Will Potter: Selected Writings

"Thousands Rally for Affirmative Action as Justices Hear U. of Michigan Cases," The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2, 2003, online.

By WILL POTTER

WASHINGTON — Thousands of affirmative-action supporters, primarily students, rallied outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices heard oral arguments in the University of Michigan cases.

The demonstrations focused on defending race-based admissions policies, but it was clear that the U.S.-led war on Iraq has influenced the affirmative-action supporters and their arguments.

Signs bobbed through the crowd that read "PhDs not POWs," "Send us to school, not war," and "We want opportunities, not oil."

Roblyn Smith rode 24 hours on a bus from Langston University, in Oklahoma, to attend the rally. "It's hard to explain," she said. "Seeing the war going on makes you look at your own life differently and realize what's at stake."

Others in the crowd carried banners representing their institutions, including the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Harvard University, and Howard University. Some students, like Ms. Smith, had traveled overnight to attend the rally, but much of the crowd seemed to come from the Washington area.

Darla Thompson, a resident of Washington, said she was concerned that not enough people would attend the event because of "protest fatigue."

"It's almost difficult to articulate because it's so overwhelming," she said, referring to a "conservative agenda" that she said includes war, rollbacks on environmental protections, and attacks on civil liberties and affirmative action.

Ms. Thompson, who said she attended college and graduate school with the help of affirmative action, said that "everything is at stake" with these two Supreme Court cases. "A lot of people who are focused on the antiwar movement need to be reminded of the war at home," she said.

The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary, a sponsor of the rally, raised that same concern in a national e-mail message sent to members weeks before Tuesday's event. "On many occasions we have met with difficulty getting white antiwar activists to understand why they should come to DC on April 1," organizers said in the e-mail message. They then listed talking points to help bring white antiwar activists to the demonstration.

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and other speakers were eager to draw parallels to the civil-rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. Protesters, too, drew parallels to past movements and were quick to say that one issue does not trump another.

Raymond Bockman took an overnight bus to the rally with the Plymouth, Ind., chapter of the United Steelworkers of America. He stood under a banner reading "Affirmative action: It got Bush into Yale," and said it's important to build coalitions between movements.

"If we were just a white union, or a black union, we wouldn't be a union," he said.

The crowd was predominantly African-American, but also included significant numbers of white and Hispanic people. Most of the activists appeared to be of college age or younger, including many high-school students wearing their schools' letter jackets. Some of these students said that the war is definitely a concern, but that they also have another looming fear: college.

"It's going to be harder for us trying to go to college," said Dominique Prue, 16, of Eastern High School in Washington. She said that administrators had excused her and other students from classes to attend the rally. "I mean, some of us don't want to go to just the historically black colleges. There's nothing wrong with that, you know, but I want to go to Princeton."

The only counterprotesters in sight were two young men in business suits, holding signs that read "Affirmative action breeds incompetence" and "MLK and I are against racial bias." Some protesters pointed and laughed at them, but did not seek out conflict. They just marched on by.