Butch Ware

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Butch Ware
Ware in 2024
Born	1974 (age 51–52) United States
Education	University of Minnesota (BA) University of Pennsylvania (MA, PhD)
Political party	Green

Rudolph "Butch" T. Ware III (born 1974), also known as Bilal Ware in the American Muslim community,^[1][2][3][4] is an American associate professor and hip hop artist who was the 2024 vice presidential nominee for the Green Party. He is one half of the hip hop duo Slum Prophecy.

Ware has been vocal about the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the Gaza genocide.^[5] He has organized teach-ins, community education curricula, and other organizing initiatives. Ware has been vocal as a public intellectual, activist, artist, and organizer, and supports communities across the country and around the world to challenge imperialism, ethnic cleansing, and war.^[6] He advocates for building sustainable, peaceful alternatives rooted in African, Indigenous, and Abrahamic traditions.^[7][8]

He is currently running for governor of California in the 2026 gubernatorial election. Ware is not on the ballot.^[9][10]

Ware received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota in 1997.^[11] He received his PhD in history in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania where he was trained in African History, and Islamic Intellectual History.^[12] Ware cites his political influences as Malcolm X and Kwame Ture.^[13]

A historian of West Africa at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he first began teaching at Northwestern University, and later at the University of Michigan.^[14][15]

Ware is also one half of the hip hop duo Slum Prophecy. Less than two weeks before he began running for vice president, Slum Prophecy released an album titled Aqsa Flood in honor of those who perpetrated the October 7 attacks.^[16] He is currently an associate professor in the department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara,^[17] and the founder and director of the Initiative for the Study of Race, Religion, and Revolution ("ISRAR")^[18][19]

On August 16. 2024, Ware was selected by Jill Stein to be her running mate in the 2024 United States presidential election.^[20] The Green Party nominated them as their candidates the following day.^[21] Upon being nominated, Ware would state that a goal of his campaign would be to win over voters in the battleground states, particularly Arab voters who were opposed to Joe Biden's support for Israel in the Gaza War.^[22] Ware and Stein would be featured on The Breakfast Club in September of 2024, which gave them the most visibility of their campaign.

On November 11, 2024, Ware announced that he would be running in 2026 as a candidate for Governor of California.^[23] In August, Ware participated in a gubernatorial debate hosted by the Service Employees International Union and held in Sacramento. All other candidates were Democrats.^[24] On September 15, CBS News Sacramento conducted an interview with Ware.^[25]

When questioned^[a] on legal limits for abortion in the United States, Ware voiced support for a vague restriction on abortion. He later walked back this position, aligning with Green Party values that recognize a woman's inalienable right to make decisions about her own body.^[27][28] Ware believes that safe, legal, and accessible abortion is a fundamental right, and that restricting access disproportionately harms young, poor, and marginalized women.^[29]

The Green Party's platform of reproductive rights, which he espouses, includes expanding access to contraception, comprehensive sex education, and public health initiatives to reduce unwanted pregnancies.^[30] They support government funding for reproductive healthcare, including abortion services, to ensure that economic barriers do not limit any woman's ability to make choices about her body.^[31]

Ware is a firm advocate for aggressive climate action and a just transition to renewable energy.^[32] Deeply aligned with Green Party values,^[33][34] Ware views the climate crisis as a human-made disaster exacerbated by corporate greed and political complicity. He rejects the notion that wildfires, extreme weather, and environmental collapse are mere flukes, instead attributing them to decades of fossil fuel dependence and deregulation.^[35]

Ware's gubernatorial campaign prioritizes ending California's reliance on fossil fuels, holding corporate polluters accountable, and investing in clean energy solutions.^[36] He has criticized both major political parties for bowing to Big Oil, citing the millions of dollars in lobbying that have stalled real climate action. Ware also advocates for climate justice, recognizing that Black, Brown, and working-class communities suffer first and worst from environmental destruction. He has pledged to fight corporate real estate interests that exploit disaster-stricken areas and ensure that recovery efforts center community resilience, sustainable infrastructure, and long-term environmental protections.^[37]

Through his campaign, Ware aims to dismantle the fossil fuel industry's grip on California politics and usher in a future where environmental policy is driven by science, justice, and public good—not corporate profits.

Ware's 2024 Green Party profile described the Gaza war as a genocide.^[38] In a 2025 post on X, he asserted that the death toll in Gaza exceeds estimates, stating, "They continue to throw around 60K+ as the death toll. Population based data and public health research indicates the real toll will be in the hundreds of thousands".^[39]

Ware has likened Hamas's 2023 surprise attack on Israel to Nat Turner's Rebellion, viewing Hamas as a resistance group against Israel's illegal occupation.^[40]

In October 2024, Ware posted a tweet where he pointed out the environmental impact of war. In the post, he included Uyghurs as victims of genocide, which garnered backlash from users. In a reply, he stated, "Stop caping for Chinese racists. I have sat with Uyghurs myself who directly suffered. Get lost."^[41] In response to his position, Stein stated that she would educate herself on the topic.

In an interview with YouTuber The Black Authority in late October 2024, when asked "do you agree with the idea of biological males playing in female sports",^[26] Ware stated: "I don't think that biological males should play in female sports. I think it gives an unfair [...] competitive advantage."^[42][43] Ware has stated that his comments were taken out of context by media outlets, Tweeting, "The remarks in question, presented in a hostile interview, were misrepresented through selective editing to suggest otherwise. In context, I was engaging in what I thought was a discussion of a nuanced policy on Olympic inclusion based on information shared by the IOC, not making a statement against trans inclusion."^[44]

Ware is a staunch advocate for immigrant rights and has centered his campaign on ending California's cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).^[45] Ware has strongly condemned Governor Gavin Newsom's decision to veto AB 15, a bill aimed at limiting the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's (CDCR) collaboration with ICE.^[46] He has criticized the long-standing racial profiling and civil rights violations by ICE, arguing that the agency's actions undermine constitutional protections and disproportionately harm asylum seekers and immigrants fleeing economic, ecological, and political crises—many of which he attributes to U.S. foreign policy and corporate exploitation.^[47][48]

He believes that state cooperation with ICE not only disrupts immigrant communities but also erodes public trust in law enforcement, making neighborhoods more vulnerable to systemic injustice. As part of his campaign platform, Ware has pledged to enact policies that shield immigrant communities from federal overreach, advocating for a California government that serves all residents equitably, regardless of immigration status.^[49][50][51]

On X, formerly Twitter, Ware described ICE as "the American Gestapo", comparing the usage of force against African-Americans to the 1985 MOVE bombing and the Tulsa race massacre firebombings.^[52]

Ware is a Muslim convert.^[53] Ware stated in a podcast with The Thinking Muslim that he converted to Islam at the age of 15 after being introduced to it by The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and then reading the Quran. He follows West African Sufi traditions and stated that "the Sufi tradition that I know tethers together spirituality with social justice".^[54]

He has a son.^[55]

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• Faculty website
• "Christopher Brown and Rudolph Ware". The New York Public Library.