Elaine Brown embodied all of these criteria. She was a party member who had run for local office in Georgia. A former national chair of the Black Panther Party, she has continued actively to support U.S. political prisoners and to oppose the expanding prison-industrial complex.

So it is not surprising that she was urged by many Greens to seek the party's presidential nomination. Unfortunately, as things played out, she not only dropped out of the contest, but left the party. Other Greens have already followed her.

The rumor mill

The first problem faced by the Brown campaign was a rumor spread among the party leadership accusing her of having been a COINTELPRO agent.

COINTELPRO was the FBI COunter INTELligence PROgram which targeted a broad range of peace and civil rights groups in the 1960s and 1970s. More radical groups like the Black Panthers and American Indian Movement were infiltrated, and individuals bad-jacketed, framed and even assassinated.

Among those who propagated the FBI rumor about Brown was former Santa Monica mayor Michael Feinstein. He was also involved with the effort to draft Cynthia McKinney. The slander was sourced to unsubstantiated allegations made in private hearings held by McKinney’s office while she was a U.S. Representative.

Ironically, the spreading of such rumors is a standard tactic of COINTELPRO and covert ops like it. The aim is to develop mutual suspicion among the targets and the unwitting carriers of rumors. The life or death lesson from this COINTELPRO period is to never make claims about another activist unless you have hard proof to back it up.

Cat Woods of California, Co-chair of the GPUS Presidential Candidate Support Committee (PCSC) said, "I was told by more than one person in the party that she was a COINTELPRO agent. But I looked into it and it was purely hearsay. There was no evidence presented." The fact that Greens were participating in such behavior was a sign of, at best, extreme political naiveté or, at worst, malicious underhandedness.

The second problem emerged at last summer’s GPUS annual meeting in Reading, Pennsylvania. All announced presidential candidates were invited to a candidate forum.

Ralph Nader was not an announced candidate but was invited to address the body at an event on ballot access issues.

Cynthia McKinney was still at that time a member of the Democrat party, but was asked to host a screening of a film mostly about herself, “American Blackout.” Neither was billed as a candidate, but the crowd could be heard chanting “Run Ralph run “ and “Run Cynthia run.”

Elaine Brown did not attend the candidates forum in Reading, but did send along a statement, which the PCSC agreed to read. It slipped through the cracks and was not read at the forum. This situation strengthened the impression that certain people “need not apply” for the GPUS nomination.

The third conflict revolved around the issue of draft candidate versus declared candidate status. The PCSC rules provided a way for non-declared candidates to be included. Nader is the best known example of someone who was not a party member and had not declared his candidacy at that point. McKinney was being recruited but had not yet left the Democrat party which had repeatedly betrayed her.

The people who matter

But this flexibility, intended to afford inclusion, created the appearance of a two-tier system—one for the people who matter and the other for everyone else. Brown started out as a declared candidate, then switched to the draft candidate approach. However, when candidates were first listed on the website, she was not among them. This was perceived by Brown and her campaign as another slight. PCSC Co-chair Cat Woods explained the delay on the committee's end.

“She didn't understand that a committee vote had to follow receipt of requirements for the draft process. It was undertaken immediately, but it takes one week to vote online. There was unanimous support in favor and she was listed on the website immediately upon completion of the vote."

Appearances were not helped by the fact that the other PCSC Co-chair, Greg Gerritt of Rhode Island, admitted to contacting Brown and discouraging her from seeking the nomination.

He had a similar message for the Nader campaign, which he sent in the form of a letter identifying himself as PCSC Chair. He failed to run the contents of this letter by his committee or even the other Co-chair of his committee.

Who’s afraid of Elaine Brown

Shortly after this, an email report from staff political director Brent McMillan was forwarded to the GPUS National Committee (NC) by Steering Committee (SC) member Liz Arnone. In it McMillan reports candidly assessing Elaine Brown in extremely disparaging terms to one of her campaign volunteers. To the SC, he expressed fear for his life since Brown was, he alleged, coming to Washington to confront him; and, as he put it, “who knows which of her past associates she will send to come after me next.”

Many in the party, including Arnone, felt that McMillan’s characterizations demonstrated racist stereotypes and unfair treatment of Brown. Appeals were made to issue an apology. Instead, eight SC members drafted a letter calling for Arnone's resignation for forwarding the email to the NC list.

Greg Gerritt also chairs the Coordinated Campaign Committee and thus serves as McMillan's supervisor. He simply affirmed the contents of McMillan’s email, describing it as “measured and appropriate within a range of two or three words.” Yet he concedes he had seen no evidence that Brown intended to do anything violent.

Gerritt was asked if it was appropriate for McMillan to suggest he might be killed because Brown was allegedly coming to the national office to confront him for perceived racism. He said he couldn't comment on that. But he felt that the SC concern was justified. “Saying that you are going to come to the office and confront someone, that is something we should be protecting our employees from, too.”

The McMillan email, and SC’s failure to repudiate McMillan’s actions, proved to be the final straw. Elaine Brown sent an open letter announcing her withdrawal from the race and her decision to quit the party.

In Massachusetts, former Green-Rainbow Party Co-chair David Ebony Allen Barkley resigned all his GPUS offices. In his analysis, “[t]he Green Party has already made their decision as to who should run and who shouldn't run and who qualifies and who doesn't ... anything that is grassroots and not from established corporate parties that is coming into the party is scary to them, it’s undermining.

"So the idea that you would have people who don't vote or haven't voted following someone who was encouraging them or bringing them into the party, it was very unstabilizing for the white male psyche....”

In Greg Gerritt’s view, Brown actually “had no intention of actually putting a campaign together, but…she could not gracefully exit the race, admitting it was a bad fit for her, so she went looking for other people to blame.”

But according to Diane White, GPUS delegate from Pennsylvania and acting secretary for the Green Party Black Caucus Organizing Committee, racism is nothing new in the GPUS. She describes the frustration in the process of getting the party's Black Caucus formally recognized and off the ground.

“Black caucus members went through all the hoops to get the members, write bylaws and secure accreditation, only to be sabotaged by the implementation of GPUS Proposal #69 in 2004, which codified the GPUS SC role as overseers, reminiscent of the plantation system, rather than respecting our autonomy,” She says. “As long as this system remains in place the GPUS will have their versions of the ‘house nigga,’ but the rest of us will be handling our business.

“What was done to Elaine Brown will not be forgotten.”