NAACP Convention and the Peace Prize

My 2nd NC NAACP State Convention as a member of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Branch had many highlights today in Hickory.

The line for our luncheon featured an opportunity to talk with William J. Barber III, the son of the NC NAACP President, and a freshman physics major at NCCU. William’s focus is on opportunities to create jobs in local, alternative energy generation and transmission.

Caitlin Swain McSurley, daughter of NAACP legal redress chair, Al McSurley, is a 1L at Duke Law School, and shared ideas of defending US service personnel accused of violating interrogation standards while Bush administration officials are shielded, whose tortured standards were in clear violation of US law and treaty obligations.

Our luncheon speaker was Prof. Timothy Tyson, author of the award winning “Blood Done Sign My Name.”

Tim Tyson explained why African-American culture is celebrated around the world. It has to do with the strivings of a people yearning to breathe free from the yoke of white supremacy. The people of the world are sympathetic to this movement, and it is up to us to push this movement forward.

Prof. Tyson highlighted the multi-racial “fusion” government that won broad electoral victory in NC in the 1890’s, only to see its leadership massacred in a reign of white supremacist terror in 1898.

Tyson sees the resurgent NAACP in North Carolina as potentially restorative of the human based policies of the 1898 fusion movement.

He recounted the historic, world-wide celebration of Obama’s election to the presidency of the USA, and the historic recalcitrance of national NAACP leadership to supporting grassroots efforts toward achieving true equality.

What was not addressed during the luncheon, was the broad disparity of responses to Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. Here’s my view:

How 'bout Obama donate the $14M cash prize to the USIP? It would put the USIP on the map, and nearly double its budget. During the Bush regime, the US Institute for Peace became a political tool of the Republican Party agenda, like every other branch of government. But there were still good people there who toughed it out, ready to work with the likes of Larry Wittner when the Bush season drew to a close.

My congressman's district liaison never heard of the USIP, as though it was classified information. Let's put the annual USIP essay project in every school in America, thanks to Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.

John Heuer
North Carolina Peace Action