Posted on 09/20/2013 1:53:01 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
KALAMAZOO, MI -- Members of the Michigan State Conference NAACP are gathering in Kalamazoo this weekend to consider how to address the "mass movement to subvert democracy" in the United States, convention speakers said.
"The will of voters is being completely overtaken" on several fronts, including efforts to overturn the federal Affordable Care Act, restrict voter registration and access to the polls, and, in Michigan, the use of emergency managers in financially stressed cities, said Derrick Miller, president of the Mississippi State Conference NAACP, and the Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III, national NAACP vice president of stakeholder relations.
Rivers and Miller held a press conference Friday at Kalamazoo's Radisson Center Hotel & Suites, site of the Michigan NAACP's three-day annual convention, which starts Friday night.
Also at the press conference were Michigan NAACP President Yvonne White and Charles Warfield, president of the Metropolitan Kalamazoo Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Rivers, a native of South Carolina, referred to the current political climate as the "third Reconstruction" in the nation's historic battle over civil rights. The first Reconstruction occurred with the Civil War and the end of slavery; the second Reconstruction was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s. Now once again, Rivers said, American society is facing a "moral dilemma" on whether all its citizens are offered equal rights, protections and opportunities.
"Folks will say 'I'm Christian' or 'I'm Christian right,' but the Christian right is so often wrong" and acts against Christian principles, Rivers said. "You've got moral dilemmas in the black church, too.
"It's horrendous when Christians attack, in public, the right to vote," Rivers said. "It's mind-boggling ... that faith communities are debating same-sex marriage and saying nothing about gun violence in America."
One "evil" singled out by Rivers was efforts to thwart Obamacare.
"In South Carolina, you've got people trying to terrorize black folks from accepting health care under the Affordable Care Act," Rivers said.
He drew an analogy between the fight over the ACA and school desegregation. In both cases, he said, a Supreme Court decision declared the law of the land, only to face fierce resistance, especially in the South.
Rivers referred to Republicans' current threat to shut down government in an effort to stop implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
"You've got people encouraging government to shut down and defund something that is legal," he said.
Johnson said the NAACP "has always been the conscience of the country," and a key part of that is emphasizing the need to put "people before profits" in determining social policy.
"If people are not in the equation, the decision should be made easy," Miller said. Miller and Rivers both have ties to Michigan. Miller is a Detroit native, and Rivers lived in Detroit during the 1960s and '70s, and has a grandson who is a former student at Kalamazoo Public Schools.
"I'll always be indebted to Kalamazoo" because of the education his grandson achieved in KPS, Rivers added, saying the young man just finished his first year of college with a 3.9 grade-point average.
He added that Michigan has played a critical role in the Civil Rights Movement.
"Michigan has been on the forefront of so many battles," Rivers said. "Michigan never will get full credit for developing the black middle-class, with the Big Three and the labor movement.
"Detroit is synonymous with the struggle," he added. "The first time that Martin Luther King ever said, 'I had a dream' was in Detroit."
The NAACP conference officially kicks off tonight with a soul food dinner and public mass meeting at Galilee Baptist Church, 1216 N. Westnedge Ave. The public meeting is at 7 p.m.
Other public events include a Walk a Mile in My Shoes fitness talk at 6:30 a.m. Saturday from the Radisson to Martin Luther King Park, and a 8 a.m. Sunday worship service at the Radisson.
White said about 175 delegates are expected to participate in the convention.
NAACP leaders: Efforts to block Obamacare and change election laws a ‘subversion of democracy’
Perhaps NAACP you can explain how doing the will of the people is a subversion of democracy?
The majority of citizens want the abomination of Obamacare repealed and our election laws reformed. That is democracy.
How about the Subversive-in-Chief’s refusal to follow laws?
Is it racist if we call it a Representative Republic?
It is a subversion of democracy to fail to read a bill before you sign it.
It is a subversion of democracy, to rule by Executive order when the Congress passes the laws.
It is a subversion of democracy to go to war without a declaration of war from Congress.
It is a subversion of democracy to ban constitutionally protected rights by regulations, as with gun restrictions.
It is a subversion of democracy to create Czars to rule outside of the public eye.
It is a subversion of democracy to hide from the public the financial and other information when congress seeks to investigate as part of its oversight duties.
It is a subversion of democracy to weaken the military which protects us, while giving billions of dollars to the Muslim Brotherhood front groups.
But it is not a subversion for Congress to actually vote on something, to debate something, to reject something, because the people do not wish it.
According to the National Association for the Advancement of Communist Priniciples (NAACP), limiting blacks to a single vote per candidate in each election is “subverting democracy”.
We are a republic or at least we started out that way
Maybe the Republicans should not have liberated these ingrates from slavery, since they obviously want it again.
"The will of voters is being completely overtaken" on several fronts, including efforts to overturn the federal Affordable Care Act, restrict voter registration and access to the polls, and, in Michigan, the use of emergency managers in financially stressed cities, said Derrick Miller, president of the Mississippi State Conference NAACP, and the Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III, national NAACP vice president of stakeholder relations.
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