Missouri Civil Rights Initiative stays in play even though ballot campaign ends

By AJA J. JUNIOR
May 12, 2008 5:21 p.m. CST
COLUMBIA — Students, faculty and staff overflow from the sidewalks onto the streets. Chants are heard, signs are raised and fists are pumped in the air on MU’s campus down Rollins Street, in front of Johnston Hall. They want their message known: The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative is not welcome here. Pedestrians look at the crowd, some taking informational fliers and others trying to understand the purpose behind the protest. Cars honk to acknowledge the growing crowd. Leaders shout into bullhorns. The protest, slowly moving towards Jesse Hall, is peaceful.
Rewind to the days of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Students at universities across the country held protests against the war and for equality. Martin Luther King Jr. led marches in Alabama, Mississippi and other Southern states to express the need for equality for all people, regardless of race, religion or gender. Police met King’s efforts with dogs and water hoses, especially in Birmingham, Ala.

Fast forward 40 years later to April 15. New leaders emerge to guide people down the streets of Columbia. No police or government officials countered the march.
“We are potentially in a new civil rights movement,” Winston Tracy, an MU graduate student, said.. Students marched to defend their civil rights through affirmative action. They were speaking out against the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative.

Introducing the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative
In late 2002, North Central Missouri College’s Director of Admissions Tim Asher noticed a common thread in how the diversity scholarship was being awarded. He said the process was guided by the race or ethnicity of the applicant.
Asher researched the matter further and found that a variety of programs and scholarships in Missouri higher education, public contracting and government employment were based on these preferences. He took action.
Asher called the American Civil Rights Institute to discuss his findings in early 2005. He reached out to Ward Connerly, a former University of California regent, to begin the process of trying to place an anti-affirmative action initiative on the Missouri ballot. Previously, Connerly had led similar citizen-driven propositions in California, Washington and Michigan, and those had passed. In June 2007, Asher submitted wording for a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution to Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s office.
The proposed amendment was the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative. The initiative sought to ban statewide and local affirmative action programs granting preferential treatment based upon race, gender, ethnicity or origin in public education, employment and contracting.
The initiative hit a few bumps on the road to the November 2008 ballot.
May 4 was the deadline for collecting signatures. Asher’s group needed to collect 140,000 to 150,000 signatures and hired an army of paid petitioners, which is equal to 8 percent of six of Missouri’s nine districts during the 2004 gubernatorial election, to gather them. [To read the entire story, go to: http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2008/05/12/missouri-civil-rights-initiative-stays-play-ballot/ ]