“Don’t be fooled. There is nothing civil about the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.”
   Sue Rumph, vice president of the National Organization for Women’s Michigan chapter, had nothing but fighting words for NOW members gathered at Oakland Community College in Farmington Hills. This fall’s election, she said, is critical to Michigan feminists.
   MCRI will be on the ballot in November 2006; it would amend Michigan’s Constitution to ban affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin. If enacted, it would permanently bar preferences in public employment, education and contracting.
   “The immediate affect if the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative passes would be to eliminate all gender-based state programs,” Rumph said. That could include everything from programs targeted to breast and prostate cancer prevention, summer enrichment programs that encourage girls to pursue careers in science and math, as well as programs to attract more men into nursing careers.
   The list of what will be lost is immense, and it includes the elimination of any gender or race-based data collection by state government, which would help measure the impact of eliminating affirmative action.
   “It’s a nice, tidy little package,” Rumph said.
   However, she urged feminists, “We can’t focus on what’s going to be gone. We have to defeat this bill, no question.”
   She encouraged NOW members to network through their e-mail lists, to write letters to the editor and op/ed columns and invite speakers from One United Michigan (www.oneunitedmichigan.org) to groups and organizations. Some advocates are also hosting house parties, where funds will be raised to mount an opposing campaign.

Supporters call affirmative action divisive
   According to a March 2006 Associated Press news story, surveys show support for the measure has dropped from 64 percent in 2004 to 46 percent, with the percentage of undecided voters nearly doubling. MCRI’s Executive Director Jennifer Gratz has called the polls “an anomaly” and believes overwhelming grass roots support exists for MCRI’s stated goals and objectives.
   Supporters of MCRI argue that affirmative action initiatives enacted in the 1960s have evolved into a divisive system of preferential treatment based on race and gender.
   Gratz has become a national spokesperson for the anti-preferences movement. She served as the lead plaintiff in a 1997 lawsuit filed against the University of Michigan based on its two-track admissions grid system, which assigned higher points to some applicants because of their racial background. Gratz v. Bollinger challenged racial preferences in student admissions at UM’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
   Now a University of Michigan - Dearborn graduate, Gratz holds a degree in mathematics and worked in the computer software industry before moving back to Michigan to lead MCRI.
   Prominent activist Ward Connerly, who has mounted anti-affirmative action campaigns in California, Washington and Florida, helped launch MCRI in 2003 with the intent of getting the issue on the ballot. Connerly helped get an anti-affirmative action measure approved in California and in 1997, formed the American Civil Rights Institute to take his campaign nation-wide.