Western Massachusetts

On March 16, hundreds of students marched and rallied at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in support of affirmative action. The protest was called by the UCLA African Student Union and was timed to coincide with a meeting of the UC Regents, some of whom have followed the lead of settler-tailing politicians like Pete Wilson and Bob Dole in calling for the elimination of affirmative action programs.

Affirmative action is part of Amerika's neo- colonial way of minimizing the threat of rising national liberation struggles among Amerika's internal colonies. It allows small numbers of people of oppressed nationalities to "integrate" more easily with their national oppressors, while the majority in the internal colonies remain colonized.

MIM sees the protesters' defense of affirmative action as progressive, but severely limited. Real affirmative action requires reparations from the oppressor nations to the internal and external colonies and neo-colonies. And that requires that the imperialist U.S. bourgeois dictatorship be overthrown through armed revolution and replaced by a dictatorship of the international proletariat. The anti-affirmative crowd was progressive and quick to snap up MIM fliers.

"Many carried masks made out of white paper plates - to remind the regents, as one student explained, 'what the university used to look like.'"

And the enemy was nervous: "Nearby, 75 campus police officers stood at the ready - about one for every three protesters. UCLA Police Chief Clarence R. Chapman said he had bolstered his 35-member police force with 40 additional officers from six other UC campuses because he had 'received information that people may attend and attempt to disrupt the meeting. We wanted to take precautions.' Usually, Chapman said, seven officers work the day shift at UCLA. Chapman estimated that it was costing the university $42,000 to pay, transport and house the 68 extra officers.")

NOTE: LA Times, 3/17/95, p. B4