The viewpoint (Stop BAMN, by any legal means, 1/24/2006) and the letter (Group wants to hold BAMN accountable, 1/25/2006) by the “new” anti-BAMN group contained only falsehoods and irrelevant trivialities. BAMN is slandered all the time, and none of these slanders are new. We don’t have time to sort out the falsehoods and trivialities each time they surface. We will note only that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The deceit of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative – the passage of which is the primary aim of this group – however, is worth taking the time to expose.
The MCRI is a proposed state constitutional amendment that, if successfully placed on the November ballot and passed, would ban affirmative action in college admissions and in state hiring and contracting for women and minorities. If MCRI passes, it would nullify the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger.
Over the last half of 2004, MCRI petitioners canvassed the state, lying to voters in majority, minority and progressive white voting districts about the aim of their proposal. MCRI petitioners systematically led signers in these districts to believe that they were signing a pro-affirmative action petition, not one whose purpose was to ban affirmative action. On this basis, more than 120,000 black voters signed for MCRI to be placed on the ballot.
Our investigation is turning up a growing number of white voters, already in the tens of thousands, who were also deceived. This fraud alone is reason enough to bar MCRI from the November ballot.
The examples of MCRI’s fraud are numerous. In our investigation into its petitioning, we have come across people from all walks of life who were deceived: city of Detroit workers, university professors, union activists, judges, news reporters, civil rights activists, school teachers and even some of MCRI’s own petitioners.
One example of MCRI’s fraud is Ruthie Stevenson’s story.
Stevenson is president of the Macomb County NAACP. An MCRI petitioner approached her near her local post office. The petitioner told her that the president of the Macomb County NAACP supported his petition. She informed him that she was the president and that she did not support his petition, but she still continued to receive reports from NAACP members that they had heard MCRI petitioners claiming she supported their initiative.
The executive board for AFSCME Local 207, a city of Detroit workers union that has actively supported the defense of affirmative action and BAMN in particular, found that more than one in 10 of their members signed MCRI’s petition. Upon hearing that their names were on MCRI’s petitions, union members were outraged because they had been deceived and defrauded.
To proceed with its attack on the progress that women and minorities have made towards equality, MCRI has resorted to lying to voters.
To draw an analogy, suppose there were a petition campaign in the state that, if successful, would reduce the enrollment of white male students at the University by 75 percent according to the administration’s own estimates. Suppose, too, that while circulating this petition, white voters were told either that the petition’s goal was to increase the enrollment of white students or to ensure educational opportunities to everyone. If this scenario were to transpire, every politician, every judge, every news pundit and every business leader in the state would stop at nothing to prevent such a duplicitous proposition. However, it’s taken BAMN eight months of campaigning to get the beginning of an official investigation into MCRI’s fraud.
In spite of the overwhelming evidence that’s come to light exposing MCRI’s fraud, the state courts have so far taken it upon themselves to railroad the proposal through the official electoral process. BAMN will not sit idly and allow such a clear disregard for the rights of the black community of this state. BAMN pledges to work tirelessly to expose MCRI’s fraud, to defend affirmative action and to build the new civil rights movement.
The writers are member of BAMN. Stenvig and Royal are Rackham students, and Smith is an LSA senior.