A Revived NAACP Targets Capitol Hill, GOP ‘Contract’

WASHINGTON — In a sign of their new-found energy, NAACP officials descended on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to urge lawmakers to support the group’s positions on political issues.

Their stated goal was to secure commitments from legislators on several issues that they considered crucial to minorities: welfare reform, stopping a balanced-budget amendment, support for affirmative action programs and approving Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. as surgeon general.

But that was only their starting point. The real goal was to signal that the civil rights organization has put recent internal bickering behind it and to begin its assault on the provisions in the GOP “contract with America.”

“This day has been an effort to educate our members at the grass roots on the issues contained in the ‘contract with America’ as they impact on the lives of blacks,” said Wade Henderson, who heads the group’s Washington office. “Provisions of the contract that have the greatest impact on African Americans are not being criticized as such. That’s why our members are here.”

The lobbying day was in some ways a coming-out party for the new leadership of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Although plans for the legislative assault on the contract began in December, the election last weekend of Myrlie Evers-Williams to chair the organization apparently triggered even more support among NAACP members and led to greater-than-expected participation.

Evers-Williams did not participate in the lobbying effort.

Ernestine Peters, the West Coast regional director who led one of the delegations, spent most of the morning along with about 80 officials of the NAACP in a strategy session coordinated by the civil rights group’s Washington office. By midafternoon, she led a delegation of eight NAACP members to lobby a list of senators.

The California delegation’s first stop was the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who was not in her office when the NAACP group arrived.

Henry Dotson, president of the NAACP’s Los Angeles branch, pressed the staff members for the details of Feinstein’s position on job training for people deprived of welfare. “The message we want to deliver is that if the welfare reform plan doesn’t offer some form of work, it will lead to more homelessness,” he said.

“I do not have an answer for you on that,” said Ralph Payne, the legislative assistant in charge of welfare issues for the senator. “But I do not think that President Clinton does either.”

“We do agree that there should be some form of welfare reform,” Peters said during a meeting with Matthew Kagan, a legislative assistant to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “But we don’t agree with the current proposals” in the GOP contract.