NEWSBYBENJAMIN JEALOUS

Benjamin Todd Jealous is president of the NAACP and part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change.

Last week at the NAACP annual convention, we passed over 75 resolutions. They addressed critical issues from education equity, to fixing our broken criminal justice and immigration systems, to our top priority: jobs, jobs, jobs.

One resolution, which was highlighted in my convention speech, created media frenzy: The unanimously passed resolution demanded that the leadership of the Tea Party repudiate its racist elements and make it clear that there is no space in the organization for bigotry.

It is unfortunate that at a time when our nation is reeling in the midst of one of the most devastating downturns in our economy since the Great Depression, the NAACP is compelled to deal with a disturbing, corrosive attack from the Tea Party.

Instead of joining us to repudiate racism, Tea Party leaders have attempted a tit for tat and demanded that we condemn the New Black Panther Party for reported hate speech. It is a false argument. Of course we condemn hate speech from anyone and any organization, including the New Black Panther Party. But that party is a mere flea compared to the influence and size of the Tea Party. And the New Black Panther Party is not a member of the NAACP. What we are asking the Tea Party to eschew is not the racism of some outside organization, but the bigotry within.

After my speech, I was approached by a man named Chris, who asked that his last name not be used. He's a member of both the Tea Party and the NAACP. He thanked me for denouncing the racist elements of a party to which he is loyal. He explained that he felt increasingly uncomfortable within the Tea Party. We want Chris to live in a world where he can feel comfortable in both organizations.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is part of Change.org's Changemaker network, a network comprised of leading voices for social change.

Last night on the Rachel Maddow Show, I challenged Kentucky political hopeful Rand Paul to a debate. Mr. Paul has made headlines for his opposition to certain aspects of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark legislation that outlawed racial segregation in voter registration, schools, workplaces and other public accommodations like hotels and restaurants.

The Civil Rights Act heralded the modern era of our nation's history; one in which race-based discrimination, on paper at least, was relegated to our history texts. It is a law that also doubles as a calling to our better nature.

In one sense I have got to hand it to Rand Paul. It takes some serious guts to publicly challenge such a cherished pillar of the modern American identity. Unfortunately, in the political arena, guts need to be tempered with brains as well.

Mr. Paul says that he supports all efforts to fight government-sponsored discrimination. He has no quibble with the end of segregation in public schools, for example, or in public-sector hiring.  His only dispute is with desegregation of the private sector — the local merchants and lunch-counter operators whose speech rights were apparently encroached on by an overzealous federal government. In Mr. Paul's worldview, the free hand of the marketplace would have eventually forced most of those businesses to serve black folk anyway, because it was in their economic interest to do so.

The problem is that it never quite worked that way. Even after Jim Crow laws were overturned, those business establishments that bucked the system and served an integrated clientele faced threats, coercion and violence from a ruling class — a group made up not merely of local thugs, but of fellow business owners and, far too often, the local police force itself.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Mr Jealous is the 17th President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP. This piece was originally posted on CNN.com.

Van Jones is an American treasure.

He is quite simply one of the few Americans in recent years to have generated powerful new ideas that are creating more jobs here.

He penned the national bestseller, "The Green Collar Economy," which provided the definitive blueprint for retooling American industry to create pathways out of poverty and generate a national economic recovery. He was a driving force behind passage of the 2007 Green Jobs Act. In fact, Van's ideas have helped lead to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs across the industrial Midwest and throughout the nation's decaying urban and rural areas.

Van Jones also may be the most misunderstood man in America.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Mr Jealous is the 17th President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP.

Fear, misinformation and haste are a recipe for bad policy. Throughout our nation’s history, some of the most discriminatory government actions, or those with the worst unintended consequences, were born from uneasy times. Some, like the Black Codes or the McCarthy-era anti-Communist hearings, have been rightly judged by history as shameful over-reactions. Others, sadly, are still in effect.

In 1986 -- at the height of the inner-city crack cocaine epidemic and the fears it sparked -- Congress rushed the passage of legislation that required mandatory minimum prison sentences of at least five years for the possession of just five grams of crack cocaine. The same law, though, said that someone would have to possess five hundred grams of powder cocaine to receive a comparable prison term -- a ratio of 1 to 100. This massive sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine set in motion the mass incarceration of African Americans and Latinos. With mandatory minimums and measures such as three-strikes laws, the trend has spread to working-class whites, as well.

Benjamin Todd Jealous is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Mr Jealous is the 17th President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP.

Every February, we celebrate the triumphs and accomplishments of African Americans, as families, classrooms and libraries across the nation commemorate Black History Month. It is a time to recognize the giants of our struggle, from Harriet Tubman to Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass to Barack Obama.

But history is more than just a collection of famous people and major dates. Indeed, it is a multi-layered narrative in which individual decisions lead to collective movements, where context, timing and personalities combine to create the space for social change to occur.

Without question, the Montgomery Bus Boycott needed a Rosa Parks to take her legendary stand, but it also depended on the thousands of individuals making the courageous decision morning after morning to risk their jobs, their health and their safety to bring a measure of justice to the Jim Crow South. Each of these participants deserves our recognition too. Examples are as varied as our community itself. Here are just a few examples recognized by NAACP members:

Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change.

Since the struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement, we as a country have celebrated significant breakthroughs. Last year's inauguration of President Obama as the nation's commander-in-chief broke the White House color barrier, while the appointments of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Attorney General Eric Holder signified a new wave of diverse and highly qualified officials committed to equality. Undoubtedly, these political achievements are indicators of hope, steps closer to Dr. King's dream of racial and ethnic equality in both treatment and opportunity.

Unfortunately, our inclination to celebrate these triumphs is overshadowed by the daunting disparities and inequalities we have yet to eliminate.

Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Change.org asked Mr. Jealous to respond to questions to provide context for his work and the causes he supports.

Change.org: What causes would you most like to promote as a Changemaker and why?

We are fighting for a better America where all children can go to a good school, where communities are safe and healthy, where people have jobs and make a living wage and where incarceration is not used as the treatment for social ills like mental illness and drug abuse.

It is said that when America catches cold, African Americans get pneumonia. Our communities tend to be disproportionately impacted by crime, joblessness and a broken health care system.

My goal is to promote criminal justice initiatives that put an end to mass incarceration, common sense employment programs that bring jobs back into communities, and health policies that protect the most vulnerable among us -- including those disproportionately affected by global climate change.

Change.org: If you could ask one million people to all do one thing to advance causes that matter to you, what would it be?

Raise your voice. Talk to your member of Congress, your local representatives, your school board. Be a player in helping to change our system. Democracy depends on your participation. It is so easy to throw your hands up and say that the powerful will always win, but cynicism doesn't accomplish anything. One advantage of leading the NAACP is the 100-year history I have to draw inspiration from. It is a history of people who refused to take no for an answer, and ended up changing the world.

Change.org: Tell us a bit about your personal story and how you came to care so much about these causes.

Growing up as one of only a handful of African-American kids in Monterrey, California, I was always deeply aware of the role of race in society. My white father was actually disowned by his parents when he married my black mother. When I was seven years old, I told them that I planned to be a civil rights attorney. When I was a teenager I was out with my family running voter registration drives.

In 1992 I was suspended from Columbia University after organizing a demonstration against the destruction of the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated. The suspension was only for one semester, but I didn't come back for two more years. Instead I moved to Mississippi to fight the closures of two of the state’s three public historically black universities.

I believe deeply that human rights issues -- good schools, public health, addressing the alarming rates of incarceration in this country -- are the logical extension of the civil rights movement.

Change.org: What are the greatest obstacles to change on these causes?

Complacency. Yes, the insurance companies and the polluters and the multinationals and the prison industrial complex can be formidable opponents, but historically we have taken on tougher battles and won.

The NAACP has always embraced the impossible. One hundred years ago, we were a small multiracial group of progressives who dared to come together in a tiny New York apartment to share a bold dream: an America free of racial oppression. The organization launched a tenacious struggle to end the horror of lynch mobs. In 1932, we took up the mantle to reverse Jim Crow, and two decades later, segregation was made illegal. In the wake of Brown v Board, a determined effort for political inclusion was launched, triumphing last year in the election of an African-American president.

Our opponents have always been stronger than us, and the odds stacked against us, but through tenacity and hope, we have managed to redefine the possible.

Photo credit: kennesaw-state-archives