After fighting for the right to vote for over 100 years,
is the NAACP now ready to disenfranchise Benton Harbor
members?
Last August 22, 2011 MI NAACP president Yvonne White asked Rev. Pinkney for the Benton Harbor chapter's 2010 "Branch Election" report.
He emailed it to her that same day, and received this email reply:
Rev. Edward Pinkney,
Your Officer's Report has been received and will be filed at the state office. Thank you!
Juanita Taylor, Secretary, MI State Conference NAACP
Now, five months later, Yvonne White has emailed Pinkney stating that the MI NAACP will come to BH on Feb. 25, 2012 to hold elections. Rev. Pinkney was elected branch president by wide margins in both 2009 and just five months ago, August 13, 2011.
White says this coming election will be forced on the BH branch because the report Pinkney sent last August, which sec'y Juanita Taylor accepted, was not signed (how does one sign an email?), and a 2010 election was not held by the branch. According to White, the BH branch is no longer in "Good Standing."
Pinkney says there are two untruths in White's most recent email: she claims it had been explained to the BH membership that the 2009 election was only good until 2010, and that the state NAACP "attempted to work with the Branch to schedule that election. However, for various reasons this never took place." Pinkney says these things never happened.
White also stated: "It is also my understanding that the Branch has not met in more than six months and there are no current Executive Committee members." It would be almost no effort for her to discover that BH NAACP has a slate of officers and meets every single month.
Do BH NAACP members have to fight the organization which supposedly stands for free and fair elections for all? Why should the August 13, 2011 election be tossed out? Is this really about silencing Pinkney? It certainly wouldn't be the first time! It's extremely distressing to see an organization such as the NAACP act like Emergency Manager Joe Harris who already disenfranchised all BH voters! Is the NAACP the new EM?
(For the record, the BH chapter is called Twin City Area Branch NAACP #3155.)
