The Greenberg Brief: Reverend Amos Brown, Resign

If you aren’t familiar with the African-American activist, preacher and sometimes bully, then may I introduce you to Reverend Amos Brown. His civil rights hypocrisy and angry temper come to a head over recalls, reparations and  transgressing of IRS nonprofit rules separating church and politics.

Born in Jackson, Mississippi on April 20th, 1941, Amos Brown has to this day led a tumultuous life filled with civil rights activism. At nearly 83 years old, he’s lived a long, productive life, and one cannot fault him for his aging and health.

Brown grew up in small town Georgia before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law. While in high school he lamented local schools’ segregation, and after he publicly criticized separating black and white students, he was promptly barred from attending his senior school year as punishment- until the local NAACP intervened; school administration relented, allowing him back in.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated when Amos Brown was 27 years old, which no doubt had a profound effect on him. Together with MLK, the two were arrested for a “Lunch counter sit-in” protest in Atlanta in 1961. They knew each other, were colleagues and Brown was one of a lucky handful of students King taught in a class.

After earning divinity degrees, the Reverend Amos Brown moved to San Francisco in 1975, becoming the pastor of Third Baptist Church, a position he holds through this day. This cemented his heavy political activism and church leadership into a perpetual state of religious/political activism.

Brown was appointed in 1996 to fill a seat on the all-important San Francisco Board of Supervisors (the City Council), during which time he proposed legislation to combat rampant panhandling – by barring loitering on the street for more than five minutes, punishable by fines and possible jail time. He was quoted in a New York Times interview, saying “we have to pay a price if we want to improve the quality of life.” His tough on crime stance then stands in stark contradiction to his activism for the Black community today.

In 2001, he delivered a highly controversial speech where he criticized America at a public memorial for the 9/11 attacks, – a stance so outrageous, Governor Gray Davis and Sen. Dianne Feinstein both walked off the stage, and Nancy Pelosi issued a harsh condemnation of his rhetoric.

More recently, when current San Francisco mayor London Breed first won election in 2018, Rev. Brown delivered a fiery sermon from the outdoor podium in Breed’s praise at her mayoral inauguration. The relationship between Brown and madam Mayor goes back decades.

Now, we’ll find Reverend Amos Brown at it again, combining and intertwining his continued leading of the Third Baptist Church with being president of the local chapter of the NAACP, serving in a paid position on the San Francisco Reparations Plan Committee and the California State Reparations Task Force.

Brown has become the de facto media spokesman for Reparations and has been interviewed on both the San Francisco and Sacramento’s plans. But, as a learned man, he should know better than to pretend the Civil Rights Act doesn’t exist. Since Brown’s earlier activism days, the US and California state Constitutions both provide remedies to those unjustly discriminated against, at the same time prevent the awarding of funding, jobs, education, housing and schools in a racially-biased and preferred manner. Reparations, which Rev. Brown subscribes to, seeks to re-segregate our community, to excuse Black-perpetrated crimes, to create Black school curriculum, a Black health care system, Black banks, Black zero-interest mortgages and Black credit scores. And everyone not Black will pay for it. Basically, Apartheid. Such bias and bigotry have no place in the pulpit nor in the city of San Francisco.

He’s been quite vocal from the pulpit, using his voice and influence to proclaim edicts and influence parishioners on many issues political. He’s in direct violation of IRS nonprofit activism rules. And there is apparently no indication today he’ll stop his violations of law.

Mixing Church and State (and the Constitution as well), he’s throwing all into a blender and coming out with a mess. Just last week, all hell broke loose as a rap song video chastising his good friend mayor London Breed. Rev. Brown went raving bonkers, calling in parishioners and reporters to his church for an awkward, angry gripe session.

The rap artist is Chino Yang, Chinese, and the condemnation by Rev. Brown is being spun as Black vs. Asian conflict once again. In 2022, during the recall election of three disgraced School District board commissions, Brown engaged in heavily defending one particular commissioner, Alison Collins, whom herself spewed insanely racist anti-Asian rhetoric throughout her embarrassing tenure.

RAPPER reprimanded for his video.

Here’s an excerpt from Chino Yang’s rap, “San Francisco Our Home” , that criticizes mayor London Breed, and he was forced to make an “apology”.
An artist getting threatened by mayor supporter? WTF. pic.twitter.com/ubS7sDU5Hh

— Richie Greenberg (@greenbergnation) December 28, 2023

At a rally over a SF public school’s merit-based admissions, Brown rabidly argued with local advocate Mankit Lam at Lowell High [insert photo2 mankit and brown photo credit: camille cohen] , even though Brown knows the importance of merit, and Martin Luther King’s cry for the day his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Rev. Brown is currently being accused he personally went to rap artist Chino Yang, allegedly to demand he take down his video and to make a follow-up video apologizing for untruths. Brown warns of repercussions from the Black community if he didn’t. Brown is strongarming a musician who dared to criticize the mayor. National news is covering this issue, and it’s not going away during 2024, a mayoral election year.

Being divisive in such a time on San Francisco’s current tightrope act, inflaming fragile to poor relations between two racial communities of our city, Reverend Amos Brown has straddled, muddled and ignored religious, racial and constitutional principles and law, and ruined community respect. By being front and center in the unconstitutional powerplay demand to punish all those not Black through so-called “Reparations”, his angry outbursts at political opponents using the backdrop of his Third Baptist Church, Reverend Brown is doing more damage than good, digging himself and colleagues into a massive quagmire. He’s doing more unlawful than righteous. It’s time for Reverend Brown to resign and retire.