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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 10, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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California students protest David Duke's talk

By Workers World Los Angeles bureau

On Sept. 25, over 700 people came out in Los Angeles to protest the appearance of David Duke, whom they called "a Klansman in a three-piece suit."

Duke, a former "grand wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan, was speaking against affirmative action in a debate sponsored by the student government at California State University at Northridge.

Among the protesters were Workers World Party candidates for president and vice president, Monica Moorehead and Gloria La Riva.

Moorehead told reporters: "I'm dedicating my campaign to rolling back racism, attacks on women, and the exploitation of working people in this country-which in truth, Clinton and the Democrats have done more to support than oppose.

"Racist reactionaries like David Duke cannot be tolerated. His support of Proposition 209 exposes the 209 proponents' real agenda, backed by big business and rabid racists like the Klan. "While totally dismantling the gains won through the civil rights movement, it institutes cutbacks that only benefit the ruling class," Moorehead concluded.

Proposition 209, on the November ballot, would end state affirmative-action programs in California.

The students who came out against the Klan got a lesson in how the police and Klan work hand in hand. It is common knowledge to many in the progressive movement that the Klan is a secret terrorist organization that is supported and protected by the capitalist state. But for many of the students, it was their first experience in dealing with the Klan and the police.

When the debate ended, police in riot gear attacked the protesters and those who were just there out of curiosity. The police used tear-gas projectiles and started to club students-all in order to protect and escort David Duke off the campus. Six protesters were arrested and two were taken to the hospital.

John Peter Daly, a Workers World Party member, gay activist and student at CSUN who is running for Congress in the 29^th District on the Peace and Freedom ticket, said:

"David Duke should be in jail, not have the right to speak on this campus. The Klan used murders, kidnappings, burnings, lynchings, whippings and mass terror for over 200 years. Groups that espouse racist genocide do not have the right to express their fascist ideas."

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