Why I Am Running For The Green Party Presidential Nomination

WASHINGTON—My name is Jared Ball. I’m a Navy veteran of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I’m also a Black man living in Washington, D.C. Do I really want to be your President? No. But I am currently running for the Green Party’s presidential nomination.

Then why run for President? Well, I’m not running for simple symbolism. I don’t believe in that. But I do believe in a new style of politics, so I’ve decided to help create one.

I’m running because the true majority of women, the poor, Black, Latino and Indigenous people need organization, a place to cohere. I’ve chosen the Green Party because its structure is loose enough for those groups to find that kind of liberated space.

It’s time to find that space and claim it. Next year we’ll be commemorating 40 years of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.—and the wholesale abandonment of his radical politics in favor of corporate-sponsored dreaming.

A little personal history is appropriate here. I joined the D.C. Statehood/Green Party several years ago specifically because it fought for the District of Columbia to become a state. The party’s freedom from corporate dominance, its commitment to social justice, the redistribution of society’s wealth, and its call for diversity within its ranks made it different. And so I stayed, and fought.

Do I believe in the vote? Yes—depending on how you use it. It’s an organizing vehicle, not an action designed to fulfill fantasies.

We’re not targeting Democrats, Republicans or others to “steal” votes. We’re not engaged in an effort to upset one or another major party candidacy, since we don’t see either as being able to legitimately represent the needs of the true majority.

I have always believed that it’s time to build a genuine populist party—one built on the proper politics of those who, like Kwame Ture (nee Stokely Carmichael) once made clear, are no longer willing to accept the lesser of evil because “we will not vote for evil, period.”

So my campaign is not expecting to “win” the Presidency next year. Instead, we’re expecting to help build a party to build a new community, society and world.

To do that, we’re trying to make it funky. We’re focusing on the culture of the most oppressed—Blacks, Latinos and Indigenous—to make the case to them that it’s time to use the voting booth to build a real movement. My man Head-Roc, one of the most critically acclaimed hiphop artists in the Mid-Atlantic, is onboard. We are perpetually on tour with a brash, powerful and unorthodox campaign. We want the Green Party to gain tens of millions of eligible but dormant voters. Our radical approach matches the radical tone of the Green Party.

Your party and politics are here. Let’s add some Red and Black to the Green! For more information on my campaign, visit voxunion.com. You’ll see video of my initial statement of candidacy, along with campaign updates and contacts.

As Fred Hampton said long ago: “To you I say peace, if you are willing to fight for it.” So let’s fight and win together.

Copyright 2007 by Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.

Dr. Jared Ball, a candidate for the Green Party’s Presidential nomination, is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at Morgan State University. He is also an independent journalist. He is a host on WPFW 89.3 FM, the Pacifica Network radio station in Washington, D.C., and the founder and creator of “FreeMix Radio: The Original Mixtape Radio Show,” a rap music mixtape committed to the practice of underground emancipatory journalism. He and his work can be found online at voxunion.com.

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An Open Letter To Michael Baisden, Steve Harvey And Black Radio

WASHINGTON—Dear Michael, Steve, And The Other National Black Radio Hosts:

I was exceedingly glad to hear that so many of you were so incensed about the attempted lynching of those Black boys in Jena, La., that you decided to go down there to broadcast, bringing folks with you to raise hell.

It was great that you/us/we scared them so bad the court rushed to overturn Mychal Bell’s trumped-up conviction before the Sept. 20 Black rhetorical beatdown. The shame of charging six Black teens with murder just because they kicked a white boy’s butt! And over a tree, yet! Strange fruit trying to drop in 2007.

But as I was filling with pride, I kept wondering how come I don’t hear from you when other issues pop up. What do I mean? Well, issues like:

* The cases of political prisoners such as Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

* The continuing expansion of the prison-industrial complex.

* How the so called “Wars Against Terrorism” in Iraq and Afghanistan are illegal as well as immoral.

* How President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the whole administration have repeatedly committed violations of the Constitution of the United States.

Nothing but love. But just sayin’.

Why put this on you, after you just made Black broadcast history?

Because Black radio had such a strong activist history in the last half of the last century. Its deejays were independent of the radio stations because they made their money elsewhere—as sock-hop emcees, etc. This financial freedom, coupled with the creative independence that came from directly representing the Black community, helped give many of them the courage to tell it like it was.

But nowadays, Black radio is, in reality, white conglomerate radio serving Black—uh, excuse me, I meant “urban”—customers. (For more on this, Google “Black Radio” and  BlackCommentator.com, then “Black Radio” and BlackAgendaReport.com.) All of you are paid very handsomely by your white syndicators. So there’s plenty of yucking it up and Baby Boomer oldies, with small doses of social observations interspersed in-between. But I notice it’s not the type of commentary that gets national advertisers like Wal-Mart and Dodge upset.

Even Black news-talk radio isn’t sacred anymore. Mark Thompson recently got his walking papers from “The Power,” Radio One’s XM Satellite Radio channel, and Bob Law was just ousted from WURD, Philadelphia’s only remaining Black radio news-talk. When Bob Law—the legitimately legendary host of American Urban Radio Network’s “Night Talk” for more than three decades—can’t keep a job in Black radio, there is something wrong with the system and the role too many of us are playing in it in 2007.

With Jena gone, we can’t just go back to business as usual now, can we? There’s an election coming up. More importantly, there’s the commemoration of the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King.

King asked a year before he died: “How do we turn the ghettos into a vast school? How shall we make every street corner a forum, not a lounging place for trivial gossip and petty gambling, where life is wasted and human experience withers to trivial sensations?”

I think you could play a major role in answering King’s questions on the 40th anniversary of his death next April. You have the tech; do you have the will? I mean, I think we’ve all had enough of Michael Vick (and now O.J. II), right?

Let’s make Jena the beginning, not the end. Thank you for doing the right thing there. But we need more from you. A lot more.

Your Brother and Colleague,

Jared A. Ball, Producer/Host, “Jazz & Justice,” WPFW-FM, Washington, D.C. and Candidate, Green Party Presidential Nomination

Copyright 2007 by Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.

Dr. Jared Ball, a candidate for the Green Party’s Presidential nomination, is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at Morgan State University. He is also an independent journalist. He is a host on WPFW 89.3 FM, the Pacifica Network radio station in Washington, D.C., and the founder and creator of “FreeMix Radio: The Original Mixtape Radio Show,” a rap music mixtape committed to the practice of underground emancipatory journalism. He and his work can be found online at voxunion.com.