By Any Means Necessary

The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, commonly shortened to By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), is a militant, American far-left group that participates in protests and litigation to achieve its aims. It is a front organization for the Revolutionary Workers League. Origins BAMN was formed in 1995 to oppose the July 20, 1995, decision by Regents of the University of California to ban affirmative action as The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary. It ran a slate of candidates in the April 1996 Associated Students of the University of California election on a platform of defeating California Proposition 209. The proposition passed in November, prohibiting state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity for employment, contracting, and education. In 1997, BAMN expanded to Michigan, where it organized student support for the affirmative action policy of the University of Michigan Law School at Ann Arbor (UMLS) as a result of a challenge to that policy via Grutter v. Bollinger. Campaigns