The goal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is just what its name implies: to promote an agenda that defends and benefits the interests of people of color in America.
In deciding what policies to include on the association's platform, the leaders of the NAACP consider resolutions authored by its 1,800-some official chapters, scattered all over the country.
The lopsided statistics regarding the incarceration of African-American men is a major civil rights issue. In 2004, 21 percent of black men in their twenties who were not in college were in jail or prison. That NAACP branches have sprung up behind prison walls should be of no surprise.
Crossroads Correctional Center Branch #4003 in Cameron, Missouri, is the association's most prolific chapter, not just among prison branches but of all of the branches. It has authored three of the six resolutions adopted to the NAACP's criminal justice plank.
"Last year, this branch wrote a resolution that pledged the national NAACP's support to ending prison-based gerrymandering, and the national NAACP's support was critical to many of the gains made this year," says Peter Wagner, who heads an organization called the Prison Policy Initiative and communicates frequently with the members of #4003. "Watching how hard these incarcerated men worked to raise an issue of national importance -- but which won't benefit them directly -- is a real inspiration."
As soon as it was announced that Kansas City would host the NAACP's 101st annual convention this July, chapter #4003 sent a letter suggesting that the prison act as a satellite stop for a convention seminar. Cameron is an hour's drive from Kansas City, so the commute would be easy, but the convention's organizers would have to navigate some big-time bureaucracy in order to get the Missouri Department of Corrections to allow a specific list of convention-goers inside the maximum-security facility. Time was of the essence.
In response, the Crossroads prisoners heard crickets.
They sent more communications, including outlines of the seminar and the
names of confirmed keynote speakers. For a year, nothing.
The chapter members wondered if they were being snubbed.
Last December, Wagner sent a letter to the NAACP, echoing the inmates' inquiry. A response came a month later from the executive assistant to Benjamin Todd Jealous, the NAACP's president and CEO. It said that Wagner's inquiry had been forwarded to Ana Aponte-Curtis, senior director of events planning. Wagner never heard from Aponte-Curtis, and she didn't return The Pitch's calls, either.
Wagner remains optimistic, and says he very recently learned from Robert Rooks, the NAACP's director of criminal justice programs, that efforts are being made to include the Crossroads inmates in the convention. But when we called Rooks, he refused to confirm that any progress was being made.
It would be a shame if the area's most active NAACP members got a cold shoulder when the convention comes to town. When the NAACP's chairwoman, Roslyn Brock, was elected in February, she told USA Today,
"When we say people of color, we're really speaking to the issues of
people who have fallen through the cracks and have been left out of
prosperous society." Who fits that description better than prisoners?
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I will be speaking on a plenary panel regarding criminal justice reform at the NAACP convention this year. Regardless of whether the convention organizers find a formal way to include the prisoners - and I hope they will - I would be happy to travel to the prison to give a talk about my new book: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010). See http://www.newjimcrow.com.
I recently spoke about the book inside a prison outside Seattle. That book event was organized by the Black Prisoners Caucus and was one of the best events of my book tour so far.
Please let the NAACP members at Crossroads Correctional Center know about my interest in sharing the book with them.
Sincerely,
Michelle Alexander
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