Seeking ‘right balance’ for Stamford NAACP
In the first few months as leader of any organization you’re pretty much living your life in a fishbowl. Fairly or not, every one of your meetings, speeches, actions, or scratch of your head are going to be on the people’s minds. How will you compare to the previous president? Now that you are voted in, how is this going to affect me? Regardless of what you are saying, what are your real intentions for the organization? How will you fare in a time of crisis? These questions, and all those that follow are definitely fair game in my book.
Becoming president of the Stamford branch of the NAACP when the pandemic has harmed many throughout the City of Stamford is probably the most complicated task I have taken on in my life. But I do so with passion, love and service to neighbors, youth, and fellow Stamfordites of all walks of life in mind. During a time of crisis you don’t have much time to get it right — so I want to share a little about what your local branch has been up to these past few weeks.
In late 2019 the branch began to form a new executive committee with the intent to reinvigorate our efforts to bring full fairness and equity to the marginalized — and ensure everyone’s survival as truly free people in this country. The focus areas of our chapter align to the national office to include bringing parity to Federal Advocacy (voting rights and political representation, expanding youth and young adult engagement), education, economic opportunity, criminal justice, health, and ethical treatment of our climate and environment.
Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization. For too long, though, we have marched, we have protested, and we have mourned our lost ones. Business as usual has been costing us our livelihood and our lives. We recognize this and we are innovating and adapting to find common purpose during significant racial and cross-movement discourse that has stubbornly persisted well into the 21st century.
The pandemic has been disproportionately affecting communities of color, Blacks make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for 23 percent of COVID-19 deaths nationwide. This disparity has played out here in Stamford. The total number of positive tests per 1,000 for Blacks and Hispanics have been running at twice the rate of our white counterparts. This virus has claimed 150,000plus lives to date, including our very own immediate past president of the Stamford NAACP, Jack Bryant.
For that reason, targeted coronavirus testing has been our branch’s No. 1 priority; it is essential for health equity and mitigates the negative impact of COVID-19 on our city. Right now, the focus is still on continued funding for expanded testing and protocols that follow the guidelines recommended by public health experts — wearing face coverings in public, maintaining physical distance, exercising proper hygiene, minimizing crowds and carefully reopening businesses.
In collaboration with the City of Stamford, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), Stamford Fire Department and Stamford Police Department, we brought free testing to more than 500 hard-to-reach individuals that yielded handfuls of positives that might not otherwise have been discovered. The Stamford NAACP has provided more than 28,000 masks to 2,800 apartment units in 26 buildings with affordable housing. None of this would have been possible without having raised more than $23,000 toto purchase required supplies and items needed for safety precautions for each doctor, nurse or program volunteer. Our leadership on this front has yielded significant increases in testing in the Black community, putting us roughly on par with the non-Hispanic white population. The latest data shows we are achieving our objectives.
Equally important, our goals for our local chapter include creating events that address our civil discourse and increasing community involvement in our fight for true freedom. We want our local chapter to be a safe haven that responds from a place of openness. Just this past month we collaborated with “Picture That,” an award-winning art consultancy led by Valerie A. Cooper, founding owner of the Stamford-based business. Sixteen Black Fairfield County artists served as the frontline workers for the project to raise consciousness and counter acts of violence while creating space for Black imagination, innovation, and Black joy. If you haven’t witnessed the awe-inspiring event and breathtaking fine art in our street, I encourage you to visit the Ferguson Library Plaza and take in the inspiring view.
While the NAACP National Board of Directors doesn’t have an official platform for statue removal, we do recognize monuments are not history, and the continued elevation of those who have done wrongdoings in this country is a signal to people of color that America has not repudiated racism. In that respect, we have prioritized transforming the collective understanding of our nation’s history which does involve reassessing which legacies should be celebrated.
People are gaining a new understanding that it is impossible to win economic justice without racial justice. Economic justice is about fairness across generations — ensuring the economic promise of rising living standards for successive generations and that no particular group of people are specifically left out of the opportunity. Our local branch is concentrating on growing responsible sharing in banking practices and access to the capital markets. It is important to note small and medium-sized Black-owned businesses have been hit the hardest by the COVID-19 crisis. The loss of more than 400,000 firms represents 40 percent of Black businesses nationwide. Stamford has more than 50 Black-owned businesses, many of which suffered tremendously. Additionally, Black employment is disproportionately concentrated in consumer-facing service industries and the retail sector, as well as local government — all hit hard in our city by pandemic-related slowdowns.
During a time that calls for “social distancing,” the Stamford Branch of the NAACP has been challenged to strike the right balance of becoming rightfully activated by the massive uprisings against racial injustice and police violence across the country while enduring the toll of the pandemic. We see these things as inextricable.
I’m sure we won’t get it right every time. Nonetheless, it is our promise to work with executive, legislative, and regulatory powers at every level to begin to rewrite the rules and reimagine private enterprise, democracy and shared unity so communities of every background cannot only survive but thrive. I have already been impressed with how our community has embraced our new NAACP and are collectively working together to tackle the most important issues of education, housing, criminal and police reform.
We can work together if we hear and respect each other’s voice. Now is the time to undo and unravel what has been propagating within our communities and the nation for 400 years. I know we can do it. One thing I’ve learned from standing with the community at our recent street mural event is that we are all in need of healing, and coming together can be a real, genuine source of jubilation that we all badly need after experiencing crisis. For those moments of joy I have observed and shared with others I am grateful.