| Author |
Message |
    
Libralind2
Veteran Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 696
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 04, 2007 - 04:28 pm: | 
|
NAACP president resigns after 19 months By ERIN TEXEIRA, AP National Writer
44 minutes ago
NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon is quitting the civil rights organization, leaving after just 19 months at the helm, he told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Gordon cited growing strain with board members over the group's management style and future operations.
"I believe that any organization that's going to be effective will only be effective if the board and the CEO are aligned and I don't think we are aligned," Gordon said. "This compromises the ability of the board to be as effective as it can be."
Gordon said he will give up his duties before month's end. He spoke by phone from Los Angeles, where he had just attended the taping of the NAACP Image Awards.
Dennis C. Hayes, general counsel of the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is expected to serve as interim president, Gordon said.
Hayes filled the same role after Kweisi Mfume resigned the presidency in 2004 after nine years.
Gordon said that while the NAACP is an advocacy organization, it needs to be more focused on service and finding solutions.
"I'm used to a CEO running an organization, with the board approving strategy and policy," Gordon said. "But the NAACP board is very much involved."
Gordon said he made the decision in recent weeks and told the board at its annual meeting in New York City in mid-February.
NAACP leaders were surprised by his decision and engaged in hours of discussion, he said.
"They expressed disappointment," Gordon said. "We attempted to see whether there was a way to continue but that didn't happen."
Gordon sounded weary as he boarded a flight home to New York City on Sunday.
"I don't view this as I'm right and they're wrong. I view this as I see things one way and they see things a different way," he said. "That misalignment between the CEO and the board is unhealthy."
Asked about his plans after leaving the NAACP, Gordon said: "I'm going to catch my breath."
"What I've clearly learned in my tenure here is that all is not well in black America, that's for sure," he said. "I believe I have a lot to offer. I've got to find a way to be engaged that optimizes what it is I bring to the table. My intention is not to disengage, but to find a different way."
Gordon, 61, was a surprise pick for the NAACP's top post. When he took over on August 1, 2005, he had no track record in traditional civil rights circles. He had spent 35 years in the telecommunications industry and retired in 2003 from his post as president of the Retail Markets Group for Verizon Corp.
Critics said he wouldn't be a good fit for the nearly 98-year-old organization.
However, he smoothed strained relations between the NAACP and the White House, meeting with President Bush three times in less than a year. He used his corporate ties to lend quick assistance to black New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina. And he hired a number of key national employees whose reputations inspired staff members.
Gordon "brought a level of competence that we hadn't had," Julian Bond, chairman of the board, said last year.
Bond also has acknowledged that, with 64 members, the NAACP's board of directors is large and sometimes unwieldy. But he has defended it, saying it allows a wide range of members voices to be heard.
|
Robynmarie
Regular Poster
Username: Robynmarie
Post Number: 342
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 04, 2007 - 05:44 pm: |
|
I never throught Bruce was a good fit for the N double A Cp. Bruce obviously liked the glitz and glammour and made sure he stuck around for the Image Awards.
Good Riddance
Now maybe the NAACP will hire Russell Simmons. I think at one point he was interested. |
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1957
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 04, 2007 - 06:14 pm: |
|
why russell simmons? |
Robynmarie
Regular Poster
Username: Robynmarie
Post Number: 343
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 04, 2007 - 06:57 pm: |
|
Russell Simmons would put a popular name and face to an old organization and would definitely help with fundraising and marketing, which this group sorely needs. I think two years ago when they hired Bruce, Simmons had indicated he wanted the job. How he would deal with a 64-member (outrageous number) board is another question.
The NAACP needs to be redefined to be relevant.
They are best known for their get- out- the- vote operations and legal defense, ie getting folks wrongly convicted out of prison, helping with civil rights cases, police brutality. I would like for the NAACP to focus more on education and entreprenuership.
But whomever they hire will have to get along with Julian Bond, who I think is part of the problem. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 3824
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 11:40 am: |
|
Now maybe the NAACP will hire Russell Simmons. I think at one point he was intereted.
(It they do that they may as well hire Shug Knight, Flavor Flav or Busta Rhymes and call it a day) |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3759
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 11:56 am: |
|
Russell Simmons wouldn't be my first choice for a replacement but he operates several successful businesses and so he should be able to run this organization in an efficient manner. If I were him (or whoever the replacement shall be) I would reduce the number of board members. It's no wonder they can't get anything accomplished with that many HNICs.
|
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 3827
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 12:00 pm: |
|
Russell Simmons wouldn't be my first choice for a replacement but he operates several successful businesses and so he should be able to run this organization in an efficient manner.
(He's hooked up with them dope dealers up in Queens--and probably across the nation by now.
The organization would become another dope front-- |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8626
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 12:12 pm: |
|
I don't know if I'd want Russell Simmons to be the Chief Executive of the NAACP. But he might provide some much needed energy and fresher perspective to the organization via being a member of its board of directors. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 3830
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 12:23 pm: |
|
I don't know if I'd want Russell Simmons to be the Chief Executive of the NAACP. But he might provide some much needed energy and fresher perspective to the organization via being a member of its board of directors.
(The Negro is too hot. I would allow him to be a member. I would allow him to be a contributor.
He is driving around in a bullet proof car. He is doing this for a reason.
You can work with these people but you can't get them entangled with you--and allowing them to be the HEAD of the organization--be the same as getting John Gotti. Or Irv Gotti. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8628
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 12:26 pm: |
|
Chris,
Let's be real, now. There are foks who are in the highest arenas in government and business who are at least loosely affiliated with organized crime. Hell. JFK was elected PRESIDENT on the strength of that. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 3832
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 12:35 pm: |
|
This guy is too close. When he got gunned down at a rally everybody would be looking stupid.
But we need not worry. White folks is crazy but they ain't THAT crazy! |
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1961
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 01:05 pm: |
|
beyond the resignation, does any one have any details of the conflict between Gordon and the Board...can discrimination be solved through traditional business strategies?
how can an organization teach black people to love themselves in a way that is beneficial to black people not individuals? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7612
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 01:13 pm: |
|
A marriage between the NAACP and Hip-Hop might work. Lord knows they could both use a change of direction. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8631
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 01:15 pm: |
|
Yukio,
Sounds like there was some confusion between Gordon and NAACP Board with respect to how the organization was to be managed. That's not unusual. But I suspect what happened was there were too few SPECIFICS were established and mutually-agreed about what Gordon was charged with doing PRIOR to his being made President.
What's the mission of the NAACP, anyway?
I mean, I thought it was created to end oppression against Black foks. Not to be teaching brothas/sistas how to love themselves and each other. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 1949
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 01:38 pm: |
|
"A marriage between the NAACP and Hip-Hop might work."
And that would clearly demonstrate how pathetic and tragic Negroes are.
|
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 3763
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 01:45 pm: |
|
LOL @ NT. Think about it. Russell could bring in Kimora and she could bring in some FABULOSITY. It really could work.
|
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8632
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 01:51 pm: |
|
I'm very suspicious of powers that are often attributed to hip-hop that are seldom if at all proven. So I don't really buy this merging of NAACP and hip-hop thing, per se.
I do think, though, every organization, even one that's as accomplished and venerable as the NAACP could use different, fresher, perhaps even OPPOSING perspectives and influences.
So from that vantange point, I do think it might be good idea for the NAACP to bring into its fold someone who's got a true/authentic connection with the younger elements of the conscience and spirit of the times. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7616
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 01:57 pm: |
|
Since providing legal defense to facilitate fair trials has always topped the NAACP agenda, this is certainly something that the hip-hop culture could relate to. |
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1963
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 08:05 pm: |
|
ABM: part of the struggle is to acknowledge that everybody can't be successful and at the same time, fighting the 'good fight.'
i think self-love means make better decisions for yourself and family, and so that needs to be taught somewhere...but in a secular institution. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8637
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 08:15 pm: |
|
Yukio: "...part of the struggle is to acknowledge that everybody can't be successful and at the same time, fighting the 'good fight.'"
Who determine who should be successful and when they're to be successful? |
Robynmarie
Regular Poster
Username: Robynmarie
Post Number: 345
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 05, 2007 - 11:31 pm: |
|
Simmons Isn't the Answer to NAACP Woes
Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson,
Pacific News Service, Jan 21, 2005
Editor's Note: Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, reportedly being eyed for the top spot at the NAACP, would need much more than his savviness with youth to lead the organization away from its decades-long abandonment of the black poor.
LOS ANGELES--The buzz is that hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons is in line for the top spot in the NAACP. A national search team is currently interviewing candidates to succeed outgoing NAACP president Kweisi Mfume. Some veteran NAACP-watchers and critics publicly tout Simmons because they think he can appeal to the younger generation. They're off the mark.
At first glance, Simmons seems a plausible candidate. The standard knock against the nation's oldest civil rights organization is that it's too old, staid and hopelessly out of touch with young blacks. But it will take much more than Simmons' dynamism and purported youth savvy to revive the flagging fortunes of the NAACP.
The problem is not an aging membership, but the NAACP's disconnect from activism, failure to address the problems of the black poor, embrace of showy fights, repeated Bush-bashing and blatant push for any and all Democratic office-seekers. The NAACP can't drum up new members, old or young, because it has been missing in action in recent years on many of the critical issues that tear at black communities.
The organization, for example, wasted valuable time, energy and resources fighting with South Carolina officials over whether the Confederate flag should fly over the statehouse. But the flag's removal wouldn't have saved one black farm, improved failing public schools, increased funds for historically black colleges, created more jobs or reduced poverty for South Carolina's blacks.
The NAACP's penchant for mediagenic showpiece battles that do nothing to solve the black poor's thornier problems did not begin with Mfume. The collapse of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s marked the turning point for the NAACP. It became the political springboard for the newly emergent black middle class, fighting hard to get upwardly mobile blacks into corporate management and elite universities and in front of and behind TV cameras. It fought to secure more business loans, elect more black Democrats to state and national offices and, of course, unhoist the Confederate flag.
Meanwhile, the black poor have grown more numerous and more desperate. They are trapped in segregated or re-segregated neighborhoods, their children shuttled off to abominably failing public schools. They're plagued by crime, drugs, gangs, and are stuffed into bulging jail cells. The wealth and income gap between the black haves and have-nots has widened even farther.
NAACP leaders are incapacitated by this widening gap and the shifting political trends. A tilt by NAACP leaders toward hard-edged activism carries the risk of alienating the corporate donors and the Democratic politicians they carefully cultivate. Such a stance also would draw even more fire from the growing ranks of pro-GOP-leaning blacks the NAACP has alienated with its relentless attacks on Bush.
The irony is, polls show that many of the young people Simmons' NAACP backers expect him to win over are either disgusted with Democrats, hopelessly distant from both political parties, or openly sympathetic to the pro-business, self-help, family-values pitch of the GOP. Republican strategists know this. They're wooing and dumping millions into black churches' youth programs through Bush's faith-based initiatives.
Mfume recognized the folly of continuing to escalate the war with Bush. Before his departure, he asked for and got a meeting with the president. Some critics accused Mfume of cozying up to Bush, but the meeting had nothing to do with pandering, kowtowing, or endorsing any part of Bush's agenda. Despite the meeting, Mfume and NAACP officials remain miles apart from Bush on school vouchers, Social Security, universal health care, affirmative action, judicial appointments, the Iraq war and the continuing erosion of civil liberties protections. It was simply a smart and practical move to recognize that, like it or not, Bush, not Kerry, won the election and will be in the White House for four years. It kept open the possibility that there are issues -- such as greater funding for HIV/AIDS programs, public education and health care -- in which both sides might find common ground.
Simmons, or whoever the NAACP chooses to be at its helm, will have the tough task of bridging the gaping class and political divides among African Americans, crafting credible programs to tackle black poverty and finding a working accommodation with the Bush administration. A youth movement is not the answer to those problems.
PNS contributor Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and author of "The Crisis in Black and Black." He publishes the Hutchinson Report, an online public issues newsletter.
|
Yukio
Veteran Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1965
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 06, 2007 - 05:54 am: |
|
Who determine who should be successful and when they're to be successful?
i suspect that is a personal choice, as an individual and a people. but the latter, imo, is more tricky. |
Libralind2
Veteran Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 705
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 06, 2007 - 10:11 am: |
|
I suggest if you want to know the problems of the NAACP, join your local chapters. I did and was so discouraged, they wont get a nickle from me until they clean it up. (and until I find a job..LOL) That's all Im sayin
LiLi |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8641
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 06, 2007 - 10:13 am: |
|
LiLi,
Please give us a hint of how bad things were at your local NAACP. |
Libralind2
Veteran Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 717
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 06, 2007 - 10:50 pm: |
|
I'll get back to you on this Abm
LiLi |
Robynmarie
Regular Poster
Username: Robynmarie
Post Number: 347
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 09:40 am: |
|
My local NAACP is filled with lots of ole school hangers-on who don't know how to bow out gracefully. They refuese to give the youngsters (and I talking about folks in their thirties nad forties) any real authority. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8658
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 10:00 am: |
|
Robynmarie,
Many would assert what you describe is the central problem of progression of Black foks as a whole. Which is sadly ironic, seeing at prior generations were wise enuff to make YOUNG foks (ala MLK, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, etc.) the public, central figures of Black advocacy. Not only do those younger foks have the charisma and energy, there's the assumption and hope that the cause might endure.
These days, one's often get the impression that older Black foks HATE our yungins. Though, admittedly, the sentiments seem mutual. |
Libralind2
Veteran Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 719
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 11:51 am: |
|
Robynmarie..exactly
LiLi |
Email This Page