(Editor’s note: This story by by Chris Mays was first published in the Brattleboro Reformer on Dec. 17, 2016.)
[B]RATTLEBORO — In hopes of getting the first Windham County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People established, SIT Graduate Institute students Steffen Gillom and Jesse Roaza have started an organizing committee.
“The vision is really to integrate and collaborate with all the other social justice movements happening here and work with them on issues that I think the NAACP could help support with its historic name and backing,” Gillom said of the longest running civil-rights organization in the United State.
The NAACP was founded in 1909. Its mission is to “ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of rights of all persons, and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”
The NAACP, Gillom said, has had a history of helping make effective social change.
Needed to make a formal NAACP chapter is a minimum of 100 applications, which involves getting signatures and membership fees. The goal is to have that completed by the next NAACP review board meeting on Jan. 15.
“It’s the same deadline the Rutland chapter is working with,” Roaza said. “Right now, there’s only one NAACP chapter in the state of Vermont, which is up in Burlington and they opened last year.”
Ultimately, an executive committee will need to be formed for the Windham County chapter.
Gillom, the organizing committee’s chairman, currently serves as a diversity fellow at SIT. He is of African American, Native American and European American descent. He said he discovered a Windham County chapter did not exist when he attended a multicultural conference at Stratton Mountain Resort in November.
“He got inspired to set up an NAACP down here,” said Roaza, who is part Korean-Filipino and part Irish. “I joined him when I found out he was doing it … He and I have been talking about this for months.”
A week after Election Day, the need for the chapter seemed more urgent.
Recalling stories he heard from SIT students and local residents experiencing “more overt hate speech toward them,” Roaza said, “It kind of convinced us that we should probably have more support and institutions in place locally.”
Membership fees are $30 a year. Roaza said the funds allow the chapter to use the NAACP name and have access to the organization’s databases. Part of the contribution will go toward regional NAACP events in New England. The money is also used to help offset costs associated with hosting local workshops.
The benefit of having 2,000 branches in the United States, Roaza said, is that “they all report to the national organization that funds a lot of studies. They collect reports from around the country. So it’s a lot of information about the issues that go on locally and regionally.”
A temporary e-mail address, windhamsocialjustice@gmail.com, has been set up to receive inquiries and letters of interest.
“We’ve been focusing a lot in the Deerfield Valley area and Brattleboro area,” said Roaza, who’s the project coordinator for the downtown organization Wilmington Works. “Ideally, we’d like to get signatures from all the towns in the county, especially outside of SIT.”
So far, Gillom reported a positive response. It’s his opinion that since the election, “a lot of people are more energized now to be part of something that stands for other people.”
Gillom and Roaza said they believe they’ll get the signatures by the January deadline.
Young professionals
Gillom and Roaza came to Brattleboro to pursue their education. Originally from the Midwest, Gillom said he would get emails from the NAACP to stay connected to the organization. He had felt there was adequate representation in his former place of residence. Roaza came from Florida.
Gillom is going to talk during a Southern Vermont Young Professionals speaker series on inclusion and equity in February.
“I think as a young professional of color living in Vermont, one of the things that would make me stay here would be structures like the NAACP being in place,” said Gillom, a member of the Southern Vermont Young Professionals steering committee. “Because representation matters, whether it’s fighting for me directly or knowing it’s there as a resource. I think the NAACP is more important to some millennials than people think.”
The efforts to start the chapter are not led by the Southern Vermont Young Professionals, said the young professional group’s coordinator Alex Beck, community development and workforce specialist at the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp.
“But we absolutely expect a lot of our community to be a part of it, and will facilitate that process,” Beck said, adding that the Southern Vermont Young Professionals hoped Gillom’s “skill set and professional expertise” will contribute to the growth of the group.
