By Karan Singh
In an exclusive interview, Dr. Rudolph “Butch” Ware of the Green Party elaborates on the Black Radical Tradition’s proximity to the fight for Palestinian liberation, his ongoing bid for Governor of California and his vision for transcending the duopoly.
In an exclusive interview for the Palestine Chronicle’s FloodGate podcast, Dr. Rudolph “Butch” Ware of the Green Party elaborates on the Black Radical Tradition’s proximity to the fight for Palestinian liberation, his ongoing bid for Governor of California and his vision for transcending the duopoly.
The two-party system of the United States has conditioned citizens of the country to vote largely against their own interests election after election. Today, millions of people cast ballots in favor of those they don’t even believe in, and this widely ignored defect is precisely what Dr. Rudolph “Butch” Ware is seeking to remedy once and for all.
In this new episode, Zarefah Baroud (PhD candidate at the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Palestine Studies) and I spoke with the academic-turned-politician about his plans for orchestrating a radical shift in the social structure as he ramps up his campaign for the 2026 gubernatorial elections in California.
Read on for eight key takeaways from Dr. Ware’s interview with The Palestine Chronicle.
1. Major Demographic Shift
Dr. Ware was the vice-presidential nominee for the Green Party in the most recent elections, and he began by talking about the progress he made as Dr. Jill Stein’s running mate.
As his contingent finished third overall in the race to the White House, he pointed out that more than 50% of the American Muslim community voted for his team. This marked a massive shift within said group, who have historically voted Democrat.
“Not just American Muslims, but all the people who join the Green Party movement see it as the best vehicle to deliver an anti-imperialist punch in the elections. That includes the Free Palestine movement, that includes the End ICE movement and that includes the constituencies that were driving the George Floyd uprising.”
2. All-Encompassing Coalition
Regarding the practicality of a third party emerging victorious at a high level, Dr. Ware made it clear that he would gladly form a coalition with independent hopefuls as well as other collectives if that helps depart from the two-party system.
Furthermore, he believes that recruiting disgruntled Republicans is just as central to the mission as pulling in Democrats who are ashamed of voting blue. In fact, he believes that members from both major parties are just as likely to jump ship considering how they’ve been repeatedly misled by their leaders.
“We need to pull in a lot of those traditional Democratic voters and also to appeal to some of those Bernie–Trump voters and even Trump–Trump voters. In the last two polls that came out before the election, we were actually drawing as many voters from Team Red as we were drawing from Team Blue.”
Of course, appealing to eligible voters who have never participated in politics remains a key focus of the Green Party. That is precisely why he credited Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York City for generating interest by focusing on “bread-and-butter community issues.”
3. Building Momentum Between Electoral Cycles
The Green Party has been repeatedly accused of not putting in enough work between presidential elections. Despite there being 100s of elected members of the party across the country, Dr. Ware acknowledges that they haven’t built sufficient momentum between electoral cycles and that their most recent performance illustrates that.
By running for Governor of California, he wants to ensure that all the support from Muslims, working-class communities, people of color and progressives that the Stein–Ware ticket gathered in 2024 remains intact.
“If the 50 states were all independent republics, California would be the fifth largest economy in the world (…) What happens in California shapes American politics — it is so large that if you are able to build an effective ground game and organizational strength across communities here, then you are going to be building strength that cannot be ignored in ’28 and ’32.”
He emphasized how much money the state has, most of which is concentrated in Silicon Valley, and contrasted that with its homelessness crisis, extortionary rent and predatory development. Essentially, all the issues he ran on in the presidential elections are concentrated in the Golden State.
Stressing single-payer healthcare and affordable housing as pillars of his campaign, he took a moment to address potential challengers Kamala Harris and Katie Porter in the upcoming gubernatorial elections.
“I will have the opportunity to debate them, and they’ll never survive that process. There isn’t a Democratic candidate in the country who is ready for what I will bring at them on the stage because they sold out their constituencies — they run a corrupt mafia-style patronage network and they use all of our tax dollars to do favors for their cronies and their friends, and they use none of our tax dollars to actually protect the people from this rising fascism that we have seen sweep over the country.
4. State Divestment From Genocide
One of the principal positions of Dr. Ware’s current campaign is detaching California from the Netanyahu government’s genocidal crusade against the Palestinians.
To paint a picture of what that would look like, he referenced how Alameda County voted to halt partnerships with corporations that energize Israel. Likewise, numerous municipalities and educational institutions in the state have also distanced themselves from Israel.
“There is already an effort underway — it is just not being reinforced or amplified by the Democratic leadership in the state because their souls are folded on tiny pieces of paper, buried deep in the pockets of AIPAC.”
He then circled back to his bid for governor and how he would bring these initiatives to fruition.
“From the governor’s mansion, divesting from genocide is actually a very easy thing to do because the state of California has leaned progressive, and we know that both liberals and progressives alike overwhelmingly condemn the genocide and don’t want tax dollars being utilized to incinerate children in tents (…) They want to go toward fixing the damn roads and paying for affordable housing and education.”
5. ‘The Only Way to Resist is to Resist.’
On the subject of Palestine, the conversation inevitably shifted to Mahmoud Khalil. The Columbia University graduate is currently being detained by ICE for protesting the United States’ direct involvement in the onslaughts on Gaza, and the Trump administration has even threatened to revoke his green card and deport him from the country.
About protecting the rights of immigrants, Dr. Ware cited a bill promoted by Progressive in California called AB15 that would prohibit the California Department of Corrections from cooperating with ICE by engaging in illegal interventions. Current governor Gavin Newsome, however, has already said that he will veto the bill should it ever reach his desk.
“As Governor of California, I am not enforcing any unconstitutional orders; I am not underwriting any federal overreach. ICE is going to have to come through the full legal apparatus of the state to touch the hair on the head of any single Californian, whether they’re speaking out against so-called illegal immigration and the persecution of immigrants or for Free Palestine. It’s unconstitutional and it is cowardice on the part of these authorities to simply stand to the side and let federal agents execute obviously unlawful orders on their campuses.”
He also shared his thoughts on Columbia professor Keren Yarhi-Milo, who played a major role in Khalil’s arrest, and the fact that she previously served in the Israeli military.
“We all know that there’s no such thing as a former Mossad agent — they’re active and dormant Mossad agents — so what we essentially have is people in these institutions that are instruments of a foreign government, seeking to quell any criticism of the genocidal policies of that state, and they are willing to run roughshod over our basic constitutional rights and civil liberties in order to do it.”
Complying with Zionist propaganda, he believes, only gives it more and more strength.
“We saw university presidents unwilling to say that ‘From the river to the sea’ isn’t hate speech, and still getting thrown out (…) Despite the fact that Columbia has worked hand in glove with the apartheid state, they nonetheless get this threat of having $400 million of funding lifted from them, because the more you appease these kinds of genocidal, fascist overreaches, the more you will be punished by them. The only way that you can actually resist is to resist.”
6. The Mileage of Activism
Dr. Ware continued talking about the importance of resistance and protest, saying that invigorating a movement goes beyond electoral politics. Organizing past the confines of a formal political system, he explained, is just as significant as growing within it.
“Political party organizing has played a central and crucial role in every successful modern revolution — as a student of anti-imperialist revolutionary politics, I cannot underscore that fact enough …) Malcolm X said, ‘We are not outnumbered; we are outorganized.” Part of why we have this defeatist mentality is because we accept the media’s depictions of where we are in this struggle. Malcolm had another one on this: ‘Never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are’ (…) We have absorbed a lot of fatalistic, self-defeating rhetoric about our own capacity to resist.”
He then alluded to the work of civil rights activist Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael), who said, “Revolutionaries don’t just mobilize around issues; revolutionaries organize against systems.”
“Free Palestine protests break out everywhere, mobilizing around the issue but not effectively organizing against the system, so they keep the genocide going because we are not sufficiently capable of acting as a body.”
On a more hopeful note, he looked back at a cause he rallied behind when he was a teenager.
“Divesting from apartheid in South Africa looked impossible, and then just like that, we put so much pressure on that they had to divest from the apartheid state. Apartheid collapses when that happens.”
7. Prospects of a Pivot
The autobiography of Malcolm X forever changed Dr. Ware’s perspective of the world during his formative years. Having grown from those revolutionary teachings, he now describes himself as a “radical” and “anti-capitalist” — two terms that have always been stigmatized in the red-and-blue duopoly. Yet, he believes that a hands-on approach to communicating his vision can bring about the necessary changes to restore balance in the United States.
“The reason why Fred Hampton gets assassinated through an illegal action of the state and the Black Panthers get targeted is because they were so good at proselytizing to white working-class communities and Latino communities and Asian communities.”
In that spirit, he noted the importance of finding common ground with the people he hopes to bring over to his side.
“I don’t care what your ideological position is — I don’t care if you’re a communist, socialist or Marxist. What we’re talking about is wrestling back power from corporations and giving it to the people. What we’re talking about is meeting people’s basic needs through a sane approach to housing, education, energy and its sustainability, living wages and job creation.”
Calling attention to how both Democratic and Republican voters are dissatisfied with their leaders, he reiterated the value he attaches to putting things in perspective rather than alienating potential allies.
“People know good sense when you present it to them in a way in which they’re going to understand it and when you’re not weighed down by ideological concerns or performing a particular kind of identity — you’re just going to tell the truth in a way that’s going to make sense to the people that you’re talking to.”
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8. The Black Radical Tradition and Palestinian Liberation
Since the age of 15, Dr. Ware has abided by the teachings and practices of the Black Radical Tradition. Before wrapping up the interview, he elaborated on how said ideology is connected to the fight for Palestinian liberation by design.
“Black people have stretched the meaning of freedom to make it inclusive for all kinds of people. The 1965 immigration reforms that allowed so many people of color — Muslim and otherwise — to migrate to the United States were opened by civil rights activists (…) When Black people show up and fight for Black freedom, it always leads to more freedom for everyone — it has to, because it is a direct assault on a white supremacist structure that impoverishes everyone, including whites.”
Shifting his focus to Palestine, he once again brought up Malcolm X and expanded on the late human rights activist’s view of Israel.
“Malcolm X said that this is a white Jewish population being empowered by white imperialists to knock brown Arabs off of their land — this is white supremacy. And by the way, that’s how that whole Black emancipatory tradition read Palestinian liberation. James Baldwin in ’79 said the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of Jews; it was created for the salvation of Western interests. The reason why the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was targeted was because they came out with anti-Zionist positions in the middle of the 1960s.”
Tying the above two points together, he concluded by explaining that the Black Radical Tradition and Palestinian Liberation are essentially part of the same struggle.
“All true Black freedom fighters understand that the struggle against white supremacy is an international struggle; that what we face here in the United States of America is a local iteration of a broader struggle, and whoever fights for the liberation and freedom of any oppressed people is fighting for the liberation and freedom of Black people. Our destinies are interconnected, whether we know it or not.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Karan Singh is an Indian American journalist based in Los Angeles. He contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.
I like the cut of your jib Mr Ware. Great interview, I look forward to your winning in California in 2026 and winning the whole country in 2028. This great country needs a great leader, be him. Love and respect. Roger Waters.