Yeah, yeah.

Welcome to OnQ magazine.

I'm Stacy Smith.

For more than 90 years, the NAACP has been the nation's leading civil rights organization.

Locally, the Pittsburgh chapter has faced some tough times.

But now a new leade says she wants to bring change.

M. Gayle Moss recently defeate longtime president Tim Stevens to take over as leader.

And tonight, Moss sits down with OnQ correspondent Tonya Caruso to discuss her plans and her hopes for the future.

It is tonight's cover story.

Insid a tiny office on Wiley Avenue.

Gayle Moss is gearing up for a big challenge.

This meeting about the consensus group president of the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP.

Was it a difficult decision to run?

Very.

It's a very awesome job because it's a very is so many needs.

And of course, you cannot do everything at one time.

And when people are hurting and need things they want instant gratification.

And you can feel that but you're not you're not able to deliver it in that manner.

But you can certainly chip away at it.

And I just, my heart, just would not let me sit by any longer and not say something, scream out and say, here I am, I'm going to try this challenge.

Why not me?

Moss may b new to the office of president, but she is no stranger to the NAACP and its mission.

She served as a first vice president for several years, raising money and building the branch's scholarship program.

But her commitment has been more than 50 years in the making.

Moss joined the NAACP when she was just eight years ol and gave Miss Fox the original.

Did you even know at the time what it was?

Well, yes.

My parents were very civil rights conscious.

And the church we belong to one of the founders of the NAACP to work very close with membership.

Daisy Lampkin came to ou church with the membership drive and my parents purchased our membership.

And from that time I was always a member.

Over the years, Moss witnessed history as national events helped the Pittsburgh branch to grow.

No, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Well, it was very exciting.

I was at the 1st March in Washington, and I was at the 2nd March One day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

There were people that were abl to vote which wasn't going on.

Then you were able to rose.

We had Ross Parks who would not get about the seats, and then we were allowed equal access to the transportation system in different cities.

I can remember here in Pittsburgh when we weren't allowed in Highland Park Pool because we were color that changed.

So I did see great changes.

When would you say it was at its strongest?

I guess during th time that I was involved with, I would say in the 60s and 70s, was when we start to make breakthroughs as far as, boycotting and getting peopl employment in, different places where people of color had never been before, starting to see a surge o African-American teachers here.

At its peak, the Pittsburgh membership reached 10,000 people.

Today that number is less than 1700.

It's the first and most crucial hurdle Moss must overcome.

What do you attribut to the drop off of membership?

Well, I think it's like everything else.

First of all, a lot of people have been leaving the area.

Of course, you hear the mayor say that in the city council or whatever the people, they come out of school, they leave.

I think that has something to do with it.

Then people with not having our membership did do a drastic leap.

It was $10.

For many, many years.

And then it tripl to 30 for an annual membership.

So when people don't have jobs or have a way, then they don't have a way to buy membership.

Moss says perhap the biggest reason for a drop in membership is a disconnect with young people.

Our kids don't know where the NAACP is unless there's someone in their life that's affiliate or that talks to them about it.

I came up in a household that we talked about it and things were going on and happening, and when I raised my children was in the time of Martin Luther King coming along.

And so all these things were there, and they were, you know, they were taught from home.

My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

You have new young adults, new parents, new children that need to know the story.

And I think maybe we have been lax on telling the story.

And I think that that's what we need to do.

Tell this story.

One afternoo and double ACP Sheila speaking.

Can I help you?

Moss is now kicking off a massive membership drive, hoping to sign up 1000 new members by May.

Meantime, the list of issue she wants to address continues to grow.

See, here's some ones I were talking about for the letter.

We have to look at our achievemen of our children in the schools, which seems to m that the testing are very low.

So is that two minus one equals one?

We want to see where.

Why is that?

We need to know that our children have books and the right materials to be able to study.

And learn.

Unemployment is very bad.

And underemployment, although as you look across the board, is very bad with African-Americans and, other, denominations of people.

We have this transit system taking the busses off.

Okay.

If you have a people all in a certain area and they most do not have cars, how do they get to work?

If you cut off the busses?

So all these things need to be looked at and challenged.

Which brings Moss back to the membership drive.

The key, she says, to puttin the organization back on track.

Number one is membership.

We will have this membership drive, and as we gain members, we will be able to approach some of the ills of our community in numbers.

We can address the government.

We can address the CEOs who have these high positions and pull the purse strings of our community.

And from there, you know, because it's all one thing.

When you really look at it, one affects the other.

And once you can get out there and start to chip away at the one it like the ripple effect it'll start to make differences and all those areas differences.

Moss says that can be life changing as long as people remember what this organization has done and recognize where it could go.

And you have to start off a new generation of people to knowing that NAACP is very important and it's a part of our living.

Like other organizations are to other people.

And it has to become a household word.

And, you talk about it at home.

And so once you get the word out and you begin to talk to people, I think that it will change how they feel an it'll give them some awareness.

Now, Gayle Moss has lots of experience in both education and organizing people.

She worked for the University of Pittsburgh for more than 30 years.

Most recently, Gayle was a program developer in student affairs.

And you can't really say she's retired now because she really does go nonstop.

And Stacey Gayle hope to have those 1000 new members signed up by May 19th, which is their annual human rights dinner.

And, she says she's going to get the ball rolling.

That's really the first step.

All right.

Yeah.

She's indicated already.

That's the first thing she wants to do.

And she's already taking action on that.

What else does Miss Moss want to do?

Well, really, she talked about a list of problems, and there may be things that come up immediately, like the pet transit crisis.

But really, for her, education is a very serious issue.

And she's already talking about organizing some initiatives going into local schools.

So she really does have a plan, and she wants to move forward back to her role with th University of Pittsburgh in two.

Absolutely.

Tonya thank you, Shirley.

Still to come, an insider's look at the recent elections in Iraq.

We'll find out if local Middle East correspondent Betsy Hiel thinks the elections were a success, and what they will ultimately mean for Iraq and the United States.

And then coming up a little bit later this half hour.

Today is the day.

And Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of winter.

So why is a local group singing his praises?

We'll find out OnQ.

Continues.

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The members of WQED a little more than an hour fro now, President Bush is expected to outline his strategy for success in Iraq.

Well, tonight, state of the Union comes just days after an electio which brought millions of Iraqis to the polls.

A reporter from Pittsburgh is among those watching the events with great interest, and she is with Chris Moore this evening.

Chris.

That's right.

Stacy.

She's no stranger to our program.

Join me in welcoming back the Pittsburgh Tribune Review's Middle East correspondent, Betsy Hiel.

How are you?

I'm fine.

All right.

I've read some of your dispatches prior to the elections.

You were talking to a lot of people about whether they would vote or would not vote.

There was some mixed reaction.

Some thought they'd stay away.

A lot of people did want to vote.

And it appears that people di go to the polls and vote there.

A major success for the Iraqi people first.

Yeah, I definitely think so.

And you could see the, the the excitement on their faces when they came out and they had purple fingers and they were showing them off and going badge of honor.

Right, right.

And some say giving a finger to the insurgents.

But, there was a lot.

I've talked to some of my Iraqi friends back home who walk one, walk six miles to go and vote, and he's a journalist.

And then he had to go cover a story in a Sunni area where they said they were going to boycott with his purple finger got caught in a in a firefight, phoned in his story and he said terrorists and or bombs were not going to stop him from voting or covering his story.

And so is that the mood of the majority of the Iraqi people?

I remember the one, student who wanted to vote for the communists that you wrote about because they were an eclectic group across, some of the religions and the races there.

But felt that he did not want to go vote.

Well, he wanted to vote, but he was afraid to vote.

And what happened was a lot of people were afraid.

And then they looked outside the window and they see people walking, and they knew they were going to vote.

And it gave them courage to go and vote themselves.

And, and there were reports of people that, you know, there were attacks, suicide attacks, and they cleaned people.

The voters waited.

They cleaned up the, the the blood in the bodies.

And the they went back in line to vote.

I mean, it's truly extraordinary, these people who defied, you know, and I don't know how many people, how many of us would go and vote, you know, we don't even we could take a lesson from them about voting.

We don't go to vote.

And nobody's there to discourage you at all at the polls.

Is this a major victory for the Bush administration as they move forward with their policy on Iraq?

I think it was a very necessary thing for it to happen.

This is something that that the Bush administration has, has pushed forward as democracy in the region being something necessary for the region.

I think it's been part of his policy, and I definitely think he will cast it in the state of the Union as a, as a great success.

Now, I know you've been in Egypt too, and I wonder how others see this.

Because I've read some of the foreign press coverage that says, that international la says that any occupied country of the election is invali and that the U.S., and rightly so, criticized Russia when they invaded places like Hungary and checklist Slovakia or Afghanistan and had elections.

We criticized them.

And now some of that criticism is coming, to us saying under occupation, this is not a bona fide election.

What do you think the Iraqi people think?

Well I think there is a lot of that.

I think part of the platforms that people had were, on the basis that that th American occupation would end.

Some are saying tha they don't want it right away.

They want some sort of timetable, that they wan the security situation better.

And, there is that criticism, a lot of the criticism in the Arab world about having elections under occupation.

And then on the flip side, there is a lot of those who do want democracy in their own country.

And, you know, people seeing, Iraqis going to vote in, in Syria for the Iraqi election was something pretty amazing for seeing them vote, no matter what.

I think knowing that the elections that they had had under Saddam Hussein were were just shams.

I think that for those who want democracy in their own countries, I think they were heartened by it.

And I think people if this works out, if they can form a government, if the country doesn't fall apart, I think it will reverberate around here.

So I think, well, of course, I mean, right now you have people jockeying for power.

Depending upon how the parties lined out.

You have, you know, the United Iraqi list, which was made up of, the Shia, some of the Shia clerics as well as others.

You have Allawi, Ayad Allawi, the current interim prime minister, his list, he's seen as a secular strongman, Shia.

He also has Sunni, as on his list.

And apparently he is doin it has done quite well in this.

You have a strong Kurdish, Kurdish and they, vote as well.

And you need you need them to all work together because you need a coalition two thirds majority in the Assembly.

What's what's the likelihood of that happening, especially when people wer and probably rightly so, afraid to campaign put their names on the on the ballots.

A lot of Iraqis wanted to vote, and we understand that.

True enough.

But many of them didn't know who they were voting for in some cases.

Right?

Well, they're also voting for political parties.

I mean, they knew who their major parties were that they wanted to vote for.

It's true.

I mean, it's very different.

You know, I can't imagine votin when 37 out of 180 or so or not.

The rest are not even there to keep it secret.

And so that does make it difficult.

And there will be those the Sunni, clerics have already said that this is illegitimate.

And but will they be able to bring in more Sunnis and to form a constitution, to form the assembly that will then write the constitution for the country?

Ali al-Sistani writes a major fatwa that says everybody who is Shia should get out and vote.

The Sunnis kind of boycott the Kurds in the north, in their own oil rich region, are looking for their independent land.

They all turn out and vote.

What are the Sunnis saying now that many of them did not go to the polls?

Well, they're saying it was illegitimate.

A lot of them said they didn't vote because either they feared feared reprisal.

And these are the ones who are leading the insurgency, too, aren't they?

Correct.

And that this is an illegal election because of the occupation.

But now you're also seeing more clerics saying, we want we want some say in wha the Constitution is going to be.

And they're looking at ways to bring everyone's talking a lot more conciliatory.

You know, we're not going to have a Shia state like they have in Iran.

This is what the Shia are saying.

We have to we, they're talking to major.

The president of Iraq right now is is a Sunni, and he's talking as well as, Adnan Pachachi, who is like the one of the leading Iraqi Sunni, foreign diplomats there.

I think you'll see some of them in the higher echelons, of the of of the new assembly.

And, so they're talking about how they can bring in the Sunnis because they realize they want to bring in the Sunnis.

What about women?

How will they fare?

We saw a number of women going to the polls.

Will every 1 in 3 o the candidates had to be women, so that this assembly is goin to be one third women, which is, you know, very unusual.

We don't see it in our in our government.

And, so tha will be quite different as well.

You'll see a different face, faces.

There's some very strong, strong women that I know.

One woman, she's head of a Shi tribe, and she's a very strong, she's a campaigner for women's rights.

Human rights.

And, she she can really sit down with those, sheikhs, male sheikhs and tell them a few things she's not afraid to.

So there's some very interestin women out there that that will probably be included in the assembly.

Now, there's that timetable that that within a year, the constitution has to be written.

It has to be voted on, what's likely to happen next?

And what do you think the future is going to bring after these elections?

Well, you do have the Constitution that has to be written and then the Constitution to if two thirds of the of the provinces actually vote no against the Constitution, they'll have to go back and redo it.

So there's been like a six month, maybe extended period if the first constitution does not pass.

So there's going to be a lot of jockeying.

There's going to b the role of religion and state, the role of the US, how long we keep the US Army there.

That's a major thing the president says.

Mr.

Bush says we will not hav a timetable that only encourages those people who fight against us.

So what's going to happen was that one of the major campaign themes that these folks wil the occupation will in, showing the helicopters and the and the tanks leaving Iraq.

I think that that that is an issue.

But I, you know, recentl you've had all the Iraqi leaders come out and say, if the U.S.

leaves right now, that would be suicide for us because we have to we have to both bolster the Iraqi army, the the police, the the National Guard to be able to defend against the insurgency.

We don't want this government to just fall.

And so it will be up to how they can train the Iraqi forces, how fast they can to make them actual, real strong fighting force to be able to defend the country, the borders, as well as internally.

My last question is about yo and how you cover these things.

What's it like for you?

When you're there, you mostl not embedded when you're there.

Right.

With troops.

So there's a lot of kidnaping going on there.

Hostages with rifles pointed toward their heads.

There's beheadings going on.

What do you think about how do you deal with all of that?

Well we have a lot of gallows humor.

I was with some of my Iraqi friends, and, they said, well if someone tries to kidnap you, we'll just tell them you're our.

You're our hostage.

Go find your own hostage.

You know, so we kind of joke about things like that, and you also, you take precautions, you talk with people.

You get an ear on the ground of what's happening, and, you cross your fingers.

Now you're going back in.

This time, you will be embedded with the Pennsylvania National Guard unit.

That's what I'm working o right now with them to see when, when it can happen and how we will work it out.

Do you know what their mission will be?

Are they infantry?

Engineers?

Artillery?

Was there a mix of differen people from around the state and mostly half from the Philadelphia area, half from the Pittsburgh Oh, I see a rivalry right there.

Right.

It could have been worse had the Steelers won.

What are you.

When are you leaving?

Do you know I'm leaving in a couple of weeks for the Middle East.

Okay, well, we will look forwar to your dispatches in the trip.

Thank you for being here, as always.

And thank you and welcome back.

Whenever you come back, you know, we want you on the program.

Thank you.

All right, well, that's Betsy Hiel.

Look at the election.

Stacy.

Now, back to you.

All right.

Thank you.

Chris.

Coming up next, it only comes once a year.

Today is Groundhog Day.

We're going to find out why one local group think that is something to sing about.

So stay connected.

When viewers request, we respond.

Is there an on cue story you think bears repeating when you heard about from friends?

Or maybe missed the first time around?

Let us know by logging on to our website, wqed.org.

Then click OnQ to submit your request for an OnQ story.

Punxsutawney Phil usually brings bad news and this year was no exception.

The groundhog saw his shadow this morning, and as the legend goes, that means six more weeks of winter weather.

But regardless of the forecast, three teenage singers from Scranto think that Phil is kind of cute.

Tonight OnQ, contributor Dave Crawley visits Groundhog Town with the chicks.

Every February 2nd, the little town of Punxsutawney becomes a medium sized town as true believers turn out i force for a forecast from Phil.

Punxsutawney Phil is the penultimate prognosticator, but a teen idol.

Well, the chicks dig him.

And I do mean the chicks.

Hey, Phil, have you heard?

Dave's hanging on there every word.

Did you see it?

Was it there?

Are the six.

more weeks of winter.

Springtime in the air.

The chicks are 16 year old Kaylee Dining and 14 year old Erin Kennedy and Katie Blake.

The girls from Scranton have hit the local charts with a song called Hey Phil.

It's been getting a lot of airtime on fantasy radio.

Okay, girls.

They've even cracked the Groundho Club's mysterious inner circle.

We always saw the groundhog on television, and we always watched him and thought it was so cute.

And since we were into performing, we thought it would be cool to make a song for so.

You're the cutest little guy.

Hey, Bill, can't you mak all those groundhog girls cry?

Some famous visitors from MTV loved the song.

Oh, it's good I'm going to use it on the show.

Which made them mildly excited to six more weeks of winter over springtime in the air.

You're the man with a song from the Chick for another six weeks of winter.

Dave Crawley for OnQ.

Got it from Beanie Baby.

And to top the film, and to Dave, as you know, is one of OnQ's newest contributors, but you can see all of Dave's popular Katy Country segments on KDKA TV.

6 p.m.

news.

As for the chicks, if you would like more information on them or their song, you can go to our website, wqed.org and click the OnQ logo on the first page.

Now here's a look at some of the other stories we're working on this week.

Tomorrow night the president of Pittsburgh School Board goes on the record and is live OnQ.

Find out what Bill Isler has to say about the recent controversy surrounding Superintendent Doctor John Thompson.

And when the search fo a new superintendent will begin.

Also tomorrow, reflections on K Leroy Irvis, the first and longes serving African-American speaker of the House in Pennsylvania.

He's a man who fought endlessly for civil rights, health care, and improvements in housing and education.

And then on Friday, OnQ is OffQ.

This week, regular panelists Alan Cox, Fred Honsberger and Ruth Ann Dailey are joined by special guest.

Pittsburgh School board member Mark Brantley.

It's sure to be an interesting discussion.

We're live at 7:30 every night this week OnQ.

Stay connected.

And thank you for watching.

We will se you live at 7:30 tomorrow night.

Stay connected and have a good night.