August 29, 2008:
Total Victory in Arizona!
Ward Connerly's "Ground Zero" Campaign Against Affirmative Action Turns to Quicksand
"Super Tuesday" Becomes "Super Lose Day" for the enemies of civil rights

Late Friday afternoon, the campaign manager for the deceptively named "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative" (ACRI)—a state ban on affirmative action—announced that ACRI was dropping their challenge to the finding of the Arizona Secretary of State that ACRI did not have enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

"BAMN's fraud-blockers prevented Connerly from obtaining petition signatures by lying to qualified voters about the aim and effect of the initiative, so he was forced to resort to outright forgery and fraud," said Shanta Driver, National Chairperson of BAMN, and chief strategist of BAMN's campaign to stop ACRI.

"BAMN's campaign in Arizona shows that any reactionary initiative, no matter how well funded, can be stopped by a small group of determined people who stand on principle, tell the truth and won't be moved," she added.

"In Michigan, Ward Connerly and Jennifer Gratz's operation was found to be riddled with fraud by a U.S. Federal Judge," said George Washington, the attorney representing BAMN in its lawsuit against ACRI. "In Oklahoma, they withdrew their petitions in the face of accusations of fraud, because they knew they couldn't withstand a challenge. In Missouri, they dared not even risk a challenge by filing their petitions. Now in Arizona, home of McCain, over 40% of their signatures were found to be invalid. These con artists should not be allowed to peddle their lies and deception in any state of the nation."

For more information about how BAMN defeated Connerly in three states in 2008, go to BAMN's STOP ACRI website. To see the results of BAMN's preliminary investigation into ACRI's fraud—including video footage and notarized affidavits from whistleblowers who worked for the ACRI campaign—go to BAMN's Fraud Finder website and the new "Fingerprints of Fraud" site.

July 22, 2008:
VICTORY WITHIN REACH: Donate now!

Dear friend,

BAMN, the national youth led leadership and civil rights coalition, is working to defend affirmative action and integration programs by ensuring that the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative (ACRI), the anti-affirmative action initiative, stays off the ballot.

The people backing the ACRI, led by Republican Ward Connerly, have tried to place ballot proposals to ban affirmative action in five states simultaneously—Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Arizona. In Oklahoma, Connerly was forced to withdraw his petitions when faced with legal challenges to his fraudulent signatures.

And in Missouri, BAMN and others mounted a youth-led voter education project that shadowed his circulators and told voters the truth about his petitions at the very moment his circulators asked the voters to sign. Connerly failed to get enough signatures to file his petitions. We won!

In Arizona, we know we can win because of all that we have been able to accomplish. In just the past 6 weeks in Arizona, we have been blocking signature gatherers in 110-120 degree weather, exposing the ACRI’s voter fraud, getting circulators and leaders in the petition company to come forward and reveal election violations that they and others have committed around the ACRI. We have also filed a preemptive lawsuit that is a part of our petition challenge.

Now we urgently need your financial support so that we can defeat Connerly in Arizona. We can win this fight! Connerly has said Arizona is “ground zero,” and that is because the far right wing is bolder in Arizona than anywhere else in the country. For that reason we need to give this right-wing movement a hard blow especially around the issue of affirmative action and equal opportunity programs, the most important gain of the civil right movement.

In order to have accomplished all this, we had to be in Arizona, and we need to be back in Arizona no later than August 1st in order to finish the job. That is the day that the Secretary of State will produce a 5% random sample (approximately 16,000) of the signatures to check their validity, and they usually invalidate about 20% of that. In order to win, we have to invalidate an additional 10% ourselves.

BAMN has mobilized youth organizers from around the country to spend August in Arizona exposing and legally challenging Connerly’s fraud.

We can win this historic fight, and change the direction of our country. But the next month is critical. We need your help today.

Our organizers are primarily college and high school youth. They are rich with social commitment and energy. But they are poor when it comes to money. And every day—in Arizona’s 110-degree heat—they need food, water, housing and transportation. In order to finish the job and get this work done, we need the support of absolutely everyone to get students back to AZ.

Whether Connerly wins in Arizona will help determine whether he can win in other states, and will help determine how the federal courts decide the pending legal challenges to his Michigan initiative.

Americans do want change. Our youth organizers are finding fresh evidence of that every day as they work to defend the very best of our nation’s accomplishments.

Senator Obama has declared his opposition to the so-called Arizona Civil Rights Initiative. But as we learned in Michigan, we must expose the voter fraud to keep Connerly’s initiative OFF the ballot if we are to win in a state with a majority white electorate.

Please help our young people seize this historical moment and press forward to victory.

What happens in the next month in Arizona is critical to our success.

What you do today can help make the difference.

To contribute, DONATE ONLINE or write a check to "BAMN Committee to Stop ACRI" and send it immediately to P.O. Box 10741 / Phoenix, AZ 85064-0741.

Thank you for standing up in the fight for equality.

July 14, 2008:
Maricopa County Democratic Party Executive Director supports lawsuit

Todd Landfried, executive director of the Maricopa County Democratic Party, wrote an excellent op-ed against ACRI's voter fraud and supporting BAMN's lawsuit. Read the op-ed

June 30, 2008:
BAMN files lawsuit against "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative"!

Former Phoenix City Councilman Calvin C. Goode, defrauded Latina/o and black Arizona citizens, and the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) will file suit in state court Monday morning to stop the fraudulent "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative" (ACRI) from getting on the ballot.

"Tens of thousands of Latina/o, black, and Native American citizens of Arizona were defrauded and led to believe that by signing the 'American Civil Rights Initiative' (ACRI) they were banning racial discrimination and advancing the dreams of their children to have a better future," said Shanta Driver, National Chair of BAMN and an attorney. "They are angry that the ACRI stole their signatures as support for a petition whose sole aim is to eliminate affirmative action, which is the only way that their children will have an equal chance for a future. The duly elected public officials of Arizona have a duty to protect them, their children, all the citizens of Arizona, and democratic norms from systematic, racially-targeted voter fraud."

Get more info and read BAMN's lawsuit HERE

Keep ACRI Off the Ballot!

Download the Stop ACRI Campaign Flyer   [PDF file]

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!

Argument for
Affirmative Action

Fact sheets, video, research

• Myths & Facts 1

• Myths & Facts 2

• Fact Sheet 1

• Fact Sheet 2  [Adobe PDF file]

FACT SHEET:
Who Is Ward Connerly?

Photo: Emerge Magazine

• Why We Must Eliminate the SAT

• Asian Pacific Americans & Affirmative Action

• Outline of BAMN's groundbreaking case for affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger trial - Full trial transcipt

If you think you might have signed ACRI, REMOVE YOUR SIGNATURE by signing this AFFIDAVIT and turning it in before July 3rd 5:00PM. You must sign it in front of a notary: take it to the Secretary of State's office (where it can be notarized), or get it notarized elsewhere (i.e., a bank) and mail or fax it to:
Arizona Secretary of State
1700 W. Washington St., 7th Fl.
Phoenix, AZ  85007
Fax: (602) 542-6172

ACRI Fraud Finder:

STOP ACRI's growing evidence of the ACRI campaign's illegal tactics and fraud.