Women’s Advocates Assail Prop. 209

An array of women’s advocates, civil rights leaders and Southern California elected officials denounced Proposition 209 Monday as they joined a statewide bus tour to galvanize opposition to the November ballot initiative.

Organized by anti-209 forces, the “Save the Dream” tour began Sunday in Los Angeles and will loop into Northern California and back over the next week, stopping principally at college campuses to recruit volunteers and mobilize the youth vote.

Calling the initiative “the big lie,” Proposition 209 foes warned that the public has little understanding of the full impact of the measure, which would ban state and local government affirmative action programs for women and minorities.

At a morning news conference and an afternoon rally at UCLA, opponents described Proposition 209 as a far-reaching attack on civil rights gains that, if successful, would spark a national trend.

“This is the opening war to roll back civil rights and women’s rights in this nation,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “They’re trying to sneak it in.”

With members of the Chino High School girls basketball team standing behind them, speakers argued that the proposition would weaken California’s sex discrimination laws, jeopardizing school athletics for girls and other educational and job programs that have helped women in recent decades.

“The sports opportunities will close down again,” Smeal said.

(Initiative supporters dismiss as a red herring the opposition’s contention that Proposition 209 would dilute sex discrimination laws.)

State Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), Assemblywomen Diane Martinez (D-Alhambra) and Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles) and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter joined women from the legal, medical and business professions in urging the public to defeat 209.

“This is the latest in a long battle to close you out,” Archie-Hudson told a gathering of a couple hundred predominantly minority students at the UCLA rally.

As hundreds of students passed by without stopping, the crowd waved anti-209 signs, including several bearing an altered photo of Gov. Pete Wilson, a vocal Proposition 209 proponent, with a Pinocchio-length nose. “Read Between the Lies, Vote No on 209,” the sign said.

Arriving from another anti-209 rally in San Diego, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson sniped at Wilson, UC Regent Ward Connerly and GOP vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp for their support of the initiative.

The women and minorities who benefit from affirmative action make up the majority of the population, Jackson said, and such programs are needed because they are still discriminated against.

White American males are not losing work because of affirmative action for others, Jackson said, but because corporations are shipping their jobs abroad to laborers toiling for a few dollars a day.