File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9712, message 359


Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 18:55:07 -0500
Subject: M-I: NYT: Blacks Recruited to Fight Affirmative Action (fraud)
From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman)


New York Times
December 17, 1997


Blacks Recruited to End Affirmative Action

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By TIMOTHY EGAN

EATTLE -- As migrant labor goes, the signature-gathering campaign against
affirmative action in Washington state seemed to offer just what Arthur
Tillis of Chicago said he was looking for: a chance to earn some
Christmas
money and see a different part of the country. 

But Tillis, who said he was homeless, had no sooner arrived in Seattle
last week than he realized that being a trench worker in modern democracy
was not at all what he expected. 

"I was getting cursed at by people and having a lot of trouble getting
signatures," he said in an interview. "Then I finally read the thing real
carefully and I said: Wait a minute. This is against affirmative action.
It's a not a civil-rights thing like it says." 

As one of five blacks transported by bus to Washington state by the
supporters of a ballot issue that would end most affirmative-action
policies here, Tillis said he had never been told the true nature of the
campaign. But he was told he could earn up to $600 a week, at 90 cents a
signature. All five of the black signature gatherers interviewed told a
similar story. 

Once they arrived in Washington state, some of the petitioners went into
debt, and say they were forced to gather signatures just to get enough
money to get out of town. "You want to know what this whole thing really
cost me?" said Pro Mayes, an unemployed father of two from Rancho Tehama,
Calif. "My pride. I was duped. And now I got nothing to bring home to my
kids." 

The leaders of the campaign, Washington Initiative 200, say there was no
attempt to recruit blacks as a strategic way to counter the perception
that the initiative would be a setback for many minorities. Nor were
petitioners misled, they say. It was simply a money-making proposition in
a tight labor market, which forced the campaign to recruit far away from
the state, they say. 

"The only way they could be misled is if they can't read," said Sherry
Bockwinkel, the owner of the firm that pays and recruits
signature-gatherers, on behalf of the campaign. "Petitioners are
motivated
by money. They tend to be lazy. If they say they were misled, they are
lying." 

But part of the problem, the black petitioners say, is the language of
the
ballot question itself. It is called the Washington State Civil Rights
Act. The proposed ballot title, at the top of the petition, says nothing
about dismantling affirmative action. 

When Tyrone Wells, an 18-year-old high school dropout from Toledo, Ohio,
read the title, he says he thought it was a pro-civil-rights ballot
measure. "So I went out there on a bus and started trying to gather
signatures, and people were cursing me," he said. "It is confusing." 

Wells returned home by bus a few days ago, in debt and discouraged. "They
wanted some black faces," he said. "We were used." 

If supporters of the initiative can gather 180,000 signatures by Jan. 2,
Washington could follow California as one of the first states in the
nation to outlaw racial preferences in hiring, contracts and education.
The initiative would require the state Legislature, which is
Republican-controlled, to either pass the measure, or pass it on to
voters
for their consideration. The governor would have no veto power. 




On one level, the campaign has been a debate over a colorblind society,
featuring radio advertisements by Steve Forbes, the publisher and
Republican candidate for the presidency last year, and rallies at which
William Bennett, a leading conservative philosopher, played host. 

But in the malls and on the streets where petitioners are frantically
trying to gather the necessary signatures, the debate is more shrill and
divisive. A vigorous campaign to dissuade people from signing the
petitions has led to numerous verbal clashes. 

Opponents of the measure say that by recruiting poor blacks, the
Initiative 200 campaign is essentially using affirmative action to try to
end affirmative action. "It's not accidental that the people who were
brought here are African-American," said Kathleen Russell, the campaign
manager for No! Initiative 200. "They're playing the race card. And
they're preying on people who are hard up, who are unemployed or
homeless." 

John Carlson, a talk-radio host who is the campaign manager for
Initiative
200, said race was not a factor in the petition drive. "You want people
who are known as 'horses,' people who can get the signatures, and get
them
fast," he said. "You don't want people with little or no experience, of
any race." 

The ballot measure, he said, deliberately borrows language from the 1964
Civil Rights Act, the landmark anti-discrimination measure of the last
four decades. It is not misleading, he said. "This initiative will
restore
the moral principle of protecting all Americans from discrimination,"
Carlson said. 

Ms. Bockwinkel, who runs the signature-gathering firm, said a number of
recruiters who were on a retainer to her found the black petitioners in
the Midwest and California. They were offered bus fare to Seattle and
motel expenses if they could produce a certain number of signatures. 

She said she did not know if they were told the exact nature of the
campaign, but she scoffed at the idea that they were ignorant. "I handed
them material about the initiative and told them to read it," she said. 

The people who traveled 2,000 miles from the Midwest or 800 miles from
California say they were motivated by what sounded like a good deal. "The
recruiter came to my house in California, he bought my family a turkey
for
Thanksgiving," Mayes said. "It thought this man is my friend." 

But once in Washington state, he says, he not only had difficulty getting
signatures, but he fell into debt and had to borrow several hundred
dollars from the campaign. 

He left Seattle on Tuesday on a bus, thoroughly discouraged by the
experience. 

"Black people were mad, saying stuff like 'You ought to be ashamed,"'
Mayes said. "White people in suits, they were taking it and signing it.
But I'm just out there, in the end, trying to get signatures to get out
of
debt so I can get out of town." 




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