From Friday's BCCT:
Check out the comments section, I think we all know the names they are looking for.
NAACP drops the ball
By: KATE FRATTI
Bucks County Courier Times
John Jordan, president of the Bucks County NAACP, did himself no favors in the credibility department earlier this week when he proclaimed in the newspaper that he feared voter intimidation in Morrisville and so would post NAACP poll watchers to guard against it.
He didn't do it.
There were no official NAACP watchers assigned Tuesday until very late in the day, he conceded Wednesday. "We're all volunteers. No one gets paid," he explained. He couldn't ask folks to leave work or school to monitor the borough's four polls.
In my skepticism, I suspect there was another reason for the NAACP's absence, and it had nothing to do with Jordan's sensitivity toward members' busy lives. He was blowing hot air from the start.
Jordan is a likable guy who served on the Morrisville school board for two terms ending in 2005. He owns property in town. It means he knows the players and the field too well to really think there'd be any open displays of contempt outside the voting booth.
That's not to say racial hatred is absent in Morrisville politics. It is abundantly present. There are members of the sitting school board, and those who elected them, who deeply resent having to educate low-income and minority children. They blame them for the borough's economic decline. You only have to engage in some private conversations here to be sure of that. Blame is easier than accepting responsibility for the lack of vision and leadership over the years that could have better ushered Morrisville through changing times. Bristol, equally diverse in terms of ethnicity and income, for instance, thrives, as does its school system.
Jordan correctly points out the damage being done in Morrisville by a school board that is systematically dismantling the school system, in part, because it sees no value in educating children whose faces are not white and whose parents don't earn enough to own a home. Read some of the anonymous political literature circulated in this primary, and that mindset is clearly revealed. The schools are being marginalized because of it.
Still, the racism, classism, boneheaded way of looking at things in Morrisville is covert. When neighbor meets neighbor in the market or at a ball field or at a polling place, it's smiles all around. Tuesday, minority voters were greeted cordially at the polls. Even Jordan was met by polite faces when he got to the Ward 4 poll at 5 p.m., he said. That's how it works in a small town.
It's why the NAACP should be paying especially close attention here. What lurks in the dark is by far more dangerous that anything exposed to light.
Long before Tuesday, Jordan and the Bucks NAACP should have rallied minority and low-income voters to save the schools. Some of their children happen to be among the district's top academic performers.
The NAACP also was in a position to encourage volunteers to serve as judges and inspectors of elections at the polls to ensure fairness. As it was, at Ward 4, a sitting school board member and the wife of another did that job. Why should voters have any confidence about fairness?
Jordan, instead, complained that the Bucks County Board of Elections did not reach out to the NAACP for volunteers when it knew there was a shortage of good help at the polls.
Shame on the board of elections, John. And shame on you for waiting for an invite.
In the end, Jordan's stated concern about intimidation was a weak attempt to interest minority voters in the primary election. It also served as a little intimidation of his own. Behave yourselves, you powers that be. The NAACP is watching.
But it wasn't. Nor is it working as diligently here as it should be, with so much at stake. People notice.
Most NAACP energy is spent in the Bristols and in Bensalem, Jordan said. He's short on volunteers in Morrisville.
That's because, to date, Morrisville's minority community has been woefully short on real NAACP support. Mostly, it's had to settle for Jordan's false bluster in the newspaper. It's not enough to make the difference here.
May 22, 2009 02:00 AM
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phillyburbscom:http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_details/article/448/2009/may/22/naacp-drops-the-ball.html
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Whaddawhopper, 05-22-09, 7:56 am Rate: 2 Report-->
Which "members of the sitting school board...deeply resent having to educate low-income and minority children" and "blame them for the borough's economic decline" ? Please name names.
