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BY CZERNE M. REID "What side are you on?" civil rights leader and minister Jesse Jackson asked the throng of approximately 600 men and women gathered in White Plaza on Oct. 1.
Jackson was on campus to lend his support to the Stanford Coalition Against Proposition 54, a group that aims to galvanize the Stanford community to vote on Tuesday against the recall of Gov. Gray Davis and against Proposition 54, a measure crafted by University of California Regent Ward Connerly. The proposition prohibits state and local governments from classifying, with some exemptions, any person by race, ethnicity or national origin. While proponents of Proposition 54 see the move as an effort to discard an offensive and outdated classification system, opponents of the measure see it as means to hinder cultural diversity and thwart affirmative action. Jackson described the California recall effort as a government tactic to divert public attention from important national economic issues such as gross "thievery" by companies including Enron, Halliburton and MCI WorldCom. "It's about ideology," Jackson said, describing the forces behind Proposition 54 and the recall push as having an unbroken pattern of exclusion in connection with such issues as denial of voting rights for all citizens in 1964 and "allowing the loser to win and the winner to lose" in the 2000 presidential elections. "There's a line between stop-the-count in Florida, redistricting in Texas, recall in California, Prop. 54 and Prop. 209," he said, referring to the 1996 anti-affirmative action initiative also authored by Connerly. Society, like baseball, requires a level playing field, public rules and clear goals, Jackson said. "Prop. 54 seeks to undermine our quest for a fair and just society; it seeks to make a virtue of ignorance," he said. Involvement in the effort to stop Proposition 54 should not depend on age or race but should be based on a desire for fairness and character in governance, Jackson said. In describing how Proposition 54 would affect them, Jackson told his mostly college-student audience that "the same forces that do not want to tax the top 1 percent want to tax you with a higher tuition cost." Staying at home or voting Republican out of frustration, Jackson warned, "is like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders -- you might be frustrated today, but you'll be fried tomorrow." Jackson charged the audience members to vote because of what is at stake -- access to graduate school, jobs, justice and health care. "Stanford, come alive. Vote your hopes and not your fears. Vote with optimism, not with cynicism. Vote your dreams. Vote your future. This land is your land."
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Stanford Report, October 8, 2003
