Gary Bledsoe is president of the Texas NAACP, a position he has held since 1991. An Austin attorney who specializes in public interest law, employment and civil rights law, has been a member of the National Board of the NAACP since 2003, and is currently chairs the organization’s National Criminal Justice Committee. Bledsoe earned a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was class president in 1976. Bledsoe has received “lawyer of the year” awards from the Texas Attorney General, the Travis County Bar Association, the Austin and national NAACP, and the Austin Area Urban League Jay D. Jurie, Ph.D., is a resident of Sanford, Florida, where he is an associate professor of public administration and urban and regional planning at the University of Central Florida. Jay, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is a veteran of SDS at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has long advocated public policies that promote social and environmental justice and economic democracy. His Rag Blog article, “Trayvon Martin’s Fatal Shortcut,” which has been will appear in a special edition of ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics and Consciousness.