Who is Kamala Harris’s radical pastor?

Amos Brown, longtime pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church and current president of the San Francisco NAACP, has a history of radical, anti-American statements and viewpoints, as well as political alliances that are antisemitic, yet he is what Kamala Harris calls “an inspiration to me always.”

Brown’s anti-American statements first took the spotlight just days after the 9/11 terror attacks that took the lives of almost 3,000 Americans. Brown was speaking at the memorial service for some of the victims of the al Qaeda attacks when he accused America of causing the terror attacks, stunning the families and friends of the victims there.

"America, is there anything you did to set up this climate?" Brown asked the audience. "Ohhhh—America, what did you do?"

"America, what did you do two weeks ago when I stood at the world conference on racism, when you wouldn't show up?”, Brown said, referring to his participation as a delegate in the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (The Durban Conference).  

“America, America, what did you do – either intentionally or unintentionally – in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting?” Brown went on.

Brown’s inflammatory remarks at the memorial service drew criticism from even the staunchest liberal Democrats, including former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the late California senator Dianne Feinstein and former California governor Gray Davis, all who left the service during and after his comments.

The Durban Conference where Brown served as a delegate in 2001 was boycotted by the United States and Israel due to its vilification of the State of Israel, their reference to Israel as an ‘apartheid state’, their Nazi analogies and distorting the Holocaust. The Durban Conference became the birthplace of the Boycott, Divestment & Sanction Movement (BDS), whose stated goal is to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Brown says he has known Harris for over two decades and attended her inauguration in 2021. Harris has lauded Brown for his support saying he has been “on this journey with me every step of the way, from when I first thought about running for public office almost two decades ago,” Harris said in 2022, during the NAACP National Convention.

In 2022, Brown, who serves on The California Reparations Task Force, held a "Solidarity for Reparations" event at his church where he told the San Francisco Chronicle that "America is a racist country."

Brown introduced Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III as a "son of Third Baptist" during the event, and said he was the "right man to come and to inspire us, inform us, and make sure that we have the map to implement in all that we might make reparations a reality, not in the sweet by-and-by, but right down here in the here and now."

Haynes followed Brown’s introduction by saying, "America, you owe us. What you done to us has been immoral. It’s been evil. It’s been unjust. It’s been downright wrong and the only way to bring salvation to America – you gotta pay us what you owe us," Haynes said during the event about the government paying reparations.

If this all sounds a little familiar, that’s because it is. Barak Obama’s radical pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright, had similar values and ideas to Brown. The only difference here is that Obama was smart enough to begin distancing himself from Wright and his church long before the election. 

Instead of distancing herself from Brown, Kamala Harris has continued to seek his advice, inviting him to the White House at least twice while she’s been Vice President, and continues to be a “due-paying member” of his church, according to Brown.

When asked by Sojourner where he thinks Harris could grow more, Brown initially said she should just “stay the course and hold the hope”, but later added that Harris could grow in her foreign policy expertise. 

He’s certainly right about that.

With her recent demands for Netanyahu to get a ceasefire in place, sympathizing with pro-Hamas groups, ignoring Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and her lack of strong condemnation for the Hezbollah attack that took 12 Israeli children’s lives, it’s clear that she’s not a strong advocate for Israel.

A Kamala Harris presidency would not only be a continuation of the policies that have eroded America, but it would also radically change the alliance between the U.S. and Israel.