March 23, 2006

By ROSETTE ROYALE
Staff Writer

NAACP: few acronyms in the American lexicon are as well known as these five simple letters. But what, exactly, do those letters stand for?

The oldest civil rights organization in the country, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People began in 1910 as biracial coalition, forged from a movement of 29 Black Americans who felt Blacks and whites should be social equals and a group of “new abolitionists” wishing to aid Blacks of the era. Through the use of lawsuits, protests, and moral persuasion, the organization achieved many of its calls for social justice in its early years, though, with time, it was the impact of court victories that began to define the organization. Coupled with those legal wins were the names of the lawyers that changed forever the course of our national identity. Perhaps the most famous of these lawyers was Thurgood Marshall, whose arguments in 1954 convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Plessy vs. Ferguson, thereby making desegregation in education illegal.

But sometimes it’s what happens on the local level, not the national, that defines an organization best. And while it would be unfounded hyperbole to suggest a present-day Marshall is here in Seattle, there exists in our midst a lawyer whose quest for social justice recalls those voiced by some of the NAACP’s heaviest hitters. Her name is Sheley Secrest.

Secrest, 31, was recently installed as the new chair of the Seattle branch of the NAACP. As such, she will steer an organization composed of 2,000 members, and, if her outspoken and unapologetic words are any indication, those members may find themselves in for quite a ride. Tapped for the post while working as an attorney for the Public Defender Association, Secrest also sits on the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) Review Board, which examines police investigations into complaints against officers. It was from the NAACP’s small office, rented from the Urban League, that Secrest laid down the law on discrimination, race, and why the fight for equality is as important now as it’s ever been.

Real Change: Why don’t we start with your work on the OPA Review Board.

Sheley Secrest: I kind of critique, or, at least identify, the functioning of the OPA. I was particularly interested in it because, from the NAACP’s point of view, the OPA was not working at all. We knew that there was misconduct going on. We were able to identify the officers, what they did, what they did wrong, and returned it to the OPA. But they’d do their investigation and they would have a result that wasn’t the same as the NAACP’s. So for the NAACP, when we say that we are the voice of the community, our main thing for the OPA is “Hold those officers accountable, do the true investigating, let the truth really come out.” But right now we can’t even get the chief to be able to discipline the officers, because we can’t get the right investigation going on.

RC: How do you get the right investigation going on?

Secrest: You can identify certain things. For instance, tazers were a big complaint in the community. You have investigators that don’t do something as simple as pulling up the data report showing how often the officer used his tazer: did he tazer the guy six, seven, eight times? The officer says, “He resisted.” Well how did he resist? What type of physical things was he doing that made you tazer this man when he was handcuffed? It’s these types of questions that aren’t being asked. We’re not looking for a story, but if there is something that is being done wrong, we want to correct that.

RC: So what is the NAACP looking for then?

Secrest: Discrimination, especially in Seattle. A lot of times it’s hard to put your finger on it. So many times, because we sit side by side with whites and Blacks, and we can be neighbors, we forget that civil rights is still an issue and that race still matters. We often look at Martin Luther King[, Jr.] back in the ’60s and the marches, but here, in 2006, what’s going on right now. Let’s look inside the classrooms — matter of fact, the special education classrooms. What do the students look like? Are the classes filled with African-American males? Education is one of the biggest things that we’re working on this year. Seattle [school] superintendent, Raj Manhas, I have to give him credit. He’s stepped up and said, “Okay, we definitely have a problem, but I have no idea of how to resolve this.” So he’s working with the NAACP to try to come up with a solution. What we’re going to recommend is not to put the burden on the students to become better students: place the burden on the teachers to perform their jobs better.

RC: Can we take a step back and get a wider view of how race is handled in the country at large?

Secrest: It’s hard for people to admit and accept that racism still exists here in 2006. Or if they do admit it, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s over there.” Take for example, Hurricane Katrina. There, the world said, “Oh, that was horrible,” because they were poor, because they were Black. But it stopped when it was over there, in the hurricane-affected areas. Almost as if to say, “Here in Seattle, that would never take place.” So that’s a strange component of trying to address race relations. But the NAACP is so blessed, because we have our national branches, so we’re able to show, “Who’s getting tasered? Black males, 18-35? Oh, they’re doing that in Chicago. too. Oh, wait a minute. It’s not just Chicago, but over in Detroit they’re doing that.” It’s these common stories that we’re able to show, not just the isolated incident. It didn’t happen just this one time: this is happening nationally.

RC: So these things are happening nationally. But do you think there is the national perception, sometimes, that the NAACP is obsolete?

Secrest: Absolutely. Especially for younger people. Here I am, 31. Four years ago if you would’ve asked me to join the NAACP, I would’ve said, “Why? That’s an organization for my grandparents.” It wasn’t until Carl Mack [Seattle NAACP chair from 2003-2005] started reaching out to young people that he helped to remove the organization from just being the history books. Under Carl’s leadership, any person that came into the office saying that he was discriminated against, we were able to sit down and investigate it. He taught us how to do it: did this happen to you because you are Black, or did something bad happen to you and you just happened to be Black? There is a fine distinction a lot of times.

RC: How, as a person of color, do you know if race is the reason you were discriminated against?

Secrest: For most of us, it is strictly off of a feeling. Something doesn’t feel right. You can’t exactly put your finger on, but you know. Come to us and let us figure it out. We’ll do a thorough investigation.

RC: How does the cloud of racism and discrimination hover over Seattle?

Secrest: It’s harder to identify, because we intermesh so much. It’s not right in your face. If you go down South, you can hear somebody call you “nigger” or “boy”: it’s very direct discrimination there. Here, it’s a little bit subverted. In that way, Seattle is very unique. One of the issues that local NAACP is addressing now is Black contractors. Now, we don’t have affirmative action here in Washington. When it came to the rewarding of the jobs, [those who hire] were saying, “Well, we can’t look at race, but we can look at the disadvantaged businesses.” As the work is coming out, millions and millions of dollars are being put into projects all over the city, but a small amount — something like one percent — has gone to these disadvantaged businesses. The effect is that it’s putting the businesses — African-American businesses, that you’ve seen exist for years — completely out of work. The Sound Transit Project is one the NAACP is looking at trying to correct. It’s not a matter of unqualified workers. We have people [of color] who have trained for these particular types of jobs. If they’re qualified, give the people the job. If Sound Transit isn’t able to do it, the NAACP is prepared to shut them down.

RC: Does the NAACP only investigate claims for people who are African American?

Secrest: Absolutely not. We do race discrimination, that’s a favorite of mine. But we do all civil rights: disabilities, age discrimination. Now it looks like sexual orientation is going to be added to it.

RC: How do you get people to know that the NAACP is not just about the “CP?”

Secrest: It has to be with the visibility of the cases that we take. We have won one against Rabanco: they hold the garbage contracts for our city and the surrounding cities. They have discrimination as well. Their management was calling their workers “Buckwheat,” just horrible things. So with Rabanco, it wasn’t only the race discrimination that we were handling; it was also disability. As soon as the workers weren’t able to lift those heavy trashcans, that’s when we found the workers were losing their jobs. So, to change from the focus of “CP,” we let everyone know if you come into our office, whether you’re white, Black, whatever: if you’ve been wronged, we’re the experts, we’ll handle your claim. Does that sound like we’re bullshitting?

RC: I see issues of poverty that are interwoven with race and not just in Seattle. How you address poverty?

Secrest: We understand that just because you’ve made it, you can’t forget to look back. Most of us are just one paycheck away from being poor and impoverished. Those are the people who we fight for. I’m in Puyallup, I’m no longer in the poorer class, you know, doing well as an attorney. But those I advocate for, those I fight for, are those who have the least. It’s actually getting your hands dirty, going back there in the trenches and making sure there’s justice for all people — that’s the true work.

RC: Now a personal question: has anything happened to you, because of your race, that you felt was discriminatory?

Secrest: Well, yes. I’m a Black girl, born and raised in Puyallup. I know what it’s like to be sitting there as the only person of color in the classroom. I sometimes hate Black History Month because the teachers and students expect you to be the expert for your whole race. So, I know what it feels like. But it’s not from my personal experience that I fight. Whether you’re an attorney or civil rights leader, you have to be able to take on the voice of the person sitting at the table asking for your help. Whether I’ve personally ever been tazed — when you come to me, I have been, your injuries are mine as well. We feel it, we personalize it, and unapologetically so. A lot of people say you’re supposed to build your own wall so that you can walk away. Not when you come in through these doors. There’s a lot of yelling, crying. But when you go out the door, you know you’re no longer alone in this. n