One is California Proposition 22, known as the "Limits of Marriage," or Knight initiative, named for its sponsor, state senator William Knight. Proposition 22 bans same- sex marriage in the state, despite the fact that it is already illegal in most states. It also seeks to deny recognition of such marriages from other states.

The other is the Youth Crime Initiative, Proposition 21. It is a sweeping package of measures attacking the democratic rights of working people, youth in particular. It goes after such hard-won rights as keeping the names of minors charged by the police out of the public record and news media.

Omari Musa, a railroad worker and socialist candidate for city council in Oakland, has used his campaign to explain the issues involved, pointing out the need for the labor movement to counter these attacks, and encourage people to vote against the two initiatives on election day.

"What right has the government to tell you who you can and cannot marry?" said Musa at a recent campaign meeting. "The state must stay out of our bedrooms and private lives! One of the gains of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s," Musa pointed out, "is that laws barring Blacks and whites from marrying were finally removed from the books.

"Proposition 22," Musa said, "is part of a broader campaign, described by ultra-rightist presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan as a culture war that plays on middle class fears and insecurities about their prospects under capitalism.

"It promotes resentment, and attempts to pin the blame for today's conditions on the oppressed, on Blacks, women, gays, and on the working class," he said. "It attacks the democratic and civil rights conquered in the past decades, as well as those who fight to extend them."

The socialist candidate also pointed out that even now workers who are not legally married, gay as well as straight, have been fighting for benefits equal to married couples. This has become a big question at United Airlines, one of the Bay Area's largest employers. Workers at the company are pressing the bosses to comply with a San Francisco law requiring those doing business with the city to provide domestic partnership benefits, including company-paid health care and pension plans.  
 

Seen as a threat to the family

Backers of the discriminatory legislation portray themselves as defenders of the family. They are making a concerted bid for support among Latinos, for example, by running ads in Spanish throughout the state depicting a large Latino family celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary.

The hierarchies of both the Catholic and Mormon churches have weighed in on behalf of the measure, as has the right-wing Focus on the Family organization. It is also supported by all of the Republican presidential candidates running in the March 7 California primary election.

"Ending discrimination against gays undercuts the oppression of women and the role of the family as a basic institution in capitalist society," Musa said. "The wealthy rulers push more and more of what should be a social responsibility--schooling, health care, child rearing, and putting a roof over our heads and food on the table--onto the basic family unit.

"We must fight against this," the socialist candidate said, "in its own right and because it helps justify cuts in social programs, food stamps, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security."

Proposition 22 comes as political polarization on issues around ending discrimination against gays deepens. In addition to student protests at El Modena High School in Orange County, 100 people recently picketed a central California newspaper after its owners announced that they would not run any articles depicting gays or abortion in a favorable light.

"Under the pretext of combating 'gangs' and 'youth violence,'" Musa said, "the wealthy families who own the factories, banks, urban buildings, and vast tracts of agricultural land in California are proposing to greatly extend the power of their police forces to frame and imprison workers and young people." This, simply put, is what Proposition 21, the so-called Youth Crime Initiative is all about. Backers of the measure aim to use repressive laws along with strengthened police and military forces to curb social struggles and protests that working people will increasingly wage as living conditions deteriorate."

Young people across the state have held rallies, school walkouts, and protests against Proposition 21 in the days leading up to the March 7 vote.

The socialist candidate told the Militant that for many years, capitalist politicians and the big business news media have sought to whip up hysteria around the dangers of "unsafe streets" and "gang violence." They have promoted a lie about what crime is, and that the insecurities of life under capitalism can be blamed on "criminals," and "gangs."  
 

Repressive measures

This has been the basis to carry out repressive measures and hire more cops, beef up sentencing laws, enforce harsher and longer prison sentences, as well as increasingly authoritarian practices such as youth curfews, identification cards, and laws against "urban blight," such as now stand on the books in Oakland.

Musa noted that protecting the names of minors arrested by the police was rapidly eroding, pointing to the recent murder conviction of a 14-year-old boy in Michigan whose name was splashed across newspapers and television around the country.

Over the past few decades, juvenile police records have been more or less sealed, and were unavailable for inspection once the individual turned 18.

This has provided some protection for young people against these records being used as a club over them for years by employers and cops. Proposition 21 would end this practice. Probation for youth convicted of felonies would be eliminated. Misdemeanors such as painting graffiti would now become felonies.

The measure would also subject youth as young as 14 to "adult" courts and prisons at the discretion of a prosecutor. Currently any decision to try a minor as an adult must be made by a judge.

"These attacks on young people constitute punishment for the crime of being young and poor," said Musa. Moreover, "the normal operation of capitalism, which fosters and reproduces racism and national oppression every day, ensures that Black and Latino youth will be hit hardest by measures such as those contained in Proposition 21."

The initiative would give police the power to keep lists of, follow, and wiretap those they decide are "gang members." The law would extend the use of harsh mandatory life sentences and the death penalty. Those convicted of "gang-related" activities would be required to register with local police when they get out of prison, in effect continuing their sentence.  
 

What constitutes 'crime'

The capitalist rulers' pervasive "anticrime" campaigns aim to cover up the fundamental truth about life under capitalism, Musa explained.

Their power over society means that the capitalist class, and their political servants, make the laws that protect their interests, and they determine what constitutes crime or illegal activity.

They deem individual or collective acts of rebellion, directed against their property, as criminal. "Wasn't the murder by four plainclothes cops of Amadou Diallo, a Black, immigrant worker in New York City, a crime? Wasn't the attack by 600 cops on South Carolina longshore workers picketing to defend their union at the port a crime?" Musa asked.

Moreover, the capitalists themselves "use every method, including torture, massacres, and nuclear war to preserve a social system which makes them rich, while subordinating human solidarity to a dog-eat-dog war of all against all," Musa said. "Workers, farmers, and youth will forge bonds of solidarity, respect, and cooperation in struggle against the capitalists and the devastation their system imposes upon us."

"My campaign urges everyone to vote against Proposition 21, Musa said. "But the vote on March 7 will not be the end. The young people across California marching against Prop. 21 are already showing that the police and government officials will not simply be able to implement this law without a fight."

Jim Altenberg is a member of the United Transportation Union.  
 
 
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