San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Volunteers prepare for convention
As San Antonio gears up to host the NAACP’s national convention for the first time, an estimated 100 to 150 volunteers turned out Saturday for an initial training session to prepare for the upcoming event.
The civil rights organization expects 8,000 to 10,000 visitors will attend the 109th NAACP annual Convention happening at the Convention Center on July 14-18. The event is expected to bring $11 million in revenue to San Antonio, said Aba Blankson, the organization’s vice president for communications and digital media.
The theme of this year’s national convention is “Defeat Hate — Vote.”
The convention is a time when NAACP members vote on resolutions and various policy agendas. But it’s also a time to mobilize the black community across the nation and to boost civic engagement and voter participation, Blankson said.
“We know that the racism and hate and vitriol coming out of (President Donald Trump’s) administration in DC is unreal,” Blankson said Saturday. “It needs to be called out in every instance.”
Volunteers — like those who turned up at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio for the first training ses- sion Saturday — are critical to the success of the national convention, Blankson said. They serve as welcoming faces, local guides and sources of help to visitors who may not be familiar with the city’s landscape.
The effort to bring the NAACP’s national convention to San Antonio was led by the late Minnie Mabry Hill, who died May 4. Hill, 74, was the wife of Oliver Hill, president of the NAACP’s San Antonio branch. That branch is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
Oliver Hill called the national convention’s expected arrival in San Antonio “historic.” He noted that former mayor Ivy Taylor, City Manager Sheryl Sculley, Visit San Antonio and others sup- ported his late wife’s efforts to bring the largescale event here.
“San Antonio has the same problems that other cities have as far as racial injustices,” Oliver Hill said Saturday. “But I would like to think we are better than a lot of other cities. … I think everybody tries to very much be on one accord. And we can have our differences and we can disagree, but we don’t have to be disagreeable.”
Hill said he hopes the national convention will bring out people who have stayed silent about the way things are. “We hope that the convention will get them to the point that they would want to come and see what we’re doing and maybe change some minds,” he said.
“I don’t care about party affiliation. But I do care about common courtesies and ... fairness, equity, justice and freedom for everyone. And we thought if we bring the convention here, where everybody else will see what our goals are for all Americans, that maybe it would wind the arena up.”
Konise Millender of San Antonio, a teacher, was one of the volunteers who showed up for Saturday’s training session.
“I just want to make sure that we show a good face for San Antonio and that there are enough people there to make sure that anyone who comes to our city has a great time,” she said. “It is a big deal.”