NEW YORK STATE NAACP AGENDA
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
The NAACP New York State Conference, its adult units and youth & college chapter members throughout the state, are frontline advocates committed to raising awareness for political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens in the electoral process. With 56 adult branches, youth councils, and college chapters across the Empire State, the NAACP New York State Conference is actively engaged in increasing the African American responsiveness of citizens to be fully engaged in the democratic process.
As we move forward this year, the NAACP is actively engaged in helping people to use the power of their voice by voting. With an aim to increase the young electorate turnout (18-29), the NAACP continues to make voter education a priority.
The NAACP will register 300,000 new voters across the nation. We will work through our units to increase the number of young voters by enhancing the Association’s capacity to sustain a perennial grassroots program. Our plan is to equip our units with educational materials, technical assistance, training, online voter registration, new media tools, marketing messaging, mobile text messaging, web based “VAN” style voter contact systems, and constituency coalition building. While Civic Engagement efforts remain at the forefront of the NAACP New York State Conference’s agenda, ensuring Americans’ voting rights are equally important.
 
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
The goal of the NAACP New York State Conference criminal justice programmatic activities is to advocate for and advance a better public safety system that reduces the reliance on prisons as a means of solving social problems, advances effective law enforcement and removes barriers to voting and employment for formerly incarcerated persons. The NAACP New York State Conference will accomplish its goal in ways that is responsive to individual needs and builds stronger families and communities.
Criminal Justice efforts are to develop a "smart and safe" framework to implement an advocacy agenda to ensure public safety as a civil and human right in our communities and more specifically the many communities in crisis. Instead of calling for "tough on crime" rhetoric and lock'em up practices, our criminal justice agenda has been developed and designed to capture the true goals and aspirations of how public safety and criminal justice institutions should operate and perform in our communities.
Our communities will only become safer when trust is built between the criminal justice system and the communities they serve, when more help and services are provided as opposed to prison, when citizens coming home from prison can vote and work freely and when we expand and reinvest our prison budgets on education and other civic institutions that helps and serves and will make communities of color safer.
 
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Fairness plays a role in any economy, and for that reason, the NAACP New York State Conference has a number of programs designed to elevate civil and human rights as they pertain to economic opportunity. As the nation recovers from the worst fiscal crisis in more than three decades, the NAACP will be there to ensure that this is done in a fair and just manner.
Fair Lending Practices: Our economic development programmatic advocacy is to facilitate the enhanced capacity of African Americans and other underserved groups to obtain affordable and competitively priced credit and financing, including mortgage loans, small business loans, and consumer loans. Transparency in Employment and Contracting: The NAACP is leading efforts to ensure transparency and fairness with respect to employment and contracting in the public and private sector. From our National corporate scorecard to our work with the federal, state and local government and other public entities, the NAACP will ensure transparency and elevate the business model of diversity in public and private employment throughout the state of New York. Removal of Barriers to Employment for Formerly Incarcerated People: The NAACP is leading public and private sector efforts to end unnecessary discrimination against people with a criminal record. NAACP Corporate Fairness Scorecard The NAACP National Report Cards on Corporate Fairness and Diversity, formerly known as the Economic Reciprocity Initiative (ERI), will measure performance in racial diversity and fairness in industries that are the fastest growing in the State of New York, by occupation and revenue growth.
 
EDUCATION
The promise of a quality education is an important civil and human right that has yet to be fully realized in the American public education system and the state of New York is no exception. African Americans are more likely to attend high-poverty schools—that is, public schools where more than 75 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and are less likely to graduate from high school and subsequently attend college at rates lower than any other racial group. The NAACP New York State Conference is proud to announce its newly developed educational program gratefully funded by the VERIZON and COCA COLA Foundations, entitled: LIFTED – Parent Leadership Academy is a program that reflects the essence of hope, positive advancement and parental engagement – success for every child. LIFTED strengthens, informs and encourages partnerships between home, school and the community.
We must attend school board meetings in order to know what is in the education budget, what resources are being allocated to assist low performing schools and at risk populations and that teachers are certified. We want to be part of discussions and decisions made on behalf of our children so, we work with school administration, parents and other community groups.
 
HEALTH
We must continue to address the need to support preventive health measures, health deficits and the availability of quality health care. Our national priority is obesity. The NAACP is committed to eliminating the racial and ethnic disparities in our health care system that plague people of color. African Americans continue to have the highest incidence, prevalence and mortality rates from chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. Additionally issues like HIV and infant mortality have continued to overwhelm the Black community. Systemic imbalances in the health care delivery system disproportionately affect African Americans and Latinas more than their White counterparts.
In addition the NAACP is engaged in the workforce development movement to increase the number of minorities represented in the medical and public health profession, and a leading presence on governmental advisory workgroups and state and local coalitions developed to provide counsel on cultural competency in the health care system.
 
MEMBERSHIP
Is the life blood of the units and the Association, increased memberships; bring in new people who bring in new energy, ideas and workers.