[ The former Berkeley mayors record of accomplishments from civil
rights activism to groundbreaking political initiatives to far-sighted
community economic development programs to global solidarity and elder
statesman leadership could fill volumes. ]
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REMEMBERING GUS NEWPORT, A PROGRESSIVE TITAN  
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Chuck Idelson
June 20, 2023
Common Dreams
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_ The former Berkeley mayor's record of accomplishments from civil
rights activism to groundbreaking political initiatives to far-sighted
community economic development programs to global solidarity and elder
statesman leadership could fill volumes. _

Gus Newport, left, and Danny Glover speaking at a 2016 rally for Sen.
Bernie Sanders in Oakland. , (Photo: National Nurses United/flickr)

 

Former Berkeley, California Mayor Gus Newport, a titan of progressive
politics in the late 20th Century, social justice champion who worked
with Malcolm X, and a lifelong humanitarian and internationalist, died
June 17 in San Francisco. He was 88.

Gus was the embodiment of the adage of a life well lived. His record
of accomplishments from civil rights activism to groundbreaking
political initiatives to far-sighted community economic development
programs to global solidarity and elder statesman leadership could
fill volumes.

_Gus Newport, as Mayor of Berkeley, 1979–1986_
 

 

“The beauty of Gus,” said actor Danny Glover in an interview
[[link removed]],
“is that I trust him to elevate our story. When you spend time with
someone with Gus’s history and character and listen to his stories,
you are changed. I hope that a little of my story could resonate with
others the way Gus’s stories have resonated with me and so many
around the world.”

As a young activist in 1962, leading the Monroe County Nonpartisan
League, the largest civil rights group in his hometown of Rochester,
NY, Gus shepherded the first successful police brutality case in
federal court after the beating of a Black gas station attendant Rufus
Fairwell who would win a financial settlement
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the city.

Daisy Bates, who led the NAACP campaign to integrate Little Rock’s
Central High School in the late 1950s and now organizing in Rochester
for the NAACP, introduced him to Malcolm X by phone. Gus and Malcolm
worked to defend nine Black Muslims
[[link removed]] assaulted
and arrested in a police raid on a Black Muslim Mosque in Rochester
during a worship service.

When Malcolm flew into Rochester, and landed on the tarmac on a cold
February day, Gus was waiting in the airport surrounded “by a lot
of white men in felt hats and white shirts and ties.
[[link removed]] When
Malcolm walked in and asked, ‘who is Gus Newport.’ I raised my
hand and said, “I am.” He said, “Young blood, you got the
best-tapped telephone in America. This is all FBI around you.”

He would go on to count Malcolm and Harlem Congress member Adam
Clayton Powell as mentors. He assisted Malcolm in founding his
Organization of Afro American Unity (OAAU).

In February 1965, after Malcolm’s house was firebombed, Malcolm
asked him to join him for a speech in Rochester about his situation.
Returning to New York, “when we landed at LaGuardia
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the chief of police of New York and the fire marshal. They accused him
of firebombing his own home.” Four days later Malcolm was
assassinated. Later Gus would help Malcolm’s widow Betty Shabazz
with burial and financial support, including with a fundraiser for the
family headlined by Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Max Roach at the
home of Sidney Poitier.

Malcolm, Gus would later say
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was “the greatest person I think I ever knew,” a “great
teacher” and 
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dearest friends I ever had.”

Gus would move west after leaving a Department of Labor stint assigned
to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, due to a distaste for the
politics of President Nixon. A cousin helped him get work 
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Berkeley, developing youth employment service programs and as a senior
analyst in the City Manager’s office and Parks and Recreation
department.

In 1979, Gus was elected Berkeley Mayor, with the backing of the
progressive Berkeley Citizens Action coalition on a platform of
community economic control, serving two terms until 1986. “I never
aspired to run for mayor,” he would relate
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“I was talked into it by John George, the first African American
elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, and Congressman
Ron Dellums. Danny Glover (who met Gus while interning with the city
of Berkeley) and Harry Belafonte
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in New York) helped with my campaigns.”

_From left, Gus Newport, former Alameda County Supervisor John George,
former San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt, Angela Davis_

As Mayor, Gus would lead Berkeley to become the first city in the U.S.
to divest from apartheid South Africa, the first city to create a
domestic partner benefits program for LGBTQ+ families, a child care
initiative to help working women, and innovative programs on
affordable housing, rent control, policing reforms, environmental
protections, and community development. Berkeley landlords sued to
block limits on rent increases the city had enacted. The case 
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the Supreme Court where Berkeley was represented pro bono by famed
Constitutional attorney Lawrence Tribe, “and we won.”

_The first mayor to ride in a Gay Freedom parade, in San Francisco_

He was one of the first mayors in the country to ride in a Gay Freedom
Day parade, in San Francisco in 1979. He also challenged U.S.
immigration 
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“The wars in Central America were creating thousands of refugees,”
he says, “and I gave orders to our police not to arrest immigrants
because of their status.”

As a result of Berkeley and Gus’ prominent role in the broad
anti-apartheid movement, he was made an honorary member
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National Congress and served on the advisory board of the US
Conference on Apartheid.

When Mandela first toured the U.S. after his release from prison, Gus
was invited to help host Mandela on his visit to Boston, and Glover
and Belafonte “introduced me to Mandela.”
[[link removed]] Gus
had worked in Boston after leaving Berkeley as the first senior fellow
at the newly founded William Monroe Trotter Institute at the
University of Massachusetts.

Gus spent years helping other municipalities
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development projects including in Boston, Seattle, Palm Beach FL, New
Hampshire. The Boston area Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, in
Roxbury, was a particular success, the only non-profit organization in
the U.S. to receive the powers of eminent domain which became a
national model for empowering a diverse community and sustainable
change profiled in two award-winning films
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Ground_ and _Gaining Ground_.

He would also serve on the five-person advisory body to oversee the
planning to rebuild New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and teach
at Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University
of California, Santa Cruz. In 2009, he gave the commencement speech at
Heidelberg University at his alma mater in Tiffin, OH and was awarded
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Letters.

Global peace and social justice was a life long focus for Gus. He was
co-chair of the U.S. Peace Council and vice president of the World
Peace Council and worked in solidarity with people’s movements, in
Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.

_Gus Newport in a bomb shelter in El Salvador with local villagers,
1985. (Photo: Adam Kufeld)_

He was outspoken in opposition to U.S. policies in Haiti, Cuba, and
Central America. In 1985, as mayor, he visited El Salvador, along with
a Jesuit priest, with representatives of New El Salvador Today, a
group he helped found.
[[link removed]] “The
priest drove us to Chalatenango, and we were told we would walk for an
hour, but it took us six hours! When we arrived, the village had no
electricity and many roofs were torn off from bombing, but they
managed to create a huge sign: ‘Welcome to the Mayor of
Berkeley’.”

He was also a prominent supporter of Palestinian rights, as a long
time board member of the Berkeley-based Middle East Children’s
Alliance. In 2019 Gus was awarded the Khalil Gibran Spirit of Humanity
Award by the Arab American Institute.

During the 2016 election, Gus and Danny Glover traveled across the
U.S. as national surrogates for the Presidential campaign of
Sen. Bernie Sanders
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a friendship
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Sanders after Bernie was elected mayor of Burlington, VT in 1981. They
also collaborated with the few other progressive mayors, including
Chicago’s Harold Washington, at U.S. Conference of Mayors meetings.
“We’d compare notes on public policy, community planning, and
organizing.”

In his later years, Gus served on the leadership committee
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Council of Elders, an organization of people over 65 dedicated to
advancing civil, women’s, environmental, farm workers, and LGBTQ+
rights.

Gus maintained a connection to Oakland and the East Bay, from the
early 1990s living on and off in Oakland with his longtime wife and
partner Kathryn Kasch. He was on the board of the Urban Studies
Council, a Bay Area regional policy and research organization, focused
on addressing inequities. In one of his last roles, Gus served on
Oakland’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, formed after the
police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd
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Asked what kept him working for a better world in the face of so many
threats from white supremacy and assaults on democracy, Gus would say
he was guided by
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King’s vision of a Beloved Community of inclusion, cooperation and
justice for all which he had first imbued from his parents and
grandmother. “We need to come back to what Martin called Building
the Beloved Community — helping communities 
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education, incarceration, mental and physical health in an integrated
and systematic way. If we want a better future for the next
generation, we need to build a movement that is strategic and
constant!”

In interviews he frequently talked about the inspiration 
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his grandmother who took him to concerts with Marian Anderson and Paul
Robeson when he was five. “My grandmother grew up in the Jim Crow
South,” he noted. “One day, after picking cotton, she came to
school late and the teacher slapped her. She walked out and never went
back.”

“I’m lucky enough for what my grandmother instilled in me
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know it all, learn something new every day. I learned it by engaging
with people and having an analysis and understanding the integrated
role that can be played by communities, universities, government, all
kinds of people. We don’t live in a community that has reached its
limit as to what’s best.”

To hear Gus in his own words, watch a 2021 interview
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Historical Society and Museum.

_Chuck Idelson is the Communications Senior Strategist for National
Nurses United, the nation's largest union and professional
organization of registered nurses with 175,000 members._

* Gus Newport
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* progressive change
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* Berkeley
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* civil rights activists
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