Political Activism

SUSIE BRIGHT WANTS TO TALK ABOUT SEX. AND somebody, it seems, is always trying to shut her up. Back in 1990, for instance, at one of her erotica lectures, a women's studies class passed out flyers that read: "First, slavery in the Roman Empire . . . then the Holocaust . . . Now, Susie Bright comes to the University of Minnesota." In Northampton, Mass., a hotbed of radical feminist activity, police advised her not to eat out because they feared she'd be attacked by anti-porn fanatics.

Sometimes Eric Stolp's head fills with voices. They squawk and yammer and scream this warning: Los Angeles' angels are bad angels, evil angels, the fallen angels of Satan. Watch his intense eyes scanning the grubby Skid Row skyline and you can almost see vulture-winged creatures hovering in the shadows, waiting for night to fall. Even in broad daylight, it's not hard to understand why Stolp itches to flee this Hieronymus Bosch landscape by catching a Greyhound for Maine.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony did not rise to archbishop of Los Angeles--where Mass is celebrated every Sunday in 42 languages and the Roman Catholic flock grows by 1,000 each week--at the age of 49 without arousing suspicions, bruising egos and making enemies. It is a lesson Mahony learned early on.

Everywhere he went in Freetown's ghettos, a dreadlocked young vocalist named Innocent heard the plea. People were fed up with lies, theft and corruption. This government had to go, they said, and they begged Innocent to speak out. So late one night, Innocent drove to Forensic Studios, a rundown pair of rooms on a clamorous downtown street. The sound engineer was asleep on an old sofa, and Innocent shook him awake. "Let's do something," Innocent said, "and release it tomorrow."

Xie Lihua's parents wanted a boy. But on the day Xie was born in a poor village in rural Shandong province, her mother learned she had given birth to a second daughter. She wept in anger. And she slapped her new baby. "Another girl!" she cried. The year was 1951. Girls were considered a worthless commodity in an agrarian society that relied upon the strength of young men to flourish. Xie grew up knowing her place -- as a handmaiden to her younger brother.

Michael Wahl is aware that he has a choice - President Obama or Mitt Romney. "It's either this guy or that guy," the Cal Poly Pomona sophomore says. But he didn't know about the candidates lower on the ballot, or the measures that could shape California's future - until volunteers came to his ethnic studies class one evening with a video aimed at convincing Asian Americans to turn out on election day. Wahl, who is half-Chinese, is among the thousands of prospective voters targeted in what is probably the most aggressive push yet to unlock the Asian vote in Southern California.

Black churches' political activism is spotty and focused more on voter registration and getting people to the polls than on shaping public policy, says a scholar who has spent three years studying the churches. The Rev. R. Drew Smith of Morehouse College in Atlanta, a political scientist and Baptist minister, said two-thirds of the 1,893 pastors he interviewed said their churches ran voter registration drives and half said voters would be given rides to the polls on election day.

Resident Ora Easley, an active volunteer on the local Republican Party scene, was honored Monday as "Woman of the Year" for the 70th Assembly District by Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach). Easley has held officer posts in the Orange County Black Republican Council, the California Republican Assembly and the Orange County Federated Republican Women.

Lupe Moreno knows the immigrant struggle. She has lived all her life in Santa Ana, a gateway community for Mexican immigrants. Her father helped smuggle them into the country; her former husband sneaked in illegally. Now Moreno is part of the growing movement to stem the flow of illegal immigration. "I want people to know that there are Latinos who are law-abiding," she said. "We need to protect our borders."

Victor Crawford's story is sadly familiar, that of a man who started smoking in his early teens and now is dying of cancer. But Crawford stands out among the thousands who share his predicament, because he is a former lobbyist for the Tobacco Institute and has turned on his former client--speaking out against youth smoking and the tactics of the industry. "I've got to make some amends," the 62-year-old Maryland lawyer said in an interview.