NAACP pledges financial overhaul

The new president and chief executive of the NAACP said he will spend the next five months getting the organization's fiscal house in order."This organization needs to achieve a viable, sustainable financial security, and I will work over the remainder of 2005 towards building an endowment for the NAACP," said President-elect Bruce S. Gordon, a former retail-marketing executive for Verizon Corp."I am an operations person who believes in tight fiscal management, and over the next five months I will work to fix the fiscal situation,"Mr. Gordon told the 64 board members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People yesterday after they elected him president.Mr. Gordon said he plans to look forward, not backward, and will continue protecting and improving civil rights, voting rights and equal justice, but with a new focus. "The new news is that economic equality will be as important, if not more important, than the others," he said.