BLACK CHURCH GROUP CRITICIZES CALIFORNIA NAACP ON MARIJUANA SUPPORT

WASHINGTON (NNPA) Some Black church leaders are calling for the head
of the California NAACP to step down over her group's support for the
legalization of marijuana in her state as well as over alleged ties to
the marijuana lobby.

Rev. Anthony Evans, president of National Black Church Initiative, and
Bishop Ron Allen, president and chief executive officer of the
Inter-national Faith Based Coalition took issue with an editorial
California NAACP president Alice Huffman wrote in a popular online
newspaper The Huffington Post outlining reasons why her organization
supports California Proposition 19 - the Regulate, Control and Tax
Cannabis Act 2010 - a measure that would make California the first
state to legalize marijuana.

"The use of marijuana for medicinal purposes is legal and we support
that because we advocate health but those are prescribed by a
physician and are prescribed for certain conditions," Evans said.
"But when the NAACP just says legalize marijuana we believe that it
sends out the wrong message given that over the last 30 years we have
lost over 200,000 people to drug-related crimes in the
African-American community. How can the church be in the business of
promoting illegal drugs? It just doesn't fit into the proper role of
the faith community or an organization that came out of the Black church."

The reverend is calling on all of their member churches to publicly
denounce the NAACP for supporting this legislation and he is also
asking them to withdraw all monetary contributions and support for
using Black churches for their meetings until Jealous repudiates
Huffman and the California NAACP.

Evans said that his 34,000 Black church-backed groups no longer
believe that the nation's oldest civil rights organization represents
the best interests of the Black family.

"How can they say they are for Black people when they are legalizing
drugs that have killed tens of thousands of African-Americans?" Evans
asked. "It makes no sense."

State conferences can independently take position on issues on which
there is no national policy, so she and the California State
Conference were within their right to do this.

"The focus for the California State conference is not
decriminalization of marijuana," said Benjamin Jealous, president and
chief executive officer of the NAACP. "The emphasis is getting a
handle on out of control and racially disparate enforcement
strategies. And it's a problem across the country. For example, in New
York City, Black children, are 20 percent less likely to have drugs in
their pockets when the cops stop them, but they're 500 percent more
likely to be stopped."

He said, "This is a very serious issue" that deserves more digging
into beyond the controversy or salaciousness.

"The National [NAACP] just passed a resolution to study the issue
more deeply because there is a high level of concern by Black leaders
who are engaged with the crisis of the mass over criminalization of
our young people and about misguided enforcement strategies. And so
we'll need to study this nationally to see where we should go,"
Jealous said.

Huffman's stance is centered on the decriminalization of a drug that
unfairly penalizes African-Americans at a higher rate than other races.

In her article, published in The Huffington Post on July 6th, Huffman
wrote that Rev. Martin Luther King was "roundly criticized by friend
and foe alike for speaking out on an issue considered outside the
purview of civil rights' leaders" for taking a radical stance against
the Vietnam war in 1967.

"The California NAACP does not believe maintaining the illusion we're
winning the 'war on drugs' is worth sacrificing another generation of
our young men and women," she wrote. "Enough is enough. We want
change we can believe in; that's why we're supporting Prop. 19.
Instead of wasting money on marijuana law enforcement, Prop. 19 will
generate tax revenues we can use to improve the education and
employment outcomes of our youth. Our youth want and deserve a future.
Let's invest in people, not prisons. It is time to end the failed war
on drugs by decriminalizing and regulating marijuana to save our
communities."

Huffman cited Drug Policy Alliance report that supports the
legalization of marijuana because African- Americans disparately
represent 22 percent of California's marijuana arrests, a percentage
that is more than three times the state's Black population.

"We believe whatever potential harms may be associated with using
marijuana are more than outweighed by the immediate harms that derive
from being caught up in the criminal justice system," Huffman
reasoned in her article.

While the California branch of the NAACP publicly supports Proposition
19 the NAACP national chapter has not issued any public statements
denouncing their state affiliate's position. In Evans' eyes, their
silence means that they support Huffman's position.

"We have not heard that the National is denouncing them in any way,"
Evans said. "What we have concluded is that the national wouldn't
allow their affiliates to do whatever they wanted because if they did
they would have chaos."

He also implied that Huffman has received money from pro-marijuana
groups which has influenced her decisions.

Huffman denies receiving any money from pro-marijuana groups,
according to the Los Angeles Times. Despite Evans and Allen's
unsubstantiated claims, Huffman does have a well-reported history of
allegations involving entangling with her organization's civil rights
agenda with the business agenda of her successful political consulting
firm A.C. Public Affairs, Inc.

For years, mainstream California newspapers have reported on suspected
corruption of Huffman as the head of the California NAACP.

For example, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2006 that Huffman
received $100,000 in consultation payments from tobacco giant Philip
Morris. The California NAACP, at the same time, opposed a California
measure to raise taxes on cigarette companies. The national NAACP
supported the measure.

Similar allegations were reported in other instances involving the
California NAACP endorsing measures that Huffman's special interest
clients such as AT&T and the pharmaceutical industry have pushed.

"The campaign payments to Huffman's political company, A.C. Public
Affairs, come only a year after the firm was paid $330,000 in
consulting fees by the pharmaceutical industry. In 2005, the state
NAACP sided with the drug companies' position on two ballot
measures," the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2006.

In 2008, The Sacramento Bee reported that Huffman and the NAACP
together received more than $100,000 dollars from a coalition of
Indian tribes while at the same time endorsing ballot measures that
those same tribes backed.

The marijuana issue in California is just the latest split between
Black church leaders like Evans and the nation's foremost Black civil
rights leaders and organizations. The reverend is planning on
challenging the NAACP on a number of hot button issues such as same
sex marriage, which the NAACP supports but so do some other prominent
leaders such as Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and organizations
like the National Urban League.

He said, "We're taking a critical look at all of the civil rights
organizations in making sure that they are standing to protect the
Black family and the Black community, and most of these organizations
are not."