From Liberator 3, page 8 (November 1998)
The question of equality for minorities and women is central to the character and direction of our society as a whole. No government, no court, no authority, and no popular vote has the right to relegate minorities and women to second-class citizenship—not before the Civil War, not in the 1950’s and 60’s and not now.
We do not accept the “right” of the University of California Regents, the Supreme Court, or any other small group of wealthy political puppets to decide amongst themselves to resegre- gate the public universities. We do not accept this “right” any more than we think early white Americans had the “right” to enslave black people or colonize a third of Mexico.
We will not bow down before racist segregation and inequality—whether it is “popular” or not.
A ballot initiative in Mississippi in 1963 would have endorsed Jim Crow. That would not have made us any less determined to raze the Jim Crow structure to the ground.
California’s Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action ballot initiative which was passed with intentionally deceptive language and the lowest voter turnout since the 1920’s, is now law. We say this law must be defied, not only because it was passed by a tiny electoral majority of disproportionately upper and middle class white voters, but even more fundamentally because no popular (or unpopular) mandate has the “right” to enforce racist segregation and inequality.
We declare that we will continue the struggle for equality when necessary even in spite of the law. We will make use of the law when and where we can, but never subordinate our struggle to it.
The means and methods availed to us by the powers-that-be as “legitimate” are not sufficient for the defense of affirmative action—they would not have been sufficient to take this society forward at any of its most important turning points. Electoral efforts and litigation alone will no more be able to successfully defend affirmative action now than they would have been capable of winning affirmative action in the first place.
We recognize the historical fact that gains toward equality for minorities and women, as well as historical progress generally, have come only as the consequence of mass social struggle. Emancipation from slavery required the bloodiest war of this nation’s history. Winning voting rights, the right to organize unions, desegregation, bilingual education, abortion rights, affirmative action—all have required mass movements in the streets and the threat of social upheaval.
The American legal and political system is as plagued with inequality and favoritism for the privileged as the society on which it rests. The existing government is a structure in the service of the elite; wealth and the political power that flows from it dominate American law and policy.
Injustices such as these lead us, as they led Malcolm X, to the conclusion that democracy is “nothing but disguised hypocrisy” and that we need “action on all fronts by whatever means necessary.”
The means that are necessary now to defend affirmative action consist primarily of a new mass, militant, integrated civil rights movement.
Winning is our aim; our methods are determined by what will help the fight to defend affirmative action win. There are those who would tie our hands in the face of this attack by limiting our means and methods to those deemed “legitimate” by the powers that be. The phrase “by any means necessary” says that we will not cede any means that will help us secure victory in the struggle for equality.
