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[Handwriting: “10/76”]
BAKKE RALLY
I wish to convey to you that we have the following people who have pledged support to me this morning and last night agaisnt the Bakke decision:
GEORGE MOSCONE, Mayor of San Francisco
JOSEPH FREITAS, District Attorney of San Franisco
CHARLES GAIN, Chief of Police
RICHARD HONGISTO, Sherif, San Fracisco County
ROBERT MENDOLSON. Supervisor of San Francisco County
CARLTON GOODLETT, Publisher of the Sun Reporter (9 newspapers in the area) and President of the National Newspapers Publishers Association of the United States,
REVEREND TONY UBALDI, Housing Commissioner that was just appointed along with me a couple of days ago to the Housing Commission of San Francisco, and Pastor of the very active Bethany United Methodist Church
REVEREND CECIL WILLIAMS, Pastor of Glide Memrial Methodist Church
REVEREND LEN HODGES, Executive Director of the Northern California Council of Churches
REVEREND MARVIN CHANDLER, Executive Minister ofthe San Francisco Council of Churches.
CARL IRVING [Irvin], President of the Northern California & Nevada Christian Churches Disciples of Christ of well over 100 churches
JOHN MAHAR [Maher], Founder of the Delancy Street Foundation
VINCENT HALLONAN [Hallinan], We all know as the astounding attorney of the people
MRS. CHARLES GEARY [Garry], the distinguished civil rights attorney. He’s already saying that he is filing a petition against the Bakke decision.
BENJAMIN DREYFUS, the prominent attorney and associate of Charles Geary along with with James Herndon, partners of Geary’s firm who has joined other lawyers in petitioning for rehearing
THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION also pledged to me this morning their support against the Bakke decision
ALBERT KAHN, the author of several best sellers, including HIGH TREASON, SABOTAGE and the GREAT CONSPIRACY
NORTH OF MARKET STREET SENIOR ORGANIZATION and many churches of all denominations and pastors. I think I better quit.
When we look at this terrible Bakke decision in conjunction with the alarming rise of racism in America, with the Supreme Court decisions that are threatening other civil liberties, with the tax on the press by the government, with the benign neglect, the total lack of concern and apparent acceptance of poverty and unemployment in America, we ought to be deeply concerned and alarmed here today! This is the kind of precedent that is dangerous and ominous. It can spell the eradication of all the gains that were won by the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It will mean that all of our efforts to institute equality could well be in vain; that the civil rights workers who died in the South may well have died in vain; that the people who marched, the Medgar Evers, Viola Luizzo, the countless people who have been shot, beaten, brutalized, jailed fire-bombed and evicted have gone through it all in vain. And that the nation-wide efforts that went into getting legislation passed to make right 400 hundred years of injustice, slavery, exploitation, torture and oppression, all this can well be in vain. This decision is an ominous sign that black, brown, Asians, Native Americans, and even poor whites, all of us of color, are being given a message that we are not wanted in the mainstream of American life, that we are expendable! This decision is a major step toward setting up all Third World people for even HARSHER measures that would lead to the creation of a permanent state of economic, social and political obsolescence for us. And both recent and current event in the world have shown us that the next step could very well be
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Sam Yette in his book THE CHOICE tells us that it is the issue of survival itself. The Bakke decision is part and parcel of what is shaping up to be a conspiracy against poor and THIRD WORLD PEOPLES in this nation. And the conspiracy begins with the abridgement of civil rights, violation of tresties and promises, taking away of liberties that gives all people an insurane of human dignity and equality. It doesn’t stop with students who have been, given an unequal education, being refused admission into the establishment schools; it doesn’t stop with taking the only chance deserving young people have ever had of realizing their potential. It will have further ramifications, you can be damn sure of that! It will affect equality in the fields of housing; its precedent can effect precedents in employment and in social services of every kind. It will keep the poor in bondage. It will keep the door shut. And if it has been opened a few inches, the door will slam entirely shut! What was achieved in the streets, what was achieved in the lunchroom, the movie theatres, the buses, and the halls of Congress in the 60s is now being systematically wiped out in the courts. Blacks, browns, Asians, our native americans people who have already been the victims of genocide, all Third World people, all the poor and disadvantaged are now being targeted. He are seeing America being divided into two nations: one affluent and one white; the other impoverished and non-white. The line is being drawn. And while 8000 people – according to the paper this last week – are becoming poor, falling beneath the poverty level everyday in the United States of America. And those who are already poor are becoming poorer. The rest of the population is being brainwahsed to believe that things are going well, that everything is looking better. Look at your TV. Poor people can be starving, but we can get a TV. And the images of the affluent society are there to entertain us everyday, to persuade us that the American dean is being realized more than ever. But we know better, we are not fooled.
My friends, we are facing the most ominous time in the coming years. The light of liberty could well be going out in the land–this greatest & most powerful land. Around the world, in nation after nation, you see the persecution of minorities. Torture is an epidemic. It has been made an institution, an official policy of government in some 60 nations around the world. So when we look at the Bakke decision, and I bet if you ask people on the street about it you won’t find 1 in a 100 who is even aware of it, and if they were would most likely, probably not even give a damn. Or most likely would agree with it, or agree with keping us Niggers out of the college. We have to look at it in the context of what is happening all over the nation as unemployment mounts and busing protests turn into racist violence, as the Klan gains thousands of recruits, as migrant workers are brutalized and denied their rights as native Americans or left to die in squalor in concentration camps of our inner cities, as the state of siege begins to take its ugly shape in leaderless and hopeless nation, choking with its own affluence while millions are wasting away and dying.
I say we have to look at this decision as yet another signpost on the road to tyranny, with a decision that would effectively sabotage our efforts to train Black and Brown doctors to give us medical care that is so desperately needed. Black and Brown lawyers to help us with legal problems that plague poor people trying to survive in a society where the laws too often are written for the rich and the privileged. A decision that would sabotage the training of Third World educators to help is overcome the cultural brainwash, the ripoffs, the deceit, the impossible
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conditions for advancement that exist in our communities, our ghettos. With such a decision being handed down from rich white judges in what is supposed to be the most liberal state in the union, the State that is years ahead of our times we’re told, we’re in a serious condition!
I hope that the message will get out about this decision and that our legislators can do something to reverse it. If not, anothe nail will have been driven in the coffin of democracy, another nail in the coffin of equality, freedom, justiee and civil liberties. And when these are gone my friends, we will be in a predicament that could very well mean our very survival!