In his opening address to 10,000 delegates and guests from every state and the District of Columbia, who crowded the Baltimore Convention Center, NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond, debunked Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s pose as a "compassionate conservative."

The former Georgia state representative warned, "Whether the next president names one, two, or three justices to the Supreme Court, our rights will be on the line," he said. "The court’s radical fringe has sent clear signals that they want to eliminate voting rights and end affirmative action."

The next president will also "name a Cabinet that will look like America or look like a hockey team," he said as the crowd erupted in laughter.

If the GOP preserves majority control of the House and Senate and regains control of the White House, the drive to privatize Social Security, Medicare and public education will get a big boost, he said. "The Majority Leader of the United States Senate regularly fraternized with the leadership of a white supremacist organization." Now that same racist outfit is calling for a "million rebel march" on South Carolina’s statehouse to support the Confederate flag. "Last year, we all wanted to be Y2K compliant. [The GOP leadership seems] to be KKK compliant," Bond said.

He praised Illinois Gov. George Ryan for imposing a moratorium on the death penalty. But Texas Gov. George Bush, he said, "continues to insist that his state’s death penalty is just and fair. Texas leads the nation in the drumbeat of death, having carried out one-third of all executions since 1976. Sixty-four percent of its current death row inmates are racial minorities. They’ve outlawed race-conscious admissions to Texas’ colleges and universities. They ignore race-conscious admissions to death row."

He added, "Now the challenge is to beat every bush, knock on every door, register every voter and turn out very voter, and make sure we count on election day."

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume picked up the theme in his keynote July 10, blasting Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security. "Most people, particularly those who are poor, Black, white ... don’t understand the machinations of the stock market," he said.

"They’re not prepared to go out and wheel and deal on Wall Street. Those few dollars are all that they have. They want to have that money when they get there. The problem is if you are ... of African ancestry you don’t get to 65 that often. But if we’re not even getting to 65 and you want to take what little we have and tell us we can’t get it until we are 70, we want to say that we’re not fools and we’re not going to stand for that. Leave Social Security alone and don’t mess with the retirement age!"

Mfume greeted Black farmers, many from across the deep south, who have been fighting racist discrimination in the Agriculture Department’s farmer loan programs. He received a roaring ovation when he announced that the NAACP is assisting Black farmers reach "beyond the borders of the country loved, 90 miles south, to the nation of Cuba where everybody else is going. Where it’s alright to deal now .... We will take them. We will lead them. We will meet with Mr. Castro."

NAACP members are not hostile to police officers, Mfume said. Some African-American officers were attending the convention. But he angrily denounced the police shooting of Amadou Diallo and other unarmed Black men and the sodomizing by white police officers of Abner Louima. "They want to smack us and spit on us in the station house," Mfume said. "They want to abuse us in our own communities and speak to us like dogs. That kind of police brutality, wherever it is, must be confronted. The NAACP will do it every day, every night, in every community and every way."

The NAACP is supporting a "Redeem the Dream" march on Washington Aug. 26, to commemorate the 37th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The aim of the march, Mfume said, is to demand action by the federal government to end police brutality and racial profiling.