© Elaine Brown, 2005
December 2005
Brunswick, Georgia
Some time ago, a black journalist from San Francisco asked me if I thought I was an anachronism, referencing my ongoing, albeit isolated, struggle for black liberation. Apparently, she thought her job at an establishment newspaper was a sign that she was free. That was my acerbic response to her.
Her number has grown over the years, constituting a little legion of Negroes who would abandon any sense of duty or relationship to the masses of blacks in favor of a job in the house of our common oppressor. It is not anachronistic to believe today, as in the days of the Black Panther Party, that black people in the United States are not free and must be free. It is absurd to believe otherwise.
Blacks in the United States make up 50% of the over two million people in the country's prisons, have the lowest employment and education rates, the highest infant mortality rates and AIDS rates and cervical and breast and prostate cancer death rates, the lowest income and homeownership rates, while less than 1% of all business revenues come from black-owned businesses. Black people in America are not free. The struggle for freedom must continue. A Luta Continua.
The Brunswick Campaign
In early 2004, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected the appeal of Michael Lewis, known as "Little B," on his 1997 conviction for a murder he did not commit.
They all knew his innocence. None admitted it. None will admit it, not the
black prosecutor, Paul Howard, or his vicious deputy, Suzy Ockleberry; not
the black drug dealers, Big E and Tom Tom and Chuckie Boy and Hootie, who
avoided prison with their lying testimonies against "Little B"; not the
lying drug addicts, Bertha Hayes and Linda Mae Mitchell; not even Michael's
own mother or brother.
By then, Michael had been incarcerated for eight years, and was only 21
years old. Every effort I had made to free him had been beaten back, despite
the press applause and other kudos for my book about him and his case,
The Condemnation of Little B. It looked as though Little B would never
be free.
If he had not fallen into such a state of despair, I would have indulged my
own despair very self-destructively. All the people I knew with influence
and power and money in Atlanta and across the country had not been moved to
help this boy. The Negroes in the Georgia legislature could not be moved.
All the work we did to this end through the organization I co-founded,
Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice, was trashed by the inertia of
partially-powerful Negroes and the pursuits of powerful racists. All the
work we did with the other organization I co-founded, with Khalil Osiris and
the others, the National Alliance for Radical Prison Reform, was trashed,
too. Michael would never be free, I never told him. Then I discovered
Brunswick.
A Brunswick "activist" I met, named Zack Lyde, introduced me to Brunswick, when I joined him and the pathetically few others in protesting the G-8 Summit George Bush hosted in Sea Island, Georgia, part of Glynn County, of which Brunswick is the County seat.---Brunswick had a significant port, I learned, one of the only two in Georgia. Billions of dollars flowed through the Port of Brunswick. Sea Island was the third-richest zip code in America. Was this why Bush had come into the area?
While Brunswick, a peninsula with 16,000 residents, was surrounded by water and white wealth, its mostly black population, most of whom were living at or below the poverty line, suffered under the boot of a white mayor, who was a Lt. Col. in the Sons of Confederate Veterans---the last in a line of centuries of such men who had been mayor. Brunswick's wealth juxtaposed against black poverty rendered Brunswick ripe as a venue for resurrecting a Movement for freedom I decided. I moved to Brunswick to run for Mayor.
If I became Mayor, I would be able to use a state power to bring greater influence to bear on Michael's case. I would bring the billions of dollars in Port revenues into the pockets of the people. I would halt the vicious gentrification scheme called Blueprint Brunswick in favor of cooperative housing developments. I would find financing for local cooperative enterprises. I would bring the schools under the protection of the City and provide more money for the education of black children. I would oust the polluters. Our dreams were as big as our opposition.
The campaign we mounted was powerful, vigorous, and soon attracted nationwide attention. The local longshoremen, and the blacks who had small businesses, from barbershops to juke joints, and the young people languishing in the six public housing projects, and the men and women riding bicycles to and from their menial jobs for a want of public transportation, all seemed to be crying out in unison: Brunswick was finally going to have a black mayor!
By the time Rev. Al Sharpton came to town in August, to speak out in support of the campaign, the sleeping black masses of Brunswick were, proverbially, awakened. By the time he left, it was, as they say, "on." Blacks in Brunswick were themselves demanding a share of all that wealth, the port, the land development. Blacks in Brunswick were openly attacking the money grabbing racists whose agenda was to bulldoze them into oblivion and "take back" this piece of prime real estate for themselves---as when ruthless Confederates in 1865, with the help of the President, drove newly-freed slaves off the 40-acre plots they occupied for what amounted to a few hours after the Civil War ended, granted them under Sherman's Field Order No. 15, and "returned" those plots of land to former slaveholders.
We were prepared for, steeled for, every assault---even the Florida and Ohio models of vote stealing. Brunswick was, after all, a Republican stronghold. It was, after all, where Bush had hosted the G-8 Summit. This is why I became so disappointed, mostly in myself. We were not really prepared for the lateral attack made on me, based on a legal fiction regarding my residency. Even though I was the leading mayoral candidate, the "Sea Island Confederates" took me down quickly with the machinery of the government they controlled absolutely. The Glynn County Board of Elections not only disqualified me as a candidate, it took away my right to vote. All the arguments I made in the courts were overcome by The Sea Island Machine, which easily rolled over my various appeals. They removed my name from the ballot, even reprinting ballots at the last minute. The people fell down in despair, and one more white boy was installed in the mayor's seat, by fiat.
There are more legal appeals, and we will wage them if we have enough strength, meaning money and organized commitment. But Little B is no closer to freedom. That is the pathetic result of the Brunswick Campaign that cannot be overlooked or denied
