BAMN is a Left-Wing organization in the image of Liberals and Barack Hussein Obama.

What is BAMN? In their own words:

“Coalition to defend affirmative action, integration, and immigrant rights. And fight for equality By Any Means Necessary.”

A total of 24 states allow voters to change laws on their own by collecting signatures and putting initiatives on the ballot. It’s healthy that the entrenched political class should face some real legislative competition from initiative-toting citizens. Unfortunately, some special interests have declared war on the initiative process, using tactics ranging from restrictive laws to outright thuggery, writes John Fund in the Wall Street Journal.

BAMN means what they say, “And fight for equality by any means necessary.” Zarko Research and Consulting offers instances of “legal” methods and violence employed by BAMN in Michigan to influence legal convassing in 2005.

The FBI has investigated BAMN (Pdf.) for potential involvement in unspecified “terrorist activities.” According to the FBI, the group’s protests were discussed in a meeting about terrorist activities.

The ACLU charged that an “out-of-control” FBI is adding mostly innocent people to the list, ballooning it to “over 1 million names.” “I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist,” ACLU spokesman Barry Steinhardt harrumphed.

Recently Rachel Alexander wrote at The Loft at GOPUSA:

An initiative to ban racial and gender preferences, the Civil Rights Initiative, is being circulated in Arizona. It is similar to California’s Prop. 109 which was spearheaded by Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute. It was also being circulated in Missouri and Oklahoma, but due to tactics by the opposition group BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), it failed to collect enough signatures to be placed on the ballot. Now, BAMN has flown its members to Arizona to stop the initiative there. They are attempting to block petition signature collecters (sic) from getting signatures in every method possible. Their methods are listed here and Sonoran Alliance has documented specific outrageous activity, including stealing candy from a blind vendor, interrupting and stopping public meetings, overturning furniture, lying to inner-city African-Americans in order to trick them into coming by the busload to their protests, pelting Asians with soy sauce, and showing a knife threateningly to an initiative supporter.

“The key to defeating the initiative is to keep it off the ballot in the first place,” says Donna Stern, Midwest director for the Detroit-based By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). “That’s the only way we’re going to win.”

Mr. Connerly says that it’s ironic that those who claim to believe in “people power” want to keep people from voting on his proposal:

“Their tactics challenge the legitimacy of our system.”

Liberal columnist Anne Denogean of the Tucson Citizen opposes the Connerly initiative, but last month she wrote that BAMN “is showing a disgusting lack of respect for the democratic process and the right of all Arizonans to participate in it.” She detailed how members of this organization harass petitioners and film people who sign the petition, while telling them they are backing a racist measure.

The police had to be called when BAMN blocked the entrance of a Phoenix office where circulators had to deliver their petitions.

“BAMN’s tactics,” she concluded, “resemble those used by anti-abortion activists to prevent women from entering abortion clinics.”

BAMN proudly posts videos on its success in scaring away voters, or convincing circulators to hand over their petitions to its shock troops.

“If you give me your signatures, we’ll leave you alone,” says a BAMN volunteer on one tape to someone who’s earning money by circulating several different petitions.

What about voters’ rights to sign ACRI’s petitions? BAMN organizer Monica Smith equates race-neutral laws with Jim-Crow segregation laws and slavery. She told Tuscon columnist Denogean that voters are simply being educated that ACRI is “trying to end affirmative action . . . We let them know it’s up on the KKK’s Web site.” Mr. Connerly has repudiated any support from racists.

Mr. Fund continues:

Ever since voters in virtually every state with direct democracy passed term limits in the 1990s, state legislators have been hostile to the process. Now Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska and Colorado have all passed legislation to prohibit people from out-of-state from circulating a petition, and also to ban payment to circulators on a per-signature basis.

In March, a Sixth Circuit federal appeals court panel unanimously ruled that an Ohio law barring per-signature payment violated the First Amendment. Similarly, a Ninth Circuit panel just voted unanimously to strike down Arizona’s residency law for circulators.

Some judges think the “blocking” of signature gatherers has gone too far. In 2006, Nevada Judge Sally Loehrers decreed a “civility zone” that barred opposing sides from coming within arms’ length of each other at petition signing sites. “The blockers were off the streets within two days,” says Paul Jacob, the head of Citizens in Charge, which promotes the initiative process.

Representative government is a cornerstone of real Democracies and the initiative process that some politicians, Leftist groups and BAMN would like to ban offers individual to participate in the Democratic process where many times government fails.

Any attempts to stop the initiative process should be resisted or we continue to lose freedoms, liberty and our individual rights as American citizens. Indeed!

See also: Obama’s Hidden ACORN