National Conference of New Civil Rights Movement

Latina/o, Black, Native American, Asian, Arab, and White, Immigrants With & Without Papers—
WE ARE ALL ARIZONANS!
Keep ACRI Off the Ballot Defend Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity
Build the New Civil Rights Movement
MARCH & RALLY
Saturday, June 14, 2008
5:00PM
Falcon Park, across the street from Carl Hayden High School
(N. 35th Ave., W. Roosevelt, Phoenix, AZ)
Stop ACRI Page
POST THIS MYSPACE BULLETIN
We must stop ACRI, the attack on affirmative action, equal opportunity, and integration in Arizona. ACRI is the one ballot proposal aimed at increasing discrimination against and inequality for all of Arizona’s minority communities and women. The aim of ACRI is to deny every Latina/o, black and Native American young person, even those everyone regards as our brightest stars, from being able to go to college and become doctors, lawyers, teachers, or engineers.
Deceptively called the "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative," ACRI is nothing more than an attempt by the racists in this state to broaden their anti-Latina/o and anti-immigrant campaigns into an attack against every brown and black person in this state. The KKK-supported ACRI is a ballot initiative to amend the State Constitution to ban all affirmative action programs in Arizona. ACRI would outlaw all the equal opportunity programs won out of the civil rights movement that combat de facto segregation and open the doors to college and job opportunities for minorities and women.
Racism and sexism still structure opportunity. If ACRI reaches its goal of collecting 230,000 signatures before its July 3rd deadline and passes this November, it will drive out Latina/o, black, Native American and other minority students and women from the state's universities. Separate and unequal would be institutionalized in Arizona.
If we unite, we win. Building the new integrated youth-led civil rights movement is the key to victory. Our communities have tremendous power. The new civil rights movement is the real hope for progress, prosperity, freedom and justice in our state. And, so like Martin Luther King and César Chávez, we march.
We march to stop ACRI and all the attacks on the Latina/o and immigrant communities. We march to defeat the new Jim Crow. We march to end second-class treatment for brown and black. We march because when we march together we can see and feel the power we possess. We march because it is the only way for our state and our nation to progress and realize our ideals of democracy, freedom and justice. We march to win.
For too long, the right-wing racists of Arizona have gotten away with scapegoating undocumented people and trying to pit black, Latina/o, and immigrant communities against each other. Their aim is to weaken the struggle for equality. We can end this now. If we fight together and keep ACRI off the ballot, we can hand the right-wing a significant defeat. If we win this fight, we can stop the tidal wave of racist anti-immigrant, anti-Latina/o attacks ripping apart our state.
Keep ACRI Off the Ballot
The only sure way to defeat ACRI is to keep it off the ballot. Mass community mobilizing led by BAMN succeeded at keeping identical initiatives off the ballot earlier this year in Missouri and Oklahoma. We can win here if we can stop voters from signing the ballot petitions for ACRI. The people who are circulating the petitions lie about what ACRI is about. Signature gathers are paid huge sums of money to gather voters signatures and they flat out lie to get those signatures. We need people standing next to them telling voters the truth. We need people telling voters the truth that the Klan backs ACRI and that those who circulate or sign the petition are supporting racism. We need volunteers to tell people DO NOT TO SIGN THE ACRI PETITION.
The days when any racist with enough money can use Arizona's ballot initiative process to take away our rights and opportunities must come to an end.
Latina/o, Black, Native American, Asian, Arab, and White, Immigrants With and Without Papers—We Are All Arizonans
The massive solidarity demonstrated in the marches and walkouts of in spring 2006, led first and foremost by the Latina/o community and actively supported by broad sections of this state, defeated the racist, reactionary anti-immigrant HR 4437 and show the method of mass struggle and unity that can win.
Join us in making clear to the State of Arizona that we need to stand up together to stop the resegregation of our state. Take a stand for the rights of Latina/o, black, and other minority students and women to go to college, and for the rights of all people to live with dignity and to be treated with respect. Become a leader of the new civil rights movement and lead this nation out of the darkness of fear, prejudice, cynicism and despair the hallmarks of the right wing program for America and into the light of optimism, progress and hope. ¡Sí Se Puede!
A great shift is occurring in our nation. The outcome of the national election is still months away, and yet something much greater has already changed: we have changed. Our generation is gleaming with optimism and excitement. For the millions of young people asserting political demands for the first time, what began as opposition to the Iraq war has grown into a declaration of hope for becoming a nation no longer separated along lines of gender and race. It took only a few months for our generation to brush aside old notions that once seemed invincible. Yesterday’s view was that a fundamental change for the better would have to wait until some indefinite point in the future; today’s view is that such a change is really possible now.
This swift change of views has arrived at an important moment for our nation. Now is the time to remove all the barriers of race and gender that deform opportunity in our nation. UCLA, UC Berkeley and the other elite campuses around the country have been moving backwards since they have implemented state bans on affirmative action programs, against the interest of the student body on these campuses and of Latina/o, black and Native American students. While our generation has distinguished itself for breaking the racial and gender barriers to the American presidency, college campuses in California and other places in the country have experienced a fortification of those barriers against minorities and women gaining a college degree. At UCLA and UC Berkeley the enforcement of Proposition 209 has driven down underrepresented minority enrollment to the token levels that existed forty years ago. We cannot accept these conditions any longer, not in the face of a generation so eager to do away with the old social divisions.
Our generation needs a voice to speak for our own interests and aspirations. Our demands for progress need to be heaerd beyond the vote tallies in primary caucuses – we need to be heard here and now. In this state. On this campus. Everywhere. We need our own leaders, and we need to BE leaders ourselves. We are the leaders of our generation. Join us and work to change our society today.
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
www.BAMN.com www.myspace.com/nationalbamn
www.myspace.com/chavezdayofaction
323.317.7675