With state and federal jails filling up with mostly African Americans convicted on possession (not sale) of crack, many African Americans question the logic of five year minimum jail terms for crack addicts while penalities for possession of powder cocaine often don't involve jail time. Most people convicted of crack are black while most convicted of powder cocaine possession are white. However African Americans did not get a chance to ask the candidates about whether the government was involved in the cocaine business, whether the government should maintain its policy of spending billions on enforcement while spending nothing on treatment and prevention programs.

There has been absolutely no discussion this campaign season on the US foreign policy toward the nations of the African continent or the government's relationship with South Africa. With the exception of Cuba, the candidates have ignored the Caribbean and South America, particularly Brazil, the fifth largest nation in the world, the country with the world's largest non-African Black population and a significant player in the world's economic community.

What little has been said about Blacks this campaign has focused on [the] poor and disenfranchised, with topics such as welfare reform, locking up criminals, teenage pregnancy, and the minimum wage being key issues.

The Republicans have used wedge issues like Affirmative Action to create an atmosphere of fear among whites on the premise that whites, as a class of people, are routinely discrimated against by unqualified Blacks and other people of color in the highest levels of the legislative and executive branches of government, corporate America, the academic and legal communities.

The issues of the average African American who works every day, has a family, attends church and is active in the community will not be mentioned by Bob Dole and his handlers, but the one message the Republicans will be sending this final week of the campaign is that if you're white and not voting for Clinton you're still alright, if you're brown, the border is where you better stay down and if you're Black, Plessy vs. Fergerson (the separate but equal Supreme Court ruling of 1898) may be back.

THE RACE IN CALIFORNIA

• "The voters aren't that stupid" and
• "You can't fool all the people all the time."

In the last week of the campaign, Prop 209 dropped 15 points to become virtually tied with the opposition, [an opposition] who have been outspent greatly ..[because of] 15 percent of the voters [being] undecided.

Prop 209 started going downhill after Republican party insiders decided to use Dr. Martin Luther King's image and a segment of his "I Have a Dream" speech in anti-affirmative ads in hopes that a campaign safely in the lead could be used by Republicans to bring out some of the racists in the more conservative areas of California to vote against affirmative action and for Bob Dole.

The ad was never aired because representatives of King's estate said the ad lied about King's position on affirmative action (Dr. King helped create one of the first affirmative action programs). Civil rights activist Rosa Parks' name was also mentioned in the anti affirmative ad. The ad was pulled after attorneys threatened legal action. The national publicity generated by the King/Parks controversy inspired a last minute infusion of much - needed money for the cash - poor No On 209 campaign.

The King/Parks ad controversy prompted many 209 supporters to reconsider their support for 209, particularly since many 209 supporters say they feel the California Civil Rights Initiative will expand opportunities for people of color.

Support for 209 dropped even further after a desperate Bob Dole came to California and slammed affirmative action, even though during the GOP convention [Dole] had promised that the national ticket would endorse 209 but not actively campaign for the measure.

In the first stages of the the 209 campaign, voters were promised the "California Civil Rights Initative " was a bipartisan effort to end discrimation in California but recent news reports have disclosed top Republican officials, including Newt Gingrich, met with [Ward] Connerly, Governor Pete Wilson, and other top 209 supporters to design a campaign that would link Dole and other Republican candidates to efforts to end affirmative action.

This news disturbed independents and Democratic party supporters of 209 who felt that a vote for 209 was a vote for Dole and the Republicans. That fear was confirmed days ago when Dole, during a speech in Orange County admitted that 209 was a wedge issue that would divide people by political party and race.

New anti-209 ads highlighing support by Klansman David Duke, Pat Buchanan, Dole and Gingrich, opposition by President Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, Willie Brown and Rosa Parks have also drawn votes away from 209. With less than a week to go, anti-209 forces are ready to unleash commercials with new messages about the consequenses of a 209 victory while the pro-209 campaign is rehashing themes that have been on the airways for weeks.

If the latest failed plans of the national GOP hasn't hurt 209 enough, the party's standard bearer may drive the final nail in 209's coffin.

In the 1980's the networks were criticized for projecting winners in the presidential race before the California polls closed. Many California voters decided not to vote because of the network projections, which impacted many local and state races. Since Democrats were on the tail end of the national beating, most of the voters who stayed home were Democrats, and the loss of thoses votes helped Republican supported candidates and propositions that would have normally lost to win.

This year the networks election night sets are full of computer-based vote tabulation equipment that will enable the networks to project winners much faster than ever before. With all the money invested in this high tech equipment, do you think Dan Rather, Pete Jennings, Bernard Shaw and the other network anchors will wait three hours to declare the winner when they know right now?

If Bill Clinton, as expected, is declared the winner early, it's expected Democrats will continue to vote to give Clinton a landslide and to help take back control of the Congress, while it would be expected demoralized Republicans will not bother to vote. If this happens 209 will lose because its supporters have so closely linked it to Republican party politics.

Although most Democrats oppose 209, the official Democratic Party did not contribute money to the Defeat 209 campaign, with the logic being [that] if 209 was passed by a large margin it would not take the Democratic Party with it. If 209 ran an independent campaign without the involvement of Dole, Gingrich and Pete Wilson, it may have passed, but come November 5, Prop 209 could suffer the same fate of one of it's biggest supporters, Bob Dole.

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