Please join us at 6pm, Tuesday November 10th for a presentation by and discussion with District Attorney Summer Stephan on the function, efforts and specialized units of the district attorney’s office.
Setting Up Zoom For NAACP San Diego Branch Meetings
The NAACP San Diego Branch, along with other units in the Southeastern Region of the California-Hawaii State/State Area Conference, has decided in order to protect the integrity of our meetings, to require that all participants and guests in our Executive Committee and General Membership online Zoom meetings meet the following criteria:
Have a (paid or) free Zoom account and log in to it before attending
Use a current recognizable photo of their face as the profile picture
Use their legal first and last names on their profile
Attendees who do not meet this criteria will not be permitted in the meeting.
On Thursday night, October 22nd at 6pm the NAACP San Diego Branch will host a forum with the candidates for the San Diego County Office of Education District 1 board seat, Mark Powell and Gregg Robinson. This event is co-sponsored they the League of Women Voters and the California Charter Schools Association.
We are all of course aware that there is an election taking place in November that will determine whether civil rights protections, environmental protections, consumer protections, and nearly every other function by which government is supposed to protect its citizens from powerful monied interests will continue to be dismantled at a rapid rate. Furthermore, we are experiencing a global pandemic the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a century.
In the light of these grim struggles, the Branch’s election will be a relatively light affair. Happily you don’t really need to worry about it right away; unless you want to run for office. Here is the timeline for the Branch’s 2020 Election:
Stage 1: the Membership Deadline:
In order to run for election in November of 2020, you must be a member in good standing as of May 1st(1), with your membership dues paid up. If you have even a single day of lapsed membership from May 1st to the election in November, you will be ineligible to run. We have seen this happen in our very Branch in the past, and the Secretary wishes to ensure it never happens again.
If you think you might run, check your membership card; if the Expiration Date is coming up, renew now! Whatever the date may be, please make a mental note to renew before then, if you think you might run. On their part, the Secretary will do their best to remind you when your dues are due, but it is ultimately your responsibility to keep up your membership.
Note: it is currently impossible to renew your membership in our Branch from National’s website.
You must renew your membership at join.sandiegonaacp.org, either with a credit card or by downloading a membership application and mailing it in with your check.Please write [email protected] with any questions.
Stage 2: When and Where?
At our August General Membership Meeting, the Membership will decided to hold the election on November 12th, from 4pm – 9pm. Due to COVID-19, elections will not be done in person but will take place through an online voting system.
Stage 3: Nominating Committee & Number of Members-at-Large
The next steps in our election take place at the September General Membership Meeting. We need to do three things at that meeting: Elect the Nominating Committee, decide how many Members-at-Large there should be on the Executive Committee, and choose the method of the election.
The Nominating Committee
The Nominating Committee consists of 5-15 members, only 2 of which may be current Officers or Executive Committee members. In order to serve on the Nominating Committee, you must have been a member in good standing of the NAACP San Diego Branch for the entire time period of August 4th, 2020 through September 3rd, 2020.
The work of the nominating committee will be to produce a “slate;” persons recommended for each Branch Office and each at-large position on the Executive Committee.
Members-at-Large
Members-at-Large of the Executive Committee are elected members who are on the Executive Committee without serving the Branch in a specific office or as a Committee Chair. The Branch chooses in September how many should be elected; a minimum of 10 to a maximum of 24.
Election Method
Due to COVID-19, the Board of the NAACP has decided that all elections should take place online. We postponed choosing the election method hoping they would give us recommendations by the promised September 8th date; they did not.
Stage 4: Nominations
October 1st General Membership Meeting
At our October 1st General Membership Meeting, we have four matters of election business:
The Nominating Committee will present its slate of candidates
Nominations by petition will be taken
We will choose the software we will use to conduct our election
These folks were charged with coming up for a nominee for each of our six (or seven) Officers and ten At-Large Executive Committee Members. They will give their report at our October meeting and present their list of candidates. If you would like to be interviewed by the nominating committee for a position on their slate, please email [email protected]. The Nominating Committee requests responses by September 18th.
2. Nominations by Petition
Nominating Petitions
Also at the October 1st General Membership Meeting, we will accept nominations by petition. In order for a nomination by petition to be valid, it must be signed by the nominee (granting consent for the nomination) and by at least three other members in good standing.
You may download a Petition and Consent form here. The form should be signed by all parties and emailed to [email protected], or mailed to the Branch at:
NAACP San Diego Branch PO Box 152086 San Diego CA 92195-2086
Please realize that the form MUST reach the Branch by October 1st to be considered. Postmarks are insufficient; we MUST receive it.
For email, we will accept scanned copies or copies signed via AdobeSign or DocuSign or similar.
We greatly encourage you to submit your nominating petitions sooner rather than later. We will validate them and let you know if there is anything that needs to be fixed. There is no margin for error at the October 1st meeting. Your petition will be validated during the meeting, and if it is found invalid you only have until the nominations closeduring the meeting to resubmit it.
“Good Standing” — Candidate and Signer Eligibility
We have written a lengthy post listing what the various official documents (which can all be found at sandiegonaacp.org/election) say. It boils down to this:
In order to run as a candidate you must:
Have been a paid member of the NAACP San Diego Branch, without any lapses in membership, between May 1st, 2020 and November 12th, 2020.
Live or work in the jurisdiction of the Branch; San Diego county south of the 56 freeway.
In order to sign a nominating petition you must:
Have been a paid member of the NAACP San Diego Branch, without any lapses in membership, for 30 days before the date you signed the nominating petition.
Live or work in the jurisdiction of the Branch; San Diego county south of the 56 freeway.
However, if you have your membership card, you can get some hints:
If your Unit Number is not 1063-B, you are probably not eligible.
If your Expiration Date is earlier than October 1st, 2020, you are probably not eligible to sign a nominating petition or run as a candidate.
If you are a new member and your Expiration Date is later than May 1st, 2021, you are probably not eligible to run as a candidate, though you may be able to sign a nominating petition for someone else.
John Doe is probably not eligible. Jane Brown is probably eligible.
We say “probably” not eligible because there are some instances where there have been misunderstandings that can sometimes be fixed. Please email [email protected] and we will try to help.
We say “probably” eligible because continuous membership in our Branch since May 1st, 2020 is required, and that continuity is hard to tell from a card, and you have to live or work in our jurisdiction, and that is also hard to tell from a card.
In-Meeting Validation
Please remember that the Secretary will be required to validate all the nominees and petition signers during our October 1st General Membership Meeting! Please do all our members a favor and submit your petitions early so we can validate them early and not make everyone wait. As an added bonus, that will mean there is no chance of a misunderstanding and an invalid nominating petition.
We are going to use online election software. Two choices will be presented, and we will ask the membership to choose which they prefer. We have evaluated four packages:
Price (per election)
Requires Trusted Admin?
Voter Receipts
Handling of too Many EC Votes?
Non-email voters
SimplyVoting
$340
No
Fully Automatic
Refuses
Unknown
ElectionRunner
$65
Yes
Manual
Refuses
Yes
ElectionBuddy
$89
No
Automatic
Error message
Yes
OpaVote
$50
No
No
De-selects earlier vote
Yes
Of these four packages, we believe OpaVote and ElectionRunner are not viable, due to security (ElectionRunner) and the de-selection of earlier votes and lack of voter receipts (OpaVote). ElectionBuddy and SimplyVoting are both acceptable and will be offered as choices at the meeting, but at around a quarter of the cost (which will add up if we have both a practice election and a runoff), we recommend ElectionBuddy be chosen.
DRAFT Election Process Proposal
If you are interested in learning more about how an ElectionBuddy Election might work, we refer you to the following presentation:
Proposed Election Procedure Running the 2020 Branch Election with ElectionBuddy
Please be aware that this is very much a work in progress!
4. Election of the Election Supervisory Committee
The Election Supervisory Committee are the folks who will actually work out the nuts and bolts of the election. They may not be candidates for office or the Executive Committee. Please consider that the election is a lot of work they will be required to do; they should have both the skills and time to manage an operation like this.
In order to stand as a candidate for the Election Supervisory Committee, you have to have been a member of our Branch since September 1st, 2020 and live or work in our jurisdiction.
Stage 5: The Election
When and How
The election will occur from 4-9pm on November 12th. We will be using ElectionBuddy, the choice of our members and the National Association. Specific instructions will be posted to this page when availabe.
In order to vote most easily, please ensure your email address is up-to-date. If you are receiving our newsletters, all is well. If not, please contact [email protected] and update your address.
The Candidates
The following members were nominated as candidates for our November 12th election:
President:
Francine Maxwell
Kenya Taylor
First Vice President:
Brian Bonner
Donald Moore
Second Vice President:
Philip Liburd
Secretary:
Delfina Gonzalez
Assistant Secretary:
Diane Langworthy
Treasurer:
Hakim Alaji
Assistant Treasurer:
Jennifer Porter
At-Large Members of the Executive Committee
Dr Robert Lee Brown
Althea Dougherty
Letitia Flynn
Tariq Harris
Wiley Lane III
Derrick Luckett
Brittany McKnight
Sonja Robinson
Michael Thomas
Dr Leonard Thompson III
Tommi Whitehurst
Donte Wyatt
(10 to be elected)
The Election Supervisory Committee
The function of the Election Supervisory Committee is to run the actual election. The following members were elected to this year’s Election Supervisory Committee:
Patrice Baker
Wanda Rogers
Khalada Salaam-Alaji
Carol Spong
Korral Taylor
Additionally, each of the Presidential Candidates is allowed to appoint a member to the Election Supervisory Committee. Those appointments were:
Shelly Fromholtz (appointed by President Maxwell)
Petrina Branch (appointed by Kenya Taylor)
Voter Eligibility
In order to be eligible to vote, you must be a member in good standing of the NAACP San Diego Branch (#1063) by October 13th, remain in good standing through November 12th, and live or work in the San Diego region, south of the 56 freeway.
NAACP San Diego Branch PO Box 152086 San Diego CA 92195-2086
To be eligible to vote in our Branch, you must live or work in our “jurisdiction,” which is San Diego County south of the 56 freeway. Members in good standing will by now have received an email if their address of record is not in our jurisdiction. If you have moved or if you work south of the 56, please email [email protected]
Note 1: Those of you who study the bylaws on a daily basis (we assume that is all of you) may have read that the membership deadline is April 1st. That deadline has been moved, for this year only, by the National Board of Directors.
Join us on August 13 for “Courage for the People,” a conversation with long-time activist and educator Dr. Angela Davis led by Black Women for Wellness Action Project Executive Director Nourbese Flint and a fundraising event to benefit Courage California. The evening will spotlight the visionary leadership of Black, Indigenous, and other women of color; connect Black Lives Matter to our broader lineage of movements; and highlight how we can fight systemic racism on the ballot. The event will also feature special guests such as Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, Samuel Getachew, and a special appearance by the Emmy-, Tony-, and Grammy-winning Billy Porter!
Register HERE to reserve your spot NOW. Please note that this is an exclusive event, and to attend you must register before August 11 or while space is available. There are a limited number of tickets, and the event will NOT be recorded or made available to the public afterward.
Once you register, our team will follow up with more information in the first week of August. For questions or concerns, contact Molly Watson at [email protected].
The revolution is live, and Courage California is here for it. We look forward to having you join us on August 13!
John Lewis – an icon of the civil rights movement, congressman and, for decades, a force in Democratic politics – died at age 80 on Friday. Lewis had been treated for advanced-stage pancreatic cancer after being diagnosed during a routine medical exam. He publicly disclosed his diagnosis in late December.
For the Rev. C.T. Vivian, a jail cell was about as familiar as a police officer’s fist. For his work during the height of the civil rights movement, the minister and activist was arrested more times than he cared to count and suffered several brutal beatings at the hands of officers throughout the South.
Solar Energy is a hot topic right now, as our climate crisis continues, aided and abetted by the low-IQ individual currently occupying the White House. The good news is that there are many options available to homeowners who want to go solar; the bad news is that can make it hard to decide which option is right for you.
One of our new members, Jeff Dobhriste, put some time and into the issue, an here are his recommendations:
How Much Do You Need?
The average home needs 4-8 kilowatts of power; at current prices, that will cost between $16,000 and $21,000 to install.
DIY?
You can save half that money if you install the system yourself. Be careful, though, as you’ll need permits, expertise, and you won’t get a warranty. Definitely for experts only!
Tax Credits
The Federal government is offering tax credits for solar installation through December of 2021. These credits are 26% of the cost this year, but decrease to 22% in 2021.
California offers $3000 per kilowatt in its SASH-DAC program, which specifically targets disadvantaged communities.
Maintenance
You should expect to have your panels professionally cleaned twice per year, at a cost of around $150 per cleaning. If your panels are damaged, they can be expensive to repair, but most companies offer warranties, and your homeowner’s insurance may also help.
The Payoff
You can expect your lower energy bills to pay off the cost of your solar panels in 6-10 years, counting tax incentives; less if you qualify for California’s SASH-DAC program. There is a handy calculator here if you want to run the numbers for your home.
Own, Don’t Lease
Consumer Reports recommends you skip the companies that offer to lease you panels and give you a lower rate on your electricity. The money you save is likely to be substantially less over time than if you owned your panels and you have limited control over what they do to your roof. Additionally, if you own solar panels, they will increase the market value of your home, but if you lease them, they may reduce the market value of your home because they complicate the selling process and/or impose a commitment the buyer may not want.
Bottom Line
If you’re considering solar and you can afford the up-front cost to buy your own panels, buy your own solar now. The tax credits are diminishing, and while technology is improving, it’s not improving so fast as to outweigh the benefits of the tax credit.
Don’t be tempted by the folks who just offer you a discounted rate on power, but want to own the panels themselves; this isn’t likely to save you very much money and may lead to headaches.
We are very pleased to say that Wrapify has decided to support the NAACP San Diego Branch with some of its on-vehicle advertising and matching donations!
San Diego, CA – June 22, 2020 – Wrapify, the performance-driven ad tech platform for brands powered by OOH and the gig economy, today announced a new campaign in support of equal civil rights and the San Diego NAACP chapter.
