Yes on 10 Campaign Responds to Revelations That California NAACP Leader Alice Huffman is Hired by Campaign Opposed to Prop 10...
August 10 2018 - 6:52PM
Business Wire
$800,000 and $25,000 a month retainer for
Huffman to oppose initiative run by African American leaders, and
supported by Black civil rights organizations
A bombshell lead article splashed across the front page of the
San Francisco Chronicle this morning revealed that president of the
California NAACP, Alice Huffman, has once again taken money to side
with big businesses harming Black communities in a major ballot
measure fight, California’s Proposition 10. The long list of social
justice organizations supporting Prop 10, which will allow
communities to urgently address California’s housing-affordability
and homeless crises by limiting rent increases, includes the other
major Black legacy civil rights organizations. California NAACP is
an outlier organization opposed to Prop 10, with Huffman’s
consulting firm, AC Public Affairs, being paid $25,000 a month to
direct a $800,000 African American voter outreach campaign.
In the San Francisco Chronicle article, Huffman said she was
approached by two campaigns opposing Prop 10. When explaining why
she chose the one she did, she said, “I took the highest bidder on
the ‘no’ side, to be honest. I don’t make any apologies.”
According to the article, Huffman, in the past, has taken money
from tobacco giant Philip Morris and pharmaceutical companies,
industries which have gouged and lied to consumers much like the
Wall Street corporations funding No on 10 are doing to renters.
Christina Livingston, an African-American young
professional, the State Director of Alliance of Californians for
Community Empowerment (ACCE), and one of the three authors of Yes
on 10 said, “As a Black woman who was actually displaced from
Oakland, it saddens me to see an organization I grew up respecting
being so misused.” ACCE along with the Eviction Defense Network and
the AIDS Healthcare Foundation are the three proponents of the
Proposition 10 initiative.
Livingston added, “While I am disappointed by the revelations
regarding California NAACP, I’m encouraged to know that other
legacy Black civil rights organizations like the Urban League,
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and National Action
Network have further affirmed their commitment to this effort by
endorsing Yes on 10.”
Huffman’s actions are particularly egregious in that the Prop 10
campaign, led by African Americans, will help Blacks who struggle
to pay skyrocketing rents that corporate landlords and Wall Street
speculators profit from. According to a report by the state
Department of Housing and Community Development Black and Latinx
households are more likely to be rent-burdened, spending 30 percent
or more of their income on rent. In some areas, like South Los
Angeles’ historic Black Crenshaw community, the large majority of
tenants spend over 50% of their income in rent.
Damien Goodmon, a leader of the anti-displacement
organization in South Los Angeles Crenshaw Subway Coalition, and
the campaign director of Yes on 10 said: “In the Chronicle article,
Alice Huffman claims that the California NAACP executive board met
in May to vote to oppose Prop 10. I’ve attended California NAACP
events for years. As we have with other Black organization leaders,
I and others on the campaign reached out to Ms. Huffman well before
May to ask for time to discuss Prop 10 and its direct benefit to
Black renters and communities. She never called to invite Yes on 10
to present at a May meeting or any other time, or ask for any
information. I checked in with some other prominent Black
supporters of Yes on 10 and she didn’t reach out to them either.
One must legitimately question the process Ms. Huffman did or did
not engage in.”
Rev. Kelvin Sauls, former Senior Pastor of the historic
Holman United Methodist Church, a Los Angeles Housing Services
Authority Commissioner and the Faith Community Organizer for Yes on
10 said, “We hope that the California NAACP will move swiftly to
reverse their position, and return the dirty money from the
corporate landlords who made their obscene profits from pushing
predatory lending on Black seniors, foreclosing on Black homes, and
raising the rents on struggling Black tenants. The integrity with
advancement and credibility in the achievement in equality of the
revered NAACP is on the line.”
At a recent press conference in South Los Angeles, Black civil
rights organizations and housing justice organizations leaders
gathered to discuss the importance of passing Proposition 10 for
Black communities. Attendees included Los Angeles City
Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, retired California
Assemblymember Mike Davis, retired Los Angeles Councilmember Robert
Farrell, Los Angeles Urban League President Michael Lawson,
Southern Christian Leadership Conference-Greater Southern
California President Rev. William D. Smart Jr., National Action
Network-Los Angeles’ Rev. Jonathan Moseley, AFSCME 3090 Past
President Alice Goff, Black Community Clergy & Labor Alliance
Executive Board Member Jackie Ryan, Black Women for Wellness
Executive Director Janette Robinson-Flint, Church Without Walls
Pastor Cue Jn-Marie, Fannie Lou Hamer Institute Director Akili,
Holman United Methodist Church Rev. Oliver Bouie, Hyde Park
Organizational Partnership for Empowerment, LA CAN Executive
Director Pete White, Los Angeles Worker Center’s Malcolm Harris,
and Poor People’s Campaign & McCarty Memorial Church Pastor
Eddie Anderson.
Other organizations and leaders that support Prop. 10 are the
Institute of the Black World 21st Century (led by Ron Daniels),
Advocates for Black Strategic Alternatives (led by Larry Aubry),
African-American Cultural Center (led by Dr. Maulana Karenga),
Brotherhood Crusade (led by Charisse Bremond-Weaver), California
Calls (led by Anthony Thigpenn), Dellums Institute for Social
Justice, People of Color Sustainable Housing Network, PICO
California (co-led by Rev. Ben McBride), PolicyLink (led by Angela
Glover), SCOPE (led by Gloria Walton), Urban League of San Diego
County, Ward AME Church Pastor John Cager, Women Organized to
Respond to Life-Threatening Diseases, Rev. James Lawson and Black
Lives Matter Organizer Melina Abdullah.
Yes on 10 is supported by a large and growing coalition of civil
rights organizations, housing justice organizations, labor
including the California Labor Federation and the California
Democratic Party.
Follow #YesOn10 on Facebook and Twitter.
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Yes on 10 / Affordable Housing ActDamien
Goodmon323-845-2003dg@housinghumanright.org