Group Sues to Keep Affirmative-Action Ban off Ariz. Ballot
A Michigan-based activist group filed suit Monday to knock down an effort to amend the Arizona Constitution and ban affirmative-action programs in the state.
The lawsuit claims that petition-signature gatherers for the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative violated election law with deceptively worded pitches that led potential signers to believe it would further the cause of civil rights, in some cases saying it would actually preserve affirmative action.
The suit asks the court to throw the initiative off the Nov. 4 ballot, assuming the initiative gets enough valid signatures. It was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court on behalf of former Phoenix Councilman Calvin Goode and 12 other county voters.
{snip}
Thomas speaks up
County Attorney Andrew Thomas, honorary chairman for the initiative, calls the allegations groundless.
“It’s a frivolous lawsuit from a radical organization that is true to its name,” Thomas said.
That organization is the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, an acronym for the last four words.
The Arizona initiative has out-of-state roots as well, stemming from a 1996 California initiative spearheaded by former University of California Regent Ward Connerly whose organization has sponsored initiatives in several states.
Max McPhail, the initiative’s executive director, summed up the measure: “It’s very simple. To ban discrimination and end preferential treatment for people based on their race or their sex. . . . It doesn’t get more basic than that. Everyone in this state has a right to be treated equally by their government.”
According to campaign-finance reports filed with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, Connerly’s American Civil Rights Coalition has contributed at least $957,000 to the Arizona signature-gathering effort.
{snip}
The Goldwater Institute, a conservative local think tank, has criticized BAMN for what it calls harassing tactics to try to dissuade voters from signing the petitions, some of which have been the subject of YouTube videos.
Tactics defended
Driver responded: “We were exercising our free-speech rights and handing out fliers saying don’t sign for fraud, don’t sign for racism, don’t sign for something endorsed by the KKK.
“And we had uniform success where we were in stopping people from signing whether we were at a food store in a Black neighborhood or at a Diamondbacks game and it was largely White voters coming in.”
{snip}
According to McPhail, the Arizona initiative needs 230,047 certified signatures to get on the November ballot. He could not say how many it has gathered but said the group expects to file the petitions by Thursday’s deadline.
(Posted on July 1, 2008)
Comments
Thats the way to go. When Democracy fails, try judicial tyranny.
Posted by The way at 4:58 PM on July 1
they will not stop at nothing in their genocide of whites
Posted by at 5:04 PM on July 1
“By Any Means Necessary” — a phrase jacked from the SDS/Weathermen. If they’re going to be thugs, they could at least be original.
Posted by at 5:09 PM on July 1
It needs 230,047 signatures to get on the ballet. Not just any signatures but ones collected between certain start and stop dates, in a certain manner, and certified. Is this about creating barriers to justice or about creating a jobs program?
Aren’t there any politicians in Arizona willing to propose this legislation?
Posted by at 5:11 PM on July 1
Looks to me that Ward Connerly has done it again. The people representing BAMN are going to eat it again and all I can say is hal·le·lu·jah! The BAMN bozos had tried every dirty trick in the book on the Michigan initiative and failed. This initiative is based on the Civil Rights amendment and is designed to treat all people the same. This is the only way to fly in America!
Posted by Jake at 5:54 PM on July 1
“To ban discrimination and end preferential treatment for people based on their race or their sex… . It doesn’t get more basic than that. Everyone in this state has a right to be treated equally by their government.”
Yeah, but some people insist on being more equal than others.
True equality is not their agenda.
Posted by Edward at 6:24 PM on July 1
“That organization is the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, an acronym for the last four words.”
Good old BAMN, I wish them as much success as they had in Michigan!
The MCRI after all did pass with 58% of the vote in the “blue” state of Michigan; thus, “red” Arizona should knock this out by 65% or better. We can only hope that BAMN acts as it did in the Michigan fight, with the utter animalistic ignorance that is the hallmark of all Marxists and their multicultural surrogates.
Indeed, God let it be so!
Posted by John PM at 6:28 PM on July 1
Don’t fool yourselves: it’s not just the “Left” that supports so-called “affirmative action.” Practically the entire American political and corporate elite, on the “Left” and the “Right,” supports it, just as they supported and compelled school integration, “civil rights” legislation, and now, ruinous mass third world immigration. Let’s face the truth: our elites have been engaged in a war-in-all-but-name against the white middle and working class for at least the last half-century in this country.
Posted by Zorba_the_Geek at 7:19 PM on July 1
Rest assured that the groups backing affirmative action are desperate when they try to keep people from being able to have an up-or-down vote on whether it should continue. They know that in a fair vote, they’ll lose in a landslide. So they come up with all this nonsense about “misleading voters,” questionable signatures, and the like. The group that calls itself “By Any Means Necessary” ought to instead be called, “By Any Means, Fair Or Foul.”
Posted by Wayne Engle at 7:48 PM on July 1
Rest assured that the groups backing affirmative action are desperate when they try to keep people from being able to have an up-or-down vote on whether it should continue. They know that in a fair vote, they’ll lose in a landslide. So they come up with all this nonsense about “misleading voters,” questionable signatures, and the like. The group that calls itself “By Any Means Necessary” ought to instead be called, “By Any Means, Fair Or Foul.”
Posted by Wayne Engle at 7:48 PM on July 1
“That organization is the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, an acronym for the last four words.”
Good old BAMN, I wish them as much success as they had in Michigan!
The MCRI after all did pass with 58% of the vote in the “blue” state of Michigan; thus, “red” Arizona should knock this out by 65% or better. We can only hope that BAMN acts as it did in the Michigan fight, with the utter animalistic ignorance that is the hallmark of all Marxists and their multicultural surrogates.
Indeed, God let it be so!
Posted by John PM at 8:32 PM on July 1
I find it a bit pathetic the contempt liberals have for our democracy and legal system. They really do want to establish a socialist America, don’t they?
Posted by Roman Holiday at 10:33 PM on July 1
that this is even an issue says alot about todays society.
at this point i strongly feel the only possible solution to the whole race issue is segregation by choice. im sure there is an equal percentage of blacks that would be in favor of this as whites. forced segregation just like forced integration will never work. people just dont like being forced into anything.
im not saying hey lets split up the whole country, but what would be so wrong with an all white city? and an all black city? and an all asian city? and an all hispanic city? blacks always talk about being disenfranchised so let them have their own franchise so to speak. this could be a real positive thing for them.
im not a racist in the modern sense, just a realist. i want all people to be well off in America this once great country.
Posted by at 11:26 PM on July 1
Wait a minute! If I deny an unqualified person it becomes racist if the unqualified person happens to be black? How so?
Is the reverse true? If I allow a qualified person is it racist if that qualified person happens to be white? What’s going on?
Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.
- Realist in Atlanta
Posted by Realist in Atlanta at 4:12 AM on July 2
AA has proven to be a disaster not only in the workplace but in all the branches of local, state and federal government as well. In short if anything gets accomplished at all it is a miracle due to the large presence of a certain group of minorities in these institutions. Even at the checkouts at Walmart a white checker will move double the amount of people through the checkout as a black checker. Same thing applies to any service industry, bank, post office, school or about anything else one could imagine where large groups of these minorities work.
Posted by at 6:50 AM on July 2
It is very good that it be exposed, state by state, that the only ones who are in favor of continued racial discrimination are the liberals.
Posted by Robert at 7:47 AM on July 2
Liberal and self-hating whites, as well as blacks and hispanics that hate whites and have an entitlement mentality….they can’t effectively and civilly debate us “racist white people” on why they should get preferential treatment and ‘equality’, so what they do is take away our rights.
Posted by at 8:06 AM on July 2
So-called “affirmative action” is what’s wrong with the country. Moaning, whining and stewing over past injustices and creating new injustices against people who did not commit the past injustices, but in fact repudiate them.
Posted by at 8:17 AM on July 2
Don’t let the people decide, we know what’s best for them! This is what the privileged elite seem to be saying in Arizona. Our leaders both distrust and secretly dislike average white citizens. Thank God for Ward Connerly. If he were a lawyer, I’d send him to the Supreme court.
Posted by Sardonicus at 8:22 AM on July 2
I think this is close to an admission by these people that blacks cannot compete on an equal playing field with other races. They know if not for government preferences they wont get anywhere. They need the schools to lower their standards. They need lower standards for performance in the workplace and they need the govt to support their children and their women. They want the police to be handicapped in prosecuting blacks. Why not just give every black a handicapped sticker to wear everywhere they go?
There is no shame in the black race.
Posted by Capt. Kirkegaard at 10:06 AM on July 2
What’s a Michigan based group doing meddling in Arizona state politics in the first place? Kick them in the ass and send them back where they came from. Arizona has enough problems without these kind of meddlers from out of state trying to start something.
Posted by at 10:38 AM on July 2
As I keep saying it doesn’t matter. The Feds just withhold highway funds until the state comes into complience with Federal AA guidelines.
Posted by at 12:58 PM on July 2
Rope. Tree. BAMN activist.
Some assembly required.
Posted by Wild Eyed Charlie at 1:22 PM on July 2
BAMN and other leftists, long practised at using law to enforce injustice, reveal themselves here once again as conspiratorily anti-democratic - and hence, anti-American.
Ever fearful of allowing people to rule themselves, these leftists scheme to deny citizens even the opportunity to try.
Truly, this tells you everything you ever need to know about the nature of the American left today.
Posted by Gary at 1:33 PM on July 2
If affirmative apartheid was really the wonderful cure-all for society’s ills that it is touted to be, why shouldn’t Arizona’s voters be allowed to decide for themselves whether to continue it?
Surely anything with “affirmative” in its name is good, or does BAMN know something they’re not telling us? Do they think Arizona voters might be opposed to something as wholesome and pure as anything called “affirmative”?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 3:49 PM on July 2
Jesse Helms’ racial quotas ad:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/04/former-sen-jesse-helms-passes-away/
Posted by at 6:27 PM on July 4