Thousands Rally Against 209:
Jackson calls law banning preference 'poetic injustice'
 

     By Teresa Moore
     San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
     August 29,1997

     On the first day of life under Proposition 209, Jesse Jackson led a march of thousands across the Golden Gate Bridge to
     protest the law that ends government-sponsored affirmative action in California.

     Dubbed the "March to Save the Dream," the demonstration drew an ethnically diverse crowd all ages. And despite fears
     of huge traffic tie-ups, motorists passed easily over the bridge.

     Planned before court decisions allowed the initiative to take effect, the march was also meant to commemorate the 34th
     anniversary of the 1963 "March on Washington" where Rev. Martin Luth King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream"
     speech. Jackson, who was with King in Washington that day, impressed upon the crowd the irony of the anti-affirmative
     action law taking effect on such a significant date in civil rights history.

     "It is poetic injustice that on this day, 34 years from the day that the dream of hope and inclusion was projected, that
     Proposition 209 has been unleashed like a Scud missile, with the effect of bludgeoning the dreams of this generation,"
     Jackson said to the crowd that gathered for a rally at Crissy Field after the march.

     No appeals were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, and Governor Pete Wilson and University of California
     regent Ward Connerly reiterated their determination to enforce the law passed by California voters in 1996.

     "It's only going to happen with vigilance from us and others who will make sure that every city and county, state colleges,
     the University of California, community colleges, mosquito abatement people, all of them, that they will be held
     accountable to bring their policies into compliance with Proposition 209," Connerly said in Sacramento.

     Jackson blasted Connerly and Wilson for appropriating King's language to advance Proposition 209.

     "Those who did not march with him, who did not support him, cannot be the interpreters of the dream," he said. "I can
     interpret the dream. I marched with him. I walked with him and talked with him."

     He told the crowd-which included large contingents from Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego and Philadelphia-that
     yesterday's demonstration was the beginning of a campaign to fight the effects of Proposition 209, as well as welfare
     reform, the three-strikes law and Proposition 187, the 1994 measure designed to bar illegal immigrants from public
     school education, non-emergency health care and other social services. On October 27, Jackson is leading a similar
     march on Sacramento.

     According to the California Highway Patrol, approximately 4,000 people marched across the bridge, although march
     organizers put the figure at 10,000.

     "At the height of the rally, there were about 10,000 people- those who had marched, those coming off the bridge and
     those who didn't march but came for the rally," said Hari Dillon, president of the Vanguard Foundation and one of the
     march cochairs.

     Marchers proceeded in a peaceful fashion from the staging area at Vista Point on the north side of the Golden Gate
     Bridge to Crissy Field. Despite prognostications to the contrary, cars sped by in both directions and drivers frequently
     waved and honked their horns in support of the marchers.

     "They should ask the Lord to forgive them," San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown said of those who had worried the
     march would impede motorists on the bridge. "Traffic was better today than it is most days. I suspect that's because most
     of us would be in cars if we weren't here."

     In fact, the only significant traffic jams occurred on the pedestrian walkways. By the time buses carrying Jackson, his
     entourage and the press departed Crissy Field for the north side of the bridge, so many people had gathered at Vista
     Point that the CHP and Marin County Sheriff's deputies asked the mayor, Supervisor Amos Brown and the Rev. Cecil
     Williams to begin the march.

     About three-quarters of the way across the bridge, the buses met the head of the march and stopped to let Jackson and
     the other passengers out. Those on the buses climbed across the barrier at the edge of the walkway and into the thick of
     the march, jamming the already crowded passageway.

     "We were simply more successful than we expected to be on such short notice," Dillon said.

     Naysayers didn't think we'd even fill up Vista Point and we had people overflowing onto the bridge."

     Dillon spent a year in jail on riot charges for leading the five month student strikes at San Francisco State University in
     1968. He marched with his 27year-old son, Jeffrey, who is leading the anti-209 campaign at San Francisco State today.

     "This is tragic: Pete Wilson and Ward Connerly have launched a blinding assault on people of color," Dillon said. Boalt
     Hall is lily-white. There's
     nothing color-blind about that. But this is heartening too: I see the reconstitution of the civil rights movement."

     Eric Brooks, the lone African American student who enrolled in the first-year class at Boalt Hall this year, joined Jackson
     on the podium at Crissy Field. After the march as Jackson asked the crowd to pray for him.

     Randall Bradley, a recent UC Berkeley graduate, was marching with members of his African American fraternity.
     Bradley, who said he has a "little better than a 3.0 GPA" said he was planning to go to law school but doubted he would
     apply to a UC campus.

     "I don't feel like going to a place where I'm not wanted and I think I'd get a better education at a more diverse school,"
     he said. "Basically, I'm tired of marching. This march represents complacency on the part of people of color and
     ignorance on the part of white people. This is a blueprint to take away our rights. People should start mobilizing and
     boycotting. If we don't have peace, no one should have peace."

     Chronicle staff writers Robert B. Gunnison and Henry K Lee contributed to this report.

Return to the Proposition 209 Page
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Carl Gutierrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu