By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
Under the leadership of newly elected President Darryl Powell, the Seattle/King County Branch of the NAACP has renewed its efforts towards economic justice and promoting fiscal energy in addressing the needs of the Seattle African American community.
Through conversations with community, political, and legislative leaders, the NAACP is upholding its mission of ensuring equality, economic justice, and eliminating racial hatred, bias, and discrimination by educating people about and advocating for reparations.
“There are a couple of things that I am really excited about that the NAACP is doing,” says Powell. “We’ve always leaned into social justice and racial equality and less so around economic equality and economic justice. So, my charge to our branch is to lean more towards the economic side. In my personal opinion, you’ll never achieve social justice until you have economic justice. With that said, we have a couple of interesting things going on at the branch level.”
According to Powell, the NAACP’s Freedmen’s Affairs Committee provides the community with information on the work they are involved in supporting reparations through various means, including the cannabis industry for American descendants of slaves.
“The Freedmen’s Affairs Committee’s task is to begin discussions at the city and state level around reparations for African Americans,” says Powell. “While we know that this is a hot topic, and we know that different states are at different levels of having that conversation, there hasn’t been a real conversation in the state of Washington regarding [reparations].”
“We have already had a couple of conversations with the mayor,” Powell continued. “And when I say we, it is not just the NAACP, it’s a collective of other advocacy organizations, but the NAACP is turbocharged and, in some cases, leading the charge. But this is one of the exciting things going on.”
The second front in which Powell sees great potential is the cannabis and banking industry and how it can impact the economic paradigm of the community.
Statistics show that African Americans have disproportionately suffered the brunt of the criminalization of cannabis but are disproportionately not receiving the economic benefits from legalization. In response, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has renewed its commitment to cannabis reform, advocating for decriminalization, pardons for non-violent cannabis offenders, and most notably, greater African American ownership and employment opportunities within the burgeoning cannabis industry.
Accordingly, Powell says the NAACP has called upon state and local governments to assist in promoting and prioritizing economic investment opportunities in the cannabis industry specifically for African Americans. This, along with banking, is a key priority for the NAACP’s Economic Development Committee.
“Our Economic Development Committee is involved in a couple of things. Supporting cannabis licensing for African Americans and working with the Washington State Department of Institutions on how to get more people of color into banking,” says Powell.
“If more African Americans are involved in banking and moving up the ladder in the banking system, it gives us the opportunity to have diversity so that when decisions are made around banking and community and loans, we have a more active voice,” Powell concludes.
