-----Original Message----- From: Frances Bolton <fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Whoops. I know I sort of said that nothing serious is going on, but that's
>not what I meant. I meant to say that today's activists aren't getting the
>same impressive-looking victories as other generations did. The Prop. 209
>mobilzation was sort of a mess, I think.
Let me be rude for a second. I am impressed by the victory for civil rights and the rise of the women's movements victories. But the dominant peace movement looks in retrospect like one of the most depressing losing nightmare's I could imagine experiencing.
On the other hand, Prop 187 and Prop 209 are classic instances of losing the battles and winning the wars (at least partially). Most of Prop 187 never went into effect because it was unconstitutional and even much of the national cuts in immigrant welfare aid (stemming from 187 followup) have been restored in the last few budgets.
The mobilization against Prop 209 was not a mess, although it had some real divisions, but it actually was a rather amazingly unifying campaign. Many of those first mobilized in the fight against Prop 187 in 1994 joined with new activists against Prop 209 in 1996. Given wording in Prop 209 that confused many people into thinking it was a pro-civil rights measure, it was almost impossible to win, but the campaign itself was very important.
This past Spring, the mobilizations against Prop 187 and Prop 209 merged with those to stop the anti-union Prop 226, a campaign that was successful. In those same primaries, latinos were gaining nominations in unprecedented numbers across the state. And while many people will say it doesn't matter, the fall election saw the defeat of the hard-right Dan Lungren in the largest landslide in modern California gubernatorial history - a rather radical change from Wilson's landslide win four years earlier. Dramatically, where 80% of voters in 1994 were white, by 1998 that number had dropped to 60% - a doubling of minority registration and turnout in four years.
I don't think people recognize the seismic significance of what has transpired in the last four years in California. We are seeing a preview of a state where whites will soon be a minority of the voting population and which will soon emerge as the most progressive laboratory for social change in the country. As far as affirmative action, Davis is already pushing a plan to accept the top 4% of every individual high school into the Univ. of California campuses - in many ways an improvement on the old AA system since it will likely benefit poorer blacks and latinos than the old system. Unions are on the move in a very serious way and with new appointments to the state Agricultural Labor Board, hopefully the United Farm Workers will start having some serious victories as well.
It is partly because of what has happened in California that people like Jeb Bush are giving Connerly the cold shoulder. If Connerly can do for Florida politics what he helped do for California, you should only be so lucky.
--Nathan Newman