STOP ACRI
MEDIA INFORMATION PAGE
STOP ACRI'S CAMPAIGN TO KEEP THE FRAUDULENT "ARIZONA CIVIL RIGHTS INITIATIVE" OFF THE BALLOT
Broadcast this
Public Service Announcement (PSA) warning the public about voter fraud.
Audio files: English Español
Or download in Word format
ACRI's Racially-Targeted
Voter Fraud EXPOSED
The new FRAUD FINDER WEBSITE has extensive video documenting the extensive, systematic voter fraud, physical assaults, and other illegal tactics that we are uncovering in the anti-affirmative-action ACRI campaign. ACRI is using deceptively-worded ballot language, signature gatherers who lie about the intent and results of the proposed initiative, and teams of well-paid out-of-state petitioners who are dishonestly representing themselves as Arizonans. The Arizona backers of the deceptively-named "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative" and their out-of-state political and financial backers are using tactics that echo the old Jim Crow, to establish the new Jim Crow in Arizona.
• What is the "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative" (ACRI)?
• How is the racially-targeted voter fraud taking place?
• The effort to keep ACRI off the ballot
The "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative" (ACRI) is anti-civil rights. It would outlaw all affirmative action and equal opportunity plans in Arizona and lead to the resegregation Arizona's universities, jobs, and government contracting.
Affirmative action programs are desegregation measures that take race and gender into consideration to ensure that minorities and women are not excluded from universities, job, and contracting opportunities from which they have historically been excluded. In college admissions, they have made it possible for Latina/o, black, and Native American young people to pursue their dreams of being doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, etc.
ACRI is being put forward by California Republican businessman Ward Connerly. Connerly got other constitutional amendments with language identical to ACRI passed in California (1996), Washington (1998), and Michigan (2006). They have been devastating to those states' Latina/o, black, and Native American communities.
The California experience speaks louder than the lies and misrepresentations of the ACRI campaign. After the passage of California's Proposition 209, the undergraduate admissions of Latina/o, black, and Native American students at UC-Berkeley and UCLA fell by 60% in 1998 and to this day remain far below their pre-1998 levels: they comprise only 16% of UC-Berkeley's freshman class despite being a majority of California's public school students. Latina/o, black, and Native American enrollment at University of California law schools remains 40% below previous levels. Proposition 209 is now being used to challenge popular and community-supported voluntary K-12 school desegregation plans. Since the passage of 209, there have been severe drops in government contracts for minority- and women-owned businesses.
Without the ability to take race and gender consideration, there are no policies that can effectively address de facto segregation in our society. ACRI would institutionalize separate and unequal conditions for Arizona's minority communities.
The ACRI campaign's racially-targeted voter fraud:
The initiative language is deliberately deceptive and uses language from the civil rights movement to conceal its resegregationist aims. The initiative summary on the petitions reads: "A PROPOSAL TO AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION TO PROHIBIT PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT OR DISCRIMINATION BY STATE GOVERNMENT." ACRI petition circulators have deceived progressive and anti-racist voters into signing it.
During a June 5 radio interview with STOP ACRI, dozens of Phoenix residents called-in, many of whom had been duped into signing the ACRI petition and demanded that their signatures be removed.
In August 2006, U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Tarnow found "systematic voter fraud" in the petition to campaign to place the "Michigan Civil Rights Initiative" (MCRI)—spearheaded by the same organization behind ACRI—on that state's November 2006 ballot. At a series of public hearings held by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, more than one hundred Michigan citizens—including a federal judge who himself had read the petition language before signing MCRI—submitted testimony about how they were defrauded into believing that MCRI was a pro-affirmative-action, pro-equality petition. The Commission printed a 1,000+ page report documenting the voter fraud. Civil rights activists conducted an investigation interviewing several hundred black people who signed the petition, and not a single person consciously wanted to end affirmative action. (More than 125,000 black Michigan residents signed the MCRI petition.)
One underhanded tactic widely used in Michigan—now being used in Arizona—was the deliberate use of black and other minority petition circulators to give an impression to signers that MCRI was a petition against discrimination. Many of these minority circulators are themselves deceived.
As of June 3rd, some of the Phoenix petition companies stopped including ACRI within the bundle of petitions that they were giving to petition circulators. As a result, the ACRI campaign began to target homeless shelters in Phoenix to recruit circulators. Exploiting the fact that many homeless are black—the ACRI campaign hopes to capitalize on their desperation to dupe many more voters into signing their petition.
• The ACRI petition summary and language
• STOP ACRI update and video on ACRI voter fraud
• U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Tarnow decision finding that "Michigan Civil Rights Initiative" (MCRI) campaign engaged in "systematic voter fraud"
• Selected quotes from Tarnow decision
• WATCH TESTIMONY of voter fraud by the MCRI campaign
• Michigan Civil Rights Commission findings of MCRI fraud
STOP ACRI's campaign to keep ACRI off the ballot
STOP ACRI activists are organizing a grassroots community campaign to prevent ACRI's petition circulators from collecting their signatures on the ballot. STOP ACRI is getting the word out in the community—through newspaper, radio, and television, postering and flyering, and speaking to churches, classrooms, and community organizations—to boycott circulators who have the ACRI petition. STOP ACRI is publicizing a hotline number that people can call so that a blocking team can be dispatched to the site immediately.
"Blocking" consists of telling passersby not to sign a petition supported by the KKK that would resegregate the state of Arizona. If a voter engages in conversation with the circulator, STOP ACRI makes sure that the voter knows it would outlaw affirmative action programs for minorities and women. This has been effective at blocking nearly 100% of the circulator's potential signatures, and the circulator is usually compelled to leave the scene.
STOP ACRI is working to expose and stigmatize the ACRI campaign as a campaign of racially-targeted voter fraud. STOP ACRI is organizing community protests as well as demonstrations at petition company sites, including sites where homeless circulators have come to collect their checks, to expose the nature of the campaign.
• STOP ACRI Campaign Page
• STOP ACRI's June 3, 2008 update, including report on ACRI voter fraud
313-438-3748
And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)