There was something surprising about the Assembly vote last week to reject an attempt, to borrow the apt phrase of an opponent, to “justify the unjustifiable” the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War 11, wrote the Stockton Record editorially.
It wasn’t the vote itself that was a welcome and overwhelming, 604 to reject the racist resolution by Assemblyman Gil Ferguson, R Laguna Beach, the edit added.
Nor was it that San Joaquin County’s two Assembly members, Patrick Johnston, D Stockton, and Phillip Isenberg, D Sacramento, were among the leaders in opposing Ferguson’s resolution. No one expected anything but that from them.
What was surprising was that none of The Record’s news services reported the names of the three Assembly members who supported Ferguson.
We think you ought to know whose those three were, and remember them in case they ever seek a political office in which you could vote against them.
For the record, they were Marian La Follette, R Northridge, Cathie Wright, R Simi Valley, and Phillip D. Wyman, R Tehachapi.
At least Ferguson, La Follette, Wright and Wyman had the courage of their misguided convictions. Others didn’t.
The Los Angeles Times reported that “some of his (Ferguson’s) Orange County colleagues disappeared from the chambers before the vote. Thirteen legislators in all declined to vote.”
Again, neither the Times nor any other news services reported the names of the 13.
Those 13 may be more of a threat to this democracy than Ferguson, La Follette, Wright or Wyman,
As Edmund Burke observed 200 years ago, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Assembly Minority Leader Ross Johnson, R Fullerton, was among the most outspoken opponents of Ferguson’s resolution.
Johnson, in fact, clearly delineated the issue:
“What happened was wrong if even one U.S citizen was denied his or her constitutional rights or freedom not because of what they did but because of who they were. It should never have happened. It must never be allowed to happen again.”
Article extracted from this publication >> September 14, 1990
