The Vice Presidential contender speaks on the challenges of being hip hop, brown and Green.

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DENVER—The predominately white crowd gave out a loud whoop—one of many—when Green Party Vice-Presidential nominee Rosa Clemente put Black and Brown establishment politicians on notice, saying that it’s not about color anymore. Too many of them talk about Obama or Vieques while New York’s Black and Brown communities are becoming more and more gentrified, and she’s no longer having it.

“This is why the Green Party is the imperative, not the alternative,”—her slogan for the campaign. “I will struggle with the Green Party, ’cause at least I know we have a political agenda about social justice and freedom. I’m not wasting my time no more!”

On Aug. 25, the first day of the Democratic National Convention here, Clemente and her running mate, Cynthia McKinney, were headlining a Green candidates’ forum at the Mercury Cafe. The spot, incidentally, served as the unofficial headquarters of the anti-war activist group Code Pink for the DNC duration.

Clemente called for the Green Party to be everywhere—the streets, the suites and everywhere in between, and pledged to work, debate and fight. Both trios now seem to surround her as she moves into the new realm of becoming a constantly-updated Wikipedia entry. She’s no stranger to listeners/viewers of the newsmagazine “Democracy Now!” or its flagship radio affiliate, the Pacifica Foundation’s 99.5 WBAI-FM in New York City. Trying to crush together the worlds of hip hop culture, progressive journalism and radical activism—negotiating egos and agendas as large as Rush Limbaugh’s bank account—for more than a decade has been a challenge for the Latina community organizer. Then things got really interesting in July.

Cynthia McKinney, the former Georgia Congresswoman who had just won the Green Party nomination for President, made Clemente her VP pick. So now the duo have to merge the worlds of the predominately white, Boomer, Gandhi-loving Green Party and those younger Black, Brown Red and Yellow dead prez fans not drinking the Change-flavored Kool-Aid.

The Congressional flame-throwing Baby Boomer meshes well with the advocacy journalist/hip hop activist. Both are known for speaking their minds and accepting the consequences. And there has been plenty of that, in Colorado and across the nation since the two Black women began to shade Green. The national and local mainstream media have largely ignored or ridiculed them. And some Green leaders are taking their grumblings public. Dave Chandler, a co-chair of the Green Party of Colorado, denounced the campaign, calling it “disorganized” and “uncommunicative.” He was especially upset over Clemente’s public discussion of all types of struggle, including insurrection. “Even passing references to violent revolution are anathema to me,” Chandler writes on his website, which contains video of Clemente holding nothing back. “This is NOT Green, it is uncivil, and for a vice presidential candidate, Ms. Clemente does not seem to know the difference between radical, reactionary, and being gratuitously inflammatory.” So Clemente is firmly in the Black radical tradition, understanding everyone is not going to follow-up on her solos.
In the Mercury’s packed upper-floor auditorium, the pair was joined onstage by anti-war activist and independent Congressional candidate Cindy Sheehan, who is fighting to unseat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Sheehan lent her full support to the Green ticket, publicly embracing her sisters-in-struggle.

While the nation waited for Michelle Obama to introduce her mainstream American values to the heartland and for Edward Kennedy to say that Barack Obama’s presidency would “close the book on the old politics of race, gender and group against group and straight against gay,” the two Green standard-bearers gave blistering orations about COINTEL-PRO operations, past and present, against those who decide to struggle. As their speeches still hung in the fresh Colorado air, BlackPower.com gently pulled Clemente away from a swarm of supporters, friends and international journalists.

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BLACKPOWER.COM: As a graduate of Cornell University majoring in Africana Studies, you might have to help me out here. (Chuckles) I feel I’m at a Democratic National Convention where most of the outsiders are white and most of the insiders are Black. Am I seeing things?

CLEMENTE: Like Cynthia said [during her speech], it’s [the Convention] is still 67 percent white. I think that the mainstream media will definitely highlight Black leadership as it’s defined by the DNC. But within hip hop, our spaces are more multi-racial. I’m in Black and Brown spaces 95 percent of the time. I think [this year's DNC racial demographics] has to do with who has the means to get here, what the protesters looks like—[with the idea that] the police would beat protesters a little less if they’re white—there’s a lot of issues with that. But I also think it’s important that, in representing the Green Party, that that multi-racial analysis is here.

BLACKPOWER.COM: I just heard your and Presidential nominee McKinney’s very Black speeches a few minutes ago. It seems you two have a significant challenge being the standard bears of a predominately white, albeit alternative, party. Talk about that challenge—of Greens struggling with seeing both of you as their representatives.

CLEMENTE: Being an Africana Studies major taught me one thing: to have a strong identity within myself. I’m not looking for white people to accept me; I’m beyond that. Obviously, within my own people, that’s a struggle that hurts, when [our campaign is] not accepted by Black people, by women of color. But for me, I’ve been around, and I am around, white people who are truly anti-imperialist, who truly follow leadership of color, who don’t feel guilty about their whiteness. So being in predominately white spaces won’t ever make me feel different.

BLACKPOWER.COM: So it’s the Obamamania that hurts more than the conflict within the Green Party?

CLEMENTE: I think Obamamania is very media-driven. I think people believe that if a person of color is president, then that’s change. Because they’re Black. On one level, I identify with it: I’m Black, I’m Latino and I’m a Race Woman. But I’m also progressive and radical and I’m not joining [anything] based on color anymore. I think that’s been dangerous. And I think that’s what the hip hop generation has been struggling with. And I think the most critical analysis around Obama comes out of the hip hop generation. Because we see that he won’t talk about reparations, or Sean Bell, or Mumia Abu-Jamal or Assata Shakur–the issues that, for us, are like our fuel. Those ancestors and elders put it down for us to be here.

BLACKPOWER.COM: Well, Obama has talked generally about reparations and Sean Bell. Even somewhat specifically, if you count that time those nationalists confronted him in Florida earlier this month.

CLEMENTE: And I think that that too is the elitism [of established politics]. I believe that if someone votes for me, and I win, I’m still accountable to them. I believe that if I want to be Congresswoman, and I only win by four votes, I’m still responsible for everyone in my district. That’s what being a public servant is….I’m not going to let other people bastardize what politicians should look like, what politics in our community should look like.  I’m going to do it coming from my historical knowledge, and those of my inter-generational mentors, and speak truth. It’s the only way I can do it.

BLACKPOWER.COM: What do you want your legacy of this campaign to be?

CLEMENTE: Wow. Nobody ever asked me that yet. I want to make sure that hip hop is respected. I don’t want it to get co-opted. And I want my particular run as a Puerto Rican, as a Latina, to open up the doors for other Latinas and young women of color who feel marginalized and discouraged, who feel they can’t be strong and beautiful at the same time, who feel they can’t be emotional and full of passion, you know? I do it for my daughter, but I also do it for the sisters and brothers that are locked down and those white kids who are being “drafted” to the war because they don’t have any money, any jobs. I want my legacy to be something that someone else will carry further than me.

This story is filed under: Politics