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FROM THE PRESIDENT
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We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.
Return all power to the people.
To every officer, every committee co-chair, every committee member, and every member of NAACP Columbus Branch 3177:
I want to be clear about what we are building, and why.
We are here to organize Black Columbus, protect Black life, confront systems that fail our people, and build infrastructure capable of meeting this moment and every moment after it with discipline, power, and purpose while protecting generations not yet born.
The NAACP was revolutionary from the beginning. It was revolutionary because it dared to organize Black people and allies against lynching, segregation, disenfranchisement, racial terror, and a legal system built to deny our humanity. It was revolutionary because it understood that freedom required more than outrage. It required infrastructure. Lawyers. Members. Branches. Records. Strategy. Discipline. Power.
Somewhere along the way, too many people began to see the NAACP as history instead of machinery, as legacy instead of leverage. That cannot be our future. NAACP Columbus must become the example of what it looks like to return to the revolutionary spirit that created this Association in the first place, not by copying the past, but by building the power this moment demands.
That work starts here. In Columbus. In Linden, the Hilltop, the South Side, Driving Park, the Near East Side, the West Side, the North Side, the suburbs, the schools, the churches, the workplaces, the courtrooms, the council chambers, the block, the barbershop, the beauty salon, and every place Black people are building life in this county. We are not building theory alone. We are building machinery for the people we know, the families we love, and the future we refuse to surrender.
Revolution is the fundamental redistribution of power from those who dominate a system to the people that system has controlled, excluded, exploited, or ignored. Reform changes what a system does. Revolution changes who has the power to make the system answer.
Our revolution is infrastructure.
Revolutionary infrastructure means building permanent Black power that changes who systems answer to. It is membership. It is legal redress. It is political action. It is crisis response. It is our Community Action Teams, our youth leadership, our media, our data, our scorecards, and the leaders we train to replace us. All of it, organized into lasting infrastructure for Black power, Black protection, Black liberation, and Black joy.
We hold ourselves to a test. Before we call any of our work revolutionary, we ask plain questions:
Does it shift power?
Does it change material conditions?
Does it build Black self-determination?
Does it outlast us?
Does it create consequences?
Does it make ordinary Black people more capable of shaping their own future?
Does it strengthen the collective power of the people?
If the answer is yes, it is revolutionary. If the answer is no, we do not use the word, and we do better.
Let me be honest about where we start. Many of our people respect the history of the NAACP and do not yet feel a present relationship with it. Some see it as too slow, too formal, too far from daily Black life. I do not answer that with defensiveness. I answer it with presence. I answer it with proof. I answer it with power.
The NAACP is not powerful because it is old. It is powerful when it is active, organized, disciplined, and trusted. We are not asking anyone to admire history. We are building the infrastructure that turns Black frustration, Black joy, Black memory, Black discipline, and Black love into organized power.
The system that protects us in America will be the one we build ourselves.
That is the assignment. Build power. Protect our joy. Fight for liberation. Do it together. Do it with discipline. Do it with love.
If we follow the system, if we trust each other, and if we realize and mobilize our collective power, we win.
I believe that we will win. We will build the power required to win.
We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams. Let our work be worthy of that dream and let the blueprint we build protect generations we will never meet.
Let’s return all power to the people.
Sean Walton, Jr.
President, NAACP Columbus Branch 3177
