For the first time in four decades, the national NAACP convention came back to Boston with a point to prove and a long list of political priorities to hammer out.
Paradoxically, the 114th convention and its 13,000 attendees represent both a commitment to shared values but also a platform for the “rich diversity that exists within the Black community,” Tanisha Sullivan, president of the Boston NAACP, said on the Codcast.
“It’s public facing for people to see Black folks, primarily, in rigorous discussion and debate about some of this nation’s most pressing issues,” she said. “You take gun violence, for example. When we talk about responsible gun control, this is an issue where not all people agree, and not all Black community members are marching to the same beat. We all want safe and healthy communities. We all want to ensure public safety. But the way in which we get there may vary depending upon who you are, where you come from, and what your experiences are.”
Sullivan, who unsuccessfully challenged Secretary of State Bill Galvin in last year’s Democratic primary, didn’t rule out another run for office, but said she is focused on her role at the Boston branch of the NAACP and chairing the Healey administration’s Advisory Council on Black Empowerment.
“And I say that not to sidestep the question, ’cause I know that’s what you’re thinking,” she joked, “but to really help people to understand, look, you don’t have to hold elected office. You don’t have to have a title to play an active role in ensuring and securing our democracy for the future.”
Those who attend the NAACP convention each year get to propose, debate, and weigh in on the group’s national priorities. These resolutions can direct organizing efforts, impact political campaigns, and generally set the tone for racial justice initiatives going forward.
Over a nine-hour session focused on policy resolutions – shorter this year than at past conventions, Sullivan said – attendees supported resolutions ranging from better access to effective legal representation and equitable access to new technologies to changes to federal tax oversight policies to support lower income households.
One resolution committed the NAACP to work with Black farmers to receive funding from Congress “to compensate them for discriminatory practices by the Department of Agriculture.”
The NAACP, as an organization, has always focused on voting rights and access, educational opportunity, and economic opportunity, Sullivan said. Her next local initiative launches in two days – a campaign for ranked-choice voting in Boston that she is co-chairing with Cheryl Clyburn Crawford, executive director of the nonprofit MassVOTE.
For racial justice advocates, the literal changing climate has introduced a new wrinkle over the last several years, during which the NAACP has “really leaned into environmental and climate justice, understanding the disproportionate impact of climate change on communities of color and lower income communities,” Sullivan said.
Many of the resolutions, though framed through a racial justice lens, are not solely “Black issues,” Sullivan said.
“I do believe there are efforts to keep us divided and to put us into boxes so that people feel like, oh, if you’re advocating on an issue related to access to housing in urban environments, that you’re not concerned about housing access in rural communities, right?” she said. “And keeping us hyper-polarized in that way and creating division where there should not be division really does hold us back as a society.”
Boston’s troubled reputation – and history – when it comes to race issues cuts two ways. Sullivan noted that not only can the city’s perception discourage people of color from settling there, but it can feel like erasure of existing Black populations in a city that has been majority-minority for more than a decade.
“I was really hopeful that this convention would present us with an opportunity to reintroduce ourselves here in Boston as a city that, one, has Black people; two, has Black people who are thriving; and, three, is a city that understands our history and is working really hard to ensure that we’re not repeating history.”