Bill Clinton preaches unity in S.F.

While controversy swirls around next week’s release of Hillary Clinton’s memoir about the 2016 presidential election, former President Bill Clinton spoke of unifying America Friday night in San Francisco during a tribute to longtime civil rights leader the Rev. Amos Brown.

Clinton gave a 22-minute keynote speech at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church at an event dubbed “Service to the Community, State, Nation and the World.” He was introduced by Gov. Jerry Brown, and the program was hosted by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a Chronicle columnist. Also appearing was the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

They were there to honor Amos Brown, who has been pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church since 1976. Born and raised in Mississippi, he has been a member of the Board of Supervisors and a San Francisco Community College trustee. The longtime civil rights leader led the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP and served on its national board. Over his career, he was handpicked as one of few people to study under the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., participated with the Freedom Riders, testified before Congress against the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, has been a longtime supporter of LGBT rights, and last year endorsed the legalization of cannabis for recreational use.

It was Clinton — introduced by his former presidential primary rival Jerry Brown — who drew the audience’s rapt attention with a riff that was heavy on religion. He quoted the Bible, the Quran and the Torah. Willie Brown said that while they stood together Friday during the service, he heard Clinton’s baritone sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song often referred to as the “black national anthem.” “I had no idea they sang that in the white churches in Hope, Ark., too,” Willie Brown quipped.

Clinton said he came to San Francisco because when he ran for president, Amos Brown and his wife, Jane Brown, were the only people besides his own mother who thought he had a chance to win. “Even Hillary and Chelsea were undecided,” he quipped. (He was also reportedly in town to headline a fundraiser for his foundation.)

“I am here because you gave 40 years of your life to make this church the embodiment of San Francisco’s open door,” Clinton said. “And what I honestly believe (is what) America will come back to.”

Clinton praised Amos Brown for giving people second, third, fourth and 10th chances. The former president said he was recently talking with friends and one asked if he had to start over and pick a religion to follow, which would he pick.

“I’d have to be a Christian after the life I’ve lived,” Clinton quipped. “Because we believe in a God of second chances.”

He referenced how the mapping of the human genome showed that people “were 99.5 percent the same.”

“But we spend 99 percent of our time worrying about that half percent,” Clinton said.

Clinton didn’t mention any political party or President Trump by name, though he did refer to him obliquely. The world is so connected now, Clinton said, that walls won’t keep us apart.

The only walls that we can’t get over, he said, “are the walls we build in our hearts.”

Clinton said Amos Brown reminded people that no matter how rich they are, “we’re all headed to the same place.”

“We can’t be turned off by crazy things that are on the Internet. Crazy things that are said. It all comes down to the Good Samaritan,” Clinton said. “It all comes down to whether you want to live in an ‘us and them’ world or a ‘we’ world.”

Bill Clinton’s conciliatory remarks were a far cry from the past week’s worth of intraparty Democratic Party sniping inspired by leaked excerpts from Hillary Clinton’s new 494-page third memoir, “What Happened,” to be released next week.

In an excerpt that was leaked online, Clinton criticized her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, independentVt., writing that “his attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” campaign.

“I don’t know if that bothered Bernie or not,” Hillary Clinton wrote.

Sanders responded this week during an appearance on CBS “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

“Look, you know, Secretary Clinton ran against the most unpopular candidate in the history of this country, and she lost. And she was upset by that,” Sanders told Colbert when asked about Clinton’s book. “I understand that.”

“Our job now is not to go backwards, it’s to go forward. It is to try to create the nation we know we can become,” Sanders said. “I think it’s a little bit silly to keep talking about 2016. We’ve got too many problems.”