Markeshia Ricks Photo
The Greater New Haven Branch of the NAACP put the vote on the agenda for its 102nd Freedom Fund dinner.
The event was held at the Omni Thursday night. Organizers emphasized the value of the most basic civil right — the right to vote — and how now, more than ever, people should exercise their rights. The theme of the evening was “Defeat Hate … VOTE.”
Many of the city’s movers and shakers packed a ballroom for the dinner to hear from the Rev. Otis Moss III, who serves as the senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. No stranger to New Haven, Moss, who received one of his three degrees from Yale Divinity School, served as the night’s keynote speaker. The event also honored six people for their contribution to the cause of civil rights.
Those honorees include Tanya Hughes, executive director of the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (pictured in the photo at the top of the story, and Judge Lubbie Harper Jr. and Hillhouse Hgh School teacher Jack Paulishen (pictured together at the top of the story.)
Other honorees included David Addams, executive director of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, Teretha Brooks, an assistant administrator at Yale University, and James “Jay” Morris, vice president of education at Yale New Haven Health System and executive director of the Institute for Excellence. (All are pictured in the three photos above.)
Doris Dumas, president of the Greater New Haven Branch, noted that this year marks the 400th year since the first enslaved Africans arrived on American soil, and the fight to ensure the value of all human life continues.
“It is vital that we continue the fight to protect and extend civil liberties to all, both locally and nationally,” Dumas said. “Our country and the world cannot move forward and solve its crises without the total elevation of all Americans.”
Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut NAACP State Conference, urged people to get involved with the organization’s continued fight against police brutality, racial profiling, and poverty.
Hughes with her husband Larry.
Cheryl Shoulders and Saundra Stephenson.
Sharyn Gant and Probate Judge Clifton Graves.
NAACP Call: "Defeat Hate ... VOTE!"
Under the present system.Neither party gives a damn about Black people's right to self-determination.Therefore, the American electoral duopoly is composed of two white supremacist parties: the Republicans, for whom white supremacy is an organizing principle, and the Democrats, the party that claims the allegiance of virtually all Black voters, but whose mission is to politically pacify and neutralize Blacks, in service of the ruling class.Democrats rig the game, too, when they get the chance, although it's an uphill race. Both parties, however, are intent to preserve the duopoly system that splits the U.S. polity between them, for the benefit of their corporate masters. And neither party gives a damn about Black people's right to self-determination -- which includes the ability to elect representatives and executives of their choice, unless that choice is a Democrat or Republican.
So who are we to Vote for?