BY CAROLE LESNICK

LOS ANGELES-Nearly 700 people turned out September 28 for activities aimed at rallying opposition to Proposition 209, an anti-affirmative action measure that will be on the November ballot. The morning meeting was sponsored by Los Angeles Metropolitan Alliance, a newly formed coalition of civil rights, labor, and community organizations.

"We didn't ask for affirmative action laws," Constance Rice, regional counsel of the NAACP, told the audience of more than 500, which included labor activists, union officials, and staff members. "We marched, fought, and died for full equality. Now we're fighting for what we won in the sixties."

Other speakers included Day Higuchi, president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, Jean Morrison, president of San Fernando Valley National Organization for Women, Los Angeles city council member Mark Ridley-Thomas, Maria Elena Durazo, president of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 11.

Later the same day, nearly 200 activists, many of them young, rallied at City Hall to protest Proposition 209 in a demonstration sponsored by the LA Affirmative Action Defense Coalition. On September 29, more than 100 people, many of them Asian and Latino students, attended a debate on the referendum sponsored by the Japanese-American Citizens League at the University of California at Irvine.

Carol Lesnick is a member of United Auto Workers Local 148 at McDonnell Douglas in Lakewood, California.  
 
 
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