Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 18:47:21 PDT From: New Liberation News Service Message-Id: <9209150147.AA09293@igc.apc.org> Subject: NLNS 3.1! .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Table of Contents Volume 3, Number 1 September 12, 1992 ISSN# 1060-4227 An Open letter to NLNS Subscribers, Jason Pramas, NLNS Investigative Articles Notes from the "New" South Africa, The Thistle The Sacrifice Game Plan, Bug NEWS Ohio Incinerator Opponents Arrested, NLNS Cuba Halts Nuclear Plant Construction, NLNS Riot and the Leavenworth Lockdown, NLNS Kicking Enemy Ass, NLNS Vermonters Organize to Fight Workfare, NLNS National Women's Agenda 1992, WINGS ETAN Takes Action on East Timor, ETAN Supreme Court Limits Access to Abortion, Gainesville Iguana Pesticide-Related Leukemia Deaths, NLNS Perspectives Cultural Elite Argument Passes the Buck, NLNS Students and NAFTA, INSTEAD Development for Whom?, NLNS First Step Towards a Slow Death, ASA News Roger Ebert: Two Thumbs Down!, NLNS >From the Vault... A Closer Look at the Madison Bombing, LNS Spatial Deconcentration and Urban Racism, LNS How to use this packet: Member publications are free to reprint everything in this packet, free of restrictions, unless otherwise indicated. The only stipulation for use is that you reprint the credits and credit the news service by printing "(NLNS)." Submissions to NLNS PLEASE submit news, opinions, letters, graphics, photos and anything else that is on your mind to NLNS. We prefer items sent to us on 3.5" disks in either Mac or IBM text or graphic files. NLNS cooperates with: Nicaragua News Update, misc.activism.progressive (Usnet/ACTIV-L), Canadian University Press, Peacenet, Asian Student Association News, and many others. NLNS IS... Susan Conrad, Jason Pramas, and Phillip B. Zerbo. Call or write us at: NLNS, P.O. Box 325 Kendall Square Branch Cambridge,MA 02142 (617) 492-8316 Electronic Mail: Internet: nlns@igc.org Peacenet: nlns (c) 1992 Initiative for Grassroots Media -- All writers and artists retain full rights to all their work appearing in this packet. -- The copyright applies only to the form of this publication and any work produced in-house by the NLNS Staff, and does not in any way effect the reprint policy stated above. Statement of Purpose The New Liberation News Service was founded as a non- profit educational project with one goal in mind--to offer small underground and community media outlets a radical alternative to existing international wire services. We strive to provide as much information to such grassroots media as often and as cheaply as possible. We also work as an activist organization to spread the idea of a people's media to every corner of the globe. NLNS is biased in favor of all democratic movements for social change. We do not believe in the so-called "objectivity" touted as the journalistic standard by the mainstream capitalist press. To us, the only honest journalism is one with an admitted bias. Fairness in reportage is the single value NLNS holds above all others. Fairness to all of the people all of the time--not just to multinational corporations and their government lackeys. As long as the day-to-day struggles of everyday people continue to get buried under the endless deluge of "infotainment", NLNS will be here "uncensored and free" for all those who believe that the power of the press should be available to everyone. Not just to those who own one. Peace. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT An Open Letter to the Staff of all NLNS Subscriber Media Outlets (and other interested parties), Year Three. Im sitting here in the humidity of a late summer's night in Cambridge. I'm typing on an NLNS computer, in the new NLNS office. Behind me are possibly the largest archives of the grassroots progressive media in existence. Everything here is the product of two and half years of ceaseless labor on the part of myself and a precious few others. When I wrote a similar letter this time last year, I thought I would be bowing out of NLNS. I was burnt. The struggles of the first year were fierce and I was tired. The Gulf War had almost blown the whole scene out of the water. I had huge debts. So did NLNS. I had gotten a straight job and Phillip Zerbo had come on board as the new staff person. And as the fall of '91 began, it looked like it was going to be his baby for as long as he could handle it alone. But, funny thing, I couldn't stand the straight job. Going from head of my own molehill to the bottom of a publishing house mountain was a difficult transition indeed. And it was one I was not prepared to make. By early November, I was fired from the publishing house--largely owing to my complete abuse of the lavish facilities for NLNS business and my complete disregard for my lackey secretarial duties. My heart was with the news service, and my body followed suit with a hearty assist from the boot of my boss. Although I had been meeting periodically with Phillip and other volunteers prior to my getting The Ax, I had not really understood the extent to which he had made the operation hum like a well-oiled machine until I was able to work on the service full-time again. NLNS had become Organized. Where I had left the bare beginnings of an office infrastructure and business plan buried under a mound of radical rags, Phillip had turned the operation into something else entirely. Things were filed. The files had labels. And they were filled with the material indicated on the labels. It was truly magic to me. But I had learned a few tricks at the publishing house and was willing to mend the error of my chaotic ways. We began working together. Circling each other like wary predators for a couple of months, but after a fashion, falling into a groove where we have remained ever since. If Year One was The Beginning and Year Two was The Consolidation, Year Three is the year of The Breakout. This year we're going for the jugular. Or four jugulars to be specific. We want: 1) to press the war on the mainstream media, 2) to shake up the establishment left press, 3) to help build a better grassroots media, and 4) to be the best damned news service this country's ever seen. We do not make these pledges lightly. We feel confident making them because the last year has seen NLNS change in far more varied ways than merely having a neatly kept office (except during production, but that goes without saying). Phillip's contribution to this change cannot be overestimated. Nor can Susan Conrad's, as she hopped madly between doing the "NLNS thing" in Cambridge and the "school thing" in Amherst. Now, while we don't want you to get the idea that we have all kinds of money--we don't, Phillip, Susan and myself haven't been paid in months--the sailing is definately becoming smoother. We've done a lot in the last year and will do much more this year, but KEEP THOSE CHECKS COMING, FOLKS! Again, not only do we not make a dime on this project-- never have and never intend to--we only exist with the support of our base. You. But on the brighter side, during the past year: we have gone from a monthly to a bi-weekly during the academic year--finding it to be both more economical and much easier to deal with; we have become a dominant presence on Peacenet--running two electronic news conferences (one paid, one free for all)--and assuming facilitation of the Prog-Pubs mailing list on Internet (which connects us to dozens of papers and interested individuals and organizations at the touch of a button); we have standardized our format--making it much more attractive and useable by both our subscriber papers and individual subscribers; we have increased our percentage of paying subscribers from about 15% of 100 media outlets in September of 1991 to about 60% of 150 outlets today; we have received increasingly favorable press coverage---continuing a trend from Year One where we have not received a single negative review to date; we were once again nominated for an Alternative Press Award for "Coverage of Emerging Issues" by the Utne Reader; we have begun to sell $25/year individual subscriptions and hope to push those over the 1000-mark within six months; we have greatly increased our number of loyal correspondents around the world, and have seen a huge increase in the quality of writing and artwork we receive (despite or, I think, because of the fact that the vast majority of our work is from people under 25 years old); we have gotten a few grants--breaking the grantmaking barrier that all new non-profits must surmount if they are to survive; we have made strong connections with the Canadian University Press (CUP)--the huge progressive press organization in Canada who have treated us wonderfully and helped us both financially and with over 54 years of experience; we have built a solid reputation as a news outfit that can cover the important issues of the day from a left perspecitive--and frequently scoop wire services with budgets thousands of times larger than ours; but mos important of all we have seen a large increase in all our interactions with you, our subscribers. We're are most certainly all in this together. Most NLNS subscribers' organizations are run by young people like ourselves. And this year, we've decided that we're no longer satisfied (if we ever really were) to just report the news on the left and let it go at that--we want to see a revolt. We want to help change the face of media itself. Although we work with people from all walks and ages of life, we are still young and our focus remains with our generation. We cannot allow ourselves to be labelled by all the powers- that-be, right or left. We are not Generation X. We are not apathetic. We are not lost. We are not ignorant. We are not children. But we do face many obstacles in our path to freedom. We are beaten down! Our senses are under constant assault from people trying to sell us things. Telling us to look a certain way. To mouth a few, acceptable inane phrases. To back whatever presidential candidate the powers-that-be want us to back. Or whatever. Be it stupid TV shows like Melrose Place or left icons like Mother Jones, people are always trying to put words in our mouths. Or to identify "The Voice of The Generation." This week its Doug Copeland, acting as if the whole world is made up of white, coke-snorting, Harvard graduates filled with false ennui. Next week it's some rich liberal kid using his parents money to start some lame foundation without grassroots support claiming to help some poor unfortunates in Harlem or Fiji-- without the knowledge of the denizens therefrom. The week after, who knows? But more importantly, who cares! At NLNS, we print what's real. Since our material comes from our subscribers, we're only as good as the grassroots. The grassroots is good! You're all damn good at what you do. So do you get it? Our generation's voices must be heard. We don't need a "Voice." We need voices. Our own voices. This world is going to hell in a handbasket as much as it was this time last year. If our grassroots media--all these little papers and electronic conferences and radio and tv shows--can't work together and reach out to our generation and say, "Yes! You can save the world! There is still time. Read our papers. Listen to our radio shows. Watch our tv and movie productions. Look at what other young people are doing around the world. They're fighting. We're fighting. And if you want your life to have meaning, if you're sick of sitting by passively while things get worse, if you want to make your mark on the world, then fight! Join us," then who can. Here's how we want to tackle the Beast: 1) We must continue to show up the mainstream press. If we scooped them five times last year, we want to scoop them fifty times this year. We want to have the word from the streets, from the people who are directly affected by the news of the day, faster than anyone else. And we want to get it to you faster. So you can get it to the world faster. More importantly, we want to run more opinion and analysis of the mainstream press particularly as it affects our generation. We want to stir up the muck. We want more and more people, particularly young people, to question the truthfulness and reason-for-being of Big Media. We want them to seek alternatives. And we want them to find the grassroots media there waiting for them. Naturally, we support direct action against the mass media where desireableand useful. 2) We've had it with the "establishment left press." By that we mean The Nation, Z, Mother Jones, In These Times, FAIR, The Progressive et al (including Utne Reader, even though they've been pretty nice to us). This is not the 60s. It's the 90s. The 60s generation does not have the patent on social revolt. Our generation has fought huge battles and learned great lessons. But where is our generation in these publications? If young people are anywhere, it is as barely paid interns. We are tired of being treated as nothing more than interns. Here, at NLNS, we have gone through experiences with these publications that we know are all too common for young progressives trying to do the right thing. We didn't start our news service to go on to "graduate" to a "real job" at one of these august left institutions. We take what we do very seriously. We believe in building our own insitutions. But we don't see why the older left has such a hard time opening their doors to us. We don't appreciate how few young writers get their stuff run in these publications. We don't accept that all our hard work and experience has to be run through their editorial threshing machines until what we write agrees with their views about us. We want the right to speak our minds in these publications and get paid decently for our labor like anyone else. And we want the right to write about our lives and our movements as they really are, not as some of these publications might want us to be. We think these publications are cutting their own throats if they don't help us all out--give us some exposure, money and respect. At least the right wing does that much for its young people. If we don't get the same soon, some inreconsilable differences may fester and burn. So this year, we will agitate and publicize our displeasure until we get some action. You all are cordially invited to do the same. 3) Although we love many of your publications, there is a lot of room for improvement. We plan to run a lot of articles this year, profiling NLNS member papers that we think are particularly well- done and effective; so that less experienced media groups out there can learn from their successes. Of course, critique is a two-way street and we expect to get it from you all just like we always have. And those of you who have worked with us for a while know we take your ideas seriously. If NLNS has gotten better and better it has as much to do with subscribers' ideas as our own. Phillip and I are also on the Speak Out! speakers bureau this year for the express purpose of coming out to wherever you work and (for transportation, a few beers, and a negotiable fee) helping you fine-tune your operation. Or, for free, we can point you to people in your area that have a lot of experience doing whatever you do. In the absence of a strong US grassroots press organization, we try to fill the networking gap as much as possible. Though truth to tell, we'd like to see some motion in the direction of such an organization this year. We need something like the Canadian University Press--with their ad syndicate, legal counsel and full-time staff--to help build a fighting left media in this country. We really want people to start thinking in those terms too. We want people to work together more than they ever have to build a real, united opposition to the capitalist press and its attendent bullshit. 4) Finally, of course, we want NLNS to kick holy ass this year. We would like to go weekly as soon as possible. We want to soldify and expand our worldwide network of correspondents until we truly "cover the globe." We want to stop reacting to the news and start making it. We would like to be able to hire our third staff person, Susan Conrad, full-time once she graduates from college in May. We want to push the technological envelope whenever possible. As a friend at MIT once said, "Why smash the system, if you can render it obsolete?" Although we do not have the money of the campus right- wing press or certainly the money of the mainstream press, we should use all available technology to get our news and views to more people, faster and cheaper than ever before. And we want to teach as many people as we can what we know along the way. We want more of our subscribers to actually use more of our news than ever before. We want to reach more people this year with our news, generally speaking. We want NLNS to expand to radio. We experimented last year with weekly feeds on a local radio stations and it went very nicely. Ideally, by year's end we want to be uplinked on the national public access satellite to be picked up by community radio stations everywhere. We might even experiment with NLNS TV. But we'll hold on that for now. Just remember the slogan, "By any media necessary!" and you'll get the idea of what we're trying to do. We are indeed trying to be the best news service this country's ever seen. And to do it we'll need everybody's help. Who knows, if things go well Phillip and I might even be able to pay ourselves a real living wage soon! To sum up, we think this is going to be a great year. We have a lot of ideas, a decent amount of energy, and even a little cash. I could go on and on about our plans and ideas for NLNS and the grassroots media in general, but you get the jist of it. The only important thing I've left unsaid is a message to all the young writers and editors out there. Here it is. Consider that we are living though a Depression. This crisis is not going to end soon. It may never really end unless people like ourselves--young, progressive, visionary activists--succeed in our grand endeavor, revolution. I would say to you folks, from personal experience, that you have two choices in life. Either take the standard route, get your degrees and your resumes and compete with a million others just like you for stultifying, ungratifying jobs that are disappering as we speak. . .or make these papers and radio stations and tv stations and production companies and publishing groups that you have started. . .into your life's work. Help build the foundation of a new society in your own lifetime. Few of us have the possibility of being rich these days. And if I'm going to be poor, I'd sure as hell rather be poor doing what I believe in than what some scumbag capitalist tells me to do. Just a thought, but that's where I think things are at these days. And this is where we're at with NLNS. So go easy, folks. We've got a lot of work to do this year. And we have only just begun to live. For a New Revolution, Jason Pramas NLNS founder/co-staff person --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT NOTES FROM THE "NEW" SOUTH AFRICA Tim Hinton, The Thistle (NLNS)--It is a warm and close day, not unusually so, for winter in Northern Natal, South Africa. Our car, a rusty Volkswagen Golf, is tailing a huge bus through the low sugar cane covered hills. The road winds its way upwards; in the distance there are huts dotted on the hillsides. There are bored-looking cows to be seen idly chewing at the sparse grass as we zoom past. Every now and again we get close enough to the bus to catch the exuberant strains of the freedom songs being sung by the people inside. The black, green and gold of the ANC flag waves boisterously, defiantly in the wind. We stop intermittently to pick up people who have been waiting for much of the day in the sun. Today is the national day of protest against the massacre at Boipatong township. The people of South Africa--Azania to some--are again on the march. After a half an hour we arrive at our destination: the town hall of Eshowe, a white town, a town of honest and true white South Africans, most of them descendants of the British conquerors, once humiliated in battle by the masses of Zulu warriors under Udingane. They have bumper stickers which present the Union Jack next to the line 'Natal--The Last Outpost.' Here, the peculiar form of South African colonialism is at its most obvious. Like their counterparts in the Raj or in pre-independence Kenya, these people occupy the top side in the relations of exploitation and domination. They employ the cane cutters--often whole families of them--who eke out an existence on the white owned farms. The cutters own no land of their own and their work is seasonal. The cane they cut is sold in the city with the profits going to support the lifestyles of the whites: their Sunday lunches at country clubs and their children at private schools. But today these people look on in fear and awe and puzzlement for the cane cutters are not cutting cane, they are dancing in a phalanx of palpitating bodies up the steps of Eshowe's stolid Town Hall. "AMANDLA! NGWETHU!! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!" comes the cry. I am here with a party of legal observers known in South Africa as 'unrest monitors.' There has been a threat from the local branch of the Inkatha Freedom Party to disrupt today's protest meeting. The task of the monitors is to ensure that, should there be an outbreak of violence, there is someone there to document who started it and, if it seems reasonable, to intervene in order to stop it. Standing in a small cluster near-by, there is a small and nervous- looking group of South African police-officers. I cannot see them without feeling the same fear I used to feel in the marches I was in when I was a undergraduate in Johannesburg. In those days, the police would always baton-charge unarmed people assembled in the streets; the baton charge would come after the tear-gas canisters had been fired and the rubber-bullets had whizzed overhead. But this is 'the New South Africa': the police have different, more sinister methods for dealing with the opposition to the state. And besides, the threat to the safety of the protesters gathered today is not from the white police but from the Inkatha Freedom Party, a predominantly black organization apparently dedicated to destroying the ANC and its allies. Although there was no violence during the day, that night two houses were burned down in the township of Esikaweni, the home of most of the protesters. At the end of that month, eleven people were killed in Esikaweni. Local ANC members testify that six discrete, well coordinated attacks were carried out during the night. The attackers--eight in all--wore similar clothing and employed identical weaponry: pump action shotguns. The attacks occurred in the J1 section of the township, where mainly pro-ANC people live. The war between the ANC and Inkatha supporters continues in part because passions are never allowed to cool. There are frequent reports of white agents, their faces blackened to conceal their racial identity, making carefully planned attacks to ensure that the cycle of death is never broken. People frequently ask me what I make of 'the new South Africa.' I usually reply that the expression must be set in quotation marks and always used with a deep sense of irony. No one should be fooled into thinking that this phrase refers to a decisive break with the country's racist past. The real New South Africa, the united non-racial and democratic South Africa, is still struggling to be born, struggling because the canker of the old--the practices and institutions of the past--must be removed. MASS ACTION CAMPAIGN Some of the changes that have taken place since the 1990 legalization of the ANC must be seen as being extremely positive. There is a new spirit of defiance afoot among the members of the oppressed majority, a spirit driven by the sense that liberation is within reach. During the last two years, there have been periods of political quiescence which are unusual for the traditionally well- organized but disenfranchised black minority. Nevertheless, the recent mass action campaign has boldly highlighted the dedication and resilience of the people in the face of their oppression. The international mainstream media showed a great deal more interest in the white referendum in March than in the mass action campaign. This should come as no surprise. First, the mass action campaign involved the deployment of forms of political expression which those who think that politics goes no further than the ballot box are bound to fear. There were two days of a mass strike - a form of protest which working people in many countries have often used in the struggle for democratic rights. In addition, the mainstream media is dominated by a social perspective which unashamedly caters to the interests of Northern countries. Witness, for instance, the gross inequality of concern exhibited with respect to the plight of the people of Somalia versus the people of the former Yugoslavia. It cannot be plausibly said that neutral concern for human needs motivates the focus on the plight of Bosnians while ignoring the millions cruelly starving to death in Africa. One must conclude that the welfare of people with black skin counts for less in the pragmatic political calculations of the rich and the powerful. This biased perspective, applied in the South African case, makes for massive coverage of de Klerk's attempt to win the soul of white South Africa while all but ignoring the huge success of Mandela's march on Pretoria. The mass action campaign amounted to as large a victory for Mandela as the referendum had been for de Klerk. Many groupings of black people, including the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) which broke away from the ANC in the early nineteen sixties, had called upon people not to support the campaign. The PAC and its allies, a small trade union federation and the Azanian People's Organization, have always opposed negotiations with the regime. They argue that the negotiations are sure to play into the hands of the white minority and ultimately perpetuate the conditions of racial oppression. Given this reasoning, the mass action campaign must have seemed to be a non-starter. But in fact it was an enormous success. The millions of people who stayed away from work during the general strike and the well-disciplined behavior of the majority of participants in the marches and sit-ins made for a powerful expression of popular support for ANC strategy. BASIC STRUCTURE REMAINS INTACT But, however much South Africa may have changed in the past two years, the fundamental structure of racial domination is still as firmly in place as ever. As the western press never tires of pointing out, key parts of the system of statutes which make up Apartheid have been struck from the books. But the nightmare of Apartheid is still far from being consigned to the scrap-heap of history. For example, the system of Bantustans - puppet regimes presided over by black collaborationist dictators - still remains. When this system was created, most black South Africans were stripped of their citizenship and became members of these horrible political communities. In the Bantustan territories, standards of living are among the worst in the world, communities ravaged by disease, abject poverty and brutal political repression. In addition, the true reigns of power, embodied by Parliament and the security forces, are held by members of the white minority. This is often overlooked by people in the West. The South African government wears two hats in the current period: not only is it a key party in the constitutional negotiations, but it also claims to be the sole site of legitimate governmental authority. Third, economic power comprising crucial resources like land, factories and investment capital is controlled by the white minority. To be sure, there are more blacks earning salaries that put them in the middle class now than there were a few years ago. But the majority of the worst off, the starving people of the rural areas and those eking out a meager existence in the sprawling urban slums are black people. Their lives continue to be cheapened by the horrific system of economic exploitation and racial domination entrenched over a period of centuries and impossible to eradicate overnight. ANC WITHDRAWAL FROM NEGOTIATIONS It is small wonder that the ANC and its allies decided to withdraw from the negotiations after the massacre at Boipatong in June. There is just not enough evidence of willingness on the part of the regime to concede to the demands of the majority. Some observers feel that the ANC's decision to withdraw from the negotiations after the massacre was ill-conceived. It is difficult to know exactly what argument backs up this judgment. One thought might be that a negotiated settlement is the only solution to South Africa's problems. Therefore, withdrawing from talks amounts to little more than a futile gesture. In response to this line of thought, it might be granted that in the long run, negotiations just simply cannot be dispensed with. But the trouble with the argument is that it grossly underestimates the extent to which the de Klerk regime has dealt dishonestly with its chief antagonist. It is not as though the legalization of the ANC and the release of the political prisoners can be counted as favors which the regime bestowed from the goodness of its heart. These steps were the barest minimum of what was needed to start the process of democratizing the country. Those who act unjustly deserve no praise for stopping doing what they ought never to have done. But more to the point is the fact that nothing significant has been done by the government to end the horrifying spiral of violence in the country. Indeed, there is hard evidence to show that parts of the state's massive repressive machine have been directly responsible for instigating many of the recent atrocities. Of course it is a dangerous oversimplification to say that all of the violence in the townships comes from the police or from death squads which function with Police complicity. Much of it is part of an engulfing cycle of action and reaction whose agents are mutually antagonistic groups of people: ANC supporters and members of the small Inkatha Freedom party, settled urban dwellers and migrant laborers, criminal elements and ordinary citizens whose lives have become desperate enough. The essential point here is that it is Apartheid which is the root cause of the violence. The basic structure of South African society makes black people's lives so horrendous that to many here, civil war actually seems to be the lesser evil. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND FUTURE TRENDS Since the breakdown of negotiations, the state has shown great reluctance to address the real issues lying behind the stalemate. The ANC has called for a concrete demonstration of the government's commitment to democratization. The most recent government offers and announcements do not amount to that much. But the government's overall strategy is surely now at an impasse. Before the all-white parliament went on recess at mid-year, it passed a number of laws which dangerously concentrate power in the hands of the security forces. These were presented as being anti- drug laws but the legal immunities which they confer can easily be employed to crush political opposition. Part of the strategy is obviously to keep open the possibility of repressive action, but it is not clear what will be gained by exercising that option. The levels of popular mobilization are high enough to make the imposition of a state of emergency very difficult. But even more than this, the ANC and the PAC have become such a part of the public discourse that the old ideologies used to justify the repressive state will no longer have a foothold. Code phrases, like 'the total communist onslaught,' were used to great effect by suggesting that all unrest came from Moscow and that most South Africans would choose Apartheid as their favorite form of totalitarianism. Such phrases will sound like a bad joke now that white South Africa is aware that most black people - together with a surprising number of whites - are active supporters of the long-repressed democracy movement. The Thistle can be reached at 84 Massachucetts Ave., W20-413, Cambridge MA, 02139. (617) 253-0399. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT The Sacrifice Game Plan Why the Governent Must Allow Unrestricted Funding of the Arts Michael Corriere, Bug (NLNS)--[Created by the Johnson administration in 1965 as a part of the Great Society legislation, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) had our original objectives. Among these were to make the arts easily accessible to millions of Americans and to preserve the cultural heritage of the United States for present and future generations. Today, the NEA has become the pawn in a political chess match pitting those on the right hoping to cleanse American of alleged indecency against those on the left who would protect our freedom of expression to the bitter end. Trapped in between are the artists of America trying to fulfull these objectives while being torn apart by The Sacrifice Game Plan. . .] Following a year of relative calm, the political debate over federal funding of the National Endowment for the Arts, erupted once again this year as conservative fundamentalist groups resumed their assault on what they see as the government's tacit promotion of pornographic and lascivious work. Politicians inevitably picked up on the heightened public fervor, and conservatives, such as Patrick Buchanan, attempted to parlay cultural Puritanism into election day victories. Relentless attacks by Buchanan accusing President Bush of wasting public funds on "that upholstered playpen of the arts and crafts auxiliary of the Eastern liberal establishment" resulted in the firing of NEA chairman John Frohnmayer and a rekindled dispute over the role of the NEA. Though Buchanan claims that what we need in the arts is "a leader who will fight for what we believe in," Frohnmayer asserts that leadership is in fact the quality that has been missing from the present political debate. In a recent address at Dartmouth College, Frohnmayer outlined a number of characteristics which he felt were essential to responsible leadership in the arts and humanities. Among these properties were fairness, honesty, reverence for learning, charity towards others, a sense of service, tolerance, a sense of humor, commitment toward quality and a willingness to listen. He claimed that none of these characteristics have permeated the current discourse. Even a cursory glance at the evolution of this debate will verify his claim. The Rising of the Storm The controversy began in 1987 when the NEA approved a grant for a competition that displayed a photograph by Andres Serrano of a crucifix submerged in a beaker of urine. The issue was launched into the national forefront when the NEA subsidized the exhibition of a photographic display by the late Robert Mapplethorpe entitled "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment" which contained several homoerotic and sadomasochistic pieces." In response to these allocations, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) spearheaded an effort in 1989 to slip an amendment onto a lengthy $10.9 billion Interior Department appropriations package. The purpose was to ban the NEA from funding all art which offended "the adherants of a particular religion or non-religion," as "specified" by Helms. Though some of the controversal language was stripped from the amendment in committee, the efforts of Helms and his allies led directly to the attachment of the provision to the 1989 NEA appropriations bill. The revised Helms amendment required that grant recipients sign an oath pledging that none of their work would, in the words of the amendment: ". . .be used to promote, disseminate, or produce materials which in the judgement of the National Endowment for the Arts. . .may be considered obscene including but not limited to, depictions of sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts and which, when taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." While the debate was shaping up in Congress, Washington's Corcoran Gallery canceled its showing of the 175-frame Mapplethorpe exhibit, fearing that displaying the NEA-sponsored exhibit would drag the gallery into the political battlefield. Though local arts organizations were bowing to the pressure from the far right, the NEA remained steadfast in its opposition to funding restrictions. It's insistence on continuing the Mapplethorpe tour incensed Helms, who consequently demanded that the General Accounting Office investigate the agency and suggested, along with Rohrabacher, that the NEA be destroyed. This mentality recalls the image of a little child, dissatisfied with how the game is going, taking the ball and going home. As Robert Buck, director of the Brooklyn Museum, put it, "It's not only throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it's throwing out the whole bathroom." Obviously Helms holds no interest in providing any sort of leadership to the arts, let alone that of the responsible variety. The boiling point was reached when police stormed the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati (CAC) at 2:00 pm on April 7, 1990 to arrest the museum curator, Donald Barrie, on the grounds that he violated the state pornography code in permitting the Mapplethorpe exhibition to be shown. As a result, new questions arose concerning the precise role of the NEA. These new question, coupled with a fuming Jesse Helms, inauspiciously coincided with the NEA reauthorization continuance coming Congress in June of that year. Frohnmayer (Temporarily) Backs Down Though Bush favored a five-year reauthorization package that excluded any restrictions, he began to feel pressure from the political right to side with Helms. Fearing a sharp reduction in funding and significant restrictions, Frohnmayer rejected grants to four performance artists which had tentatively been approved. These artists became vocal members of a coalition of arts supporters who vociferously lobbied Congress during the reauthorization debate. Karen Finley, one of the rejected artists, decried the rejection to be part of a "sacrifice game plan" being pursued by the administration to appease the right wing. In effect, the NEA was obeying the restrictions in order to avoid them. Eventually the reauthorization was granted, and Frohnmayer, in the ensuing year of public disinterest, restored funding to two of the rejected artists who were bringing lawsuits against the NEA. After laying dormant until its election year awakening, the debate resurfaced in January, this time centering on grants the NEA offered to two publications with sexual content. Excerpts from "Queer City" and "Live Sex Acts"--each issued by a semi-annual literary journal called *The Portable Lower East Side*--were sent to members of Congress by the American Family Association, a conservative fundamentalist organization. Frohnmayer defended his $5,000 grant approval by claiming that the excerpts were taken out of context. Nonetheless, when it appeared that he would come under fire from Buchanan for his support of the NEA's stands, President Bush relieved Frohnmayer of his post in April in order to escape election year criticism. Frohnmayer's successor, Anne- Imelda Radice, has since resumed the "sacrifice game plan" by rejecting two "strongly recommended grants" in mid-May, this time for the sake of the Bush re-election effort. Lost in all of this political squabbling over funding of the Endowment is any sense of leadership. As we have seen, the debate thus far has centered upon determining: 1) what is offensive, 2) whether the federal government should fund supposedly offensive work and 3) what the political ramifications are of supporting unrestricted government funding. The debate has not managed to address the important qualities of art beyond the aesthetic. Nowhere has the dialogue touched on quality, innovation, or the artwork's leadership in the field--al the criteria that the NEA takes under consideration when deciding on a grant request. The debate has centered on reactions rather than the art itself. Helms shows no tolerance, no willingness to listen; the shunning of certain ideas simply because they offend some people is not demonstrative of reverance towards learning or fairness; and the denying of funds to certain kinds of art indicates a lack of commitment toward quality and is telling of irresponsible leadership. Filling this leadership vacuum, we have seen an almost Inquisition-style crusade by right-wing "family values" activists to purge the U.S. of indecency as they see it. As a result, the arts have become vulnerable to attacks from a fundamentalist movement touting a poorly defined agenda. "Family values" to many of these activists means the suppression of anything dealing with the topics of feminism, homosexuality, or religious blasphemy. Such a movement is wholly incompatible with the concept of free thinking and is consequently unacceptble as national arts policy. Creative Freedom Challenged The Arts clearly lack coherant leadership from our national leaders, but this point aside, we have yet to examine the question posed by the conservative fundamentalists, "Should the government support 'offensive' artwork?" This question must be answered for it would not be very responsible of leaders to allow funding when they should not. The debate over this matter splinters into two distinct questions: 1)Do artists have the right to create and display whatever they wish, no matter how repugnant it may be to certain people? 2) Should the government restrict funding for artwork of the sort that blasphemes religion or explores topics that activists promoting a particular moral or sexual agenda may find to be obscene? The first is a legal question and the second is a sociopolitical one. Since the government is forbidden from funding illegal activities (at least in theory), the latter depends in some degree on the former. Thus, we shall begin by examining the first question. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression to all U.S. citizens; however, certain restrictions on these freedoms have been put in place over the years. Libel and slander statutes come to mind as examples. Current state laws also restrict or prohibit certain pornographic displays. Libel and slander have thus far not presented the arts with any difficulties, but the confusing of art with pornography has. Helms and his allies can draw all the comparisons between the Mapplethorpe photographs and pornography that they like, but when it comes down to it, the pornography industry is just that, an industry. It seeks to turn a profit by pandering to sexual desires of men. Pornography producers reap hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their continued objectification and de-personalization of women. On the other hand, the NEA, as stated in its charter can only issue grants to non-profit projects. As Holly Hughes, another performance artist rejected in 1990 by the NEA put it: "If (we) were doing pornographic work, we wouldn't bother applying to the NEA. We would be making plenty of money." Beyond libel, slander, and pornography, only actions which violate the "clear and present danger doctrine" developed by the Supreme Court in Schneck vs. U.S. in 1919 curtail the freedom of expression. If we apply this doctrine to the example of an art exhibit held in the recesses of a museum and restricted to mature adults only, it becomes difficult to justify any present danger and certainly not a clear one. A 1962 American Civil Liberties Union declaration reflects this sentiment: "Any governmental restriction or punishment of any form of expression on the ground of obscenity must require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that such an expression would directly cause, in a normal adult, behavior which has validly been made criminal by statute." The Right to Funding Most of the debate, however, has coalesced around the second question, "Should the govenment subsidize 'offensive' art?" This question assumes that the government should be playing a role in the arts in the first place. Some would argue that the Endowment is a waste of revenue and that the arts should be left to fend for themselves. Though he was pursuing an agenda primarily based upon "family values," Senator Helms invoked some questions about the necessity of the NEA when he called for its abolishment. These questions faintly echoed the concerns of the Republican Congressional Policy Committee in 1964 which felt that the arts and humanities were thriving without the establishment of a national organization. Contrary to this view, government subsidy of the arts is essential to their continued growth and survival. The economists William J. Baunol and William G. Bowen came to this conclusion while conducting a study of performing arts organizations in the 1960s. The basic premise of the Baumol-Bowen thesis is that theater, music, and dance groups operate almost identically to non- profit organizations (NPOs). NPOs possess the characteristics of filling a social purpose and receiving no financial returns on invested capital. The primary objective of those in the arts is to produce the highest quality work possible. As a result, any pecuniary returns garnered by the arts are quickly reinvested in order to sustain or improve quality while keeping ticket prices reasonable to patrons. The significant point is that the objectives of the typical nonprofit organization are by their very nature designed to keep it constantly on the brink of financial catastrophe, for to such a group the quality of the services which it provides becomes an end in itself. Better research, more adequate hospital facilities, more generous rehersal time, better training for those engaged in these activities--all these are not merely incidental desiderata. They are fundamental goals in themselves, and with objectives such as these, the likelihood of surplus funds is slim indeed. Quality may be a less important objective to profit-making corporations, allowing them to adjust production in order to attain financial stability. Consequently, such corporations are able to ride out fluctuations in the market more easily than NPOs. Ironically, sharp increases in demand may actually hurt NPOs as marginal costs may rapidaly override marginal profits. Since they cannot simply refuse to expand their services and activities under "booms" of popularity, they become trapped in situations of financial insolvency. The model created by Baumol and Bowen does not provide much hope for the future either. Their model characterizes the arts as a sectotr of stable productivity in an economy competing against sectors in which productivity is rising. In these other sectors, technological advancements will lead to increases in output and an overall increase in the economy-wide productivity index. As the productivity index increases, money wages will also begin to rise for the economy as a whole. However, the arts will remain a stable sector dedicated toward improving quality and not increasing income to keep pace with the economy. While the industries enjoying increased productivity have this increase to offset the growing wages, the arts do not and therefore experience increases in unit-labor cost for every increase in money wages. Clearly these long tern economic trends portend economic doom to unasisted arts groups. Still other difficulties await the arts in the open market. If the arts are left unsheltered, a situation could arise wherein the accesibility may depend on wealth or social status. According to Finley, we could be returned to ". . .a society where art is made only by the wealthy or by those whom they sponsor." She goes on to warn that this creates "a slanted view of expression," as only artwork appreciated by the rich prospers, while the rest fades out. Art, therefore, would become a commodity rather than an expression of ideas. There is nothing free about thoughts shaped by economic conditions. Because of its tendency to distort the freedom of expression, it is clear that the free market cannot be relied upon to properly serve as a catalyst to stimulate artistic growth. While the free market can't sustain arts, government funding can. The NEA has been extraordinarily successful in keeping the arts from the control of the wealthy and countering the long term economic trends that threaten their growth. In fact, the mere inception of the NEA increased artistic production in the U.S. fourfold, and in ten years the arts had grown thirteen times. Continued funding of the NEA is necessary to provide the arts with this desperately needed protection. The Danger of Restrictions Since the abolishment of the NEA could lead to several unfavorable consequences, the debate shifts to the topics of censorship and the exact role of the NEA in the promotion of the arts. There seems to be a sentiment held by many anti-NEA zealots that anything offensive should automatically be purged from society. This reasoning, however, is plagued with flaws. The application of laws to achieve such ends would require an almost impossible legal definition of the subjective quality of offensiveness. Those who challange that the proliferation of controvesial artwork is a violation of society's right to decency, consequently, taking offense at it, should be more concerned with the violation of the rights of artists to their creative domain. If it is an offense to display indecent material in museums, it is surely a greater offense to limit the freedoms of expression and thought of artists over such petty grievance. These certainly are offenses that artists can commit that would make it right to deny govenment funding, but none of them can occur in the artistic medium, unless one's perception of art consists of something on the order of physically torturing someonme. If the question of censorship has slipped from the level of threatening work to simply offending work, then the rights of the artist surely outweigh the minor disgust that some people may have to endure. One may, of course, contend that the artist's creative domain is not infringed upon by the present NEA restrictions, but a brief look at the consequences of biased grant disbursements would reveal the fallacy of this contention. Denying funding to artwork deemed obscene could adversely affect the arts in a number of ways. First, there is the obvious case where artists may not create art of a certain sort if it is financially unfeasible and they cannot receive government funding. If this happends, what is to become of the Robert Mapplethorpe's who wish to explore the subjects of genitalia and human sexuality? They are suppressed, thus limiting their rights to artistic expression. In the second case, we have the artist who no longer has an outlet for his/her work, because no museum is willing to risk prosecution for abusing government funding in order to display it. Before the arrest of Donald Barrie, the allegation of pornographic exhibition against a museum was unprecedented. Up until that time museums had arrogantly been considered protected places like libraries and universities. Many would have gone so far as to say that they were immune from prosecution. Now that the way has been paved for other such arrests, it is difficult to see other museum curators risking long jail sentences for a simple exhibition. With no place to display his/her work, the artist would eventually be forced into alterations of creative vision or else face sinking into oblivion. This harkens back to the legal question of art vs. pornography addressed earlier, but taken from a sociopolitical perspective, one may question how artists are to excercise their freedom of expression if all of the museums and public places in which they perform are publicly funded. If publicly funded places are restricted from displaying certain forms of art, then where are these art forms supposed to be displayed? Are they not in essence suppressed? Subjective Definition Finally, any law prohibiting the creation or display of obscenity requires a subjective definition. What is horrifying to one person may be elegant artwork to another. This makes it especially difficult for a single organization such as the NEA to determine what might offend the general populace. As NEA general counsel Julianne Davis put it, "How can the NEA determine what is obscene in Tuscon, Arizona, or Portland, Maine?" There are a great variety of opinions held by art critics, politicians, artists and the like regarding what exactly constitutes obscenity. When asked for his definition of "good" art Rep. Rohrabacher responded, "Anything that shows the goodness, the wholesomeness, the beauty, and the truth of the American people." This quote demonstrates not only one possible perspective but also what the artist Larry Rivers meant when he said, "The government taking a role in art is like a gorilla threading a needle. If is at first cute, then clumsy, and most of all impossible." On the other hand, Rober Mapplethorpe saw nothing obscene about human sexuality of the body of the black male. He bagan to explore these topics because he hadn't seen pictures like that before. "That's why one makes what one makes," he said, "because you haven't seen it before; it was a subject that nobody had used because it was loaded." Not only did Mapplethorpe find his subjects non-offensive, but he even attached a certain elegance to them. That's why no single group of people can concoct a set definition of what constitutes obscenity. For every grand jury in Cincinnatti which finds that a photograph of a small girl in the Mapplethorpe collection with exposed genitals violates the child pornography law, there is an art critic who views "Honey"--the portrait of a four year old girl wearing a dress, but no underpants--as charming and guileless. Ironically, President George Bush summed it up well saying, "I don't know of anybody in the government that should be set up to censor what you write, or what you paint, or how you express yourselves." A New Idea Recently the idea of setting up a private endowment for the arts has been entertained. Although such an endowment could never generate the $176 million a year that is apporpriated to the NEA, it may be capable of matching the $9 million the NEA disburses each year in individual grants. A permanent $125 million endowment established by successful artists which awards 90% of its annual income earnings to individuals could successfully supplement public financing of the arts, shelter the NEA from political attacks and free up more NEA funds for other artistic endeavors. Unfortunately, this plan is not without significant short- comings. It is not clear that sufficient support could be assembled for such a private endowment. More importantly, the NEA could still be pressured to require the museums it funds to prohibit the display of obscene artwork. Worst of all, unless this private endowment could be set up in some way that insulates it from the opinions of its contributors, we could end up with a situation in which arts are directly controlled and shaped by the wealthy. Even if the kinks were worked out, this plan would only be able to relieve part of the problem. But, it at least symbolizes a positive contribution to the debate. It is certainly an idea worth investigating, but until it can be make feasible, public funding is our only viable alternative. Conclusion Emanual Redfield, Counsel to the New York Civil Liberties Union in the 1960s summerized it well: "Classification means censorship. Censorship, no matter how small or desirable, is still censorship; and once the barriers are breached, and insidious entering wedge is provided for more censorship." In order to maintain the free flow of ideas and to uphold the integrity of the First Amendment, Senator Jesse Helms and his "family values" lynch mob must stop insisting that restrictions be put on the NEA with regard to "good" and "bad" art. Freedom of expression requires that all such forms be treated equally in terms of legislation and subsidizing. It is interesting to note that this same argument for implicit equality in funding is used by Senator Helms to protect the subsidization of the tobacco industry, which kills far more people each year than any artwork that has ever been created. The trouble, according to Frohnmayer, is that "we have become so used to doing what is expedient that we have forgotten how to do what is right." With no one taking steps to provide adequate leadership to the arts and humanities, the NEA will most likely remain a political football and the ensuing political questions will never become social ones. With the administration's recent assault on Great Society legislation in the aftermath of the L.A. riots, the NEA is likely to remain ensnared in the political debate. The key lies in tolerating the occasional piece by Finley or Serrano, rather than twisting the NEA out of shape by applying unrealistic legal restrictions. Until our leaders learn to become responsible in this area, the arts will continue to fall victim to the "sacrifice game plan," and only the right benefits from that. Bug is the progressive student monthly at Dartmouth College. Their adderess is: Bug, Hinman Box 5019, Hanover, NH 03755; (603) 640- 4645. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Ohio Incinerator Opponents Arrested, Start Hunger Strike Linda Greene, NLNS (NLNS)--When 12 people were arrested for unlawful entry at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) headquarters in Washington on July 20, opponents of the Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, OH, began a hunger strike to call attention to the urgent need to stop the facility, to be the world's largest hazardous waste incinerator, before it goes on line. East Liverpool is a working-class community, population 16,000. The incinerator is in a floodplain on the banks of the Ohio, on a site already contaminated with industrial waste and at the edge of East Liverpool's African American neighborhood, with an elementary school 1,100 feet away. Carrying a price tag of $140 million, the incinerator is expected to burn 176,000 tons of liquid hazardous waste plus another 83,000 tons of inorganic waste each year. That amount translates into 11,000 truckloads and 1,000 railroad cars of hazardous waste from the paint, rubber, chemical and other industries arriving in East Liverpool every year. USEPA has granted WTI a permit to legally spew out over 4.5 tons of lead and over 1 ton of mercury annually. Currently the incinerator is complete and ready to operate. (For more details, see an NLNS story in the July/August 1992 packet [2.11].) Residents of the tristate area, (Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia) immediately around the incinerator have been trying to stop the facility for 12 years. Today the fight involves 10 citizens' groups and several thousand people throughout the Ohio River Valley. On October 13, 1991, 1,000 people marched on the incinerator site; 32 of them scaled the fence and were arrested. The protesters used the necessity defense to justify their actions, and a jury acquitted them on February 14 of this year. WTI has since obtained a permanent injunction to prevent protesters from blocking the entrance to the site. On May 7 the House Judiciary Subcommittee held a hearing that examined many of the incinerator opponents' objections to the facility. With that hearing WTI's cause definitely took a downturn, according to Niaz Dorry, one of two Greenpeace organizers working in East Liverpool. In late May the incinerator opponents discovered that on May 21 Blake Marshall, president of WTI, had written a letter to Vice- President Dan Quayle requesting help from Quayle's President's Council on Economic Competitiveness on the grounds that the council previously had aided companies in similar straits. By then, opponents of the incinerator had successfully halted progress on the incinerator because of problems with one piece of equipment, the incinerator's spray dryer. In his letter to Quayle, Marshall acknowledged that the incinerator's original permits were no longer valid and asked Quayle to obtain 180-day, temporary authorization from EPA to begin operating the incinerator. On July 7 USEPA wrote WTI requesting information on the incinerator's ownership. According to Niaz Dorry, the incinerator's ownership status has long been an important question and the subject of a "corporate shell game." Activists have proven that before July 23, USEPA didn't know who owned WTI or was legally liable for the company. It turns out that the Swiss engineering firm Von Roll owns WTI and also owns 62% of New Jersey Steel Corp. (NJSC), in Sayreville, NJ. NJSC has been cited for 40 air pollution violations and has paid $250,000 in fines since it began operating in 1973. Also, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has cited the company for violations pertaining to the use of cesium 137. Presently Von Roll is trying to build a mini steel plant in Hazle Township, PA, but is encountering opposition from local residents because of the company's environmental record in New Jersey. At a July 9 meeting that included Quayle, the Council on Economic Competitiveness, USEPA, the Office of Management and Budget, and representatives of the waste-treatment industry, WTI received the blatantly illegal temporary authorization it was seeking. The next day 12 incinerator opponents held a six-hour sit-in at USEPA's Washington headquarters and stated that they would leave the building if USEPA administrator William Reilly promised to meet with them soon to address their concerns. USEPA agreed to a July 20 Washington meeting. At a press conference outside USEPA headquarters before the July 20 meeting, Daneka Makellan, the teenaged star of the ABC TV series *The Wonder Years* and a representative to a United Nations organization for children, announced her opposition to the incinerator and stressed the incinerator's proximity to the elementary school. During the meeting the 12 activists who attended asked USEPA to justify the numerous illegalities the agency had permitted throughout the incinerator's history. At 4 pm, after about four hours of shuffling paper and failing to answer th activists' questions, a USEPA official announced that the meeting would adjourn at 5:55 pm and that any activists remaining in the building then would be arrested for unlawful entry. The activists decided to begin a hunger strike then. Police arrived to arrest the activists at 5:55. According to Niaz Dorry, who was one of those arrested, the activists received poor treatment from law enforcement officers while jailed. One man claims that he was placed in a holding cell with accused rapists and murderers and was forced to watch pornographic films. Apparently in an attempt at harassment, th jail administration repeatedly changed the arrangements for the activists' release. After paying $6,000 in bail, the activists were finally freed the next morning. During their trial they pleaded guilty and received fines of $50 each. (The maximum would have been $500 and six months in jail.) A rally in East Liverpool on July 23 marked the official start of the hunger strike. Top 40 singer Richard Marx, who has relatives in the town, was one of the speakers. On August 24, the 34th day of the hunger strike, Niaz Dorry, who is one of the participants, reported that the hunger strikers were subsisting on water and 450 calories a day in fruit juice, that they were experiencing the expected fatigue and irritability but that their morale was good. The hunger strikers have vowed to continue their fast until the incinerator's permits are revoked. USEPA and Ohio Governor George Voinovich have initiated bogus health studies in an attempt to allay concern about the incinerator and also allow it to start up. According to chemist and anti-incinerator activist Paul Connett, referring to the USEPA study, "[C]itizens see this for what it is: a shallow public relations exercise, not a genuine attempt to assess the dangers of the project. If the EPA was truly interested in assessing those dangers it would have hired an actuary to have calculated the probabiliy of there being an accident (leak, spill, fire, explosion, etc.) sometime in the next 20 years for an operation that expects to run 24 hours a day, 360 days a year. . . . Were such a calculation to be made it is almost a foregone conclusion that a serious accident will occur at this facility and when it does that the results will potentially be catastrophic, especially if it coincides with a period of air stagnation." The Voinovich study is supposed to take baseline measurements of the lead and mercury levels in 600 East Liverpool children's blood and urine before the incinerator begins operating and then retest after the incinerator has been running for six months. Voinovich has promised to shut down the incinerator if the levels of the two heavy metals rise a specified amount by the six-month retest. Niaz Dorry reports that only 17 children have signed up for the study so far. That, she says, "sends a clear message that people aren't buying the study or wanting to make their children guinea pigs." August 5 was the beginning of a national phone-in and fax-in to President Bush (202-456-1414), William Reilly (202-260 4700, fax 202-260-0279) and Valdus Adamkus, administrator of EPA Region 5 (312-353-2000, fax 312-353-1120) to stop the WTI incinerator. Dorry says it's also important to contact Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) (202- 224-3954), Ohio EPA (614-644-2160), Rep. Douglas Applegate (D- OH) (202-225-6265) and Rep. James Trafacant (D-OH) (202-225- 5261). The last two, she said, have "flip flopped" on the issue repeatedly but are now proposing an amendment that would stop the incinerator from operating until after a General Accounting Office investigation was performed. Governor Voinovich should also be contacted (77 S. High St., 30th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215, 614- 466-3555) because he has the power to revoke WTI's Ohio permits. Last, Dorry suggests thanking Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) (202-224-2315), who has supported the opposition actively throughout. The first week in September saw the beginning of the trial of 10 people accused of criminal trespass for having taken over the Ohio EPA office in Columbus on December 17. The judge has accepted the activists' use of the necessity defense, and therefore the accused will be able to bring numerous expert witnesses into court to testify on their behalf. Dorry reports that West Virginia's attorney general is expected to soon file for a temporary restraining order against WTI; if granted, it could eventuate in a permanent injunction. To obtain updates or offer support, contact Niaz Dorry or Beth Newman at 116 Columbia Drive, Chester, PA 26034 (304-387 1007). --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Cuba Halts Nuclear Plant Construction Karen Lee Wald HAVANA (NLNS)--The Cuban government has decided to halt construction of the multi-million dollar nuclear energy plant it has been building, with Soviet aid, since the 1970s. Although the decision was based entirely on economic realities, environmentalists are looking at this as just one more way in which, ironically, economic scarcity is turning Cuba into a model of ecological development. Cuban President Fidel Castro announced the indefinite halt in construction at a major speech belatedly commemorating the July 26, 1953 initiation of revolutionary struggle in Cuba. The traditional July 26 celebration was postponed because President Castro was out of the country attending the Ibero-American summit meeting in Spain at the time. It was re-scheduled to be held in the south-central city of Cienfuegos, where a popular uprising in support of the rebels led by Fidel took place on September 5, 1957. Cienfuegos was chosen because of the "extraordinary work carried out by the population" there and the concrete advances they carried out despite the economic crisis the country is facing. But Cienfuegos is also the site of Cuba's first attempt to overcome its fuel shortage by developing what they hoped would be safe and clean nuclear energy. Although many friends outside of Cuba warned of the dangers inherent in nuclear development (even for peaceful use), Cubans--pushed by the necessity of maintaining their economy with no oil of their own or rivers to provide hydroelectric power--tended to turn a blind eye to the potential risks. They long argued that the architectural design of their plant was patterned after ones in other countries that have run for years with no mishaps, and is completely dissimilar to that of plants which have had major accidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Regarding the problem of nuclear waste disposal, the attitude was: "By the time the medium-range solutions have worn out, science will have discovered the long-term solution." So it was economics, rather than environmental enlightenment, that led to the decision to halt construction, after years of work, thousands of workers trained in this field, and millions of Cuban pesos and Russian rubles had been invested in it. The explanation that Fidel Castro gave--first to the workers involved, who will all be relocated, then to the crowd gathered for the July 26/Sept.5 speech--was that it would be years before the nuclear plant would provide energy to light even one lightbulb, and the Cuban people have pressing needs here and now. The construction workers--the majority of the workforce of the plant--will be reassigned to build hotels and other tourists facilities in Varadero Beach and surrounding cays and islets. Tourism has the attraction of bringing in immediate hard currency Cuba can use to meet its many other needsincluding paying for the oil it needs to provide electricity as well as transportation. But the result is the same, in ecological terms: there will be no nuclear plant in Cuba in the foreseeable future. This is added to the fact that the Cuban government decided to meet the oil shortage in part by providing bikes to the whole population, to reduce the need for combustion burning cars and trucks; that biological methods have been substituted for chemical pesticides; that herbal medicine, acupuncture and other non-chemical health procedures have greatly proliferated over the past two years; and that the entire population has become enormously energy-conscious. No one would wish an economic crisis on any country, and much less when it comes as the result of 30 years of US economic blockade and the disintegration of most of the world's socialist countries (which are currently in chaos). But if economic crisis occurs, most ecologists agree that Cuba has chosen the ideal way to confront it. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Riot and the Leavenworth Lockdown: The Ongoing Saga of Leonard Peltier Lisa Farulo, NLNS (NLNS)--I could hear panic in the voice over the telephone. Had I heard? Had I seen the news that USP Leavenworth had declared a riot? Did I know if Leonard was safe? Shaken, I turned on the local news. No, I didn't know if Leonard was safe. I watched updates every hour on the hour through the night of July 5th. By 7:00 am the calls began pouring in. I had no information other than the report of one death, several injuries, and a complete lockdown. NO names had been released. Calls to the prison had resulted in little more than nothing. The question came again and again. "Do you think they set him up? We're getting soooo close. Now would be the time." Panic did not settle into my bones until the phone call came. A man's voice asked to speak to Leonard's son. When I informed him that the boy had returned to South Dakota the line went dead. Everything came to a screeching halt, emotions jumbled together until I was surely paralyzed and then I knew I just had to empty the trash and load the dishwasher. Strange what the fight against impending grief can do. "He wanted the next of kin," my mind kept screaming. Realization washed over me at just about the same time as fury. I wanted some answers. Now. I called the prison and was again turned away. I phoned the lawyers, begging them to try to get some information. Then I spoke to Leonard's Lakota mother, and we leaned on each other for awhile. By the time attorney Bruce Ellison called back to say that Leonard was not among the wounded, we were ready for battle. The prison remained closed and silent for days. Visitors could not get in and the inmates could not get any word out. We were playing the sit and wait game, something I'm not very good at. Finally Leonard called. He had only five minutes in which to tell me that he was not hurt and had not participated in any way in the rioting, but that he had been trapped in the sealed off area. He and several friends were enjoying a movie when fighting broke out in the auditorium. They remained seated, hoping to be visible non participants. When prison staff entered the area using tear gas, the Indian brothers rushed Leonard onto the stage area to get away from the burning fumes. Trying desperately to protect his one good eye, Leonard hadn't seen much but chaos. When prison staff yelled for them to get down from the stage, they did just that and then lay on the ground until taken out of the area. Handcuffs were made excrutiatingly tight, cutting off circulation beyond the wrist. Hundreds of men, sprawled on their stomachs, spent two hours choking on their own tears and mucus. Then they were ordered to roll down a hallway, rolling over and over on their painfully bruised hands, he told me he loved me and the phone clicked off. Several days later we received word that Leonard had been transferred. Phone calls proved it not to be the case, but we learned it was not a false alarm. The prison had decided that Leonard had participated in the riot, perhaps even had a part in instigating the fighting. As investigators had found that the riot was between two rival gangs from Los Angeles and Washington, DC, this new development seemed absurd. We began putting out the word; everyone needed to be ready to dmeonstrate their support. On July 13th Leonard had a hearing during which he was represented by a prison employee. He was found guilty and given sixty days of solitary confinement and a disciplinary transfer. He had sent home his incident report. This report, which is supposed to explain the criminal activity for which an inmate is being charged, stated only that Leonard had been among a crowd of individuals who had thrown objects at staff, had gotten down from the stage area behind others who had been identified as having thrown objects and that he then crouched on the ground. It did not say he had thrown anything, fought anyone or resisted the commands of prison employees. In short, he had done nothing wrong. We sterted the phone call barrage and the fax fiesta. Fellow volunteer Michele Vignola and I spent the next twnety-one hours in a continuous desperate plea for help. Our support groups were notified and in turn notified others, and then something miraculous happened. The world cried out to protect Leonard Peltier. Amnesty International, members of the European Parliament, delegates from the U.N., celebrities from Robert Redford to the Princess of Belgium, writers, media, and hundreds of supporters called the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), held vigils, and demanded justice. Senator Ronald Dellums and State Represntative Jim Slattery (KS) were among the politicians to take immediate action. Michele saw Leonard for a legal visit on July 14th. He told her that his bags had been packed and he had been taken to an area to await transfer, but something had suddenly changed the mind of the BOP and he had been led back to solitary where he had spent the last nine days. During her visit, I received two phone calls from local reporters who had followed the story closely. They had called to say that they had been told by a prison spokesperson that the evidence against Leonard had not, upon reexamination, substantiated any criminal activity and that charges were being dropped. That evening we received a ccall from the prison. Leonard would be back in general population. I coiuld visit him the next day. After a rousing round of high fives, hugging, laughing, general joy, and assertions that they had never messed with two east coast Italians before, we both bowed to exhaustion. We had acted like warriors and for that we were proud, but more than anything else we were relieved, and touched at the enormous show of love and force we had all experienced. Lisa Farulo and Leonard Peltier are engaged to be maried. A date has not yet been set. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT "Kicking Enemy Ass" Compiled by Linda Greene, NLNS The Welfare State for the Rich BOSTON (NLNS)--U.S. taxpayers contributed over $90 million toward the world's best electronic database of corporate information, and it's theirs for the asking--plus a fee of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Security and Exchange Commission's EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval on-line system) will begin operating early in '93 and will contain the documents the SEC requires corporations to file. Though designed for public disclosure, EDGAR permits almost no public access. Instead, anyone who wants access to it will have to pay big bucks to a private company, Mead Data Central, which is receiving about $13.5 million in taxpayers' funds to place the SEC info on-line. Say your grassroots organization is fighting Union Carbide. To tap into Union Carbide's financial files on EDGAR from your computer would cost only about $2.30 for each annual hour of use plus another 27 cents an hour in operating expenses if it weren't for Mead Data. Its contract with the SEC enables MD to resell EDGAR info on its Lexis and Nexis on-line databases. This situation, as James Love and Ralph Nader put it, is "a clear case of the fox guarding the chicken coop. The greater the public access to EDGAR, the fewer customers Mead will have for its Lexis and Nexis services." Hence, anyone who can cough up some $200,000 per annum will be able to receive all the filings on magnetic tape. If you wanted only the stock prospectuses filed each day, you'd have to plunk down $30,000 a year. (Macworld) --- 30 --- Jesse Helms, Tipper Gore, and You, the Viewer Unknown to most U.S. taxpayers, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is spending our tax dollars to stop obscenities on wine-bottle labels. When, for instance, California's Clos Pegase winery submitted to BATF, as required, its design for a label featuring Dubuffet's Bedecked Nude, the bureau proclaimed the label indecent because it showed a man's naked genitals. The bureau didn't go for the vineyard's offer to cover the genitals with the word "censored" but did approve the label after the winery eradicated the genitals from the picture. Kenwood Vineyards ran into a similar approval problem with a label by a California artist showing a naked woman reclining on a hillside. Hoping to satisfy BATF, the vineyard asked the artist to redo the painting so it showed the same scene with a reclining skeleton, but the BATF ruled the new version "inappropriate." (Herald-Times, Bloomington, IN) --- 30 --- Sinking Like a ShipI At a recent meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Glasgow, Scotland, Norway announced plans to resume hunting endangered minke whales next year, and Iceland withdrew from the commission altogether and is expected to announce resumption of whale hunting at any time. Pressured by whaling countries, the IWC agreed to a resumption of commercial whaling as early as '93 despite its 10-year-old indefinite moratorium on commercial whaling and postponed considering a French proposal to set up a whale sanctuary in Antarctica. Meanwhile, with the help of loopholes in the IWC's moratorium, Japan, Iceland and Norway have killed almost 14,000 whales in the guise of performing "scientific research." This past May, Japanese politicians and celebrities met for a meal of whale flesh from this year's "scientific" catch. To protest these developments, several Greenpeace activists in Glasgow chained themselves to the harpoon gun of a Norwegian whaling ship, while others chained themselves to a drawbridge, thus preventing the ship from leaving port. (Greenpeace) --- 30 --- Rostock Around the Corner? Neo-Nazi attacks on foreigners in Germany have been in the news lately, but the U.S. connections have not been as well publicized. Fred Leuchter, Jr., a Bostonian who last year attempted to market a lethal injection device for use in executions, has spoken at right-wing German rallies to spread the idea that the Holocaust did not occur. A resident of Lincoln, NE, Gary Rex Lauck publishes NS Kampfruf (Nazi Battle Cry), which, according to a German government report, "serves as important propaganda material for German neo-Nazi circles." Members of the U.S. Ku Klux Klan, according to the German government, have contacted German right- wing extremists to try to establish Klan branches in Germany. A German government official says that some German cities, among them Essen and suburbs of Berlin and Bielefeld, now have Klan branches. (AP/Herald-Times, Bloomington, IN) --- 30 --- Non-Discriminating Tastes Since 1989, young women have been contracting AIDS at twice the rate men have. Today, 11% of AIDS cases are occurring in women, with half reported in l989-91. Of the 11%, 75% are women of color, and almost all are 20-29 years old. Once full-blown AIDS begins, the longevity of affected men is significantly greater than that of women. Sexism is apparent in how medical practitioners deal with AIDS in women. Early in the disease physicians often diagnose the symptoms as those of common gynecologic ailments. Little current research focuses solely on women with AIDS. Experiments with the drug AZT include few women and exclude women of childbearing age. Further, because of misdiagnosis the Centers for Disease Control is not aware of all the women harboring the human immunodeficiency virus and therefore can't accurately track women with AIDS. As the National Women's Health Network notes, "When women are not counted, research on women and AIDS is underfunded, and women go untreated. . . . Women with AIDS are often treated by the medical community as potential hazards to men and children, not as victims themselves. As we know, women are much more likely to contract the virus from men than men are from women." (National Women's Health Network) --- 30 --- Close But No CigarI On August 14 the Environmental Protection Agency announced its completion of a long-awaited set of rules the agency claims will protect farm workers; employees of nurseries, forests and greenhouses; and others who handle pesticides at work. EPA's new regulations include requiring employers to train workers in handling pesticides and using protective equipment, to furnish a place for workers to wash up, to provide access to emergency care and to post notices at pesticide-treated fields indicating, in both English and Spanish, the health risks of occupational exposure to those pesticides. Farm worker activists are calling EPA's new regulations a gift to agribusiness from EPA and the Department of Agriculture. In an interview on National Public Radio on August 14, Marion Moses, M.D., a consultant to the United Farm Workers (AFL-CIO), pointed out that the regulations don't require employers to provide shower stalls even though showers are the simplest and most effective way to protect workers from exposure to pesticides. (Herald-Times, Bloomington, IN, 8/14/92; National Public Radio 8/14/92) --- 30 --- Bush's "Environmental Congressman" In March, as a member of the House Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials, Representative Phil Sharp (D-IN) had the opportunity to vote on seven pro-environment issues. On six of them he voted against the environment and for polluting industries or didnt vote at all. Sharp, who is in his ninth term in office, didnt show up for any of the hearings and voted by proxy when he did vote. The brochure announcing the Indiana Governors Conference on the Environment, which took place on June 27 in Indianapolis, billed Sharp as one of the star speakers, an outstanding legislator who has long been involved in environmental issues. --- 30 --- What's In That Bottle? The phrase inert ingredients on a container of household chemicals might sound more innocent than the list of active ingredients, but in reality both sets of ingredients can be deadly. For instance, many popular weed killers that homeowners and lawn care companies use to achieve suburban-green lawns are 10% active ingredients, including 2,4-D, a carcinogenic herbicide. The remaining 90% are inert substances, such as the carcinogens carbon tetrachloride (dry-cleaning solvent), chloroform, chloroethane and about 20 other substances with wellknown toxic properties. Federal pesticide laws dont require chemical companies to list the names of inert ingredients on their product labels. In fact, one federal law requires a $10,000 penalty from any government employee who reveals the constituents of inert ingredients in pesticides. (Rachel's Hazardous Waste News) --- 30 --- And This Month's Special Bonus... KICKING CLINTON'S ASS! Bill Clinton's Arkansas: Taxes In Arkansas, 29% of the children and 50% of the African American residents live in poverty, but people pay sales tax on food. >From 1985 to 1987, state income tax for individuals increased twice as fast as for corporations. Corporations in Arkansas provide 13-15% of the income tax revenues, and individuals pay the rest. Corporations pay 1-3% of the sales tax, leaving individuals to pay the remainder. (People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment, Jacksonville, AR) --- 30 --- Bill Clinton's Arkansas: Campaign Contributions Contributors to Clinton's presidential campaign include International Paper, Georgia-Pacific, Potlatch, Eastman Kodak, Great Lakes Chemical, Arkansas Oil Marketers, Waste Management Inc., Aluminum Company of America, Arkansas Power and Light, Tyson Foods, Diamond Shamrock, General Motors and Johnson & Johnson. (People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment, Jacksonville, AR) --- 30 --- Bill Clinton's Arkansas: Clearcutting Governor Clinton supports clearcutting Arkansas's Ouachita National Forest and claims that without the tax dollars from the lumber industry, Arkansas won't be able to continue funding its public schools. (People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment, Jacksonville, AR) --- 30 --- Bill Clinton: Conservation Candidate The League of Conservation Voters rated Clinton the worst of the early Democratic presidential candidates. (People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment, Jacksonville, AR) --- 30 --- Bill Clinton's Arkansas: Diamond Mining As governor, Clinton is allowing four commercial mining companies to drill in the crater of Diamond State Park. (People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment, Jacksonville, AR) --- 30 --- Bill Clinton's Arkansas: Paper Mills The Environmental Protection Agency lists 5 Arkansas paper mills as causing a significant cancer risk among the 104 such mills that use chlorine to bleach paper. Tied with two others for 6th worst: Georgia-Pacific, Crossett, and International Paper, Texarkana. Tied with three others for 13th worst: GeorgiaPacific, Ashdown. Tied with five others for 14th worst: International Paper, Pine Bluff. Potlatch, in McGehee, is 32nd worst. (People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment, Jacksonville, AR) --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Vermonters Organize to Fight Workfare Sally Conrad, NLNS (NLNS)--"What gives them the right to play with our lives like that?" said the woman getting welfare benefits for her child and herself. She was at a meeting of The Women's Union, a new group in Vermont dedicated to organize women around economic and welfare issues with the short term goal of making women's economic justice a campaign issue for Vermont state elections in November. The group began almost spontaneously in April of 1992 in response to a "welfare reform" bill passed by only one chamber of the Vermont legislature. Though the bill failed because the legislative clock ran out, the politically "moderate" Democratic governor, Howard Dean, M.D., is embarking on a "workfare" program for families receiving welfare benefits under the guise of helping low income men and women regain their "self-esteem." The large majority of those families are headed by women, who are without a husband because of death, divorce, or desertion and who are unemployed because of Vermont's recession and the inability (or unwillingness) of Vermont employers to pay a living wage. The Women's Union argues that low income women do no choose to be on welfare, but that they have no other options. And the Union objects strongly to proposal which perpetuate women in dead-end jobs and which continue to control their lives with demeaning rules and regulations. The Governor isn't listening, however. Based on the premise that women receiving welfare want desparately to be employed and to support their families, The Women's Union is developing a "Women's Economic Bill of Rights" as an educational tool to show how every woman's life could be improved. Much of the "Bill" is drawn directly from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The Union thinks that women will compare the reality of their own lives with what "should be" as described in the "Women's Economic Bill of Rights," and be struck by the blatant inconsistency. "It's this inconsistency that gives us the energy to agitate for change," say Women's Union Members. A WOMEN'S ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS -- Each generation has viewed its children as its hope for the future and its elders as wise teachers. Historically women have been unpaid caregivers of both young and old. Therefore we strongly believe that productive work includes unpaid family care as well as paid work in the marketplace. -- Further we believe that as a matter of human dignity, women have the right to economic security and the right to determine their own economic futures, without dependence on husbands or government. THE RIGHT TO ECONOMIC SECURITY -- Every woman and her family have the right to food, clothing, housing, child care, health care, necessary social services including supplemental income; the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond her control; and the right to security while caring for family members. -- Every woman has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable and non-discriminatory limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. -- Every woman has the right to life free from violence and physical and/or mental exploitation either by individuals or social/governmental institutions. -- Every woman has the right to equal access to the legal system and equal protection of the law. THE RIGHT OT ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE -- Every woman has the right to education to develop her potential to the fullest, and to enable her to make a greater contribution as a worker and citizen. High quality elementary and high school education shall be free. Continuing education of a technical or professional sort, should be equally accessible to women. -- Every woman has the right to develop her sexuality in her own way and to determine her own reproductive future. -- Every woman has the right to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. -- Every woman has the right to equal wages for work of equal responsibility, effort and working conditions. -- Every woman has the right to form and to join trade unions or other associations for the protection of her interests The Woman's Union can be reached at 35 Wilson St., Burlington VT 05401; (802) 658-1047. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT "NATIONAL WOMEN'S AGENDA 1992: WHAT WOMEN WANT & HOW THEY PLAN TO WIN IT" Radio Program This pre-election special is available by cassettes from WINGS, PO Box 5307, Kansas City MO 64131. The two half-hour segments can be aired on separate dates. Segment 1 should air by October 2, Segment 2 by November 5. This is a multi-city discussion with studios in New York and Washington. In future, we hope to interconnect other cities for more dialogues on specific issues. SEGMENT 1: THE WOMEN'S LEGISLATIVE AGENDA - 102nd CONGRESS Fates of bills women have lobbied for this session of Congress - BEYOND the abortion issue, in areas like violence against women, health, family leave, equal remedies before the law, equal rights, and taxes: Washington Studio: * Beverly Stripling, Political Director, National YWCA * Rep. Connie Morella (R-MD) * Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-OH) * Joan Kuriansky, Executive Director, Older Women's League. New York Studio: Marlene Sanders, Moderator * Jo Etta Wickliffe, President, Business & Professional Women * Helen Neuborne, President, NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund SEGMENT 2: APPROACHES TO CHANGING DECISONS & DECISION-MAKERS How women are working to change political decisions - and as may be necessary, the decision-makers - affecting women now and for the future. Each organization or activist has a unique approach. Washington Studio: * Maxine Waters (D-CA) * Becky Cain, President, League of Women Voters * Martha Burk, columnist for USA Today - follows 3rd party movement. New York Studio: + Marlene Sanders, Moderator * Anne Mollegen Smith, co-Editor "Getting it Gazette" * Debra Dodson, co-Author, "The Impact of Women in Public Office" Center for the American Woman in Politics, Rutgers University * Sayre Sheldon, President Emerita and co-founder, Women's Action for New Directions (formerly Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament) * Jan Peterson, Founder, National Congress of Neighborhood Women. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT ETAN Takes Action on East Timor John M. Miller, East Timor Action Network (NLNS)--When the Indonesian military opened fire on an unarmed funeral procession in Dili, East Timor, it assumed that any outside condemnation would soon whither. But the November 12 massacre, in which up to 200 people were killed, was witnessed by western journalists, and their reports provoked a reaction that has yet to die down. Soon after the massacre, the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) was formed to change U.S. government policies that support Indonesia's aggression against its small neighbor. Before founding ETAN, Charles Scheiner had long been active in support of self- determination for the peoples of the Pacific. Soon after the Dili massacre, answered messages put up by Richard Koch on several computer bulletin boards. From the responses came ETAN, an organization that encompasses concerned groups and individuals. "There was a vacuum in this country," says Scheiner, now national coordinator of ETAN. "Nobody was doing broad-based, grassroots organizing against the Indonesian occupation and genocide in East Timor. The media exposure and public outcry over the Santa Cruz massacre last November 12 was an opening to raise peoples awareness and activism to one of the worst ongoing crimes in today's world." Changing U.S. policy is key to the effort to end Indonesia's occupation, says Scheiner. "We knew that the U.S. government was Indonesia's prime weapons supplier and diplomatic supporter." Since last November, ETAN's mailing list has grown to over 400 activists in 27 states. Local groups have formed in Rhode Island, Boston, New York City, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Washington (DC), Seattle, San Francisco and southwestern states, with more in the works. ETAN helps individuals and local groups by providing printed resources, speakers, information, videos, and encouragement. Lorne Rider of ETAN/RI calls ETAN's national network "vital." Without it "we would feel totally isolated. It is hard to fight Goliath, if you are not even David, but only David's hand." Communication by computer networks has been especially valuable, Rider adds. By using electronic mail and other means, ETAN shares information and spreads action alerts. ETAN members are lobbying for passage of H.R. 5176, the bill that would impose comprehensive aid, trade and arms sales sanctions until Jakarta withdraws from East Timor, respects human rights in the territory and allows UN-supervised referendum. Recently, the House unanimously decided to cut military training funds, known as IMET, for Indonesia from the foreign aid bill. Journalist Allan Nairn, a witness to the November 12 massacre, calls removal of the training funds ETAN's "first major victory." The group wants to see H.R. 5176 adopted as a whole or relevant parts added as amendments to other legislation ETAN gets its message across in a variety of ways. Since its founding it has organized or assisted a number of community and university forums. Events have been held in New York City, Harvard University, Lehigh University, Los Angeles and elsewhere. On December 10, 1991, Human Rights Day, ETAN members handed out leaflets at the Indonesian Mission to the United Nations in the first of a number of demonstrations ETAN has initiated or organized. In February, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Ali Alatas was picketed as he spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. In Los Angeles, an Indonesian trade and tourism promotion was leafleted. In March, ETAN organized protests at Indonesian diplomatic office in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles as part of worldwide protests against Indonesian trials of Timorese activists. These demonstrations were coordinated with similar events held in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Portugal, Japan, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain and elsewhere. International coordination is invaluable, says Scheiner. "We have a lot we can learn from each other and resources we can share. An international network can pressure government officials and the Indonesian government from many directions." In February, ETAN was represented in Geneva at the annual Consultation of East Timor Solidarity Groups. The first time in years that a US group had participated. More recently, ETAN hosted a reception for people testifying before the United Nations committee on decolonization in New York. At the local level, ETAN activists and chapters have accomplished much in a short period of time. In New Jersey, Richard Koch has gathered a series of endorsements of HR 5176 from a wide range of organizations including the statewide chapters of peace organizations like SANE/FREEZE, Veterans for Peace and Pax Christi. The New Jersey League of Women Voters, the Peace and Justice Commission of Newark Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, and the Social Concerns Office of Trenton Diocese of the Catholic Church have also endorsed. The New Jersey Portuguese-American Congress is active on the issue, as are a number of local Amnesty International chapters. Founded by students at Brown University, with the support of Dean Targen, shortly after the Santa Cruz massacre , ETAN's Rhode Island chapter remains campus based. Students and leaders of the Portuguese-American community met with Senator Pell in January, and several Brown students participated in the voyage of the Lusitania Expresso [see NLNS 2.8, 3/31/91, "Thoughts from the Lusitania Expresso. ed.], the boat that was turned back by the Indonesian navy when it attempted to sail to East Timor. Brown student Rider spoke to a program of 1000 people in March shortly after the voyage was aborted. Through the spring, ETAN Rhode Island members organized letterwriting to congressmembers. Students lobbied both Rhode Island's legislators and those in their home towns. ETAN's San Francisco chapter is relatively new. Formally constituted in June, it is trying to arrange a showing on a Portuguese-American television program of Cold Blood, the British documentary with eyewitness footage of the Dili massacre. California has the largest Portuguese-American population of any state, and ETAN's Anne Treseder says that mobilizing that community is a high priority. Over the summer ETAN San Francisco hosted a visit by Liem Soei Liong of Tapol, the European-based group that promotes human rights in Indonesia. Bay Area ETAN activists have also supported the efforts of David Karp, the Mayor of San Leandro. Karp wrote the resolution passed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which urged the President and Congress to take action in support East Timorese self-determination. "We've done a lot, but we need to do a lot more," says Scheiner. Up until now, ETAN has functioned entirely on volunteer labor and small contributions, but "we need to step our activities, mobilizing all those that care about peace and justice to support East Timor." The upcoming debates in the Senate make this all the more urgent, according to Scheiner. While the State Department and other supporters of Indonesia ignored the debate in the House, efforts to restore IMET funding are now underway in the Senate. Robert Kasten (R-WI) and Robert Byrd (D-VA) are being pressured to restore IMET funding. ETAN is targeting these two senators, as well as Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Mark Hatfield (R-OR), for letters and phone calls urging them to uphold the House aid cut. All are members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. ETAN is also producing a video to be made available via satellite for use on cable television. The half-hour show will be transmitted in late September or available on videotape. (Contact ETAN for information on how to download the show for local airing.) ETAN is also planning local events to commemorate the first anniversary of the November 12 massacre. Scheiner says that while there is a growing interest in the East Timor issue, "with more funds we could reach a lot more people." For more information contact: East Timor Action Network, P.O. Box 1182, White Plains, NY 10602; (914)428-7299; fax: (914)428-7383; e-mail: cscheiner@igc.apc.org. Tax-deductible contributions for educational work can be made payable to WESPAC Foundation/ETAN. Other contributions should written to Foreign Bases Project/ETAN. John M. Miller is Director of the Foreign Bases Project and a member of the East Timor Action Network. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Fearing Outright Ban Would Cause RebellionI Supreme Court Further Limits Access to Abortion Jenny Brown, Gainesville Iguana (NLNS)--Even though the Supreme Court now has a clear antiabortion majority, the long awaited decision on Pensylvania's abortion law shows that the Court is fearful of banning abortion outright, and is instead enacting tighter restrictions on abortion access to advance their right-wing agenda. Massive organizing by feminists has given the conservatives pause. Three quarters of a million people marched on the Capital in April and an unprecedented number of pro-choice women are running for congress. In this election year, completely illegalizing women's right to control whether or not they bear children apparently wasn't worth the risk. The ruling was intentionally complex and was made even less clear by the press coverage. Some media said that the ruling reaffirmed the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 which made abortion legal up through the second trimester (24 weeks). The National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, and other organizations fighting for women's rights pointed to the restrictions allowed by the decision, and explained that the severe burdens on women and girls seeking to terminate a pregnancy would make it impossible for some and very difficult for others to obtain abortions. The Casey decision allows Pennsylvania to: -- Make women wait 24 hours after seeking a doctor to actually obtain an abortion; -- Require that an anti-abortion tract be read to women seeking abortions; -- Make girls under 18 get their parents consent to have an abortion; -- Require that doctors keep detailed records of abortions they perform, which many abortion providers say jepordizes women's right to privacy. (The Court didn't allow Pensylvania to require a women to get her husband's consent, which had been part of the Pensylvania law.) Since women won the right to have abortions all over the U.S. in 1973, the government has been attempting to restrict availability to kep women from exercising the possibility. Just four years after Roe, the Hyde Amendment took away funding for women covered by Medicaid, women in the military, military dependents, and women in the Peace Corps. The first known casualty of this law was Rosie Jimenez, a 27-year-old daughter of migrant workers, who in 1977 was forced to seek an illegal abortion and died after six days of pain from the complications. As a result of this law, many american women have faced injury and death, and many more have been forced into bearing children. Further, 83% of U.S. counties have no faccilities offering abortion. The requirement that only doctors can perform the simple procedure has driven the cost up to $300-500 for a first trimester abortion and $1500 for an abortion if you're pregnant more than 3 months. Second trimester abortions are only available in a very few clinics. The number of medical schools teaching the abortion procedure has dropped through the '80's. Only a handful require their obstetrics and gynecology students to learn to perform abortions. Many states have enforced parental consent and notification rules. Rather than tell her parents she was pregnant, Becky Bell, a teenager in Indiana, died after she went to an illegal abortionist. For years it has been illegal for federally-funded clinics to provide abortions. Not satisfied with this, Bush enacted the "Gag Rule" to make it illegal for medical personnel in federally funded clinics to even mention to a pregnant woman that abortion is an option, even if they ask about it. Meanwhile, to blur the issue, the right-wing represents what we have now as "abortion on demand." Frustrated by their inability to make abortion illegal again in the face of overwhelming support for continued legal abortion, the anti-abortion movement has used extralegal activities to make abortions harder and harder for women to get. They've burned down clinics (an arson fire gutted the only abortion clinic in the Ocala FL, All Women's Health Center, in April of 1989) driving insurance rates up for all clinics. The've called in fake appointments to waste clinics' time and money. They've verbally and physically harassed women entering clinics and harassed and threatened doctors and their families because these doctors dare to perform abortions. At every turn, women and their allies have resisted the right's agenda. Every year, one and a half million women have negotiated all the obstacles and castigation to get abortions. 25 - 35% of all women will have abortions. In Gainesville, supportive women and men have stood guard outside Gainesville's abortion clinics and escorted patients between screaming picketers. They've done all-night watches when there were tips that arson might occur. People have donated to funds to bring abortion within reach of women who can't afford them. Florida was the first state to try to restrict rights after the 1989 Webster decision, and strong resistance by Floridians set the tone for the whole country. When Governor Bob Martinez called a special legislative session to try to outlaw abortion in Florida, thousands marched on Tallahassee and established the precedent that being anti-abortion was political suicide. Last year when the IRS threatened to shut down the most otspoken clinic in Gainsville, the Gainseville Women's Health Center, an outpouring of community donations and loans kept the clinic alive. Eighty-three percent of U.S. counties have no abortion providers at all, which is why the 24-hour waiting period is such a burden. In the wake of Casey, Gainseville area NOW President Emily Brown commented, "What an insult to say to a woman that she has made a decision to have an abortion without any thoughtI What is not stated is that this will increase the cost of abortion considerablyI either travel expense will be doubled or women will have to stay in a hotel roomI Further, [because of the waiting period] she will have to get time off work. What does she tell her boss? Does she lie and say she's sick?" The original demand for abortion rights included that abortion be free, that forced sterilization against women of color (including a massive sterilization program against the women of Puerto Rico) be halted, that birth control be free and improved, that free childcare be fully tax funded and that parents at all kinds of jobs get parental leave to spend time bearing and caring for their children. More recently, Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement raised the demand for free abortion on demand through a national health care system. The Freedom of Choice Act, which has a chance of passing in Congress this year, and which Bush has promised to veto, states: "IA State may not restrict the right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy (1) before fetal viability; or (2) at any time, if such termination is neccessary to protect the life or health of the woman." At a July 9th NOW meeting to discuss responses to Casey, there was some disagreement about how much should be demanded on abortion rights. Some stated that the Freedom of Choice Act was the best vehicle to make the case for abortion rights this year and to draw attention to the difference between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, since Bush has promised to veto the bill. Others pointed to the history of the movement and described how the movement dissipated after Roe was passed. Many women who had abortion available to them after Roe--or thought they diddropped out of the movement before the struggle was half over. In the prophetic 1971 words of abortion fight pioneer Lucinda Cisler, "The choice is up to us: we must subject every proposal for change and every tactic to the clearest feminist scrutiny, demand only what is good for all women, and not let some of us be bought off at the expense of the rest." ("Abortion Law Repeal [Sort Of]: A Warning to Women in Notes from the Second Year, Shalumith Firestone, ed.) Some said demanding more, such as free abortion, might turn people off, and that a more moderate approach, one that didn't demand too much all at once, is more likely to succeed. Others said that asking for less and less had gotten us pushed back farther and farther and that they didn't expect women who can't get abortions now because of the costs and restrictions to get excited about fighting for the status quo. They argued that in order to get more women involved in the fight, those women have to see how it benefits them. They insisted that it was only through a large unified movement that demanded more that the government scrambled to give us the best reforms we've had. The specific clause on fetal viability in the Freedom of Choice Act is a big compromise many women are not interested in making, especially since medical science seeks to keep incredibly premature fetuses alive. Fetal viability has been hovering around 22 weeks, which if it were made law today would lose women 2 more weeks to make a decision. "Things change," one feminist leader commeted to me a few years ago, "what if I lose my job, or get a new job? Or the father leaves? I want to be able to make the decision when I want." One man at the NOW meeting asked if maybe the restrictions weren't that bad. "You can go to another state," he suggested, implying that the women were demanding too much. "Maybe you could just settle for a little lessI" A Campus NOW leader replied, "No, I want the whole enchilada." For more information on the history of the abortion fight in the U.S., write for a Redstockings Archives for Action Catalog from the Archives Distribution Project, PO Box 2625, Gainesville, FL 32602. The Gainseville Iguana can be reached c/o CISPLA, PO Box 14712, Gainesville FL 32604. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Third Child Dead of Pesticide-Related Leukemia Linda Greene, NLNS (NLNS)--In the agricultural community of Earlimart, CA, where the rate of childhood cancer is "1,200%" higher than the national average, according to the United Farm Workers (UFW) (AFL-CIO), the family and friends of Mirian Robles gathered for Mirian's funeral on March 11. Aged 10, Mirian died of leukemia from exposure to pesticides. She was the third child of farm workers there to die of pesticide-related cancer since 1989. Currently, three other Earlimart children have cancer in remission. McFarland, 15 miles from Earlimart, also has a cluster of childhood cancer. Last year California state epidemiologists completed a four- county study showing no distinct cause of childhood cancer in the area, but Marion Moses, M.D., a consultant to the UFW, told the Bakersfield (CA) Californian (3/19/92), "Whoever says there is no relationship between pesticides and cancer doesn't know what they're talking about. There are studies in Los Angeles showing direct links between acute lymphatic leukemia like Mirian had and pesticides." According to Moses, pesticides are the San Joaquin valley's most significant toxic risk factor. "As far as I'm concerned, [state officials] have turned their backs on the people here. There is a problem with pesticides and the state knows it. . . . How many more children have to die before people face up to the fact that this valley is a toxic environment?" According to the UFW, California table grapes alone are drenched with over 11 million pounds of pesticides each year. Guillermo and Maria Robles, Mirian's parents, told the UFW that they recall mornings when they would enter fields still reeking from recent pesticide application and were told, if they complained, that the powder on the grape vines was harmless "plant medicine." Maria Guillermo remembers, "I would come home and the children would rush to my arms before I had a chance to clean up." Pesticide Alert notes that the Environmental Protection Agency has registered more than 80 pesticides for use on table grapes. The pesticide found most frequently as a residue on such grapes is captan, a probable human carcinogen and mutagen. Some farm workers' children have been born with serious deformities, one boy with neither arms nor legs. The UFW (P.O. Box 62, Keene, CA 93531) is continuing a North American boycott of California table grapes to protest the occupational health hazards and risks to consumers that the agricultural use of pesticides poses. (UFW, Pesticide Alert) --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Cultural Elite Argument Passes the Buck David Jarman and Jason W. Moore, NLNS (NLNS)--Pity poor J. Danforth Quayle. With weak support in his own party, he finds himself in a fight for his political life. However, he is responding exactly as his Indiana National Guard training would dictate -- by going on the offensive. Unfortunately, Quayle has put on a heavy suit of armor in order to confront a purely imaginary enemy, the "kulcherel eleet." ErI "cultural elite." The cultural elite, he claims, are those out-of-touch members of academia, the media, and the entertainment industry, who are responsible for not only the erosion of the values of that endangered breed, the honest, hard-working American, but everything from ghetto riots to the birth of fictitious babies. The fact that all these groups immediately derided Quayle, as usual, as a dunce and a goofball, only proves his point, right? No. (Forget, for a moment, that Quayle's family fortune came primarily from publishing and that, from 1974 to 1976, Quayle served as associate publisher of the Huntington (IN) Herald-Press, which, one would assume, would make him a member of the "cultural elite." We don't need to make this even more difficult for our fine Vice-President by throwing him curveballs.) Bashing the "cultural elite" seems to have risen as a right-wing pastime to fill the void left by the disappearance of "PC" bashing, which seems to have vanished as quickly as it appeared, having done little lasting damage to academia's credibility. Both arguments, though, are cut from the same cloth. Both seem to derive from the myth of the "New Class," which floated to the feculent surface of neo-conservative think tanks in the mid-80s. "New Class" theorizing, still in vogue in many right wing circles, including former student leftie David Horowitz, supposes that the ranks of the upper-middle class have become swollen with professors, network executives, actors and recording artists, writers, computer wonks, professional bureaucrats, and other people who have benefitted from the transition to an Information Society. There is some truth to that -- certainly information, be it data or entertainment, is the commodity of the future, and those equipped to deal with it are going to succeed -- though they are certainly wrong in that this transition is making us more affluent (the decline in manufacturing jobs doesn't mean that we're turning into a nation of managers, it means that we're turning into a nation of janitors, phone operators, security guards, data entry operators, retail clerks, and other service employees). The real flaw in the "New Class" myth is that it only serves to draw out the outdated "limousine liberal" myth -- that our nation's institutions are controlled by haughty, out-of-touch, renegade liberals who are flouting the system of checks and balances to push their radical-liberal agenda on the American public. Any claims of this nature are usually supported with batteries of statistics taken from surveys of Hollywood producers showing that, by and large, they are pro-choice, tend to consider themselves environmentalists, and have committed adultery, all of which are, of course, the marks of dangerous radicalism. Frankly, statistics of this nature do nothing to demonstrate a systematic bias on the part of this "cultural elite"/"New Class." This might demonstrate a personal preference towards liberalism, but: How often do you see this manifested in a way that the current power structure might actually find threatening? MTV and Ted Turner aren't selling revolution; they're selling recycling and voter registration. Murphy Brown simply became a single mother; she didn't lead a strike or start a pirate cable station. No matter how many lukewarm liberals might be making programming decisions, they are still operating within the parameters of the cultural marketplace. From the networks' need to pacify advertisers to university presidents' reliance on on-campus defense research, both desires to break free and principles inevitably take a back seat to a higher imperative: the bottom line. This is especially the case in the media and entertainment business, where the networks, the newsmagazines, the major record labels are just subdivisions of larger conglomerates like GE or Sony, or Fortune 500 companies in their own right like TimeWarner or Gannett. For instance, even if the media empires were controlled by individuals with personal preferences towards conservatism, as long as the American public continues to demonstrate a marked interest in sex, they would in all likelihood continue to cater to that "prurience," for the values of corporations cannot be any other than the values of the marketplace. A logical extension of that is that the "cultural elite" really don't have values or an agenda of their own -- just those of the larger corporate elite. The "cultural elite" simply have the thankless job of being the most visible members of the corporate elite. Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown's creators are both part of the same elite, and their only systematic bias is to remain "haves," at the expense of the "have-nots." Dan Quayle's attack on the "cultural elite" is more than just a case of, as liberals have accused, the pot calling the kettle black; it's more like the pot's handle calling the pot's underside black. It may appear that the noble Vice-President is protecting the consumer by taking on renegade media moguls, but really, this is a case of one wing of the ruling class legitimating itself by passing off the blame to another wing. Perhaps Quayle is a bit smarter than he is given credit for, since, for a brief moment, he managed to achieve what only Ross Perot really succeeded at -- harnessing legitimate anger at a byzantine, out-of-touch Establishment into support for a man who is clearly in the innermost circle of that same Establishment. But the attack on the "cultural elite," and the larger debate over "family values," is broader than a simple case of one part of the corporate elite deflecting a blow for another part, and it's more than a Republican red herring attempt to replace the discussion of economic questions with a discussion where they actually have a possibility of winning. The whole "family values debate" serves to reaffirm the most central aspect of "the American dream": the Horatio Alger myth, which claims that anyone in America, with the proper determination, drive, and moral fiber, can achieve great material success. Dan Quayle's attack on Murphy Brown, of course, means an assumption of moral purity on his partI his morality and his success go hand-in-hand. His real target is (giving him the benefit of the doubt) not the fictitious Murphy Brown, though, but what the typical middle-class voter thinks of upon hearing "single mother, out of wedlock"I "ghetto dweller," "welfare cheat," "freeloader." His message rings out loud and clear: The problem isn't that the economic conditions of the underclass (no jobs paying a family wage, no day care or community centers, demoralizing living conditions) give her no chance to succeed -- the problem is that she simply doesn't have the moral fiber to succeed. Whether it's because she watched too many bad sitcoms or because of some other inadequacy is indeterminate; all that matters is, it's not my problem. It is bad enough that the "family values" debate has become the latest manifestation of ruling class white paternalism towards the "disadvantaged". When Quayle and Bush, Clinton and Gore speak of "family values" they simply update hidebound notions of how the poor are lazy and poor mothers are lazy and promiscuous. The underlying problem, however, goes beyond the obvious racism, sexism, and class chauvinism of the present debate. The major candidates' rhetoric serves only to conceal economic collapse and the ensuing social dislocation; in doing so, it attempts to direct the anger of the disoriented middle and working classes away from any challenge to the system and towards the "moral failure" of capitalism's victims - people of color, women, and many poor whites. Determination and moral conviction have little do with the artificially constructed notions of "success" prevalent in the U.S. The rich and powerful, by and large, did not "earn" such status, they inherited it. Ask yourself: Would Dan Quayle's moral fiber alone have gotten him where he is today if he weren't born into a family of publishing magnates but into a working family in Oregon? Where would he be? Working in a sawmill? Laid off, or permanently mangled because of a workplace injury? Dead in a ditch in Vietnam? If we desire a level playing field for all, we need to move beyond liberal platitudes about economic empowerment towards real democracy, not just a bigger piece of a shrinking pie. Dan Quayle was, to an extent, right -- the nation's elites, be they cultural elites or governmental elites or business elites, are haughty and out-of-touch. Few have any comprehension of the day-today struggles and cycles of debt plaguing the working class, the trepidation and "fear of falling" of the shrinking middle class, the abject poverty and exhaustion of the underclass -- they simply ask, "Why can't you be more like us?" Until we can build a society based on empowerment and diversity, millions of potentially great leaders will continue to wind up in our prisons and ghettos, and hundreds of Dan Quayles will continue to wind up in the Oval Office. -- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Take Action Against Corporate Greed! Continental Student Meeting: Guadalajara, Mexico, November 27-30 1992 Amie Weinberg and J Burger, INSTEAD (NLNS)--What do the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the Quincentennial of Christopher Columbus all have in common? They all play a role in the New World Order that reaffirms the mentality of the last 500 years of genocide and exploitation that have reigned on this continent. October 1992 marks a time when global leaders will be celebrating the re-colonization of the world through international trade policies (such as GATT) which are established by a handful of elites. Executive branch negotiators seek to give this secret bureaucracy the authority to undermine national laws of any country in the world and thereby destroy our collective abilities to create an economically and ecologically sustainable future. Because the future of GATT is delayed due to the effective opposition worldwide, the NAFTA proposal becomes the imminent danger. What is NAFTA any way? In reading the papers or listening to any media source, one is led to think that NAFTA has been passed. Don't believe the hype, the proposal hasn't even been sent to the U.S. Congress. Also, the papers aren't accurate; they accept the Bush Administrations press releases at face value. They rave about how great NAFTA will be for the economies of the three countries and for the environment as well. But governments and corporations said the same things about the Canadian-United States free trade agreement (CUSTA). They just forgot to tell us that since its signing, Canada has lost over 700,000 manufacturing jobs. Provincial reforestation plans are also being challenged by U.S. transnationals as subsidies to the Canadian forestry industry. The end result is that provincial governments no longer have the power to define how to manage its own forests. In general, the only thing free about this free trade it that it freely trades away our freedom to live in a democratic and just society. NAFTA is not so much about trade, but rather a package of proposals that will strengthen the abilities of transnational corporations to do as they please--earn higher profits regardless of the impacts on people and the environment. As students have seen in campaigns to change the behavior of corporations such as Coors, British Petroleum, Louisiana Pacifica, Levi Strauss, Waste Management or Exxon, it is not enough to assume that these businesses have societies' best interests in mind. Look at their track record and make a decision of whether to trust them or not. Looking at Mexico can also give us clues to the real forces at play in NAFTA. Maquiladoras or "free trade" zones as they are called, are factories right over the border, where US corporations exploit people's labor for $4 a day and pollute the surrounding environment by dumping untreated toxins directly into rivers that eventually irrigate crops. This mode of ill-development is expected to continue and grow under NAFTA. How does this affect students? As students we must understand the direct threat that NAFTA poses not only to our future jobs and the environment, but to our access to money for education as well. The Canadian, Mexican and U.S. educational systems are under attack increasingly every year. Funding to the Canadian post-secondary educational system has suffered $3.2 billion in cuts since 1986. In Canada, just as in the United States, when federal monies are cut from university budgets, private sources start influencing the direction of the institution. As Catherine Remus with the Canadian Federation of Students explains, "for students, reading the NAFTA is like being thrown an anchor when you're drowning. Here we are fighting for restoration of adequate funding levels, and we learn that the Canadian government is struggling to keep the ability to fund education at all." Education is just one part of their overall social welfare program that is being attacked. Under NAFTA, the same attacks to will be felt against the environment and in general, the overall democratic rights of students. What are students doing about "free trade?" As students win battles against privatization and corporatization of their institutions, the movement for democratic control is strengthened. Since the mid 1980's, students in Canada and Mexico have taken direct action against the privatization of their universities. More recently they are connecting this privatization to the larger economic plan of NAFTA. This past summer in Mexico students successfully mobilized thousands of classmates to resist a government plan that would begin requiring tuition at their universities. In Mexico access to free education through college is a constitutional right, something we need to fight for here in the United States. Students all over the country have been protesting and marching to voice their opinion against these new economic policies. Throughout the past few years, students all over Canada have been taking action through a variety of activities ranging from teach-ins, political art and theater, to colalition building and protests. In June 1992, students from Canada, Mexico and the United States came together for a three day meeting in San Diego, California to discuss how to best address and take action against NAFTA. At the meeting, after days of exchanging information and ideas, students from all three countries realized the need to form a continent-wide student network. It was decided that we should have a Continental Student Meeting to begin the formation of such a network. On November 27-30, student organizations will be coming together in Guadalajara, Mexico to form a Continental Student Network. Youth from Canada, Mexico, the U.S., and indigenous nations will gather to begin the open dialogue about how best to fight the NAFTA and create a future based on justice, equity, and ecology. At the meeting we will educate one another about the implications of the NAFTA and GATT and global economic integration. We will also learn much more about each others' nations. If we are to work together effectively across national borders, we must have a clear understanding about the cultural, economic, and other aspects that make organizing in each country unique. We will find out from each other how much action is already going on in our student movements--action that the mainstream media does not tell us about. Students have realized that the time for further action is now! Action you can take! To get things rolling in your group and on your campus, the first thing you can do is educatate yourself and your friends and fellow organizers about these issues. Last year, students in the US formed a program called the International Student Trade Environment and Development program (INSTEAD). INSTEAD, among other things, has created and gathered many educational materials such as factsheets about the free trade and its impacts on education, environment, human rights etc. There is also a bibliography of good books, pamphlets and videos, a resource guide with organizational listings. We have created a Campus Action Guide to Free Trade which has listings of speakers and ideas that encompass the above information. A sure way to educate people in your school is by puttung on a teach-in which can include local trade union members, environmentalists, economists, students and professors. Set up the agenda to include workshops and allow for plenty of questions to be asked. In addition to this, get involved with local Fair Trade Coalitions and host events together. Go to the Continental Student Meeting in Mexico. Also, in October most major cities around the country will be hosting events that either honor Columbus or tell the truth about his conquest and what it has meant to all peoples ever since. Help support events that shed light on the "Big Lie" of Columbus's discovery of America. Help make the links between the Columbian past and our present moment by showing people how NAFTA and Free Trade are nothing but tools that will insure 500 more years of the same unjust and genocidal mentality that had plagued this contenent. NAFTA will give overwhelming power to the transnational corporations, continuing the legacy of domination in the world. It will allow them to consolidate their power internationally by giving them essentially complete control over national borders. If we are to develop power to fight them, we must also organize and communicate across national borders. Ultimately we envision a continental network of students which can act in a unified manner. The continental meeting in Guadalajara will be a major step in developing a principled unity between youth across the continent. For more information about this meeting, or a Campus Action Guide please call or write to: INSTEAD, P.O. Box 13208 Minneapolis, MN 55414 (612) 379-3905 --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Development for Whom? The Political Economy of Urban Development Susan Conrad, NLNS (NLNS)--"More People Fall Into Poverty" reads the headline on the front page of the local paper, from a story borrowed from The Washington Post. (That damn gravity thing again--natural processes, you know.) An effective strategy of the ruling class has always been to lament increases in poverty while maintaining that it is somehow "natural" or the result of generalized moral corruption, when in fact it has very concrete causes indeed and is a result of calculated decisions. The same goes for the processes of development in US cities. At least the urban "renewal" programs of the 1950s and 1960s had obvious culprits--redevelopment authorities and city governments-- and its disastrous effects were clear to those who witnessed the bulldozing and displacement of working-class neighborhoods in practically every major US city. Subtler but no less destructive, forces are at work today and decisions about planning are more difficult to confront directly. But we must do just that in order to understand the planned inequality in our cities and develop a radical vision of what they could become. A key concept is that of "unequal development," which refers to the great disparity in resources between downtown corporate interests and poor and working-class neighborhoods. Although often defined as the "abandonment" of these neighborhoods, this term neutralizes and depoliticizes the debate, suggesting that the glorious political leaders of this country have somehow forgotten or overlooked the needs of central cities. In fact they have made deliberate decision to subsidize corporate interests at the expense of ordinary citizens. The Reagan-Bush legacy of stripping social programs while subsidizing the rich and corporate elite demonstrates this process on a national level. A lesser-known example is city official and planning offices common practice of channelling Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs)--federal funds specifically earmarked for low-income communities--into downtown business projects. In a city like Springfield, Massachusetts, whose population is 36% Latino and African-American, and whose city government officials and development interests are unsurprisingly white, poor and working-class neighborhoods are systematically disinvested. Here, Urban Development Action Grants (UDAGs) as well as CDBGs are misdirected for the benefit of big business. Sometimes the ties are blatantly obvious: The Springfield Union-News, a conglomeration of what were originally three papers enjoying a monopoly on the area's print media market, is inextricably tied to the white, corporate interests of the city. Its publisher, David Star of Newhouse Publications, is the chairman of Springfield Business Central, an organization framed by the city government to plan downtown development. Certainly, decisions made by elected federal and city official are only one component of planned inequality as we must understand it. Perhaps the most insidious and destructive aspects are those of gentrification and displacement, two processes which are inherently connected. Gentrification, the rehabilitation of working- class inner city neighborhoods for consumption of upper-middle class homeowners, can be seen as a rational response to the specific needs of the existing capitalist system at a given time. It can in no way be considered a "natural" process, however, a term which denies the existing imbalance of power. Rather, gentrification is the result of the combined decisions of developers, banks, landlords, and the pressures of the real estate market. Gentrification has the same effect that urban "renewal" had 30 years ago: displacement of low-income communites by economic and physical pressure. Only now, gentrification effects smaller pieces of capital at a time, and can conveniently blamed on the real estate market's whims, as the Department of Housing and Development has argued, justifying its support of such "revitalization" programs. The most recent campaign for "revitalization" of US city centers has developed out of the economic crises of the 1970s, and is a direct result of capital's increasing mobility, nationally and internationally. After the flight of capital to the suburbs, where land was cheap and the population was growing (thanks to Federal Housing Authority grants), a new entrepreneurial spirit was generated among city governments and business interests whose task was to largely replace the industrial sector. Commericial and recreational investment, as well as the basis for an urban service economy, were seen as the perfect solution to revive central cities. Upscale malls, boutiques, theme parks and convention centers made inner urban centers comfortable again for the rich, white upper middle- class which had fled from the growing non-white population. And the housing market reflected this transformation, to the detriment of working-class neighborhoods. Witnessing the powerful coalition of elites which have vested interests in unequal development and gentrification should alert us of the need to fight back, and indeed, success has already been won for some communities. However, the point of organizing should be to remember that no matter how well-intentioned or "progressive" public officials or development authorities may seem, the key lies in the self-determination and community CONTROL of all aspects of development. For example, community development corporations (CDCs) were considered in the 1960s by some liberal and progressive planners as one of the steps to self-determination. These corporations were to provide housing at a cost affordable to those living in the community. Yet today in the Bronx, under the guise of "community development" and considered by the city government to be acting in the interest of the community in which they are located, respected CDCs build and promote housing unaffordable to 95% of the neighborhood's residents. As Matthew Lee of the Urban Justice Institute says, "the good reputations, the power to get things done, the 'juice' of the larger CDCs, all come to them from the bankers, the bureaucrats, and the local politicians that stand behind them." If CDCs can't be trusted to fight gentrification, neither can "progressive" politicians. In Roxbury, the center of Boston's Black community, citizens organized to confront the threat of outside, unaccountable investment, against Democratic Mayor Ray Flynn in the 1980s. Developing a neighborhood authority with a broad and very politically experienced base of grassroots organizers, merchants, ministers, public housing tenants and others, they opposed the Boston Redevelopment Authority plan to invest $750 million in a commercial "galleria," a high-rise "business park," and single family housing for those earning more than the majority of Roxbury residents could afford. Discussions in the community were not limited to opposition of this project, but focused on what community control over neighborhood development, as a whole, would mean. A necessarily long process of coalition building ensued, gathering technical assistance and many years of experience fighting the redevelopment authority. The Greater Roxbury Neighborhood Authority (GNRA) consistently resisted the Boston Redevelopment Authority's (BRA's) attempts to coopt its opposition, which included an offer to give selected GNRA members only advisory power over development decision. According to Marie Kennedy, Mauricio Gaston, and Chris Tilly in Fire in the Hearth: The Radical Politics of Place in America, GNRA was committed to organizing around one central question: "Development for whom, and by whom?", the answer to which BRA has always taken for granted. Some battles were lost as a result of the BRA's cooptation, particularly its offer to give minority developers a piece of the action. Successes of the GNRA, however, can be seen best in related initiatives in smaller Roxbury neighborhoods, like the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, which developed out of the efforts of local human service groups. After launching campaigns against dumping of hazardous waste in the vacant lots of the neighborhood, and joining with the Orchard Park United Tenants Association to fight a proposed prison and waste-to energy plant bordering the neighborhood, DSNI has sufficient support and money to develop an overall revitalization for the Dudley Street area. This plan, the product of countless community meetings, aims to ensure that development is for "the benefit of current residents, while fighting speculative pressures that cause displacement," as the DSNI stated in 1987. Community development initiatives based on a maximum of participation by residents and local service organizations are necessarily long-term struggles, often without immediate results in policy changes. But the Roxbury experience gives us a sense of how exciting neighborhood planning could be, based on the questions: "what do we want as a community, and who must development benefit?" The Roxbury initiative's strength depended upon a broad- based coalition of members from different ethnicities andprofessions, who shared political and organizational skills. Roxbury was, however, well-defined as a neighborhood prior to the development of the GNRA, suggesting the prerequisite of an identification of common interests. The power of the BRA in Boston and community development corporations in the Bronx under so called progressive administrations demonstrates that our only hope for neighborhood control of development, and against gentrification and displacement, lies in comprehensive grassroots efforts which will fight until they win. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT First Step towards a Slow Death (Below is an abstact of the speech, which was censored by the UNCED, given by Wagaki Mwangi from Kenya on behalf of youth at the Earth Summit.) ASA News (NLNS)--The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) deserves commendation for being able to gather over 100 heads of state--not for a state funeral, but for the resolution of a world crisis. This is no mean task. Moreover, UNCED has been recognized as the most democratic process of the United Nations since it was created in 1946. Democratic because it has attempted to involve otherwise powerless people of society in the process. But by observing the process we now know how undemocratic and untransparent the UN system is [the live television transmission of the speech was cut out at this point- ASA Editor]. As youth who constitute 60% of the world's population, we have been given only 22 minutes of speaking time in the entire UNCED process. This is where change must begin. As youth our vision of a sustainable future is one that empowers people through genuine popular participation. Given how little has been achieved since the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, it is evident that the system will not even solve the ecological crisis without conforming to popular participation and democracy. Those of us who have watched the process have said that UNCED has failed. As youth we beg to differ. UNCED has beena success for the all-time wielders of power. Multinational corporations, the United States, Japan, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have got away with what they always wanted, carving out a better and more comfortable future for themselves. The business community under the guise of the Business Council for Sustainable Development [members of which are major multinationals- ASA Ed.] has succeeded in institutionalizing itself as a "non-governmental organization." We believe it is a Sustainable Coucil for Business Development! But this is not how the success of the UNCED should be measured. It must be assessed from what UNCED set out to do. UNCED's primary objective was to redress the current inequitable power structures that have led to environmental degradation. However, UNCED has ensured increased domination by those who already have power. Worse still, it has robbed the poor of the little power they had. It has made the poor victims of a market economy that has thus far threatened our planet. Amidst elaborate cocktails, travelling and partying, few negotiators realized how critical their decisions are to our generation. By failing to address fundamental issues such as militarism, regulation of transnational corporations, democratization of the international aid agencies and inequitable terms of trade, my generation has been damned. Instead, what we hear are ambiguous statements such as "as far as possible and appropriate." This is not the language of the 21st century. It is the language of the 20th century. We feel betrayed by governments we had faith in. Our language is different. At Prepcom II (preparatory committee meetings of UNCED) we pointed out that development had been left out of the northern dominated agenda and that there was a lack of southern participation. At Prepcom III we condemned the United States for blocking negotiations. At Prepcom IV we said that UNCED had moved from being "the last chance to save the earth" to become "the first step towards a slow death." But we shall not throw in the towel on our future. At the World Youth Preaparatory Forum for UNCED in Cosrta Rica, we decided to reduce our consumption, stage international boycotts on multinational companies that produce toxic and hazerdous products and those that exploit workers. We are committed to this. And unlike what UNCED has displayed, talk without action, we have come through the process by living what we believe in. As I speak, there are youth fasting in the main hall. They have fasted for two days and spent nights in Riocentro to demonstrate their committment to outr common cause. And in solidarity, youth from the U.S., Japan and Germany have joined them. This mornig we revcieved news that youth will be protesting in Figi, Australia, Malysia and Hong Kong-- and the mnumber is growing. This process has been jeapordized by experts who would make us believe that they are carving out a sustainabler future for all humanity, while in truth they are acting in their own self-interest. Is is not arrogant and hypocrtical not to heed what we have to say about our own furure? Whose battle are you really fighting? --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Roger Ebert--Two Thumbs Down! Jerry White, NLNS "Who is there to grieve the death of college film societies?IThe auditoriums where we once saw *Ikiru* are silent now on Sunday nights, but down in the dorm lounge the kids are sitting in front of the 50-inch Misubichi watching *Weekend at Bernie's*." --Roger Ebert, in Film Comment, May/June 1990 I for one am getting pretty tired of all this bitching and moaning that's been going on lately about the deasth of the college film society. As if Roger "the fat one" Ebert's statement above was not enough, I stumbled across another one in a recent issue of the British film magazine Sight and Sound. Lem Dobbs was agreeing with another one of Ebert's assertions, that "college student's shared experience of film today is renting Batman. They simply do not know who Fellini, Kurosawa, Bergman, Ford, et al. areI" I then turned to the bio page to find out just who this Lem Dobbs fellow was. His primary credential was that he co-wrote the James Woods- Michael J.Fox stinker The Hard Way. Later on, he wrote Steven Soderberg's Kafka, a film considered by many to be a rip off of The Third Man, a classic film that not as many people know about anymore. Somehow, I have a hard time taking their complaints seriously. Not because they are inaccurate, but because they are oh so right. The college film society is dying, and serious appreciation of film along with it. The primary reason for this is because of what these two men stand for. They both have an irritating, damaging need to talk down to the general public. At the risk of sounding nostalgic for a time when I was not yet born, film on college campuses just isn't what it used to be. My dad sometimes tells me about a film society he used to hang out at when he was in college called Cinema X. It showed films on the fringe of the fringe, and it usually did a fairly good business (good enough to stay around without any outside funding, anyway). Dad said he sometimes saw new films by Stan Brakhage there, a film maker I had the opportunity to interview not too long ago. Brakhage is internationally respected as one of the bastions of the experimental cinema, loved by critics as diverse as the Village Voice's J. Hoberman and National Public Radio's Howie Movshovitz. Brakhage too lamented the death of the college film society, saying they had provided him with a steady source of income during the sixties. Brakhage has won countless awards and been shown at the country's top film festivals. He's also been forced to move into student housing at the U of Colorado at Boubler (where he teaches part-time) for financial reasons. When Brakhage told me sadly of how campuses don't show non-mainstream film anymore, I understood why he was so sad. He had made a contribution to these organizations through he truly original, worthwhile films, and they had returned the favor by helping to support him and his family. I don't understand why Lem Dobbs and Roger Ebert are so sad. Why is Dobbs surprised that non-mainstream forms are harder to come by today when he was personally responsible for such schlock as The Hard Way? Does he wish that more people went to see films like that? If any of the general public was as cinematically saavy as he seems to wish, then his Kafka probably would have been less successful than it already was because everyone would have seen it for the rip off of The Third Man that it was. Lem Dobbs ought to be thanking his lucky stars nobody goes to good movies anymore. And why, I wonder, aren't people taking the chance on a weird film playing down at the college? Could it be because they can turn on the tube and get a nice, safe recommendation from Siskel and Ebert in less than 500 words (and some cool little clips)? Siskel and Ebert are not know for reviewing films that are anything but mainstream. Yeah, yeah, I know occasionally they review independent films like Poison or Koyannisquatsi, and I'm glad of that. But did they ever say word one about truly obscure, artful films like the newly restored version of Andre Tarkovsky's *Solaris* or Fernando Solanis' *Tangos- The Exile of Gardel* (both these films, by the way, have played on the campus of thee University of Oregon last year)? If they did, I must have missed it. Not to mention the whole notion of giving some air time to political films, or worrying about ethnic diversity in the films they review. Nowhere within mainstream film criticism, and especially not on Siskel and Ebert, will you find any mention of films on Gays and Lesbians, film by people of color who are not entrenched in the Hollywood power system, or people working for meaningful social change. They have also totally ignored recent movements in video art which are helping to democratize moving images. These are the most important movements in film of the last 15 years, and Rog and Gene have fired right past it. The places where a lot of this stuff can be found is supposed to be the college film society, which is not supposed to worry about economic factors because usually, it gets money from the University. Even if it doesn't, the University environment is assumed to be outgoing and alive enough to support such work. But it's not turning out that way, and a lot of the blame falls upon the people who work to shape our image of what film is all about. I don't want to give the impression that I'm surprised that Siskel and Ebert ignore really important work. I'm not in the least bit surprised. It's not in the nature of a mass distributed program like theirs in a capitalist society to deal with anything but that which appeals to the lowest common denominator. What surprises me is that Roger Ebert has simultaneously been so outspoken about the death of our national film culture while making millions off of the lowered viewing expectations that that death produced. He sounds like Claude Raines in Casablanca, who says he's shocked, just shocked, to discover gambling going on in Rick's American Cafe. Then a waiter comes up to Raines and hands him his winnings, which he takes with a smile. I do have to give Ebert some credit. He attends many film festivals, has contributed to serious publications, and regularly teaches film classes. I remember stumbling across a lengthy essay of his from a 1974 (maybe 1975) issue of Film Comment about the subversive nature of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. That was when he was still a contributing editor to that magazine. Sadly, he no longer is. One would assume that his committments to his TV show just take up too much of his time. The article I quoted above was one of only two that he's had in that publication in the four years I've been steadily reading it. There is little denying that the college film society is dying. Admissions to some of the more unusual films on campus can be pretty bleak sometimes. My philosophy is that it's money well lost, and I'm glad someone got to see these films. But I am offended when I am told by my "elders that the reason for this problem is somehow younger people's fault, that our generation is "cinematically illiterate." What they fail to consider is that my generation has tried to look to them for guidance, and all they are interested in providing us is a pair of thumbs and a Michael J. Fox comedy. --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Hi. Phillip here. Welcome to a new section of NEW Liberation News Service, "From the VaultI" I was thinking recently that there are more than a few of our readers--a few of your readers--who are clueless to the existence of the original Liberation News Service. What is worse, there are more than a few of our generation who who draw blank stares at the mention of the NLF, Kent State, Salvador Allende, Attica, J.Edgar Hoover, the '68 Chicago convention, even "Tricky Dicky." As one of the original LNSers, Harvey Wasserman, describes: "Founded in youthful genius, LNS moved this country as few other rag-tag operations ever did. It was the AP and the UPI of the underground, supplying the counterculture with a wide variety of articles and essays, proofs and spoofs that were read and loved by emerging millionsI LNS and the underground press were growing like a magic mushroom. The news service was colerful, lively, obscene, and funnny. Feature stories included demonstration scorecards, exposes of the insidious tentacles of foreign and domestic imperialism, caricatures of official buffoonery both local and national, denunciation of drug laws, true tales of military subordination, and long tomes of righteous doctrine." They were hot. Really hot. If the theory that the effectiveness of political movements in this country can be gauged by the lengths to which the pigs will go to destroy them, LNS did some great work: the FBI was on LNS like flies on shit from the word go. Check out Ray Mungo's Famous Long Ago or Stephen Diamond's What the Trees Said for more on the history of LNS; they're well worth checking out. So with the 25th anniversary of the birth of LNS apon us, we figured we'd dig out the archives--long buried in our office under stacks of the current generation of "underground" press--to share with you and your readers. We present this not to glorify a generation past, or with any pretense of comprehensive historical "accuracy." Just a few glimpses of perhaps the best damn news service there ever was, LIBERATION News Service. "OUR ACTIONS WERE DEEMED NECESSARY" A CLOSER LOOK AT THE MADISON BOMBING >From LIBERATION NEWS SERVICE #285, September 2, 1970 Jackie DiSalvo and Roger Keeran, LIBERATION News Service (Editor's note: On Aug. 24, a massive pre-dawn explosion destroyed the Army Mathematics Research Center [ARMC] on the University of Wisconsin campus, doing an estimated $6 million damage. Despite a telephone warning to the police, one man was killed in the blast. The AMRC, entirely funded by the Army, does the "pure" and "neutral" research so important for the deadly work of imperialism. The following article counters AMRC's claim to the mass media that they are not engaged in any "defense" work. It also shows how the bombing was no isolated incident but grew out of a lengthy campus struggle. A statement released to Madison's undergroung paper, Kaleidoscope, by the New Year's Gang, who claimed responsibility for the bombing, points out the clear political nature of the sabatoge.) MADISON, Wisc. (LNS)--The day after the Aug.24 explosion which demolished the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC), Dr. Ben Noble of ARMC told the press, "We don't work on projects for the Army as such, but merely on long range mathematical problems that may be helpful to anyone." Noble further contended that the center was not involved in secret work since all projects were reported in public annual reports. The AMRC was created in the late 1950s by the Defense Department and is the only such research center in the country. It is funded by the Army with $1.4 million annually. In 1968, ARMC had 12 research fellows and 75 staff members proudly described by AMRC as "specialists in areas of value to the Army." In its report to the Army, quite different from its public pronouncements, the AMRC boldly declared that these specialists "furnish instruction to Army personnel, advise and assist them with respect to the solution of math problems, make technical studies of the use of mathematics in Army activities and participate in Army sponsored mathematical meetingsI." The director of the Center, J. Barkley Rosser, has clear ties to the military, including a stint with the Institute for Defense Analysis. Rosser, who has helped develop the Polaris missle, has openly stated that he "very definately" thought "that the work we do is useful to the Army." AMRC's protests notwithstanding, its research is, in fact, shrouded in secrecy. And this secrecy is protected by the University Board of Regents, which, in 1965, passed a resolution introduced by Regent Helen Laird (mother of the Secretary of Defense) which stated that even all Regents and officers of the university, except the university president and one specified Regent, "can be effectively denied access to stop secret classified information in the conduct of business of the Army Math Researcch Center." Due to this secrecy it is impossible to obtain accurate and complete information on the nature of AMRC research. Nevertheless, the information unearthed indicates that the AMRC has played a crucial role in the maintenance and protection of the American empire. In 1967, the AMRC advised and assisted the Army's Project Michigan. This program developed the high altitude infra-red surveillance equipment that was used to track down Che Guevara and the Bolivian guerrillas, and which is still employed against insurgents throughout Southeast Asia. As the ARMC director has admitted, the Center's research was also indispensible in improving and reducing the cost of the Safeguard ABM system. The AMRC's contribution to the development of ABM was made possible by a graduate student, Frank Loscalzo, whose work on differential equations made possible, according to AMRC, an "accurate, fast, and stable" method of predicting missile trajectories. Loscalzo now works for Bell Telephone Labs, the prime contractor for ABM. Loscalzo, while at Wisconsin, strongly opposed the war in Vietnam. This only shows the irrelevance of personal opinions within a system where "pure" research is encouraged, financed and channeled for ends of which the researcher is indifferent or ignorant. It also shows that though such research "may be helpfull to anyone" its most important benefactor is U.S. imperialism. -- -- -- Demonstrations demanding the abolition of the AMRC kept the campus in turmoil all last year with repeated confrontations between students and police. The demand for the abolition of AMRC, along with ROTC and the Land Tenure Center at Wisconsin, which does government research on Latin America, was supported by the student government. There were public hearings on the functions of the AMRC. In November, student anger was further fanned when Davis Siff, a young English professor who had researched the activities of the AMRC, was summarily dismissed. For months, debate raged in the Daily Cardinal, the campus newspaper, over the ties of the Math Center to the Army, beginning with a freshman orientation supplement on imperialism and the university, and followed by symposiums, pamphlets, and departmental meetings which brought the issue before virtually every member of the university community. Action began in November with a march declaring that "so long as there is a war in Vietnam, there will be a war at the University of Wisconsin." A week of demonstrations planned for December brought down injunctions barring supposed leaders from activities ranging from entering classes in which they were not enrolled to "voluntarily singing in public buildings." Radicals continued their protests, however, taking over classes to discuss the issues and engaging in confrontations with police in marches against ROTC and AMRC. Within a single week during the Christmas holidays, an unidentified group, now called the New Year's Gang, firebombed an armory housing ROTC offices, attempted to bomb ROTC classrooms, ransacked the local draft board, bombed a monkey lab suspected of doing nerve gas research, and attempted an arial bombing of the nearby Baraboo munitions plant with a stolen ROTC plane. The later attempt failed when the bombs failed to explode. The bombers gave ample warning and took credit for the acts in messages which declared their support for the campus anti- imperialist demands. During the second semester, demonstrations against General Electric recruiters, the Conspiracy 7 convictions and in support of the Spring Moratorium were all linked to the attack on AMRC and were accompanied by window-smashing and attempts to set fire to the building. By then, newly installed plexiglass windows bounced small boulders back at the attackers. The student strike in response to the Cambodia invasion, endorsed by a broad spectrum of student groups, made one of its central demands the end to university complicity with the military, particularly the end to ROTC and AMRC. The scenario played out in over a week of street actions involved thousands of rock-bearing students trying to get at these targets through a cordon of bayonet- weilding National Guardsmen and a haze of tear gas. Several departments, including English, Zoology and Genetics, voted for an end to AMRC, and a number of biological sciences voluntarily cancelled their own defense contracts. At no point did the university respond to the demands with anything but brutal repression. -- -- -- The following is the text of the statement released to Kaleidoscope by the New Year's Gang the day of the bombing: "Our every action is a battle cry against imperialismI. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be our welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons." -- Che Guevara "Today, (24 August) the battle cry against imperialism was raised once again, as the mathematics research center of the U.S. army was struck by revolutionary cadres of the New Years Gang." "The AMRC, a think-tank of Amerikan militarism, was a fitting target for such revolutionary violence. As the major U.S. army center for solving military mathematical problems, it bears full responsibility for amerikan military genocide throughout the world. While hiding behind a facade of academic "neutrality," the AMRC plays a vital role in doing the basic research necessary for the development of heavy artillery, conventional and nuclear bombs and missles, guns and mobile weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, and much more. Its neutralist facade is exposed even by its self proclaimed policy of operation: "To anticipate the needs of the army, and when it is able to develop or learn of new techniques to meet these needs, it should forthwith call these to the army's attention and help it find the area in which these techniques can be used." "Today's (24 August) explosion was the culmination of over a year's effort to remove AMRC ominous presence from the Wisconsin campus. Previous efforts to even negotiate were met with indifference. Such is the response of imperialistic authority to public sentiment. Our actions, therefore, were deemed necessary, for with every passing day, the AMRC takes its toll in mutilated bodies." "We see our achievement as more than just the destruction of one building. We see it as part of a world wide struggle to defeat amerikan imperialism, that monster which is responsible for the starvation and oppression of millions over the globe, that monster which is a direct outgrowth of corporate capitalism." "For this reason, we declare solidarity with our revolutionary brothers in Uraguay, the Tupamaros, who are struggling to loosen the U.S. military and corporate grasp on their continent. We also declare our solidarity with the San Rafael four, revolutionary black brothers who died fighting the racist court system. But more importantly, we declare our solidarity with each and every peasant, worker, student and displaced person, who, in his day-by- day existence, struggles against the oppressive conditions heaped upon him by the monster." "The Vanguard of the Revolution demands the immediate release of the Miwaukee 3, the abolition of ROTC, and the elimination of male supremacist women's hours on the Wisconsin campus. If these demands are not met by October 30th, revolutionary measures of an intensity never before seen in this country will be taken by our cadres. Open warfare, kidnapping of important officials, and even assassination will not be ruled out. Although we have sought to prevent any physical harm to all people in the past, we cannot be responsible for the safety of pigs if our demands are not met. "Power to the People!" -- -- -- The movement has circulated a wallposter at supermarkets and near workplaces attempting to explain the bombing and pointing out distortions in the mass media. But university and government officials have branded the saboteurs as insane, deranged anarchists, and newspaper headlines have flaunted the word "murderer"--managing to create an atmosphere of terror in the community. Police Chief Emery has called for the formation of vigilante bands -a "watchman force" to protect the community from "terrorists." --- 30 --- .TOPIC NLNS Packet 3.1 *** 9/12/92 .TEXT Activists Charge HUD Program to "Deconcentrate" Poor and Third World Residents from Inner City Areas Discriminatory >From LIBERATION NEWS SERVICE #968 September 21, 1979 NEW YORK (LNS)--A federal policy designed to "deconcentrate" the poor from inner-city areas is drawing increasing fire from community activists throughout the U.S. The activists charge that the program, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is just another way to remove poor Third World people from their neighborhoods in favor of richer whites who are anxious to move back into inner city areas. Under the program, called the "regional housing mobility program," 22 regional planning agencies have been invited to submit proposals which would "facilitate the movement of low income and minority personsIto housing in non-concentrated areas, particularly in suburban areas." When choosing agencies for the program, according to the Washington Post, HUD considered regions within the 50 largest cities with the highest percentage of Blacks and Hispanics and regions where the central city has the highest percentage of poor people. According to its proponents, the program is designed to "increase opportunities" for poor people to move into more affluent areas. But that is not how it is being viewed by community activists in the cities invited to submit programs--New York City; Norfolk, Virginia; Philadelphia; Newark, New Jersey and El Paso, Texas. In Philadelphia, the program has become a hotly contested political issue. Falaka Fattah, co-chair of Philadelphia's Black United Front, stated that the program was nothing new and that groups in Philadelphia, including the B.U.F. since it's formation, had been fighting "recycling" for years. "It's part of a 20 to 30-year plan," Fattah told LNS in a recent phone interview. "South Philly, where alot of Black people used to live, is now being called Center City and most of the Blacks have been displaced. In West Philly also, around the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, Blacks are also being displaced." Fattah explained that there was a policy of "land banking" in the city, wherby houses that people could be living in were being kept "boarded up." "The houses are being held so that when the neighborhood is empty they can come in and fix them up or put them on the market," she charged. By scattering Black and poor people in the suburbs, critics charge, the program will drastically dilute the concentrated political power that could grow out of concentrated populations. In Philadelphia, for instance, a massive registration drive among Black voters earlier this year was generally credited with blocking Mayor Frank Rizzo's effort to ride a "vote white" campaign to another term in office. But as Henry De Bernado of the North Central Revitalization Coalition in Philadelphia told the Washington Post, "This (program) will effectively destroy any political power minorities have in Philadelphia. There will be no Black or Hispanic leadership in this town." In recent years, De Bernado asserts, inner-city low-income and Third World residents have set their sights on staying where they are and building up their economic and political base. Nevertheless, HUD, backed by federal and state officials, has boldly pursued redevelopment plans designed to change the composition of inner city areas from a large percentage of Third World working class residents to upper and middle class whites. The "regional housing mobility program" in fact is only one of three major programs with the same objective." Under the facade of "expanding housing opportunities for the poor" and "facilitating housing integration," the department is using funds alloted under Section 8 and supposedly earmarked for housing subsidies to the poor, to move poor people out of their homes. Frequently they are transplanted into neighborhoods where many do not want to go and where also, according to recent reports, they are not particularly welcome. In the last two months, for example, several crosses have been burned on the lawns of homes owned by Blacks on Long Island, the primary site for re-locating Blacks and Hispanics in the New York City Area. Fattah pointed out that the use of Section 8 funds was a "misuse." The federal agency, however, not only encourages the movement of the poor into "deconcentrated" areas but also works directly with local public housing authorities to remove residence preference requirements, and counsels residents on available housing in suburban areas. Unemployed and even employed Third World people often can't even afford to visit these areas what with the cost of transportation and the lack of day care facilities where they can leave their children. So HUD conducts bus tours and provides escorts and babysitting and child care service to "directly assist" the poor in finding suburban homes. But as Fattah stated at the end of the interview, "It's become more apparent to people," what the implications of the program are. "And the people are not going to accept it." --- 30 ---