By Quentin T. James, Political Action Chair of the Howard University Chapter of the NAACP

The symbolism of having the first African American President is being interpreted in many ways throughout American politics, and more directly in both the Atlanta and Charlotte mayoral races. In both southern cities, race has long been a deciding factor in the representative politics of the post-civil rights era. However, one must ask if symbolism and the level to which a glass ceiling is shattered is a worthy enough reason to measure a politician’s success or failure, without regard to their policies?

Since 1974 Atlanta has elected African American mayors to lead its city in every election. These mayors have done everything from developing the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport into the world’s busiest airport to bringing the 1996 Summer Olympic Games to the city. Their mutual successes have garnered Atlanta’s reputation as “the Capital of the South.” State Senator Kasim Reed and Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders, both African American candidates for mayor, hope to continue this tradition despite the perception that Atlanta is due for change in its racial politics.

By contrast, Anthony Foxx, the only Democrat in the Charlotte mayoral race, is attempting to become the city’s first African American mayor since 1987, and only the second ever.  (more…)

By Robert Rooks, Director of NAACP Criminal Justice Programs

As I was thinking about what to write for this blog, my mind kept floating to personal experiences of friends I’ve lost to violence and how inept responses to crime have made our communities less safe. My thoughts were confirmed minutes before I gave a workshop in LA last weekend when my workshop facilitator informed me that he had just received a call that his cousin had been shot and killed in Oakland. I know what a call like that feels like and after conversing with him about his loss, I knew I had to write about violence, how I believe incarceration makes our communities less safe, and introduce Smart and Safe as a strategy to address both violence and mass incarceration.

Over the years in response to violence, I’ve always been unsettled by the call to action that parents should be more responsible. Not because it is not true or that parental responsibility should not be at the top of the list. What’s unsettling about blaming parents for violence in communities is that when we do this, we often take away a call for community responsibility and a need to analyze systemic influences that perpetuates and creates violent scenarios in our communities. Although there are many factors to violence today, one important but over looked contributing factor is the role mass incarceration plays in destabilizing urban communities and creating environments that make our communities less safe.

Today, America is just 5% of the world population and has 25% of the world’s prisoners.  Over the last 30 years, the “war on drugs” has been our nation’s vain response to selling and using illegal drugs and is the reason why incarceration rates are so high. Not only does mass incarceration do little to address problems associated with drug use or drug selling, incarceration strategies over the last 30 years have actually made our communities less safe and in some instances, perpetuate continual violence. (more…)

By Jacqueline Patterson, Director of the NAACP Climate Gap Initiative

When a lot of us hear about climate change we might think, “Well, I like the polar bears as much as the next person, but there are definitely more pressing issues to work on in our communities than worrying about some melting ice near Antarctica!” Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that.

Climate Change is about Katrina, Rita, and Ike devastating communities in Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas. Climate Change is about our sisters and brothers in the Bahamas who will be losing their homes to rising sea levels in the coming few years. Climate Change is about our folks in Detroit, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere who have died from exposure to toxins from coal fired power plants.  Climate Change is about sisters and brothers in West Virginia who are breathing toxic ash from blasting for mountain top removal mining. Climate Change is about our folks in Thibodaux, Louisiana who are being forced to move within the next 10 years because rising sea levels will result in the submersion of the coastal land that is their home currently. It’s about the fact that race–over class–is the number one indicator for the placement of toxic facilities in this country.  Climate Change is about us. (more…)

By Shavon Arline, NAACP Health Programs Director

The healthcare reform debate has taken over our lives.  It has aired on the news, in the newspaper and on the radio. It is an issue that can’t be ignored.  On October 8, 2009, in partnership with the Washington DC Branch of the NAACP, Thursday Network of the Urban League and the Omicron Lambda Alpha chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the NAACP hosted the National Health care Reform Town Hall Meeting in Washington DC.

This live-streamed event was a pivotal moment for me as I sat and listened to the heart wrenching story from a young Howard University student, Zikia Jones-Martin , who shared with us her personal story in this healthcare debate.  Zikia’s mother was diagnosed with cancer and was no longer eligible for health care after losing her job.  She eventually had a relapse after being in remission and was rushed to the emergency room where she waited for hours just to receive a private room.  She lost her battle with cancer, right there in the hospital. Three days later, her family received the message that she was finally eligible for medical assistance.  Where was the help?  Where was the functional health care system that very well could have helped prevent this incident from occurring? (more…)

By Leila McDowell, NAACP Vice President for Communications

Wow.  Lou Dobbs isn’t just going after our Latino brothers and sisters anymore. The CNN television host, famous for his nasty and incendiary attacks on immigrants, has now set his sights on the African American community. In a radio broadcast last week, after a discussion of the brutal beating death of Chicago student Derrion Albert, Dobbs just went off:

“It’s a black community problem. And part of the problem is the black community is not being responsible and I mean turning Heaven and Earth to protect our children.”

And then:

“I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t want to hear your lame nonsense about how much money you need to save the next life. you have it in your power, the black churches, the black school leaders, the black community leaders, the black community organizers, the black parents of that community. Fix the problem. Quit whining, quit looking to someone else for the solution, and by God, let’s move ahead.”

Lame nonsense? Money? When I first read the transcript, I couldn’t immediately put my finger on exactly which part of Dobbs’ drivel made me so angry. Was it his glaring ignorance of “the black community” and our response to the Derrion Albert murders? The condemnation-to anyone who was paying attention-was swift and severe. From the NAACP to community organizers in Chicago, I’ve seen nothing but outrage, condemnation, and planning.

The danger of the Dobbs frame is that it forces folks to be defensive, to feel compelled to focus exclusively on their anger.  The reality is - as Martin Luther King pointed out decades ago - “violence is the language of the unheard”.  Frantz Fanon, author of the seminal book Wretched of the Earth, documented the violence of the oppressed against each other.

Chicago has the highest teen homicide rate in the country.  Tragically, there are many more Derrion Alberts - just not always caught on tape.  The real conversation we need to be having is not one of condemnation, but of examination of just what causes the violence of young men in our communities against their brethren and how do we prevent it. This, Dobbs might be interested to learn, is a “solution.”

So when Dobbs attacks us for making “excuses”, he joins a chorus that uses the mantra “don’t make excuses” to keep America, white and black, from having the crucial public discussion about solutions and demanding from a government we fund with our tax dollars what is needed to save our kids in urban wastelands: libraries, after school programs, quality schools, good health care, grocery stores, parenting classes, and opportunity.

Of course, in the end it’s not Dobbs I am so angry at. It’s CNN. In my years as a producer and a journalist, I knew of no TV station or newspaper that would allow such pure, uninformed, and downright nasty venom to be directed toward any particular group of people. It’s not that I worked for any particularly enlightened or even P.C. outlets - in fact, I did a stint at CNN in its early years - but we were news people, and it was our job to be accurate, fair and even-handed.

Lou Dobbs’ foul, ugly bigotry is not suitable for a news channel. CNN should be ashamed.

The NAACP Blog is geared toward promoting a free exchange of ideas. The views represented in individual posts may not represent the official position of the Association.

By Julian Bond

(Originally posted in The Washington Post, Friday, October 9, 2009)

The civil rights struggle for legal equality in America today is no less necessary, nor worthy, than a similar struggle fought by blacks several decades ago. Now, as then, Americans are denied rights simply because of who they are. When lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans gather in Washington on Sunday for the National Equality March, they will invoke the unfulfilled promise in our Constitution that they, too, are due equal protection under the law.

I will join them in their march because I believe in their equality and believe in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution that promises to protect it. I will join them because the humanity of all people is diminished when any class of people is denied privileges granted to others. I will join them because I know that when heterosexuals stand up and call for justice alongside their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters, the sooner justice will come.

In the ugly days of racial segregation, we had a dream. In August 1963 we came to Washington and declared that dream to the nation. Among us that day were LGBT Americans such as Bayard Rustin, the chief organizer of the ‘63 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. His homosexuality caused discomfort among some leaders of the day, and they played down his role in the march. But his heroic work has served as a model for civil rights organizers ever since.

We can no longer pretend that civil rights do not include rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. Flimsy justifications for anti-LGBT bias are giving way to evidence that society is strengthened, not weakened, when LGBT people are given equal protection under the law. Where they are free to marry those they love, the sky has not fallen. Where they cannot be denied employment and housing simply because of who they are, the sky has not fallen. Where they serve nobly in the military without the burden of secrecy, the sky has not fallen. Rather, when all people are free to live up to their full potential, all of society benefits. Yet the United States still permits all these forms of discrimination.

And this is why we must march.

My friend Coretta Scott King said in 2000: “Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender or ethnic discrimination.” That is why the NAACP resolved several years ago that “we shall pursue all legal and constitutional means to support non-discriminatory policies and practices against persons based on race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or cultural background.”

The civil rights movement has achieved tremendous victories in past decades, and so we must again. The bias against LGBT people tolerated in this land, even at the end of the first decade of the new millennium, is ugly. We must create a better future, which will give us a past upon which we can look back and be proud. This weekend, those who believe in the ideals of our Constitution, those who have a dream that we will one day live in a nation where people will be judged not by whom they love but by the content of their character, and those who stand up for their ideals can be proud that they stood up and spoke out for justice.

The writer, a professor of history at the University of Virginia and distinguished professor in residence at American University, is board chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

By Benjamin Todd Jealous

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to share the stage with America’s legendary television dad, Bill Cosby. In a town hall forum titled “About Our Children,” Cosby and I, along with comedian Paul Rodriguez and University of Wisconsin Professor Maria Cancian, discussed poverty, parenting and the American dream in front of a national audience, broadcast live on MSNBC.

I spoke about my childhood education, as a kid growing up in California. I explained that my county had multiple schools. One, across the county, had resources I needed, while the school closer to my home did not. Because of local zoning law I was assigned to the school closer to home. Even as a child, I knew that I needed to be at the better school. I put up such a fight about it that my parents simply found a way to put me on the bus to the other school. They bent the rules so that I could have a better education.

I shared this story because it is an important example of my family taking responsibility for my education. It is a lesson that I will never forget, and it most certainly put me on the path to where I am today. But the other reason that I chose this anecdote is that it underscores another important reality, one often lost in these discussions of individual responsibility. In order to take control of my education, my family actually had to defy the law. Families often face enormous structural barriers to success, barriers that can impede even the most conscientious, tenacious and, yes, responsible parents.

Here is one example: today black teen unemployment sits at a staggering 35 percent. Think about that figure for a minute. We are not talking about a “jobless” rate here - unemployment figures count only the number of African-American teenagers actively looking for work. In other words, when an involved, responsible parent pushes Junior to go out and find a job, more than one third of the time there is simply no job to be found. This situation is not only discouraging - not to mention financially problematic - but it can actually undermine the parents’ authority in the home, because they are promoting a path that doesn’t exist. Personal responsibility alone cannot overcome structural impediments.

For a century, the NAACP has promoted individual responsibility to build strong black families and healthy communities, but to stop there would have been to ignore the gaping political obstacles to achieving our goals. Much of the public discourse continues to be dominated by the responsibility frame, but mere complaining about “those parents” or “the kids today” will not completely solve this nation’s problems. We need to address structural inequalities as well.

It was not lack of personal responsibility that caused Joseph Harris, a dedicated single father in DC, to be homeless. He was in a car accident and couldn’t work. Although he’s looking for work and working odd jobs, he can’t make ends meet. It’s just not enough.

It was not a dearth of family values that caused Milwaukee grandmother Amira Weaver to almost lose her home after she decided to help clean up her community by purchasing the crack house next door for her son. Mrs. Weaver had good credit, a 6 percent loan on her own home but was steered by an unscrupulous broker into a loan that, when she read the fine print, revealed she was paying 11 percent.

Similarly, it is not the absence of responsibility that caused Robert Floyd to get kidney cancer. He has lost sight in one eye, and is having problems in his other eye. His health insurance policy said they wouldn’t cover his eye or kidney problems, and now he may die while they wait, leaving behind his wife and a child.

Family values are important, but we must also have policies in place that value families. President Obama got it exactly right when he told the NAACP this summer that government had a responsibility to “overcome the inequities, the injustices, the barriers that still exist in our country.” He cited the high dropout rates in some black communities and the “crumbling schools and overcrowded classrooms, and corridors of shame in America filled with poor children,” noting that they are not just an African-American problem but an American problem that government needs to address.

* Cross Posted at The Grio

By Benjamin Todd Jealous

When I met Troy Davis earlier this year, I was convinced of his innocence. Why did it take the American justice system so long to act?

After years of heartbreak and disappointment, Troy Davis is finally getting a chance to have evidence heard in his case after being denied a fair trial since he was arrested almost two decades ago.

It should never have taken the American justice system this long to act.

Troy Davis was unjustly convicted and sentenced to die in 1991 for the murder of Mark Allen MacPhail, an off-duty policeman who was shot while working a second job as a security guard at a Burger King in Savannah, Ga.

There was no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime and seven of the nine witnesses recanted or contradicted their testimony, citing police coercion. One witness, a 16-year-old, said police threatened to hold him as an accessory to murder, warning that he would “go to jail for a long time and I would be lucky if I ever got out because a police officer got killed.”

Of the two eyewitnesses who stuck to their stories, Sylvester “Redd” Coles was himself considered a suspect in the killing. The other initially told police he could not identify the shooter.

Brenda Forrest, one of the jurors, summed it up: “If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row. The verdict would be not guilty.”

Yet the courts stubbornly refused to hear Davis’ claims of innocence. After numerous legal rounds, the U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 17, in a 3-2 decision, finally took the extraordinary step of ordering the U.S. District Court in Georgia to consider and rule on Davis’ claim of innocence—a directive the high court hasn’t issued in almost 50 years. But it’s not justice yet. The standard of proof in the evidentiary hearing turns our criminal justice system on its head. Davis will be expected to prove his innocence rather than for the state to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We hope that this unfair burden of proof does not once again deny Davis the fair hearing all Americans deserve.

Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied to Davis’ cause—former President Jimmy Carter, actor Danny Glover, former FBI director William Sessions and conservative Congressman Bob Barr, to name a few. And there were the people all over the world galvanized by organizations like the NAACP and Amnesty International who signed petitions and raised the visibility of the injustice of Troy Davis. Our Georgia branch tirelessly fought in the trenches, knocking on doors, holding marches, preaching in Georgia’s churches to bring the travesty to the light.

Earlier this year, I met Troy. I left the meeting convinced of his innocence. During my visit, I couldn’t help but notice the faces of several of the guards who for noticeable moments dropped their stony countenance, clearly moved by Davis’ plight. Later, as I was leaving, I encountered a woman in the prison parking lot who told me that a neighbor, a former Georgia prison guard, quit rather than be forced to march Davis to the death chamber.

This victory is a testimony to the best of our country: Davis’ individual perseverance and humble courage through an excruciating ordeal, the selfless dedication of his sister who despite having breast cancer waged a relentless struggle to save her brother and the grassroots activism and the voices of hundreds of thousands of people who lifted up his cause. Finally it was the Supreme Court where enough justices decided to step back from the brink of insanity and say no to executing a man who is probably innocent despite Justice Scalia and Thomas’s insistence to the contrary. It’s almost as if there was a realization that the very soul of America is at stake when we have a criminal justice system where innocence is irrelevant even when a man’s life is at stake. It was also an implicit rebuke to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 that has deleteriously cut back on the rights of death row inmates to challenge their execution despite new evidence of innocence.

More than 3,300 people continue to wither on our nation’s death rows, men and women who are almost universally poor, disproportionately African-American and frequently innocent.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1973, 135 people in 26 states have been released from death row based on claims of innocence. And there simply is no way to discern how many of the more than 1,100 inmates executed since 1977 were not guilty of the crimes they were accused of committing.

The Death Penalty Information Center lists several reasons for the appallingly large number of innocents on death row—eyewitness error, government misconduct by both the police and prosecution and the eliciting of false confessions, often from suspects with mental disabilities, sometimes resulting from police torture.

It should come as no surprise to those familiar with the American justice system that a significant percentage of those languishing on death row are, like Troy, African-American—41.7 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Black folks make up less than 14 percent of the population.

It is a national disgrace. And it’s a reminder of the cruel consequences of racism.

There is a victory to celebrate in the Troy Davis case. After years of anguish, he will have an opportunity to convince the courts of his innocence.

But other men and women who are equally innocent are being robbed of any chance. Many of them will be executed by the state in our names. Our nation must be better than that. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court decision augurs a growing realization that we have to change.

*Cross-posted on The Root