Tiffany Dena Loftin arrived this month as the NAACP’s new director of the Youth & College Division at a critical – even urgent – time when many young African-Americans are clamoring for ways to get involved in social justice movements to resist violence and oppression.
Although she is just 28, Loftin has been organizing workers and communities since her days as a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has worked in the Center for Social Justice at the National Education Association, as a program coordinator with the AFL-CIO Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice and with the American Federation of Teachers.
“I am very, very, excited at this political moment to be asked and provided with the responsibility of leading this division,” she told Diverse in a phone interview. “I can see the power and potential and opportunity of this fantastic organization.”
As NAACP youth director, Loftin will lead the organization’s 700 youth units, which include college and high school chapters as well as neighborhood youth branches. As a former president of the United States Student Association, she is familiar with students’ issues and concerns. One of the things she knows about young people is that “they are going to look for organizations that reflect their interests” and they won’t spend time in groups that don’t.
Based on recent conversations with student members, she said, they are interested in joining fellow students in Florida and elsewhere to demonstrate for stronger gun legislation in the aftermath of the Parkland, Fla., mass shooting.
In her first few weeks on board, she said NAACP youth already have shared their interest in participating in student-led walkouts and marches. “Our students are very intentional about standing in solidarity with the families of those who have lost loved ones, but also making sure our voices don’t go silent. And I think one of the responsibilities of the NAACP in general is to make sure the voices of Black and Brown communities don’t go silent.”
The organization selected Loftin for youth and college director because of her “clear passion for the kind of membership-based organizing that fuels the NAACP,” NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said in announcing her appointment. He added that with her background in labor and student organizing, “Tiffany understands and invests in the power of grassroots activism.”
