Lee County Branch NAACP
3903 Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard
Fort Myers, FL 33916
Attn: President James Muwakkil
Fort Myers, FL 33916
Attn: President James Muwakkil
Dear President Muwakkil:
I have been invited to the NAACP Freedom Fund Awards Banquet and have been asked to sponsor the event financially. I will not be doing either but wanted to explain my concerns and the reasons for my decision. Frankly, I believe the NAACP locally and nationally loses credibility when it picks and chooses which issues it rallies around and embraces what often appears to be a double standard relative to race and ethnicity. I am citing two (2) local and recent examples of my concern.
Tragically, record numbers of young, black males have been gunned down in the streets of Fort Myers in an epidemic of alarming proportions over the last few years. In virtually every instance the killer was also black and the majority of those cases remain open. Many more black citizens have been injured and were lucky to survive similar circumstances. To date, I am unaware of any appreciable attention or public outcry the NAACP locally or nationally have afforded these issues in our own, proverbial backyard.
Conversely, you immediately inserted yourself and the Lee County Branch in the matter of Trayvon Martin’s tragic death in a city hours from ours and publically declared that matter to have been mishandled by the police while expressing your intention to travel to Sanford sporting a “hoodie.” I suspect that when you said that, you had not examined any of the evidence or specifics of the incident; and I am certain you would not have reacted that way had George Zimmerman been black or Trayvon Martin white. . . .
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