The St. Louis City NAACP has a new leadership team, with newly elected President Adolphus Pruitt and a team of chairpersons to fulfill the roles of the branch’s 21 committees.
With the new leadership role, Pruitt said he wants to bring back a positive presence of the NAACP to the community. Within the past two years, he said, the city NAACP has been working on unemployment, discrimination and furthering education in biosciences.
“Today we’re talking about youth violence,” said Pruitt. “Wonder how much violence would exist if these kids had jobs. We will never know.”
Pruitt said that his new role in the NAACP, as well as past positions, has given him a “sense of accomplishment and reward.”
After being self-employed since he was 22 years old, he said, “I am now able to open some doors up for people with the same circumstances.”
Pruitt said he and other NAACP members are working hard to provide opportunities for single black mothers, inner-city youth and unemployed workers.
“They are the most discriminated against group of people,” Pruitt said of single black mothers.
Pruitt saidthe community, government and even peers discriminate against these mothers and their children, which causes a domino affect in the future for these children.
“The criminals of tomorrow are sitting in the laps of these mothers,” Pruitt said.
The St. Louis City NAACP has put a Health and Public Safety Committee in place to address the needs of these mothers. Pruitt wants single mothers to receive support and their kids to receive twice as much support so they don’t become the criminals of tomorrow.
The branch board also wants the city to enforce its ordinances to assure the inclusion of minorities in new construction projects with public subsidy.
“There are a significant amount of resources and incentives (coming into the city) that are not touching the black community,” said Pruitt.
Pruitt outlined St. Louis Ordinance 60275, St. Louis’s First Source Jobs Policy. Its goals are “to provide permanent employment opportunities for the unemployed, the economically disadvantaged and require the full resource of energies of the City be directed to the resolvement of the unemployment of inner-city youth.”
But within the ordinance, there is a provision that allows developers to make voluntary “good faith efforts to observe the provisions of the First Source Jobs Policy.”
“If we are not enforcing the law, we might as well not exist,” said Pruitt.
Pruitt also wants to see enforcement of the Mayor’s Executive Order #28, which calls for 25 percent minority participation and 5 percent women participation in projects with public subsidy.
From 2005 until 2010, Pruitt said, out of 153 eligible projects, only 17 met or exceeded those requirements.
“If you are not going to give us inclusion, we don’t want to see the programs,” said Pruitt.
The NAACP also wants to reach inner-city youth with the new Saint Louis University and Harris-Stowe State University NAACP chapters and a new Gang Abatement Committee at the branch.
Pruitt said, “We want to reconnect with the average citizen no matter the race.”
