Cam Gordon
BY CAM GORDON
[Please see Editor’s Note at end of Cam’s Corner.]
The Green Party of the United States held their convention in August and selected former Southsider, Rudolph “Butch” Ware III, to be their candidate for vice president in 2024.
Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, announced Ware as her running mate on Friday, August 16, just a day before the delegates voted, 267 out of 287 votes, in favor of the nomination.
“I have known about the Green Party my whole life because my best friend, Shawn Young, is the son of Annie Young,” said Ware in his acceptance speech. “We grew up, two kids with single moms, on the southside of Minneapolis and Annie Young was my godmother, my second mother.”
Annie Young had a long history on the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board as was one of the first Green Party endorsed candidates when she was elected in 1997. She was first elected, however, in 1989 and served until 2018, after 29 years on the board.
As a proud Southsider, Green Party member, former Green Party elected official and good friend of Annie Young, I am happy to share the news and ask your forgiveness for the less-than objective manner in which I may be doing it.
Butch was born in Washington, DC and raised in Minneapolis which he now calls his “hometown.” He went to Jefferson (now Ella Baker Global Studies and Humanities) and South High schools in Minneapolis and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1991. He completed his doctorate in 2004 with a Ph. D in history from the University of Pennsylvania. The Green Party press release identifies him as “an academic authority on the U.S. Black Radical Tradition, Africa and Islam.” He has been a full faculty member at Northwestern, Mich., and now at UC Santa-Barbara, teaching in History, Black Studies and Islamic Studies.
“His mom knew he was safe at our place and Annie knew I was safe with them. Our mothers actually knew of each other before we did,” said Shawn Young. “Annie was a second mom to him as a youth and when he got the call from Jill, she is the first person he thought of.”
Moving to the Southside “saved his life,” said Young. “His mother escaped a violent living situation. And he found Islam.”
Ware said, “[Annie] was a public servant. She showed me that the Green Party is not filled with politicians. The Green Party is filled with public servants, with people who are willing to do the work for the people rather than for the fortification of their egos or the fortification of their own massive fortunes.” He recalled his time spent in “a little two-bedroom apartment” learning how to “put government resources in service to the people and how to make America live up to its promise to the people one block at a time, one community at a time.”
Ware has never held or run for elected office. He is known as an activist, educator and historian whose work specializes in empire, colonialism, genocide and revolution. He is considered a leading academic authority on the US Black Radical Tradition, Africa and Islam.
Ware, according to Young, has put his scholarship to work in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as the George Floyd murder in 2020. He has organized teach-ins, and others across the country and around the world to challenge imperialism, ethnic cleansing and endless war, as well as to build sustainable, just, peaceful alternatives.
“The National Black Caucus is excited to welcome Butch Ware to the national ticket and looks forward to more engagement during this campaign and beyond,” said Darryl! LC Moch, co-chair of the caucus. “The selection of Ware is a great boost to highlight the issues facing BIPOC communities and to engage in the discourse of how we build the America we can all live and thrive in.”
“His academic career has been marked by a passion for education, the promotion of social justice and a commitment to community empowerment,” said a state Green Party of MN press release.
Ware is also a former minor league baseball player and music producer. He played baseball for the Minneapolis Loons, participated in the French Baseball World Series and has several songs that can be listened to on the streaming platforms, including Slum Prophecy.
His mother currently lives in Ramsey County, and he has other family members living throughout the metro area.
While he will not appear on the ballot in Minnesota, due to the deadline of petitions and the surprise announcement and Ware’s decision that came just a week before the Aug 17 convention, a vote for Jill Stein will also be a vote for Ware as the national party’s nominee. He is also likely to visit and campaign in Minneapolis before election day on November 5.
Young said his strengths include “generosity, his experience as an educator, his experience in the Muslim community and his experience raising a family.”
“I hope the campaign will build bridges between the national greens and the state level greens,” he said. “He will be a strong voice for the revolution, the revolution of no more government corruption, no more wars, land back and reparations, environmental justice for all, Medicare for all and free public education for all.”
“Authority is not about the possession of power. It is not about dominion over the earth. It is about stewardship,” said Ware. “I hope to serve as a steward of this sacred land, Turtle Island, side by side with my sister Jill Stein. I want only to be a steward of the trust you have put in me and in us to end this genocidal war, to demilitarize this brutal empire, to get a fascist police state off the necks of the people, to return power to the people, to reform posterity for the people, to return equality to the people, to return dignity to the people.
“All empires fall,” he added. “We will dismantle this empire and put the resources of this beautiful land back to work for the American people, and when we have done that, the world will be a more peaceful, much safer place of abundance and goodness.”
“I personally would like the community to know that Butch is a great person, he values his family, his health, his mind and personal growth,” said Young. “He will be a wonderful leader in the fight against government corruption and the military industrial complex.”
Editor’s Note: Southside Pride does not endorse Jill Stein for President and Butch Ware for Vice President.
We have gone down that primrose path before. In 2000 we endorsed Ralph Nader rather than Al Gore. In 2016 we endorsed Jill Stein over Hillary Clinton. We thought the margin of victory for Gore and Clinton in Minnesota would allow for a little left slippage to protest the centrist politics of the Democratic Party without endangering Gore or Clinton carrying Minnesota.
We have, since then, come to understand that the decisions Minnesotans make contribute to a national consciousness that can result in terrible consequences.
Votes for Nader in Florida were enough to sink the state for Gore and throw the election to Bush. Votes for Jill Stein in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were more than the margin of victory for Trump over Clinton in those states.
Southside Pride supports the progressive leadership of Bernie Sanders and AOC. They are working in coalition with centrist-liberal Democrats in Congress. They are supporting Harris. They understand that the perfect may sometimes become the enemy of the good. They agree with Stein and the Green Party on Palestine, raising the minimum wage, Medicare for all and most other issues, but they realize that a Trump victory in November would destroy any progress we have made so far on those issues. They believe it’s not worth it to cast a protest vote against Harris in support of Stein, if that means throwing the election to Trump.
If Trump wins, we all lose.
