Local Officials, NAACP Unite to Stop Connerly’s Initiative

By Betty Pleasant, WAVE Community Newspapers

LOS ANGELES, CA (NNPA) — The big guns came out against Proposition 54 recently, with Julian Bond, national chair of the NAACP, and several Southland Baptist ministers denouncing the ballot measure as an abomination against morality and one of the most serious threats to civil rights the country has ever faced.

Mayor Jim Hahn hosted Bond, other NAACP officials, members of the City Council, state and congressional representatives and an array of religious and labor leaders and multicultural activists at a news conference on the steps of City Hall to announce their fight against the initiative. More than 300 political, labor, religious and community leaders trekked to Long Beach for a California empowerment conference where strategies were launched to defeat Proposition 54 and the recall of Gov. Gray Davis.

Proposition 54, which will appear on the Oct. 7 recall ballot, would ban the collection of racial data in California. Written by Ward Connerly, a member of the University of California Board of Regents, the measure seeks to prohibit the state from collecting information on a person’s race, ethnicity, color or national origin.