Over the past few years, NAACP Branches across the nation have received complaints for utilizing outdated practices which have contributed to a dwindling membership base. This allegation has become so rampant that the NAACP National Office of Internal Affairs has been inundated with calls and letters regarding branch leadership. It appears that the civil rights agenda may have become overshadowed by power hungry branch officers whose personal agendas take precedence over society's social and racial ills. When the local branch cannot handle its affairs, the National Office must intervene.

THE NATIONAL OFFICE INVESTIGATES ALLEGATIONS
In the year 2004 alone, state and national officers traveled, worked and donated inordinate hours of lengthy and often combative intervenion to promulgate and educate branches on the Association's constitution and by-laws; which they clearly seem to ignore as a governing document. Many branch officers and members serve on the committees which set, ratify and mandate the procedures but they later balk at enforcing the rules which are designed for the good of the organization and for minimizing discord.

LANSING IS NOT IMMUNE
A most recent and unprecedented intervention on behalf of the National NAACP Office occurred when a disgruntled life member's insistence and tenacity was successful in convincing the Association to cancel the Lansing Branch's recent election and reinstitute another. This new election will take place on Sunday, January 9, 2005 from 12:00 noon - 4:00 pm at the LeJon Building, 1801 W. Main Street, Lansing, MI. It is also historic that this election will produce the New Leadership Slate of officers who are challenging long-term incumbents who allegedly disenfranchised the branch's approximately 500 members; including the removal an executive committee member who missed a meeting due to being involved in a life threatening car accident.

NAACP's Statement of Objectives - Article II of the Association's Constitution The principal object of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People shall be to insure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens; to achieve equality of rights and eliminate race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes; to seek enactment and enforcement of federal, state and local laws securing civil rights; to inform the public of the adverse effects of racial discrimination and to seek its elimination; to educate persons as to their constitutional rights and to take all lawful action to secure the exercise thereof, and, to take any other lawful action in furtherance of these objectives consistent with the Articles of Incorporation.