I dont really know where to put this thread, here in the local Cincinnati stuff or the Political Forum. If it belongs in the political side, please move it or ask me and I will.

Disgruntled NAACP members to ask Smitherman to resign
Smitherman's future is on the line Thursday night
Apr. 24, 2013



Christopher Smitherman / The Enquirer/Leigh Taylor

Written by
Mark Curnutte

Quote:NAACP MEETING

The NAACP Cincinnati chapter will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 25, at Unity Baptist Church, 3126 Fairfield Ave., Evanston.

Cincinnati NAACP chapter president Christopher Smitherman, though winning re-election to a fourth term in November, continues to draw criticism from members.

With the support of 100 voting members, a motion will be made at the general membership meeting Thursday night to ask Smitherman to resign or agree to a recall vote, said member Franki Kidd.

“He is using the NAACP for his personal and political agenda, not for civil rights,” she said.

Smitherman, who is also a Cincinnati councilman, told The Enquirer the attempts to unseat him are not newsworthy and that the newspaper should focus on the legitimate work of the NAACP. “It’s so nonsensical,” he said. “It makes no damn sense.”

He said a similar complaint at the state NAACP convention by the same group of organizers was dismissed by regional leaders.

Smitherman faced a presidential challenge from labor leader Robert Richardson Sr., though Smitherman won by a vote of 652-413. The election, because of complaints from the local chapter, was overseen by the Rev. Gill Ford, national NAACP director of Unit Administration.

In January, three former Cincinnati NAACP chapter presidents sent a letter to the national office. They requested an investigation of the chapter and its relationship to the anti-tax group Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes.

On Wednesday, Ford said he has received a number of correspondence from Cincinnati chapter members, but that none of them carried the required 20 signatures from voting members to rise to the level of internal administrative complaint.

“It’s not a complaint,” Ford said. “It’s a concern. One person does not weigh above another.”

His opponents say Smitherman’s relationship with COAST has weakened the NAACP as the black community faces ongoing challenges and disparities in education attainment, incarceration rates of black men, employment, income and violence. They say his position on Cincinnati City Council conflicts with his duties as NAACP chapter president, though that complaint is one that both the national NAACP office and Ohio Ethics Commission dismissed.

Smitherman and his supporters point to the chapter’s growing membership, estimated at 2,400, financial health and ability to lead signature drives to qualify issues – such as leasing the city’s parking system – for the public ballot as signs of its overall strength.■

Smitherman has called Richardson’s challenge and other complaints to his NAACP presidency an “attempted Democratic Party and union takeover.” A political independent and fiscal conservative, Smitherman reacted angrily Wednesday to request for comment on the motion that will be made Thursday night. “So anyone can send an email, and it’s news?” he said.

Smitherman later told The Enquirer he would not allow media into Thursday’s meeting.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130.../304240168

Dissension in Cincinnati NAACP not uncommon in other branches
Apr. 28, 2013 7:22 AM


Protesters express their unhappiness of Cincinnati NAACP chapter president Christopher Smitherman after the Thursday night general membership meeting let out at an Evanston church. / The Enquirer/Mark Curnutte

Written by
Mark Curnutte

The distinguished, polite woman stood on a Evanston sidewalk and spoke this lament about the Cincinnati NAACP branch.

“The infighting makes it very hard to get things done.” said Peggy Harris, 59, an eight-year member from Madisonville and supporter of chapter president Christopher Smitherman.

The branch’s general membership meeting Thursday night would be more of the same. Three police cars arrived to remove a member who wanted to make a motion to ask Smitherman to resign or agree to a recall vote.

The woman, Franki Kidd, had allegedly struck the car driven by Smitherman supporter and chapter third vice president James Clingman when he had earlier attempted to drive into the parking lot at Unity Baptist Church. Kidd said she did not touch Clingman’s car or attempt to get in his way. Members and non-members who oppose Smitherman’s leadership and strong affiliation with a conservative, anti-tax group protested outside the meeting with signs saying Smitherman had sold out the organization to the Tea Party and was using the NAACP for his own political advancement.

Smitherman, re-elected to a fourth two-year term in November against formidable opponent Robert Richardson Sr., a labor leader, has said Richardson and his son and others in a small group of detractors are sore losers who only want to disrupt the NAACP’s business.

Other NAACP chapters national have experienced these and other types of internal squabbles. The situation in Cincinnati most resembles what happened with the Oakland, Calif., NAACP branch from 1996 through 2004 under the presidency of Shannon Reeves.

Reeves, now a graduate fellow in the political science department at the University of Alabama, had been the official spokesman for the California Republican Party and the state’s GOP secretary. Though the NAACP is officially a nonpartisan organization, Reeves’ leadership – like Smitherman’s – steered the chapter away from its labor union and Democratic party roots.

Smitherman, though he won 642-413 in an election conducted by the national NAACP office, faces continued challenges because – as an independent member of Cincinnati City Council and a fiscal conservative – he has aligned the chapter with non-traditional groups. The major one is the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), whose co-founder, attorney Christopher Finney, was brought in by Smitherman as the chapter’s general counsel. Smitherman says the NAACP here is stronger because of the new relationships.

The Richardsons, their supporters and even three previous Cincinnati NAACP branch presidents, including civil rights icon Marian Spencer, who wrote a formal letter of complaint to the national office in January, say Smitherman has led the chapter away from its most vital civil rights issues of voter rights, crime, education, jobs, blight and other inequalities still afflicting African-American communities.

Reeves’ detractors in Oakland had the same complaint. And when George Holland, a respected African-American attorney in Oakland, was elected in 2004 as chapter president, he said, “We need to take positions on issues that concern the African-American community.”

Other chapters have struggled. Earlier this month, the national office orders elected officials of the Greater Bridgeport, Conn., chapter removed because of dissension within the ranks and non-compliance in processing financial information. Last August, the national NAACP prevented the Rev. Edward Pinkney to run for re-election of the Twin Cities branch in Benton Harbor, Mich., because he had failed to hold elections in 2010 and 2011.

Last November, the Richardson campaign asked the national to come to Cincinnati to conduct the election, which it did.

Despite Smitherman’s victory, Richardson and his supporters have kept up their pressure because of the high stakes, which, they say, is the soul of the local chapter. Smitherman and his supporters say the Cincinnati chapter, now the largest in Ohio, has never been stronger in terms of finances, influence and membership, estimated at 2,400.

Since its 1909 founding and stature as the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – the Cincinnati chapter formed with 20 members in 1915 – has been a unified voice for civil rights. In Cincinnati, the NAACP fought to desegregate Coney Island amusement park, its pool and other attractions in the 1950s and ‘60s, battled to desegregate Cincinnati Public Schools and worked in conjunction with the Baptist Ministers Conference in the 1990s and through the early 2000s to reform policies within the Cincinnati Police Department.

“We followed the lead of the national movements at the time,” said the Rev. Damon Lynch Jr., former president of the Baptist Ministers Conference and in his 44th year as pastor of New Jerusalem Baptist Church, Carthage. “There is a lot of dissension there now. Brother Smitherman is a talented young man with a lot of gifts. I pray they can keep up the fight for civil rights and equality.”

Both sides believe they have the best interests of the chapter and black Cincinnati at the forefront. Neither side appears willing to back down. So confrontational scenes and hair-splitting over bylaws that unfolded Thursday night at the general membership meeting are expected to continue.

Two female Cincinnati Police officers entered the Unity Baptist sanctuary shortly after the meeting began at 6 p.m.. Minutes later, Kidd, an executive board member, walked out of the church and said, “I was told to leave.”

Of the estimated 150 people in attendance, about 20 percent were opposed to Smitherman, said Lincoln Ware, daytime talk show host on radio station WDBZ-AM and an NAACP member who was inside the church.

Smitherman, who previously had allowed media to attend meetings, barred reporters Thursday night. The actual meeting lasted about 20 minutes, participants said.

Later, Kidd’s attorney, David Singleton, who is an NAACP member, said Kidd’s removal is another reason for his growing concern with the direction of the chapter under Smitherman’s leadership.

“I don’t know why you call the police on someone who is a board member,” Singleton said. “If council member Smitherman is so concerned about the use of scarce city resources, he should not be using them to settle a personal dispute in a private meeting.”

But Smitherman did not call police. Clingman did.

An officer said the call was for a disorderly person outside the church.

After Kidd’s removal, Clingman said, no other Smitherman critic made the motion to ask him to resign or agree to a recall vote. “It was all a bunch of bluster and sabre rattling to make the news, which it normally is,” Clingman said.

NAACP member Robert Richardson Jr., whose father lost the chapter presidency race to Smitherman in November, walked out of the church with Kidd.

“It’s a shame what the NAACP has come to be,” Richardson Jr. said. “He (Smitherman) tries to find a way to suppress those who disagree with him.”

Smitherman left the church about 20 minutes after the meeting with two men who guarded him. He said the event was “a beautiful meeting.” He also said that NAACP bylaws do not allow for a membership to remove a chapter president.

“There is a procedure that you go through,” Smitherman said. Article X of the bylaws has to be initiated by the national office for the removal of a chapter officer.

Smitherman said no position was taken on the motion for a resolution that opposes the shackling of children who appear in juvenile court, a reform effort that Richardson Jr. said the national NAACP supports and an example of how under Smitherman’s leadership the Cincinnati branch is not concerned with civil rights.

Clingman said the membership could not vote on the motion and that it was sent to the chapter executive committee. Part of the problem with the motion, Clingman added, was that Richardson Jr. bundled it with one calling for support for Tracie Hunter, a Hamilton County Juvenile Court judge who time on the bench since 2010 has been largely contentious. The NAACP cannot endorse or support political candidates.

Wrong, Richardson Jr. said. “I did not botch the motion. The NAACP can support actions of elected officials without endorsing them,” he said. “The NAACP supports the leadership of President Obama with the Affordable Care Act. Similarly, it's not an endorsement for the NAACP to support the the leadership of Judge Hunter in not shackling kids in her courtroom.”

Throughout the meeting, a dozen protesters held vigil outside. One sign read “NAATP Meeting,” in reference to the complaint that the chapter had aligned itself with the ultra conservative Tea Party organization. One protester, Timothy Flanagan, 41, of Avondale, said the NAACP should be focusing its efforts on crime and blight in his and other black communities.

Two elderly women walked among the crowd after the meeting, encouraging NAACP members, if they were unhappy with Smitherman’s leadership, to leave the NAACP and join the newly formed local chapter of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network civil rights group in Forest Park.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130...r-branches