Kopkind Colony

You won’t want to miss Kevin Alexander Gray at Kopkind’s Late Tapas Brunch on Oct 11, 2015

Gray & his younger sister Valerie were among the first blacks to attend the local all-white elementary school in 1968.  Since then he has been involved in community organizing working on a variety of issues ranging from racial politics, police violence, third-world politics & relations, union organizing & workers’ rights, grassroots political campaigns, marches, actions & political events.

Gray is currently organizing the Harriet Tubman Freedom House Project which focuses on community based political and cultural education. Organizer — National Mobilization Committee Against the Drug War.  Former managing & contributing editor of Black News in Columbia.  Now serves as contributing writer to other minority newspapers in South Carolina.  He served as a national board member of the American Civil Liberties Union for 4 years & is a past eight-term president of the South Carolina affiliate of the ACLU.  Advisory board member of DRC Net (Drug Policy Reform Coalition).

In 1997, Gray was an organizer for the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition’s anti-Proposition 209 marches in San Francisco & Sacramento, California.

South Carolina coordinator for the 1988 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson & 1992 southern political director for the presidential campaign of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin.  2002 SC United Citizens’ Party & Green Party Gubernatorial candidate.

Founding member of the National Rainbow Coalition in 1986.  Former co-chair of the Southern Rainbow Education Project — a coalition of southern activists.  Former contributing editor – Independent Political Action Bulletin. 

Gray’s critique “A Call for a New Anti-War Movement” appears in How to Legalize Drugs: Public Health, Social Science and Civil Liberties Perspective edited by Dr. Jefferson Fish of St. John’s University.  The book is a collection of works by drug policy reformers across the country.  The essay takes a cultural & ideological look at the impact of the “war on drugs” on African Americans.  Gray’s “The Legacy of Strom Thurmond” appears in Jack Newfield’s American Monsters, “Soul Brother? Bill Clinton and Black America” appears in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair’s Dimes Worth of Difference and “What Would Malcolm Say” appears in Peace Not Terror edited by Mary Susannah Robbins.

Gray’s essay on race & politics have appeared in The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy – “The Intensification of Racial Solidarity in the 1990s under the guise of Black Nationalism” (1996); The Progressive Magazine,  Counterpunch, The Washington Post Outlook Section, Emerge, One Magazine, The American University Graduate Review & numerous other national, regional & local publications.  His current essays on race, politics, cultural and world affairs can be found online at The Progressive, Counterpunch.com, The Black Agenda Report and “Holla If You

Hear Kevin and have a delicious Tapas Brunch while helping build support for Kopkind’s Summer Project taking place in 2016.   It happens at the Organ Barn in Guilford Vermont, just over the border from Massachusetts.  (at 2pm on Oct 11).   If you need directions, just email our administrator John Scagliotti at stonewal@sover.net.

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