There is no doubt that the NAACP needs help . You can attack individuals , accuse them of being agents and ruin their reputations.Is all that negativity all you have left? Have you given up? I think all of our energy would be better spent coordinating a message that is positive and consistent. Sometimes its hard and frustrating to struggle on in the face of indifference. But sometimes that what struggle calls for. That what people like Julian Bond,John Lewis , Malcom X and Martin Luther King did all their lives.
Oh and Jack, let's hope the revolution doesn't start before 7am in the morning. I've never heard so much moaning and groaning about an early morning call.
Let's stop the attacks and figure out another way . Thanks Morphus, your constructive ideas are refreshing.
And please, before you criticize my writing, comment about who I might know and attack me for who knows what, I submit I've been around awhile and seen this petty bs before. This accomplishes nothing .

Keep up the good work

There is no doubt that the NAACP needs help . You can attack individuals , accuse them of being agents and ruin their reputations.Is all that negativity all you have left? Have you given up? I think all of our energy would be better spent coordinating a message that is positive and consistent. Sometimes its hard and frustrating to struggle on in the face of indifference. But sometimes that what struggle calls for. That what people like Julian Bond,John Lewis , Malcom X and Martin Luther King did all their lives.
Oh and Jack, let's hope the revolution doesn't start before 7am in the morning. I've never heard so much moaning and groaning about an early morning call.
Let's stop the attacks and figure out another way . Thanks Morphus, your constructive ideas are refreshing.
And please, before you criticize my writing, comment about who I might know and attack me for who knows what, I submit I've been around awhile and seen this petty bs before. This accomplishes nothing .

Keep up the good work

Here is her bio from The NetRoots Nation website (she was a panelist for one of the break-out sessions):

Leila McDowell is a communications strategist who works exclusively on social change issues. Currently, she works on behalf of the Justice at Smithfield campaign, representing workers in Tar Heel, North Carolina who have been fighting to join together in a union since 1994.
She is a co-founder and former vice president of McKinney & McDowell Associates, which grew from one client to a major firm successful in helping its clients impact the national conversation and change national perception and policy.
McDowell is a former broadcast reporter with several ABC affiliates, WPIX-TV (NY), CNN, NPR, AP radio and others.

http://www.netrootsnation.org/node/863

I am pretty sure this is the same person as the NAACPs involvement in the Smithfield campaign is pointed out in the letter from “Julian Bond”.

So now we know who MacDowell is

They don't want to engage bloggers unless it is on THEIR TERMS. Bloggers are unique and individual, and have to be engaged in collective fashion. Something that the NAACP doesn't have a clue about.

Any organization with 63 Board Members will never be able to agree the hell on ANYTHING.

The NAACP gets invites to Blogging While Brown, Netroots Nation and any other national forums where bloggers will be present – I don't think they even send RSVPs regretting they can't send representatives.

And the problem with the NAACP is NOT THE LOCAL CHAPTERS. The local chapters, more often than not, are doing the things the NATIONAL OFFICE IS SUPPOSED TO ORCHESTRATE.

The problem of the NAACP has long been at the National Level. Not the local chapters – in fact, the locals get their hands tied and threats to have their charters REMOVED by the National Office if they don't do what the National office TELLS THEM.

Shannon Reeves has a lot of ancedotes to tell about how the Oakland Chapter has been major-league dogged because he switched political parties and the NAACP is supposed to be NON-PARTISAN.

Nor–evidently–is she to be taken seriously. If this is how the NAACP demonstrates its relevance in 2009, then I'm afraid that they'll find themselves tossed to the junk heap of political irrelevance along side Black Republicans and the John Birch Society.

The Association is clearly not concerned with reaching out, but with shutting out; shutting out those who could help them (because reaching out would invariably expose their inefficiency, incompetence, and weakness). Time was, when a business or institution received a letter from the NAACP, they took it seriously and changed their behavior. Now the Association is but a cartoon of its former self, and is ridiculed and laughed at accordingly.

And I think that's a sad shame.