Socialist Action /March 1999
National NAACP Gangs up with Demos to Oust Minneapolis Branch President
By DOUGLAS MANN
MINNEAPOLIS-More than a month after a bitter Jan. 9 election for president
of the local NAACP branch, the NAACP National Executive Board finally declared
an official winner.
The board announced that Rick Campbell, a deputy chief and fire marshal
in the Minneapolis Fire Department, had ousted incumbent president Leola
Seals by a 218 to 202 vote.
A prominent columnist for the Star Tribune, Doug Grow, reflected the
general line of the news media, the Democratic Party, and the city power
structure in an article praising the victory of Campbell over Seals. Grow
attributed the contentious nature of the election to "an exercise in
self-defeating, hair-splitting, internal politics."
But nothing could be further from the truth. Unlike most recent elections
in this country, which are little more than power struggles completely divorced
from any questions of policy, this election for Minneapolis NAACP president
involved real differences in policy, program, and practice.
Seals, who was originally elected as president in 1996, campaigned for
re-election defending the tactics of the 1960s civil rights movement-picket
lines, protest marches and rallies-that the branch had employed under her
leadership.
These, she said, were legitimate tactics for improving conditions for
minorities and correctly characterized her challengers as "people who
owe their allegiance to the downtown power structure."
Richard Jefferson, a former state legislator, who was the original candidate
picked to oust Seals, expressed the differences clearly.
Jefferson attacked Seals for taking part in protests against the school
board and city government, saying that "these are the tactics of the
'60s, and I don't think they worked that well in the '60s, and I don't think
they will work that well in the '90s."
Jefferson, of course, has conveniently forgotten that his entire career
and election as state legislator was only possible because of the tactics
of the civil rights movement of the 1960s led by Martin Luther King.
Under the leadership of Leola Seals, the NAACP organized protests against
the "Community School Plan."
In accord with the plan, students in neighborhoods that are predominately
non-white and have very high concentrations of poverty, are forced to attend
schools with the least experienced teachers and fewer and more outdated
text books than in schools for the district's more affluent children.
The Community School Plan was developed with the support of the Democratic
Party and Mayor Sharon Sayles-Belton as a device for undermining and reversing
modest progress made under a court-ordered desegregation plan in the 1970s
and '80s. In reality, the Community School is a plan to resegregate the
inner-city schools.
Protests against the Community School Plan put Seals and the Minneapolis
Branch of the NAACP at odds with Mayor Sayles-Belton, who has been the biggest
booster of the plan.
Sayles-Belton is the first African American and first woman to serve
as mayor of Minneapolis. As a former parole officer, she has close ties
to the law-enforcement institutions in the city.
Democrats also hold 11 of 12 seats on the city council, including 10
self-described "liberal" Democrats and six out of the seven seats
on the school board. The city council aggressively supports and unanimously
endorsed the Community School Plan.
The move to abandon desegregation as a goal, and to develop tactics to
reverse previous court-ordered desegregation plans, is not limited to Minneapolis
but is occurring in cities across the nation.
Wherever possible, Black politicians who are willing to put political
careers ahead of any allegiance to Black and poor communities are recruited
to play leading roles in this.
Mayor Sayles-Belton also supports a law-enforcement policy called CODEFOR.
This is a direct copy of the "zero tolerance" policing strategy
for poor and Black neighborhoods initiated by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in
New York City. Under this policy, Black males especially are targeted for
random searches, harassment, interrogation, and worse.
The result, both in New York and Minneapolis, is an atmosphere of police
terror and abuse in Black and poor inner-city neighborhoods. Under Seals,
the Minneapolis NAACP branch has demanded an end to the CODEFOR program,
calling it racially discriminatory.
The election of NAACP branch officers not only pitted Leola Seals against
a conservative wing of the branch, as most press accounts have noted, but
also against the mayor, the Democratic Party, and the institutions it controls
in Minneapolis.
Despite this, the anti-Seals forces had considerable difficulty in finding
a candidate to run against the popular Leola Seals.
The election for branch officers was originally scheduled for Nov. 15,
1998, and former state legislator Richard Jefferson was selected by the
anti-Seals forces to run against Seals. However, Jefferson was found to
be ineligible to run for any branch office because he failed to be current
on his dues.
Neither Campbell nor Jefferson had been active members before running
for branch president. And unlike candidates on the Seals slate, many of
the candidates that ran on the Campbell slate have not been active members
of the branch for some time, if ever.
The fight over Jefferson's eligibility provided the pretext for the national
office of the NAACP to take over the running of the election. The anti-Seals
forces had much to gain from this move.
The replacement of Ben Chavis with former Congressman Kweisi Mfume as
national president of the NAACP a few years ago signaled a turn away from
the kind of militant leadership, and more distant relationship from the
Democratic Party, that Chavis represented.
Carl Brede, a representative of the national office of the NAACP, took
charge of the electoral process in the Minneapolis branch and scheduled
a nominating meeting in December, which he chaired.
Although the branch membership had elected supporters of Leola Seals
to the five-person election supervisory committee at the December nominating
meeting, Carl Brede overturned the membership's decision by appointing six
Campbell supporters to the committee and appointing Matthew Little, a principal
leader of the anti-Seals forces, as the committee chairperson.
By gaining control of the electoral supervisory committee, the Little-Campbell
group gained control of the list of eligible voters.
Many supporters of Leola Seals were subsequently dropped from the list
of eligible voters or did not get official notice of the elections. And
those who were informed about the election by other means and went to the
polling place had to cast a challenged ballot.
Twenty-two ballots were challenged. Only four challenged ballots were
eventually counted.
A powerful coalition of inactive conservative branch members, the Democratic
Party, the mayor, and the national office of the NAACP had successfully
rigged the election.
The fight is not yet over. Outraged Seals supporters are mounting a challenge
to the election report that declared Campbell president-elect. But to win
this challenge they will have to go beyond demonstrating that the by-laws
and constitution of the NAACP were violated.
It will take a large, visible mobilization of the Black community and
its allies-using the tactics of the '60's-to force the powerful anti-Seals
forces to retreat from their despicable action.
Socialist Action /March 1999 |