When Gus Newport, the former mayor of Berkeley, California, isn’t traveling the country campaigning for Bernie Sanders or helping people build sustainable communities, he starts every day in his Oakland home inspired by a photograph of his grandmother.
“My grandmother grew up in the Jim Crow South,” Newport relates. “One day, after picking cotton, she came to school late and the teacher slapped her. She walked out and never went back.”
In 1961, the police invaded Rochester’s Black Muslim Mosque, and the black community was galvanized into action. Newport, already a leader, met Malcolm X when he came to Rochester to organize against police violence.
Both Newport’s grandmother and mother were ardent activists. “My grandmother took me to see Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson when I was five years old,” says Newport, who started working in the civil rights movement in his late teens in Rochester, New York.
In 1961, the police invaded Rochester’s Black Muslim Mosque, and the black community was galvanized into action. Newport, already a leader, met Malcolm X when he came to Rochester to organize against police violence.
“When I met Malcolm, he was beginning to move in the direction of Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violence,” says Newport, who helped found the Organization of African American Unity and accompanied Malcolm on a trip just four days before his assassination on February 5, 1965.
Newport was awarded a scholarship to Heidelberg University, where he studied economics and policy. In 1974, he led an employment program in Berkeley, California, and became known as a progressive organizer. He was elected mayor of Berkeley in a stunning upset win in 1979, and served until 1986.
“I never aspired to run for mayor,” Newport recounts. “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 and Harry Belafonte helped with my campaigns, and I have been friends with both of them for the past forty-plus years.”
As mayor, Newport was ahead of his time.
“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.” He served on the United Nations Committee Against Apartheid and the Committee on the Question of Palestine, which garnered national attention.
The New York Times reported in 1982: “Mr. Newport has traveled to conferences in Spain, Mexico, and Cuba as a self-proclaimed international ambassador for peace. Some Berkeley residents are disgruntled about the Mayor's travels calling him ‘Galloping Gus.’ ”
In 1985, Newport and representatives of New El Salvador Today, a group he helped found, accompanied a Jesuit priest into the war zone.
Adam Kufeld
Gus Newport taking refuge in a bomb shelter with villagers during his 1985 visit to El Salvador.
“We went under the guise that we were observing a vaccination program for children,” Newport says. “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.’ ”
The delegation heard horrific stories of torture and murder by the U.S-backed military, about which Newport later testified before Congress. During his testimony, he says he was mocked by Elliot Abrams, an Assistant Secretary of State who was accused of covering up atrocities “so I turned around and told him to shut up.” Newport subsequently went on a tour of twenty U.S. cities to talk about America’s role in the war.
After his stint as mayor, Newport headed the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Boston for four years, reviving a neighborhood that had looked like a war zone, with empty lots, burned and shuttered houses, and garbage from other areas of Boston dumped on its streets. The effort became a national model for sustainable change and is documented in two award-winning films: Holding Ground and Gaining Ground.
John Barros, now chief of economic development for the city of Boston, remembers when he first met Newport
“As a young person, you often feel invisible to adults, but I never felt invisible to Gus,” Barros says. “He has been a mentor and friend, and I still talk to him about governance and leadership. Gus paved the way for me when I was in South Africa exploring the Truth and Reconciliation [Commission] process by plugging me into an international network of human rights activists.”
“By the time Gus was running for his second [mayoral] term, we were both aligned with the anti-apartheid movement,” Glover says. “I loved what he was trying to do with community development so I joined Gus’s army.”
Newport continues to consult for Thriving Communities, a Seattle-based organization that was inspired by the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. The founder, Jerry Millhon, greatly admires Newport.
“Given what Gus has done around the world, his humility amazes me,” Millhon says. “He has a great sense of humor and our youth are even more inspired when they witness his energy and enthusiasm in his eighties.”
Newport first met Bernie Sanders when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and has remained friends with him and his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, for forty years. O’Meara Sanders hails “his intellect, his passion, his integrity, and his humor. Gus is simply a fantastic human being that Bernie and I love spending time with, whether we are talking about strategy, politics, or our day.”
Gus Newport and Danny Glover campaigning for Bernie Sanders in 2016 in Oakland, California.
When Newport campaigned for Sanders in 2016, he was joined by actor Danny Glover, a close friend and longtime political activist.They first met when Danny interned with the City of Berkeley in the mid 1970’s. An outspoken critic of U.S. policies in Haiti, Africa, and Iraq, Glover is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from Amnesty International.
“By the time Gus was running for his second [mayoral] term, we were both aligned with the anti-apartheid movement,” Glover says. “I loved what he was trying to do with community development so I joined Gus’s army.”
The two men both welcomed Nelson Mandela when he first came to the United States in 1990. Glover visited Newport in 1992 at the Dudley Street Initiative Project, calling it “the most powerful example of community solidarity I have ever seen. I was blown away by what Gus had accomplished, and our lives have been even more intertwined ever since.”
“The beauty of Gus,” says Glover, “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.”
Newport, almost eighty-five, continues to serve on the leadership committee of the National Council of Elders, an organization of people over sixty-five who were involved in the major social justice movements of the last part of the twentieth century: civil rights, environmental rights, farm workers’ rights, and LGBT rights.
Gus Newport was one of the first mayors in the country to ride in a Gay Freedom Day parade. San Francisco 1979.
While remaining active and engaged, Newport is not optimistic about the state of affairs in the United States. “This country is in a worse predicament than I have ever seen and I’m coming out of the Jim Crow and early civil rights era,” he says.
But Newport is not someone who gives into despair. In 2018, he was one of many progressive elected officials, economists, activists, writers, and artists who came together for the inaugural conference of the Sanders Institute. Organized by Jane O’Meara Sanders and her son David Driscoll, the Institute aims to “Engage individuals, organizations, and the media in the pursuit of progressive solutions to economic, environmental, racial, and social justice issues.”
Newport campaigned for Sanders in 2016 and has been doing the same in 2020. “I will go anywhere I am asked to go,” he says. “I am inspired by young people who are fed up with moderate approaches and passionate about redefining the Democratic Party.” He is not concerned about the party pulling too far to the left and supports progressive positions on climate change, gun control, and Medicare for All.
From right: Gus Newport, Danny Glover, Cornel West, and Congressman Ro Khanna before a Bernie Sanders rally in June 2019.
“In 2006, when I was the Martin Luther King fellow at MIT, I was surprised that students from other countries knew more about the history of the civil rights movement than students from the United States,” Newport says. “We need to come back to what Martin called Building the Beloved Community—helping communities address 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!”
“Everybody tells me I have to slow down. I tell them death will have to catch me—I am not going to sit and wait for him!”
Newport relishes his marriage of thirty-two years to Kathryn Kasch. “Gus is one of a kind,” she says of him. “His whole life is about politics and building community.” Newport has two children from a previous marriage: his daughter is a teacher, and his son produces music videos.
Once a month for the past five years, Newport has traveled to Seattle to support the Thriving Communities Project. Last year, he was the keynote speaker at a conference on community land trusts in Texas. He worked with the Proctor Institute to advise the Dallas Friendship Church on “how to develop affordable housing, mental health services, and small businesses.” And he serves on the board of Project South, a Southern-based leadership development organization.
The Arab American Institute Foundation awarded Newport the Khalil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Award in May 2019. “It is with great pride that the Foundation honors Newport’s life of leadership, vision, and dedication to peace and justice.”
It is a tradition that Newport intends to continue.
“People have this idea that when you reach a certain age, you are supposed to slow down, but I feel better when I am making a difference for the next generation—including my own grandchildren,” he says. “Everybody tells me I have to slow down. I tell them death will have to catch me—I am not going to sit and wait for him!”