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Volume 5 Number 1 MOVEMENT TO DEFUND CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION GAINS MOMENTUM
On June 26, the House Appropriations Committee voted 27-16 to defund the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. An amendment to the Appropriation Bill, offered by Rep. Julian Dixon (D-CA), approved $11.8 million for the Commission to be used to close down the operations of the Commission by December 31, 1986. The LCCR in a letter to Committee members urged support for the Dixon amendment because "...there is no longer an independent Civil Rights Commission. It died three years ago when Ed Meese repudiated the congressional compromise worked out in November of 1983. As Clarence Pendleton and Linda Chavez have indicated numerous times, the Commission is now considered a part of the Reagan Administration. Indeed, it has become nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Department of Justice. Such a result is a perversion of the Commission's historic statutory role." The letter continues: "The vote to defund the Civil Rights Commission will be one of the most important votes for civil rights in the 99th Congress." The measure is expected to be before the full House in July.
The FUND has available for dissemination a SPECIAL REPORT on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights which details the controversy that has surrounded the agency since its reconstitution in 1983 ($2.50).
  
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