via The Local/ Sajda “Purple” Blackwell
The Time Is Now” for the new president of the Philly chapter
Purple Queen Blackwell reporting here for WHYY’S “You Oughta Know,” a popular series covering people, places & events off the beaten path in Philadelphia. Airs weekly, Fridays at 7:30pm on WHYY-TV12 (excerpts of this interview were featured in Nov 2021)
Catherine Hicks, a longtime publisher of the Philadelphia Sunday Sun, recently became only the second woman elected President of the NAACP’s Philadelphia chapter. Her leadership theme “The Time Is Now” includes a focus on crime, educational equity, financial literacy, and Black homeownership.
Saj “Purple” Blackwell interviewed the new president about her history with the NAACP and her plans for moving the Philadelphia chapter forward.
So, how did you begin this journey?
My family was always involved in the NAACP. So that’s how I first began working for the cause. But I really got serious when I met J. Whyatt Mondesire (the former president) and started working with him. I got more engaged with the Philadelphia branch by chairing committees and helping to organize their outreach and membership drives. The path to leadership felt like a natural one at that point but, from a community engagement perspective, it was part of a journey that included my time with the Sunday Sun. We were always looking for ways to get more involved at the newspaper and moving into leadership at NAACP meant more ways to help our community.
What’s been your main challenge so far?
It’s making sure that we’re getting information to the people and staying in contact. One of the complaints we’ve gotten in the past is that people don’t know what’s going on with the NAACP. Obviously the pandemic slowed everything down as far as just being able to disseminate information or having our meetings publicly. So we’ve had to focus on improving our social media presence. But we’re also ensuring we have as much contact info as possible for our membership — emails, telephone numbers, street addresses. There are many ways to reach people – not everybody’s online – so we want to be able to keep in touch in every way we can. I want to make sure that people get engaged and the only way they can get engaged is if they know what’s going on.
Crime is a main focus of your administration – how do you plan to deal with gun violence?
The first thing we’ve been doing is getting young people engaged. It’s critically important to hear their voices and get them involved in helping to solve the problem. It’s on all of us to lend a hand.
The second thing is to partner with organizations that have experience with gun violence and support them as much as possible. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to this issue. In fact, it makes us all less effective if we’ve got organizations all doing their own thing. There’s experience in the community already and we need to leverage that so we can maximize our effectiveness in saving lives.
Lastly, we need a sense of urgency. There’s a lot of crises facing us at once – COVID, joblessness, and gun violence to name a few. The time is now to really step up and partner with community organizations and citizens. That’s priority one.
WEIGHING IN: Catherine Hicks shares her reactions to two recent court verdicts, reflecting two very different sides of American justice.
Read the full article at The Local