[Sosfbay-discuss] Elaine Brown Couldn't Stand the Heat; Got Out of the Kitchen

[alexcathy at aol.com]

Brown
Couldn't Stand the Heat; Got Out of the Kitchen 






Harry
Truman said: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” After a
brief, tumultuous campaign, Brown decided to “get out of the kitchen” before so
much as a single primary vote had been cast. This is the person praised most
often by supporters for having been chairperson of the Black Panther
Party thirty years ago, and presumably, a real “tough guy” candidate.
Nothing demonstrates Ms. Brown’s unfitness for the campaign as her leaving it. 






I am
disappointed Elaine withdrew. But before we break out our handkerchiefs and
jerk our knees over the scourge of white "neo-liberal men" let’s
recapitulate some things that have been said about nationally prominent Greens.







Eric
Alterman on Ralph Nader: 



“...Thank you, Ralph, for the Iraq war. Thank you, Ralph,
for the tax cuts. Thank you, Ralph, for the destruction of the environment.
Thank you, Ralph, for the destruction of the Constitution."






Marc
Cooper on Peter Camejo: 



“Nader nevertheless tapped Peter
Camejo, a Green Party honcho with an exclusively leftist appeal, as his VP
choice today... a dusty fixture on the radical left for literally decades. Back
in the sixties, Camejo ran for president on the ticket of the Trotskyist
Socialist Workers Party..."






Marc
Cooper on Cynthia McKinney: 



“You’ll recall that during her six terms as Democratic
congresswoman from Atlanta, a post from which she was ousted a second time in
2006, she staged several similar outbursts… It was her bizarre public behavior
and outrageous political positions more than her shady ethics that finally
eroded her support. Apart from taking a haymaker swing at a Capitol Hill cop
and beyond her solicitation of $10 million in social contributions from a Saudi
prince, she was one of the first high-profile adherents of the official
wack-job '9/11 Truth' movement, directly implicating the U.S. government in the
staging of the attack on the Twin Towers…”






Joan Walsh
on Matt Gonzalez: 



“ 'Thank you for supporting a racist liar tonight!'






That's what groovy young Matt Gonzalez supporters, all but
one of them white and well-pierced, shouted at a multiracial crowd of Gavin
Newsom backers Monday night, when former President Clinton came to San
Francisco to endorse the embattled Democratic candidate for mayor over his
Green Party challenger. Nobody bothered to explain why Newsom was a racist, or
a liar. It was the Gonzalez campaign in a sound bite: Sanctimony over
substance, personality over policy, and a good time was had by all of his
supporters -- a helluva good time! -- as they vilified the opposition without
offering an agenda for change of their own…” 






Thick Skin
– A Green Party Prerequisite






This is my
point. Reactionaries have already tried to say Barack Obama attends a “hate
whitey” church in Chicago, that Barack Hussein Obama is an Islamic
terrorist, and that Brother Barack is a cokehead. Why should anyone think a
Green Party campaign is going to be a Sunday church picnic? You need a thick
skin to run as a Green for a high profile office in this country. 






Then there
was this big brouhaha over a letter by Green Party political director Brent
McMillen in which he denounced Brown as "paranoid delusional and is also a
late stage alcoholic"






The letter
was outrageous, but so what? Elaine should have laughed it off the way Dennis
Kucinich laughed off that talk that he was a "nut" for sighting a
U.F.O. If the Green Party "hierarchy" is entrenched, well then,
that's why we have primary elections in this country. 






This,
frankly, trivial incident is a walking-talking poster for my argument against “People of
Color” caucuses. It completely dominated discussion on the Green Party
Black Caucus list serve for days and eventually worked into yet another
anti-Green “hit piece” on Alex Cockburns’s CounterPunch web site. 






Again, I
see no evidence that within the Green Party “some in the
hierarchy seemed utterly fearful of the prospect of a massive influx of blacks
and browns into the Green Party” and I'm getting tired of people saying this.
Alas, the perpetual "victim" narrative has won applause for forty
years wherever the cynical, poisonous blend of Democratic Party Machine
“liberalism” and “Black Power” pseudo-radicalism holds sway. Only aging
radicals "stuck in the Sixties" think Black Panther credentials is a
big plus. The sad truth is that it is actually a "high negative"
because in their last days the Panthers were not much more than just another
drug-addled, gun-slinging street gang. The constant association of Elaine's own
supporters with this era of COINTELPRO, gangsterismm and counter-gangsterism
actually obscured her many good qualities. 






Excited
about the idea of an African-American candidate? Dr. Jared Ball and Cynthia
McKinney are excellent choices.






Read and Leave a Comment at: 



 



http://www.greencommons.org/node/902#comment-2827




 





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