SAN FRANCISCO -- United against a statewide measure spearheaded by UC Regent Ward Connerly that would prevent the gathering, analysis and use of racial data, hundreds of people in San Francisco and Los Angeles rallied today against the initiative and launched a grassroots effort to defeat it.

Outside San Francisco City Hall and the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration, health experts, educators, religious and labor leaders, civil rights advocates and elected officials vowed to engage in a massive public education effort to alert voters about the dire consequences of the Classification by Race, Color, National Origin or Ethnicity (CRECNO) Initiative. Proposition 54 will appear on the October 7 ballot, five months earlier than when it was originally scheduled to be on the March, 2004 ballot.

Over 200 people rallied outside City Hall in San Francisco, and they heard from Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante; Congresswoman Barbara Lee; Assemblyman Mark Leno; Dr. Christina Shih, Kaiser Permanente; Jim Wunderman, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce; Matt Murray, UC Board of Regents; Dr. Michael Sexton, California Medical Association; Rocio Nieves, Youth Force Coalition; Zoe Clayson, Professor, College of Health & Human Services, San Francisco State University.

At the rally in Los Angeles, speakers addressed a crowd of about 200 people. The speakers included Rev. Norman Johnson, Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Dr. Rick Brown, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research; John Perez, United Teachers Los Angeles; Ramona Ripston, American Civil Liberties Union; Geraldine Washington, Los Angeles NAACP; Alexia Salvatierra, Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice; Warren Furutani, Los Angeles Community Colleges Trustee; Assemblymembers Jackie Goldberg and Cindy Montañez; County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke; LA City Councilmembers Tony Cardenas, Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel, Ed Reyes, and Antonio Villaraigosa; and the emcee, Robin Toma, of the County Human Relations Commission.

The messages at both events centered around the dire impacts on the provision of health care, education and public safety programs in the state if the initiative were to pass. Specifically, arguments against the Connerly measure included: