My wife collected signatures for the constitutional amendment banning eminent domain for private gain. WeCan people came up to my wife and asked to look thru her petitions. The told her that if they found no Missouri Civil Rights Initiative petitions they would leave her alone. She let them look thru her stuff, they found nothing and they didn’t harass her further.

I personally was harrassed by these thugs dressed in their gang colors. They screamed, yelled, threatened myself as well as people signing petitions.
I made the remark to one particularly large scarey man of the three that tailed me everywhere I went (I am a 5ft. 2 inch 58 year old woman), that if people like him were the ones that affirmative action programs benefit, then perhaps we should look into banning everything. These people weren’t educating anyone, they used scare tactics–threatening one elderly lady signing by telling her that the picture they snapped of her with their phone camera would be spread all over the internet as a racist. They were paid thugs, nothing more. But what would one expect from ACORN who’s own people have been indicted for voter registration fraud. Making up false voter registrations so they padded their pay checks. Yup, this is a wonderful society isnt’ it.

The real “thug(s)” are wealthy out-of-staters who try to change Missouri laws!!

By using legal, peaceful, and democratic means? Yeah, that’s thuggery alright.

If a conservative group physically and verbally intimidated petitioners, the PD would spend the next six months in high dugeon, But when so-called progressives use fascist bullying to get their way, the Post doesn’t bat an eye. Nuts to fascist thugs and the press that supports them.

#2,
I am one of those ‘thugs’ except I am a 26 year old man, who lives in St. Louis and volunteered my time to keep this off the ballot. As soon as I found one of these petitions and I started flyering, 8 people from Ward Connerly’s army showed up, 4 with cameras that they kept following me around with. I finally had to call the police because they would not get the camera’s out of my face.
So honestly, stories like you and I tell probably happened on both sides. That tends to happen in heated debates.
To make sure this doesn’t continue to happen in Missouri I think the MO legislature should actual act on one of the many proposals put forth to reform the process. My favorite would be to only allowing Missouri residents to petition to change Missouri’s constitution. Maybe that would keep the out of town money and out of town bullies at bay. It would certainly mean there wouldn’t be these petitioners on every street corner in every town.

The fact that ACORN spent so much time and energy defeating this proposal sends a strong message that it actually had a good chance of passing and thus had the merits to be on the ballot. Personally, I would sign any petition that had merit to give it its day at the ballot box. Signing the petition only says that you are for putting this on the ballot so that the entire state can decide on the issue and not that you are voting for the proposal. ACORN just set itself up for battle for another day by not allowing this on the ballot then campaigning for its defeat, because this issue will probably come back up sometime and sooner than if it was defeated at the ballot box instead on the street.

Hard to feel sympathy for our local community activists when they react so viruently to something as innocuous as a petition drive. Remember that the next time time they whine about the supposed lack of democracy.

LLS is the perfect racist example for why we need affirmative action. “gang colors”, really?

#8 - How so?

Mr. Connerly’s proposed ballot measure is a mirror image of the wording and promise of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which made it illegal to discriminate against, or grant preference to anyone on the basis of race, color, sex, ethnicity or national origin. Unfortunately, various courts, universities and municipalities ignored that promise and instituted systems of race-based systems of preverential treatment.

As a consequence after decades of race preferences in school admissions, hiring and contract awards, those people with their snouts in the “affirmative action” trough do not want to give up the freebies, and attempt to live by a color blind system operating on the basis of the equal treatment guaranteed in our Constitution.