The Trenton Branch NAACP Executive Committee accepted an initiative to form an LGBTQ Standing Committee with Kadja Manuel, the branch’s 3rd Vice President, as Chair during it’s February Executive Committee meeting. The Executive Committee must now vote in its March meeting to ratify the Standing Committee. Christian Fuscarino, the Executive Director of New Jersey’s largest LGBTQ Advocacy Organization, Garden State Equality, said, ” I clearly remember the moment NAACP’s Julian Bond spoke out in favor of marriage equality. It was a pivotal moment in a fight that needed to rapidly change public opinion. It is with great excitement to learn the Trenton Branch of NAACP is in the works to become the 2nd in the Nation to have an LGBTQ Committee. New Jersey is often considered to be one of the most LGBTQ-friendly States in America–it is monumental for our capital city’s NAACP to have such a committee.” If the Trenton Branch ratifies the committee, it would be the first branch of the civil rights organization to do so in the state of New Jersey and the second to do so in the Nation.