NAACP State President Sarah Tyree on Politics, Activism, and Organizing

Published Nov 2, 2024, 2:02 PM

Today we are joined by Army Veteran, Social Worker, and Arizona State NAACP President Sarah Tyree to discuss navigating the NAACP agenda in a swing state during a presidential election, issues that people should remain mindful of when voting, police reform, and activism in our current political climate.

Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship, empathy and understanding. I'm your host, ramses joh.

He is ramses Jah, I am q Ward. You are tuned into Civic Cipher.

Yes you are, and we are in fantastic spirits. This week. We've had a lot of really awesome things that we've been up to. For those that follow us on social media might know what we're talking about. It feels good to see some changes, some ripple effects, and you know that motion won't stop today. Today we are joined in studio by Sarah Tyree, the one and only. She is an Army veteran, She's a social worker, and indeed she is the Arizona State NAACP President. Yes, sir, welcome, Madam President, tells. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, absolutely so. I'm an Arizona native, I'm a former foster care youth, spent eight years in the Army. I'm a social worker. I experienced some domestic violence in my life. I had a partner previously who nearly took my life, and as such, I lost my housing, I lost my job. As a disabled veteran, I do have free health care, but it took them four months to see me. And so once I stabilized, I kind of felt like, if me and my privilege, my privilege being a veteran, I'm educated, I have my master's degree. If it was this hard for me to get the type of support that I needed, what is it like for people who have less than I do? And so that was really my first step into not only the NAACP, but in the political sphere within Arizona as well well.

I am so excited to hear all about that and indeed what the NAACP is up to and the optics on the current political climate. So we got all that and so much more to stick around for. But first it is time to discuss some ebony excellence.

Shall we?

I think you shall.

This week's Ebony Excellence sponsored by Actively Black There is Greatness in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com. Supreme Court Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, recipient of the National Council of Negro Women Mary McLeod Bethune Trailblazer Reward at their sixty first annual national Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, where we were present on the ground and we got an opportunity, i'd like to say, to be in the presence of royalty, of black excellence and of true civil rights trailblazers having those conversations in real time and watching Justice Katanji Brown Jackson captivate the room. Rams and I had an opportunity to have a conversation in real time, and I'm like, man, I wish my daughter could see this. And as I kind of scampered off to be on the spot security for some people who were violating or trying to violate rules that have been put into place, my brother, as usual, saved the day and captured some allowable content for me to share with my baby girl when I got home, and that was, as you can imagine, a great moment for me. So being able to see history happen in real time is something that I hope is the norm for us moving forward, because a lot of these things are, as you can imagine, far overdue. We shouldn't still be having the first black woman anything. But let's get them all out of the way and you know, fast secession. Let's have those things happen. The first black whatever you can listen, especially the first black woman. I'd like to see those things happen back to back to back to back to back, because those celebrations feel a little bit more special as those who are the reason we're here, our leaders and our saviors in almost every instance is the black woman. So being able to celebrate that moment felt exceptionally and especially special.

Yeah, one of the things that happened over the week and is us basking in the presence of black women as leaders, black women as thinkers, as philosophers, as champions, as heroes, and that spirit is the spirit out of which this show was born. We've had to share that story many times and we are continuing to celebrate that spirit today with our guest. Now, before we get to your story, let's talk about the NAACP a bit. So for folks that may not know, you know that we work in the allyship space and some people are just coming to the table, talk a little bit about the NAACP or NAACP as it's now referred, What is it, what does it do? And then of course talk about your position as the president of the Arizona in AACP.

You know, I still call it the end of ACP as well. So the end of ACP was founded in nineteen oh nine. We just celebrated our one hundred and fifteenth year this year. But we are a civil rights advocacy organization. We don't do legal representation. I think there's a common misconception that people think that they can come and will support them legally, but that's not something that we do. We do, however, connect folks, community members to allied lawyers, other civil rights lawyers that we do partner with sometimes if they have housing issues, education discrimination right we're facing a lot of that here in Arizona as well, and really across the country if we think about the voucher program and moving back to segregation of schools and so our job really is to support the community and uplifting their voices when they're not able to do it for themselves.

Fantastic, So do us a favorite talk a little bit about your background. You shared a bit when we when we first got on, but talk a little bit about your background and kind of what led you to becoming the president of the ME because that's a huge deal. That's a huge deal and for those that don't know, we do work all across the country, of course, but Arizona is a swing state. Arizona is a state that is it's sort of like the Florida of the West coast, and that there's a lot of strange things that happen here and politically we find ourselves in headlines quite a bit. So insofar as the NAACP is concerned, it is definitely a factor out here, perhaps the most established civil rights advocacy group in the country period, but certainly in the state. So tell us how your path led you there? Is this something that you always had your eyes on? Is this you know? And because we talked to allies again and people that want change and sometimes they have to be the change. And so I feel like folks could find a lot of inspiration in your story. Yeah.

So what a lot of folks don't know is that I'm bi racial and I was raised by a white mother who essentially was racist, right. She really raised me to believe that black and brown people were plagues on society, that all we did was about the government were lazy, and I kind of not kind of, but I did. I grew up with like this identity crisis, viewing myself and my habits as a white person probably into my early twenties. And then that partner that I mentioned earlier was incarcerated at the time, and so being married to that person really opened my eyes into what the justice system is really truly like. And so from there, I think it just kind of propelled me into this wanting to do work for former offenders, formerly incarcerated people, being with our community. So when I came back to Arizona, I am a part of the West Valley Writer Die and I started out in twenty twenty as their Criminal Justice Chair and moved into a vice president role, and then last year myself and Bishop Anthony Holt ran for the state conference as the president and vice president and he was elected as the president, me as the vice president, and he had some health things that he needed to take care of, and so I ascended into the role of president. It's one that's very important to me as I'm the first female president for the Arizona ENDAACP and also the youngest at thirty six, So it's an honor and even though times are heavy sometimes, it's something that I love doing. Now.

What we've noticed in our.

Partnership with our legacy civil rights organizations is that a lot of the leadership is not young. Talk to us a little bit about how important that has been for you to be. You know, in a lot of instance, it's one of the younger leaders across the country, regardless of the organization, The responsibility that you now hold, and what that feels like being a young woman leader, someone who we will refer to as royalty around here, as a as a young leader coming into this new space. Tell us a little bit about how that's been for you and how you see that moving forward.

Yeah. So, you know, historically folks are in leadership spaces or a decade plus, and the way that I view it is that you're not allowing the next generation to come in and experience leadership. We're not doing succession planning things like that. And so I kind of felt like coming in as the first woman and being somebody under forty was going to be a bit hard. Maybe I wasn't going to be able to garner the respect that I feel I have earned, not just by being an upstanding citizen. But you know, I was deployed to Iraq by the time I was seventeen, and I've seen more things than a lot of people have, and so honestly though, it has been I think a journey because there are folks who've been in seats for a long time who were ready to sit down but didn't have somebody to step in into that role. And then there are folks who aren't ready to sit down. So we're kind of bridging that gap between our our elders and Gen X Gen A. So millennials are doing what we can.

So here's something that I thought was interesting, the end of the end of the NAACP, sorry, is a nonpartisan talk to us about well, how about this? Is it difficult to guide the NAACP as a bipart bipartisan organization where many of the pursuits of the organization are based on left leaning views left leaning.

Ideas, Yeah, absolutely, So I wouldn't say that we consider ourselves bipartisan because that means we're acknowledging that there are only two parties, right, and there are multiple, So we are, yes, we are a non partisan organization. However, as President Johnson has said, we are political as hell, and it is sometimes a struggle for us to remain neutral because you're right, a lot of the things that we're advocating for are left leaning and so when I have young people that are coming to me and saying, like, why can't we say that we support candidate A, and that candidate be is you know, doing harm to our community? My response to them is talk about the issues. Right, if we talk about the issues and we don't talk about the candidate, we can we can get the message across to all of our people that what's really happening, And the thing that we need to focus on is the issues, not the person, because the person will go away, right if it's four years or it's eight years, But once that person is done, that person is gone, but the issues still remain. And so really our focus is to just really edge kate young people, old people, middle aged people on the issues that are impacting our community as a whole.

In this season of Donald Trump. How much more difficult is remaining in that position when there's such an when there's such a forwardly aggressive threat on all of the things that are the ideals that we collectively believe in, the things that the nd OFACP has been fighting for for you know, decades now, When when faced with Trump supporters or when trying to remain nonpartisan in neutral how much more difficult.

I'm sorry.

Has this season made that even when, like you said, speak about the issues, well, when disinformation and misinformation that becomes so prevalent, sure, how much more difficult has that made the position that you sit in?

Yeah? Honestly, I don't even think it's disinformation or misinformation at this point. It's outright lives. Okay, Right, you're intentionally lying, You're intentionally stoking fear into people, because that's how you control folks, is fear and control. So I would say that, yes, it's been difficult. I don't know that I would say it's more difficult necessarily because the average person isn't tyvically engaged the way that they need to be. Right, Civic engagement isn't just during election time. It's what happens after election time. It's holding people accountable, it's following the bills that are being put forth, it's looking at their voting records, knowing what a governor does, what a school board member does, and so we don't. We're just not as engaged as we need to be. So, yes, it's difficult because there are outright lies, and also really we just need to do better about educating the voter that's it.

Now, talk to me a little bit about this is something that you and I brush up against. Talk to me about the black men who have been vocal in their opposition to a Kamala Harris presidency. Now you don't have to say, sure, what you can't say, but who are these people? What are their grievances? And if they come to you for clarity or understanding, what do you say to them?

Yeah, So we were just talking about CBC off air and in my time there, I had a cab driver who was an older black man, and we were talking about all the folks who are here because of the election. And so he asked me who I was voting for, and I said who I was voting for? And he said that the other candidate was better for business. And I asked how, and he said, well, he's just better for business. I had money in my bank account, and well he's that person has bankrupted multiple businesses, right, and that person is dangerous to our community, to multiple communities. Well, that person is good for business, and so that's why they have my votes. And so for me, it's the conversation really is just I want to vote for the candidate who supports humanity, right, Like, that's it. I'm going to support humanity over a business any day, because businesses are formed and they're lost, and nonetheless they're created by us. It's not the other way around. So I think that's one of the conversations that we have. But also, you know, I hear sometimes that people are really focused on the stimulus check that we got in twenty twenty, which so weird. Let's talk about it though, for two things real quick. The first is that as former President Trump was in office, Congress wanted to put forth the stimulation to help the economy, and present former President Trump said no, he was against the stimulation. But Congress has the power, and so they made sure that the economy had what they needed during COVID and and really the second piece of that is, if you're if you're basing, you're basing an entire vote on something that happened four years ago for sixteen hundred dollars. That's only seventy five cents a day. Dollars, yeah, twelve hundred dollars. Excuse me, seventy five cents a day. You're you're voting for somebody because they gave you seventy five cents a day.

Can I add something here? Yeah, if that's true, and people want to vote because I can say it, And people want to vote for Donald Trump because he gave them a stimulus check. As you mentioned, it wasn't Donald Trump, they gave him a stimulus check. Second thing is he actually delayed the stimulus checks from getting sent out because even though it wasn't his idea, he wanted his name to go on the check correct, so that it would have the very effect that it's having right now.

Clearly a very effective decision.

Yeah. And so to everyone that's listening to our voice, where you might be considering that as your vote because you got twelve hundred dollars once upon a time. A, he didn't do it. B. He slowed it up so he could put his name on it to trick you and be and see it's working. So you might want to rethink that if that's what you're hanging your hat on in terms of why you're voting for him, right. Just wanted to add that in.

There, absolutely, I think in the most layman terms is you are at work, can you you know you accomplished some task that was really big and a co worker took credit for it, right, Like this is that he didn't do it, he didn't want it, but he got to put his name on it, and so now people think that he is associated with it.

I bet he took it out of his billions of dollars and just when we write a check to everyone in the country.

Right, it was a group project and he got an.

A too, much like his high school record.

This particular moment in history, for me, carries a lot of weight, and sometimes I know voice my fears out loud on the show and to my brother Rams this when we are just having private conversations. Every election cycle, we are told that this is the most important election of our lives. And the problem with that rhetoric is when it is the most important election of your lives, people don't tend to feel that sense of urgency that you think those words should cause. In your opinion as a participant, as an observer, is that sense of urgency something that you feel and that you see those around you share, or is that something that, like me, you're looking around and realizing, Okay, the only person that seems to be taking this serious is me.

Yeah. I think for me specifically, the urgency is there but you have to also understand that I'm surrounding myself with other politicos, right, and so we do understand the urgency for this particular election because if a specific candidate wins, there will be no democracy left, there will be no country left. We will be shipped off to concentration camps or shot dead. And so it's it's unfortunate that not more people are engaged the way that we need them to be so that they understand the urgency that we're facing. But as I'm in community spaces, yeah, it's just me. It's people just go on living their lives. And that's that's where we're at.

We'll talk to us a little bit about let's let's let's go back to the NAACP. Talk to us about what the NAACP is is doing on the ground, not not just in Arizona, but nationwide, because again there are people that listen all over the country.

Yeah, absolutely, so national NAACP has taken the stands of our goal this election is to preserve democracy. That is our goal. Again, it's not about Canada a candidate b. It's that we simply want to ensure that we have a country to call home. Post November fifth, and so all across the state, all across the country, there are naacps that have put out candidate report cards, so you can go to their website and you can see for that state how they how they've rated candidates in their state based on NAACP values. We are have been doing vhoter registration, We're working on training up poll observers, making sure that you know, our people are in those bases. And I think one of the other things is that the NAACP has been able to partner with LYFT and getting folks to the pole. So you know, we're trying in in all areas that we can to make sure the areas the states that need the most support have it, and thankfully Arizona is finally one of those states.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like for folks to know that there are resources out there for you know, people who listen to this show, for them to know that there's infrastructure they can plug into. If you're in like Tupelo, Mississippi, or if you're in Jacksonville, or if you're in you know, pick a city in a state, you know, Cleveland, someplace like that. If you're not connected to individuals or you know an activist group. There's these legacy civil rights organizations about NAACP that can help you mobilize, get you mobilized, and get you involved in something that can make some real change. So food for thought.