New NAACP seeing more gay, diverse chapter leaders as group seeks to increase membership

New NAACP seeing more gay, diverse chapter leaders as group seeks to increase membership

By Associated Press, Wednesday, March 23, 6:52 AM

WORCESTER, Mass. — The NAACP’s newly revived Worcester chapter elected a 28-year-old openly gay black man as its president this month. In New Jersey, a branch of the organization outside Atlantic City chose a Honduran immigrant to lead it last year. And in Mississippi, the Jackson State University chapter recently turned to a 30-something white man.

Founded more than a century ago to promote black equality, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is seeing remarkable diversity in its leadership ranks — the result of an aggressive effort over the past four or five years to boost NAACP membership and broaden the civil rights organization’s agenda to confront prejudice in its many forms.

“This is the new NAACP,” said Clark University political science professor Ravi Perry, the new chapter president in Worcester. “This is a human rights organization, and we have an obligation to fight discrimination at all levels.”

NAACP branches have been recruiting gays, immigrants and young people who grew up in a world far removed from the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that outlawed school segregation. Now, leadership positions that were once held only by blacks are being filled by members of other racial or ethnic groups.

The group does not keep track of numbers, but in recent years NAACP chapters in New Jersey, Connecticut and Georgia have elected Hispanics as president. A white man was picked to lead the chapter in Aiken, S.C. And two years ago, NAACP members in Hamtramck, Mich., a Detroit suburb, selected a Bangladeshi American to revive their long-dormant chapter.

“Some people mentioned that it wouldn’t be possible for me to be president,” said Victor Diaz, 32, a Dominican American who ran against an incumbent and was elected president of the Waterbury, Conn., branch in November. “But when I ran, I won 3 to 1.”

The push for diversity troubles some members of the NAACP’s old guard, who worry that problems in the black community may get short shrift. But some social scientists say the new diversity is merely a return to the group’s roots as a biracial organization.

In 1964, the NAACP’s membership peaked at 625,000 paid members. By the middle of the past decade, that had dropped to just under 300,000. Now it has reversed course and climbed to more than 525,000, in large part because of an increase in young members, group officials say. The NAACP said it does not keep track of the organization’s racial and ethnic breakdown.

Stefanie Brown, the NAACP’s 30-year-old national field director, said the under-25 crowd is the organization’s fastest-growing age group. In fact, the NAACP has slots on its 60-plus member board of directors reserved for people under 25. In addition, Brown said, young professionals under 40 are taking leadership roles — something that hadn’t happened until recently.

Some in the group say the diversity push weakens the NAACP’s identity. Jamarhl Crawford, editor of the Blackstonian, a Boston website that covers the city’s black population, said he fears it could “water down” the focus on problems in the black community.

“I think there’s going to be some loss there in terms of actual activism, actual protest” on behalf of blacks, said Crawford, a 40-year-old member of the NAACP’s Boston branch.

The diversity push was started a few years ago under then-NAACP chairman Julian Bond. Later, Benjamin Todd Jealous, who in 2008 became the group’s youngest leader at age 35, ramped up the effort and also urged the organization to take up gay rights.

“At our core, we want to end discrimination and have equality for all people,” Brown said.

In a reflection of how it has broadened its agenda, the NAACP came out against California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure banning gay marriage. Last year, it spoke out against Arizona’s anti-immigration law. It also strongly supported the federal DREAM Act, a proposal to give illegal immigrant students a pathway to citizenship through college or military service.

Perry, the openly gay chapter president, said: “I’m just one example of younger individuals who find a home in the NAACP for issues that they might represent.”

Patricia Sullivan, a history professor at the University of South Carolina and author of “Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement,” called the new push for diversity thrilling and said: “It’s really reflecting what the NAACP has represented historically and what its vision has been.”

Founded in 1909 partly in response to race riots in Springfield, Ill., NAACP begin as a coalition of black and Jewish activists with whites serving in leadership position in many chapters, and it was only later that it became a predominantly black organization. Sullivan also noted that the NAACP spoke out against the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Tatcho Mindiola, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston, said that while some Hispanics were NAACP members during the civil right years, their election to leadership roles is a new phenomenon. Mindiola said the NAACP has won over some Hispanics because of recent positions it has taken on issues important to Latinos.

“The group has shown it is fighting for civil rights for all minorities,” said David Alcantara, 52, president of the Pleasantville-Mainland chapter in New Jersey. “And it’s time that all minorities support the NAACP.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
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US wants stronger wiretap powers over Web Agencies say terror suspects evade scrutiny

US wants stronger wiretap powers over Web

Agencies say terror suspects evade scrutiny

By Charlie Savage, New York Times | September 27, 2010

WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations of the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark’’ as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking websites like Facebook, and software that allows direct “peer to peer’’ messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The legislation, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering technological innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications’’ and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution’’ — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,’’ he said.

“They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.’’

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

“We’re talking about lawfully authorized intercepts,’’ said Valerie E. Caproni, general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “We’re not talking expanding authority. We’re talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security.’’

Investigators have been concerned for years that changing communications technology could damage their ability to conduct surveillance. In recent months, officials from the FBI, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, the White House, and other agencies have been meeting to develop a proposed solution.

There is not yet agreement on important elements, like how to word statutory language defining who counts as a communications service provider, according to several officials familiar with the deliberations.

But they want it to apply broadly, including to companies that operate from servers abroad, like Research In Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry devices. In recent months, that company has come into conflict with the governments of Dubai and India over their inability to conduct surveillance of messages sent via its encrypted service.

In the United States, phone and broadband networks are already required to have interception capabilities, under a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. It aimed to ensure that government surveillance abilities would remain intact during the evolution from a copper-wire phone system to digital networks and cellphones.

Often, investigators can intercept communications at a switch operated by the network company. But sometimes — like when the target uses a service that encrypts messages between his computer and its servers — they must instead serve the order on a service provider to get unscrambled versions.

Like phone companies, communication service providers are subject to wiretap orders. But the 1994 law does not apply to them. Although some maintain interception capacities, others wait until they are served with orders to try to develop them.

The FBI’s operational technologies division spent $9.75 million last year helping communication companies — including some subject to the 1994 law that had difficulties — do so. And its 2010 budget included $9 million for a “Going Dark Program’’ to bolster its electronic surveillance capabilities.

Beyond such costs, Caproni said, FBI efforts to help retrofit services have a major shortcoming: The process can delay their ability to wiretap a suspect for months.

Moreover, some services encrypt messages between users, so that even the provider cannot unscramble them.

There is no public data about how often court-approved surveillance is frustrated because of a service’s technical design.

But as an example, one official said, an investigation into a drug cartel earlier this year was stymied because smugglers used peer-to-peer software, which is difficult to intercept because it is not routed through a central hub. Agents eventually installed surveillance equipment in a suspect’s office, but that tactic was “risky,’’ the official said, and the delay “prevented the interception of pertinent communications.’’

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