A Call For Meaningful Activism

I have been loathed to write this post. I’m trying to be polite and respectful. I’m trying to be deferential. I realize I am new at this and my new fangled views might sound radical. I actually wrote most of this post before I learned that the NAACP is doing some major overhead reduction and closing seven regional offices and 40 percent of the national staff. So either I am clairvoyant, or I have an amazing ability o state the obvious.

I previously posted on the silliness of the NAACP burying the “N” word. I though that it was foolishness to have a symbolic burial of a word when African Americans are failing to graduate from high school at alarming numbers and AIDs, a preventable disease is the largest killer of Black women between the ages of 21 and 34.

Held to a Higher Standard - NAACP, NAN, Rainbow Push, NCBW are NOT Grassroots Organizations
Now some might find it heresy that I am even criticizing these civil rights organizations. These are well meaning folks after all. Not so fast my friend. Yes, I have featured grassroots organization on this blog. I consider grassroots groups separate from these large organizations with permanent paid staff, brick and mortar headquarters and huge budgets. These are hardly organizations selling fried catfish dinners to keep the doors open. Most of these organizations take in millions of dollars from dues, corporate sponsorships, and tax payers in the name of addressing the needs of people of color. So we as Black folks have a right to expect competent leadership and effective advocacy from organizations that are taking in money IN OUR NAME.

A week ago on this blog, I featured a post about the Rainbow Push organization and National Congress of Black Women attending a Viacom shareholders meeting to protest the degradation of African American women on the Viacom networks, this includes BET, VH1, and MTV. I try to highlight everyone making an effort and try not to be judgmental, but one of the comments left on the post asked a very simple question, “What Happened After the Meeting?” Well folks, I did some research to find out what happened after the protests at the meeting… ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Mean while, our favorite preacher is collecting soap in Detroit in the name of combating indecency in Hip Hop.

Intentionally Tanking the Match?
All of this has made me wonder; do “civil rights” organizations really want to end the degradation of African American women in popular culture, or are they merely exploiting the War on Black Women to garner attention and additional corporate donations. Based on recent actions by Rainbow Push, the National Congress of Black Women, and Rev. Al’s National Action Network, I can’t tell if they are deliberately tanking the fight or just inept and inefficient. This article from Mother Jones, which I did not read before my initial draft of this post, confirms my suspicions. If it is true then maybe it is time to shutter their doors.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree
The year is now 2008 and traditional civil rights organizations continue to cement the idea among many from younger generations that they are dinosaurs whose time has passed. I would be saddened if this is true. I still believe that many of the institutions created and birthed by our parents and grandparents still carry significant clout, connections and organizational structure that dwarfs anything subsequent generations have yet to amass. However, we’re being slaughtered and slandered here . Sentiment and symbolism isn’t enough. Serious, effective action is required.

The truth is that 40 years ago, African Americans used protests in the streets because that is what they had available to them. Protesting continues to be an effect change agent. However, through the power of interactive media and economic advancement, African Americans are uniquely positioned to demand that advertisers discontinue subsidizing Viacom’s networks and enforce economic sanctions on those advertiser refuse. My question is why haven’t these traditional civil rights organizations aimed their resources at the entities that are in the position to bring about the greatest change?

I am going to give these organizations the benefit of the doubt and believe that it never occurred to them that the reason Don Imus is no longer on the air is not because MSNBC and CBS Radio were good corporate citizens, but because advertisers stopped subsidizing his show. WhatAboutOurDaughters.Org calls on traditional “civil rights” organizations to abandon seeking redress from media companies and speak directly to advertisers. We call on them to approach the top five advertisers for Viacom and appeal to those advertisers to pull their advertising from all Viacom networks. Viacom has no incentive to change its policies and programming until they have an economic reason for doing so.

Conflict of Interest?
The only explanation I can come up with for why these organizations haven’t focused on the likes of Proctor and Gamble, State Farm, T-Mobile, and other large advertisers on BET and VH1 is that it isn’t in these organization’s financial best interest to do so. Are they afraid of approaching advertisers for fear of losing
Reluctance to Create a New Organization

In my very first post to this blog, I said that I did not want to create a new organization to combat the War on Black Women. Organizations require overhead. Creating multiple organizations is wasteful and unnecessary when we already have organizations in place who just need to operate in a more responsible and effective manner.

A Call for Meaningful Activism
I’m willing to work with them to come up with strategies that might be more effective today, but I am not going to sit by and say nothing while they exploit the degradation of African American women to garner headlines and corporate donations while doing absolutely nothing that helps the situation. I’m willing to put the hustle on BLAST!

To this day the ONLY organization that has issued a statement about DL Hughley’s slur against the women of Rutgers has been Sharpton’s National Action Network. The response was tepid at best and only the result of the readers of this blog raising hell about it. Sharpton’s defense was that he didn’t know, but how can you not know when you set yourself up to be the guardian of decency. How hard is it to set up a news feed with for posts about “Black Women” or better yet, posts about “Al Sharpton.” The fact that they say they didn’t know is another example of incompetence.

What should we do if we can’t trust these organizations? Should we start our own? SPEAK ON IT!