BY FLOYD FOWLER
ATLANTA - More than 200 people turned out to defend
affirmative action here August 23 at a rally at the Ebenezer
Baptist Church sponsored by the Georgia Black Chamber of
Commerce, the Atlanta Labor Council, and other organizations.
The crowd, most of whom were Black, included groups of union
members from the Carpenters Union and the Amalgamated Transit
Union (ATU), and a number of small business people. This
rally was in response to a threatened suit against the city
of Atlanta's affirmative action programs.
"The trade unions must fight discrimination in the community and in the workplace," said Benita West, an official from the ATU who addressed the rally. "We must fight for the rights of the most oppressed workers."
The Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) is spearheading legal attacks on affirmative action across the south. In a letter delivered to Atlanta Mayor William Campbell June 14, the group demanded the city end affirmative action provisions in contracts for city construction work within 30 days. Under this city program, businesses awarded city contracts must subcontract between 35 and 40 percent of the work to firms owned by members of oppressed nationalities or women. Before this program was established in 1975, less than 1 percent of this work went to such firms. The population of Atlanta is nearly 70 percent Black.
What is at stake is not just one city program that benefits a small layer of Black business people. On June 16 Matt Glavin, president of the SLF, declared, "We're ready to go to trial. When Atlanta's program falls - and it will - that will be the final nail in the coffin of affirmative action." Working people have the most to gain in defending the conquests of the civil rights movement. The struggle against Jim Crow segregation opened the road for working people to forge unity in the fight against racism and discrimination. Affirmative action programs that exist today reflect what was gained by that movement.
"It has to do with health, education, human rights, the whole nine yards," said Sharon Turner, a carpenter and president of the Atlanta Tradeswomen's Network, a 300-member organization that fights to help women get into the construction trades. "The minority-owned businesses are just small potatoes to me. We've had to take some of these same companies to the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission over the last several years. We've been fighting for affirmative action, sometimes against the city too, long before this fight came along. In trying to eliminate this program, the Southeastern Legal Foundation is representing the Association of General Contractors, not the workers."
The SLF is generously funded by developers, construction firms, and national corporations like Atlanta-based Flowers Industries, one of the nation's largest producers of baked goods. One of those drawn into the current fight is Edwin Rosemond, who worked for Flowers for 24 years. "I've been fighting Flowers a long time," he related. "They closed their Atlanta plant in 1996, but then it reopened the next year under another name but still running their products. I think it was all to get rid of the union we had. I'm still learning about affirmative action, but I'll participate in anything that will help to get the union back in that plant."
Over the last several years the SLF has successfully challenged affirmative action programs in Richmond, Virginia, and Jacksonville, Florida. In Atlanta, this outfit won a suit against the Fulton County Minority/Female Business Enterprise Plan, which was declared unconstitutional. The Dekalb County School Board, facing an SLF lawsuit, gave up without a fight and on its own ended a voluntary school busing program aimed at combating segregation in the schools. Grady Memorial Hospital was forced to suspend an affirmative action program in construction bidding similar to the city of Atlanta's in 1997. Attorney Robert Proctor, after winning the case against Grady, crowed, "I'm not going to stop filing lawsuits until I dismantle all the affirmative action programs in the state."
The SLF's legal attacks on affirmative action have up to now confronted only half-hearted resistance, and have almost invariably resulted in sympathetic court rulings, even when the program in question is technically upheld. A recent suit aimed at the admissions policies of the University of Georgia was dismissed on a technicality, but the judge used the bulk of his decision to declare that the admissions program amounted to "reverse discrimination."
At a rally of more than 1,000 people at city hall in July, Mayor Campbell declared he was ready to "fight to the death" for affirmative action. But after prominent press, political, and big-business figures urged compromise, Campbell said he was "going to have a different approach." The Georgia Black Chamber of Commerce used the August 23 rally to promote a boycott campaign against Flowers Industries and another company with connections to the SLF as the way to pressure the group.
Thousands of people are ready for actions that mobilize the broad support that exists for affirmative action. Every meeting, picket line, and rally draws fighters looking for a way forward. Up to now, the SLF has not accepted any compromise that did not effectively gut the affirmative action program targeted. Many aren't in a mood to accept that. "Whether there is a compromise or not," said Sharon Turner, "we're going to go on fighting for affirmative action.
Floyd Fowler is a member of the United Steelworkers of America in McDonough, Georgia. Dan Fein and Arlene Rubinstein contributed to this article.