07/07/2014 – John Evans – Public Comments

John Evans’ Public Comments
John Evans is President of NAACP DeKalb County Branch

John Evans (President of NAACP DeKalb County Branch)
I’m here on a mission of mercy. I know these legal services are floating around somewhere. We’ve heard the ones you had retired. We want to know where the process is. The one thing we have as a problem at the NAACP is that we can never be sure blacks are going to be represented. We want to make it clear that we are expecting that process to work.
If you know you don’t have all the ingredients, you have to do something to make it work. The makeup of this board and the makeup of this county almost demands that we have good representation from black law firms. We are not talking about who, what or where, but we are certainly talking about having some. I think you all understand what I mean.
If we don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it. If we have control and we don’t use it, nobody else is going to work it out for us. We have to take what we have and mandate that we want some black firms in that process. I know that realistically that in a normal straight forward bid process we won’t make it. I know we won’t make it. So, we’re asking that those believe in doing the right thing to make sure that the ingredient of black law firms is involved in the process.
I don’t know what you have to do. I don’t know what you’ve done to date. But that process needs to be looked at to make sure that we have representation. We can’t say it too many times that we need black representation in the legal matters of this system. I hope that you all will certainly put your minds to it, whatever you need to do to massage it.
Make sure you do that, for if you don’t, I say it will be an injustice to this district. We’ve had black representation most of the time here recently. We hope and expect you to do it again this time.
[applause from crowd]