~Out-of-State Millionaire Ward Connerly’s Anti Affirmative Action initiative fails to turn in signatures~

St. Louis, Mo. – Organizers of the so-called Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, led by rich California political operative Ward Connerly, failed to turn in signatures today in an attempt to qualify their initiative to ban affirmative action programs in Missouri.

Signature petitions for all initiatives seeking to qualify for Missouri’s November ballot were due today in Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s Jefferson City office. When the 5 pm deadline rolled around, it became clear that MoCRI organizers were abandoning their efforts in Missouri. “Missourians have spoken loudly and clearly over the last several months – and they have said that Missouri will remain a state that embraces the value of fairness, and the goal of creating an equal playing field for women and racial minorities,” said Brandon Davis, a spokesman for the WeCAN coalition, which opposed the ballot measure. “Affirmative action programs have been one of the most effective tools in achieving these goals in the arenas of public education and public contracting.”

WeCAN (Working to Empower Community Action Now) is a coalition of community, faith, labor, business, and education leaders who lined up across the state to oppose this initiative and mobilized to educate voters. Teams of WeCAN voter educators throughout the state stood alongside MoCRI petitioners to make sure that they approached citizens honestly and that citizens were aware of the impact the initiative would have on valued public programs.

“Missouri is a state that believes in fairness and equality,” said Jeff Ordower, Missouri ACORN Head Organizer, “Once our voter educators got the word out, people learned quickly that this initiative was bad for everyone.”

According to Lara Granich, director of Missouri Jobs with Justice, that effort is what made the difference, “WeCAN volunteers logged well over 1000 hours educating voters on the real impact of this initiative on our state, and we found that when told the truth about the negative social and economic effect of this initiative on our state, Missouri voters refused to sign the MoCRI petition.”

Connerly’s signature gatherers became more desperate and brazen in their deceptive practices as the May 4 deadline to turn in signatures approached – MoCRI organizers employed a person to gather signatures who was wanted in three states on charges of “obtaining signatures by deception”; Connerly’s requests for out-of-state gathers to come to Missouri were posted on websites of know extremists and hate groups; and just last week, WeCAN volunteers witnessed a MoCRI gatherer using carbon paper to trick voters into unknowingly affixing their name to the petition.

The WeCAN coalition was the main opposition to Connerly’s initiative, and the only group that coordinated both paid and volunteer efforts to defeat MoCRI.

Don’t Sign Anti-Affirmative Action Petition

April 19, 2008
by Marcus E. Hammond

Roving petitioners seeking signatures for the so-called Missouri Civil Rights Initiative say that it seeks to end inequalities. Here’s the truth: This petition seeks to change the state constitution to eliminate and/or ban programs that help to level the playing field for women and cultural minorities! Furthermore, it’s not being sponsored from within Missouri. It’s being organized by a rich California businessman named Ward Connerly, who is working in five states to get ballot initiatives passed to end affirmative action. If enough signatures are gathered in Missouri.

by the May 4 deadline, the question will be added to the November ballot.Connerly insists that the playing field is now level for all races, ethnic groups and genders, citing as proof the fact that an African American man and a woman are vying for the Democratic nomination. Women and minorities have made significant strides over the years, in part because barriers were lifted by affirmative action programs. This initiative seeks to turn back progress. Although we like to think that everyone is truly running a fair race, that actually is not the case. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965:

You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying ‘you are free to compete with all the others’, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

According to the Affirmative Action Research and Policy Consortium, “The race is not fair, not because any group of runners are unfit to compete, but because we are not all running on the same track. People of color find their track is blocked by obstacles of racial discrimination as it plays out in education and employment opportunities. People in poverty also find their track littered by unfulfilled basic needs. Women find their lanes blocked by an impenetrable ‘glass ceiling.’ Meanwhile, those unencumbered by race, class or gender discrimination are privileged to run a race where their ability to compete is not impeded by arbitrary barriers.”

After a similar ballot question passed in California, there was a 28 percent drop in tenure-track appointments of faculty in underrepresented minority groups and two-thirds of minority-owned firms in the transportation construction industry that were in business in 1996 (when it was passed), are no longer in business. After the ban in Michigan, Native American college enrollment dropped by 13.5 percent and Hispanic enrollment by 12.6 percent.
This initiative would affect such issues as:

• Education (financial aid, student housing, faculty recruitment and employment, private foundation grants)
• The financial impact to the state that changes in civil rights programs will have, such as hurting our ability to attract new companies and losing an unknown amount of federal funding connected with diversity and affirmative action programs.
• The protection of the integrity of
  Missouri elections. Connerly is attempting to amend our constitution for his own political purposes.

Many Democrats and Republicans agree that affirmative action (not to be confused with quotas) is necessary. President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain support affirmative action, as long as it does not equal quotas. Sen. Barack Obama is on record as supporting affirmative action for contracts, education and employment, and Sen. Hillary Clinton recognized that many middle-class blacks and professional women felt they needed affirmative action to win government contracts or to get ahead in their respective workplaces, and rightly so. In 2006, the annual average weekly earnings of women in full-time wage and salary positions was $600, compared to the $743 earned by men, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Additionally, women are underrepresented in many occupations, meaning they comprise less that 25 percent of total employment. Some of these occupations are architects, construction and building inspectors, and detectives.

Here’s what you can do to help keep this initiative off the ballot in November:

• Refuse to sign or support petitions for the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative.
• Encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues not to be fooled by the signature-gatherers, whose pay is based on how many signatures they collect. If you encounter someone who has signed without realizing what it was or was misled into signing it, report it to 1-877-644-0466. Affidavits are available to reverse that.
• Donate money to help stop Ward Connerly.

Many notable national organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and numerous city and regional organizations seek to help defeat this dangerous initiative. After the ACLU and others supported a challenge to the petition that was filed in Oklahoma Supreme Court, the Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative filed a motion to withdraw the petition because the group said it did not have enough signatures.

You can make a difference. Don’t be fooled in April. Decline to sign! For more information, call 1-877-644-0466 or visit www.wecanmo.org.

Marcus E. Hammond lives in Kansas City, MO. He can be contacted at Tumble_Stud79@yahoo.com

Sunday, April 20,2008

Editor, the Tribune: By now you are likely aware of wealthy California businessman Ward Connerly, who has brought his assault on civil rights to Missouri in the form of a ballot-initiative petition.

Connerly and his supporters suggest that affirmative action should be based upon socioeconomic status, rather than race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. It is for this reason they are attempting to amend the constitution of Missouri to permanently reflect this.

However, if ending socioeconomic inequality is the true motivation, the question begs to be asked: Rather than spend gobs of money, time and energy to banish the efforts of our civil rights leaders - an effort of this nature requires hundreds of volunteers and paid staff, thousands of man-hours and many thousands or millions of dollars - why not use those resources to fight for Missouri’s low-income people, who continue to have safety nets such as Medicaid ripped away from them? Does that not seem like a more reasonable way to end socioeconomic inequality?

Another question that begs to be asked is: What does this wealthy businessman from California stand to gain from an assault on civil rights in Missouri?

Too many things just don’t add up.

So Mr. Connerly, thanks, but no thanks.

You can take your money, your false pretenses and your followers - and go back to California.

Joshua Ewing, Policy Coordinator
Missouri Association for Social Welfare
606 E. Capitol Ave., Jefferson City