PROGRAMS

The Long Beach Branch NAACP is very honored and happy to be able to help the community. Long Beach Branch NAACP Food and Mask Distribution Program is helping address the disparities of low-income families due to Coronavirus Pandemic. The grant for this program was provided by the Long Beach Community Foundations. The Mask Distribution began in April 2020. The Food Distribution Program began in June 2020 and provides food to residents who do not have access to food or food resources due to income, mobility, disability, and transportation.

The branch has distributed over 950,000 masks, sanitizers and gloves, and has provided food for 900 people since the program started.

The Health Committee has held special screenings at meetings and addressed areas such as mental health, HPV, asthma, and heart disease as well as silent killers such as diabetes, high blood pressure, prostate cancer and other issues. The LB NAACP continues to work on raising community awareness of health issues such as AIDS, sickle cell anemia, breast and ovarian cancer, and other diseases affecting African Americans and other minorities. The Long Beach Branch NAACP are partners and collaborated with St. Mary’s Medical Center, the Long Beach Community Hospital, and other healthcare providers and associations. We are also collaborating to help reduce respiratory disease for communities that live near the port, freeways, and oil refineries.

Silent Killer Disease Program
The Long Beach Branch NAACP the work that was made possible by a grant from Dignity Healthcare and St. Mary Medical Center. The purpose of the grant was to provide workshops, screenings and education for “Silent Killer Diseases”. There are a number of diseases that are known as “Silent Killers” because they gradually attack your body without causing any serious symptoms in the early stages. The grant focused on the prevention, treatment and management of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.

LB Branch NAACP Technology and Tech Support classes are available to help senior members and youth that need special computer support. To request services email mnaacp@gmail.com. Group Computer classses for youth and adults are all virtual due to COVID-19. LB NAACP intern Joyce Le oversees this program.

Naomi Rainey-Pierson Erdmann, Thomas Le, and Marie Treadwell are the Fall 2020 Community Membership Drive Chairs. Marie Treadwell, Branch Secretary, is in charge of identifying churches and community organization facilitators and to reclaim former branch members. To help Mrs. Treadwell, please email the branch at mnaacp@gmail.com.

Join the LB Branch NAACP online-use Branch code 1045. For youth membership, use code 1715. https://www.naacp.org/membership/

The LB NAACP holds Wealth Empowerment Workshops in partnership with various banks. The workshops provided area residents with strategies for financial self-sufficiency, including homeownership and debt management.

Jacqui Patterson is the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. She can be reached at jpatterson@naacpnet.org

Program Goals

Environmental injustices, including climate change, have a disproportionate impact on communities of color in the United States and around the world. The NAACP ECJ Program was created to educate and mobilize communities to address this human and civil rights issue by advocating for these three objectives:

1) Reduce Harmful Emissions, Particularly Greenhouse Gases

Combines action on shutting down coal plants and other toxic facilities at the local level, as well as building of new toxic facilities, with advocacy to strengthen development, monitoring, and enforcement of regulations at federal, state, and local levels. Also includes a focus on corporate responsibility and accountability.

2) Advance Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy

Works at the state level on campaigns to pass renewable energy and energy efficiency standards while simultaneously working at the local level with small businesses, unions, and others on developing demonstration projects to ensure that communities of color are accessing revenue generation opportunities in the new energy economy, while providing safer, more sustainable mechanisms for managing energy needs for our communities and beyond.

3) Improve Community Resilience and Livability

Ensures that communities are equipped to engage in climate action planning that integrates policies and practices on advancing food justice, advocating for transportation equity, and upholding civil and human rights in an emergency.

Courtesy of National’s website

In 1981, the NAACP launched the NAACP Fair Share Program to ensure the reinvestment of African American consumer dollars back into the community in the form of jobs and business opportunities. The principle objective of this approach is to promote the growth of entrepreneurship amongst African Americans, and to create employment opportunities with private sector companies.

Fair Share seeks to expand African American’s relationship with corporations and to ensure that a fair share of the dollars spent by African American consumers is invested back into their communities in the form of jobs and business opportunities.

In purpose and design, the Fair Share Program seeks to achieve the following specific objectives:

1. Establishment of minority vendor programs for purchases of goods and services, including utilization of African American contractors, professionals, and financial and insurance institutes.
2. Establishment of aggressive affirmative action programs and opportunities for advancement of African Americans into senior management positions, including representation on corporate boards.
3. Creation of investment and ownership opportunities for African American businesses, i.e. franchises.
4. Promotion of philanthropic contributions to worthy African American organizations and causes.

Fair Share has both a local and national component. NAACP branches and state conferences focus their efforts on companies with local or regional markets, while the efforts of the national NAACP office are directed at firms with a national market.

The non-partisan NAACP Voter Empowerment Program is an aggressive campaign designed to empower the African American community by increasing awareness and participation in the full political process in local, state, and federal elections.

The Program encompasses several components designed to educate and empower African Americans to vote. The nationwide program, places special emphasis on southern and southern border states.

In effort to achieve its objectives the Voter Empowerment Program provides support and expert services to state and local NAACP units to galvanize and increase voter participation in their communities.

The NAACP Voter Empowerment Program makes itself available to groups and organizations committed to educating and empowering African Americans to vote. Literature, materials and expertise are provided to NAACP units and coalition partners to ensure the development of successful voter empowerment campaigns.

This Program has formed partnerships with every major organization in the African American community including churches, sororities, fraternities, civic organizations, social clubs, civil rights organizations, labor unions, and representatives of the homeless.

The Program Director holds regular meetings with staff and consultants to evaluate and upgrade its approach to increasing voter registration and voter participation. The initiatives and projects pursue strategies, issues and activities that support the goals and objectives of the NAACP Voter Empowerment Program.

While the Voter Empowerment Program’s numerous projects may each have its own distinct goal, the plan devised to incorporate, employ unique methods to register, educate and get voters to the polls on Election Day.

Voting Rights

The right to vote should be fundamental for all citizens. This right is placed in jeopardy by understaffed polls, faulty equipment, language barriers, arbitrary decisions by election officials and misguided efforts to prevent former felons from voting. These, and other “irregularities” can undermine voters’ rights to participate in the voting process. Therefore, the NAACP is launching a historic voting rights and election reform campaign. We need to fight to preserve and extend the right to vote. Your actions will make the difference if we organize to keep officials accountable to our community.

The NAACP has championed voting rights since 1909. The NAACP helped develop the Dodd-Conyers “Equal Protection of Voting Rights Act” to strengthen the United States’ election process by 2004. The act requires states to meet uniform and nondiscriminatory voting system and technology standards, provide provisional voting, and distribute sample ballots and voting instructions prior to the election.

As a longtime champion of voting rights, the NAACP’s process for empowering millions of voters with information, legal defense and legislative advocacy centers around three core principles:

• Access to Voting
• Action Through Voting and Organizing
• Accountability to Voters

Registering people to vote is the first step in shaping the agenda. Informing them about issues that impact their well-being and the well-being of the community is equally important. Additionally, the Long Beach Branch NAACP advocates that voters should hold the following rights:

• To vote without intimidation or persecution.
• To use as much time as they need in completing the ballot.
• To redo their ballot if they make a mistake.
• To get help if they have questions about the ballot or the process.
• To get help if they have language difficulties or challenges resulting from disabilities.
• To request and receive a challenge/provisional ballot, should they be denied the right to vote.
• To cast their ballot if they are in line before the poll closes in their precinct/ward.
• To have a polling place or process accessible to the physically challenged.

Action Through Voting and Organizing

Only your commitment to take action can defend against voting irregularities and other threats. Together, we can make certain your rights and the rights of others are protected. The following are a list of policies and procedures that help protect voters:

• Make certain there is a visible public education campaign to register voters and explain the voting process.
• Ensure that voters are notified of polling place changes.
• Make sure a complete voter file of active and inactive voters is available on site for each precinct.
• Make certain your community has access to early voting and absentee ballots.
• Ensure that bilingual voting instructions are available to all voters.
• Make certain that staff and volunteer recruitment is sufficient to adequately deal with the size and traffic of the precinct.
• Ensure that staff and volunteer training is sufficient to identify potential irregularities with materials and ballots, and overcome language barriers.
• Help organize an NAACP Prison Branch to register incarcerated individuals who may be able to vote, and begin re-enfranchising individuals who will be able to vote after their sentence is served.

Holding Officials Accountable

Holding officials accountable for what they do about election reform is the next step to ensure voting rights. To help accomplish this, the NAACP is mounting a campaign to develop report cards on what our public officials are doing (or not doing) about election reform.

The following four-step process can help us do it.

• Help the NAACP gather information about the voting record and issue positions of your governor, secretary of state/election board and state legislators on election reform.
• Work with your NAACP Unit or Branch to discuss and publicize the records and positions of local officials.
• Work with your NAACP Unit or Branch to hold accountability sessions with elected officials regarding their position and record.
• Publish a report card of each official’s votes and other actions regarding election reform.

Report Cards: Grading Local Officials

The NAACP Voter Empowerment Program will be grading Governors and State Legislatures on the following points:

• Signing an election reform bill that provides for new voting machines in all areas of the state and emphasizes replacing older machines first.
• Advocating support for re-enfranchising individuals who have completed sentences for felonies.
• Increasing dollars spent on voter education efforts by 25%.
• Increasing dollars spent on voter registration efforts by 25%.

The NAACP Voter Empowerment Program will be grading Secretaries of State and Election Commissioners on the following points: Designing and implementing new voter registration and education projects.

• Providing counties with on-site technical assistance to train poll workers.
• Designing and implementing a program to ensure the legitimacy of removing individuals from the rolls because of felony disenfranchisement.
• Endorsing universal, on-demand voting.
• Allowing for a provisional ballot.
• Enacting policies that ensure equal access to the polls for the physically disabled, non-English speakers, minorities and others.
• Auditing registrations and balloting procedures, including absentee processes, to ensure the process is both fair and effective.

Long Beach Branch Candidate Forums and Issues

The NAACP collaborated with other groups such as the Ministerial Alliance, NCNW, Sororities and Fraternities, the League of Women Voters, and churches. The LB Branch held candidate forums for political races in the city of Long Beach. The purpose of these forums was to provide members of the community the opportunity to meet candidates, hear their positions on issues, and to ask questions to learn more about the candidates.

Ivy Arlinda Goosby is the WIN Chair for Long Beach. The WIN Committee has over 30 members, who support the national theme of “Outstretched Hands and Open Hearts to Women and Children.” The purpose of WIN is to enhance the leadership role of women, to serve as an advocacy vehicle for social, economic, political, educational, and health and welfare issues affecting women, to advocate for the positive development of children, and to support the on-going work of the NAACP on its units. The agenda includes select women issues, such as health, education, reentry into workplace, and sponsorship of women in shelters and non-profit agencies, who cannot afford to attend the Freedom Fund Anniversary 2004. To date, 40 women have been sponsored. For additional information or to join WIN, email the Long Beach Bracn NAACP, please contact us.

The branch conducted Civil Rights Violation investigations and receives and addresses hotline calls regarding Civil Rights Violations.

Forums have been held in conjunction with various law enforcement agencies such as the Long Beach police department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol, and campus security. Issues addressed included what to do when you are stopped, city ordinances and their impacts, defining racial profiling, how to file a complaint, what is the complaint process, recruitment, and community relations.

• Legal clinics
• Credit repair workshops
• Finding your ancestors
• HIV information & referral
• Home ownership
• Attendance of the NAACP annual convention