He Speaketh

Pitch staff writer Kendrick Blackwood first requested an interview with Bryan J. Brown in February of this year. Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline’s spokesman turned down that request (see “Born Again”).

Undaunted, Blackwood wrote this week’s story, saw it through a final edit — and then left the country on vacation. But on May 8 — just days before the Pitch‘s press date — the paper received an e-mail from Brown.

“Word all over the street is that KB is asking questions about me,” Brown wrote. “I have been cleared by my employer to talk with him. Please have him give me a call before you publish an article about my life, my past lives, and any other regressions that his deep background search may have uncovered. (He is even contacting my wife’s ex-boyfriends, boy is that digging! For the record, I used no improper dating techniques in stealing that great catch from other eligible bachelors.)”

Pitch editor C.J. Janovy conducted the interview in Blackwood’s absence. What follows is a version edited for length.

Why did you protest in front of clinics?

Why do all questions start with protests? I was involved in a protest movement for two years of my life. I’m 44 years old. I hope that’s not indicative of where this story’s going, just focusing on those two years of my life.

Can you describe the events outside George Tiller’s clinic during the Summer of Mercy?

Peaceful and nonviolent. Robust exercise of First Amendment rights at times. Subtle exercise of First Amendment rights at others. There were so many people dedicated to seeing an end to the grisly practice he’s involved in that at many times the gates were indeed blocked. Many of the arrests that were made at that time were in fact illegal, as my case proved…. It’s still the law in Sedgwick County that the city can’t use its loitering ordinance to arrest those involved in First Amendment activity.

Were you the initiator of the residential pickets in Wichita?

I think residential picketing had gone on for a long time. I would hate to call myself the originator. I stood on the shoulders of giants.

[The Supreme Court has ruled that] the First Amendment does not protect targeted picketing of a residence…. [But it does protect] blanket picketing where you go to a residential neighborhood and say, ” This person is making a lot of money involved in a practice that a lot of people find abhorrent … we’re going to make them notorious.”

Why did Judge Kelly order you to spend 68 days in jail for contempt of court?

Because I would not promise him unconditional obedience to his injunction. For him to ask me to promise obedience was a violation of my rights of religious freedom. I offered him that I would acknowledge his power over me. I told him I had no plans to violate his injunction. I told him that his injunction was overbroad and would be found unconstitutional by the 10th Circuit, which it was later. I told him he could put me in jail for six months and fine me $50,000 if I violated it, but I could not promise him the unconditional obedience I’d promised to Jesus Christ.

Why did you go to law school?

I had the desire to work within social institutions to effect change. To continue to be an activist but in a way that society channels activism. Right now I’m an activist for consumer protection.

What were some of your most notable cases at the American Family Association?

My biggest victory is probably Saxe vs. State College Area School District, [fighting] a speech code that went so far as to say you could speak positively about things including religion, race and sexual orientation but not negatively…. It really was classic liberal free speech. Most editorial pages across the country applauded the decision. One of the guys who most applauded it was Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice.

[Another victory was] Edwards vs. Coeur d’Alene. Coeur d’Alene is a very conservative little town, and they’ve got a neo-Nazi problem up there. They passed an ordinance that said, “When the neo Nazis march, we don’t want anyone else doing anything. Ignore them.” My client said, “No, you don’t ignore Nazis, that’s how they get stronger. I’m going to protest.” So he went down with a sign … but the cops broke his sign, arrested him, held him for five hours. That was the county cops. The city then passed an ordinance saying you couldn’t have a sign with a stick on it. They said you can have your sign down this low [Brown holds his hands chest-high]. The neo-Nazis had 20-foot flagpoles that they were allowed to carry, but Gary Edwards couldn’t carry his sign on a stick. The county ended up paying 15 grand for arresting him and bowed out.

Can you talk about Matt Trewhella?

Matt’s a controversial Protestant pastor in Milwaukee involved in pro-life activism. I won a case for him recently … [members of his group were] on a public sidewalk, with signs that a lot of people don’t care for, but they have a First Amendment right to be on the public sidewalk. A police officer said, “You all have to leave.” Matt comes up with a video camera, and you can see the police officer’s hand go like that and the camera go to the ground. What you don’t see is that he jumped on Matt, threw him to the ground and kneed him in the back, broke his glasses, broke his video camera, broke another camera, put him in the ER that night with contusions to his back, causing $2,000 in chiropractic bills … it was a federal case that I started, and had to walk away from to take this job. It just settled for 20 grand in damages to Matt — the city’s going to pay rather than go to trial.

Planned Parenthood has quoted Matt talking about how parents should teach kids how to put weapons together.

Well, I didn’t represent him in any of those statements. Planned Parenthood says a lot of awful things about a lot of people. If they’re looking for radicals, they should go back to their roots and look at Margaret Sanger, who advocated eugenics against blacks, who advocated sterilization for southern Europeans, who advocated white supremacy — she was a blatant white supremacist, started the Negro Project in order to get colored people not to breed, in her own words. So I have a problem with Planned Parenthood trying to paint anyone as fringe when their matriarch is about as fringe as you can get, as politically incorrect as can be.

What are your qualifications for this job?

Graduated with honors from Indiana University with a degree in sociology. Worked in industry for years in management, certified quality engineer. I graduated law school second in my class, summa cum laude.

In activism I was involved in public advocacy — for those who have ears to hear, it was consumer protection. My concern was for the women who I thought were making a terrible decision in the marketplace, one that would have lifelong effects, negative for them and certainly for their offspring.

At the American Family Association, I made Chevy buy back a woman’s junk Monte Carlo under the Mississippi lemon law and helped her turn an attorney in to the bar and get him disciplined, and he paid her back $3,000. I went to bat against Wells Fargo in Mississippi. My wife had bought some carpet, and they tried to do punitive interest on her when she was one day late on a payment. So I did the research and found out they hadn’t given us the paperwork, and I found the Mississippi statute that said that we ought to get all of our money back and the carpet free.

My mother’s really strong in consumer advocacy. She’s a little outgoing lady that you don’t want to take advantage of, and she’s taught me to stand up for myself and others. My dad’s real big into a code of chivalry. What we’re doing here is reorganizing this division so it’s more chivalrous. We’ve started the Vulnerable Adults Task Force — the VATF — focusing upon the elderly and persons with disability who are taken advantage of by scammers.

Everything I did at the American Family Association was public-interest law. This job is public-interest law.

Do you think you were disrespectful of the law?

I will refer you to the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King. The answer is no, I don’t. He who breaks the law willing to accept the consequences shows the greatest respect for the law. I believe in the rule of law. But if you obey the law no matter what, then what was the German resistance but lawbreaking rebels who should have been hung? What was the Underground Railroad? They were right to break the law if it was an unjust law.

Have you talked with Attorney General Kline about abortion?

We talked briefly about abortion in the interview. He wanted to know if I was pro-life. I have not talked with him about any legislative agenda, federal or state, that would affect abortion. I’ve let him know that, as the consumer-protection division head, I only want to work in areas that are within my jurisdiction, which he agrees.

What else do you want to talk about?

I want to talk about CPERTS — Consumer Protection Emergency Response Teams. [When a tornado hit Lawrence on May 8], I grabbed the literature and drove over. We were basically there to stop any scammers who came in following these storms. I wasn’t there twenty minutes before a police lieutenant was approached by a young man who wanted to start putting tarps on people’s houses. To make a long story short, three hours later we had nearly arrested him, his girlfriend and three of his compatriots who were illegal aliens from Kansas City, Missouri, running what looks to be an insurance scam where you sign the paper and they’ll work on your house, but on the back in the fine print it says they’ll get a mechanic’s lien if you don’t pay them. We threw this couple out of Kansas last night, told them not to return to Kansas to do this type of activity.

We’re going to be doing grassroots initiatives where we try to get people across the state interested in helping others do self-help. Like my mother, there’s a lot of savvy people who never get taken advantage of in the marketplace — they can go along with someone who’s more timid and maybe just needs some help. This division can’t do it all. Kansas is a big state. We’re going to build that grassroots initiative — and I have a little experience in grassroots movements. Just a bit.