of their unscrupulousness.
It is my sincere belief that the Green Party as it now exists has no intention of using the ballot to actualize real social progress, and will aggressively repel attempts to do so. To remain in the fray or in the Party, then, would require a betrayal of my lifelong and ongoing commitment to serving the interests of black and other oppressed people by advancing revolutionary change in America.
