Sam Brown (activist)
Sam W. Brown Jr. is a former political activist, the head of ACTION under President Jimmy Carter, and ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
[1] He attended Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs where he was, in his own words, "the outstanding ROTC cadet.
[1] In 1967, Ramparts magazine reported that the CIA had been using the National Student Association (NSA) for intelligence gathering abroad.
[9] "I know the first time that I ever went and knocked on somebody's door and waited for them to answer so that could tell them that I wanted to talk to them about the war was not an easy moment," said Brown.
[9] Brown said that the volunteers gained valuable organizing skills that he and others would later apply during Eugene McCarthy's presidential bid.
[3] According to Tom Wells in his book The War Within Brown would sometimes entertain the notion that McCarthy could win the nomination "sometimes for up to thirty minutes at a stretch.
[11] "In 1968, my husband Sam was the liaison between the McCarthy campaign and the protesters and was eventually a defense witness at the Trial of the Chicago Seven," wrote Teal.
[3] David E. Rosenbaum wrote in the New York Times in 1969 that Brown "is a young man with a genius for organizing who has been the prime mover behind the Vietnam Moratorium protests.
"[3] As part of organizing the moratorium, the group ran three full page advertisements in the New York Times for a total cost of $26,328.
"[14] The organizers said that the demonstrations had been at least a partial success and took some credit for Nixon's troop withdrawals and the dismissal of the head of Selective Service, General Lewis B.
"[14] The Moratorium Committee announced on April 19, 1970 that it was disbanding and the organizers said that money had dried up and the "political fad" of large demonstrations had run its course.
[14] "You'd be surprised how many people don't know how to draw up a telephone tree, set up an office, call a press conference," said Brown.
[16] Anthony Lake, a member of president Carter's transition committee, recalled "Sam was very good at pushing his point of view with sufficient flexibility so he could make deals and stick with them.
"[16] Future congressman John Lewis, then the associate director of ACTION under Brown, wrote that the conflict between Brown and Payton was entirely over policy: "The resignation of Carolyn Payton stemmed from regrettable – but nonetheless honest and unreconcilable – differences with the administration concerning policy and philosophy.
[21] Peace Corps Director Payton responded that "Whether or not we could find satisfactory jobs for volunteers was a better criteria than how much money a country has ...
"[21] According to Payton, Brown wanted to "send volunteers for short periods to developing countries and then bring back the skills they had learned to fight poverty in the United States".
"[16] In 1994, during the confirmation hearings for Brown's later ambassadorship to the CSCE, Payton's resignation was interpreted in two very different ways by his supporters and opponents.
The final result of those hearings was that Congress decided he was doing an exemplary job, and it increased the agency's budget by 20 percent.
[1] The New York Times reported in 1991 that Brown said that force could be necessary to restore stability in the Middle East and keep nuclear weapons from the hands of Saddam Hussein.
"[25] Margaret Carlson reported in Time Magazine in 1994 that President Clinton had appointed Brown Ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), a 52-nation organization in Vienna that mediates conflicts in the former Soviet republics and promotes human rights, and that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had held hearings on Brown on November 18, 1993 and approved his nomination by a vote of 11 to 9.
[26] "Some think Hank Brown simply wants to zing the President, refight the Vietnam War and triumph over an old rival.
[28] On November 17, 1997, President Clinton awarded Brown the personal rank of Ambassador in his capacity as the Head of Delegation to the 1997 OSCE Ministerial Preparatory conferences, an appointment that does not require Senate confirmation.
[30] "The CSCE is the natural multilateral forum, as the trans-Atlantic institution where Russia has an equal voice, for work on these questions.
Christos Botzios, the Greek Ambassador to the OSCE, said "He has added enormously to the prestige of the United States, as a country that cares about cooperation ...
[34] "I'm really upset that we're stuck on Vietnam," he said, "but what really appalls me is that unlike 1968, when there was a real clash of ideas, this year we hear nothing from either candidate - not Bush, not Kerry - about what they propose to do to extract us from this awful mess in Iraq.
"[34] Thirty-six years after the idealism that produced the McCarthy insurgency, Brown said, "I see nasty, mean-spirited politics on all sides, the equivalent of the kind of scrum you see in the Chicago commodities pits.
"[34] The Los Angeles Times reported that Brown and his wife Alison Teal raised about $800,000 for the Kerry campaign including about $300,000 in "ideological money" from the East Bay area.
[35] Brown and his wife raised funds by hosting house parties for Kerry, seeking donations from strangers on the grocery line, and soliticiting from Teal's online blog.
[36] Brown lives in modernized log cabin on the shores of silvery Deer Lake 85 miles south of the Canada–US border at International Falls.
