Datelines

...They expected the public would never find out what they were doing," says John O'Connor, a member of North Cambridge Toxic Alert and coordinator of the National Campaign Against Toxic Hazards...

...He urges his Polish co-workers, some of whom make even less than he does, to keep their spirits up...

...He started from the church, and from the church he did everything," says longtime friend Jose Maria Men-dizabal, a priest who is organizing the papers of Arizmendi...

...The citizens of Ohio can count on hearing about the activities of the Sisters of Justice for a long time...

...Kjmberly French (Kimberly French is a freelance writer in Cambridge, Massachusetts...

...It's been useless going to the Board for almost four years," says Joe Carroll, senior organizer for Local 592, which filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB anyway...

...When the cold weather set in last November, the women moved back across the street from their target...

...Representatives from a television news program had been alerted by the group, and the whole protest was taped...

...Like the first Mondragon co-op, the bank was inspired by Don Jose Maria Ariz-mendi, a Basque priest and veteran of the anti-Franco forces...

...The group's diverse products, which range from buses and earthmovers to books and bicycles, continue to find markets despite low consumer demand...

...Consumer, labor, and citizen groups have joined in organizing a public education campaign that will give Congress second thoughts about voting for a Superfraud instead of a Superfund...

...But almost all the displaced workers remain employed, either as independent sales and service representatives or as members of other co-ops—a typical display of solidarity within the group...

...They vowed to confront "those in power who condone and perpetuate sexism...

...Nerve Gas Loses a Home CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS Arthur D. Little, a multinational consulting company in Cambridge, enjoyed sunny times with this progressive city for almost a century...

...We put them in a situation where they can't win...

...The city health commissioner banned nerve-gas research in March 1984, whereupon Arthur D. Little took Cambridge to court...

...The woman stops and introduces herself: "Spinder Kia from the United States, resident at Ravnstrup's Women's Peace Camp...

...Or so they thought...

...Now, the county even services the camp with daily mail delivery and trash collection...

...And during one recent trial, Sisters, who range in age from sixteen to fifty, picketed outside while the jury deliberated whether a man could be guilty of raping a woman when both are in the process of legally dissolving their marriage...

...The situation is not much better at Chemical Waste Management's deepwell injection facility in Vickery, Ohio, where the company has been storing Superfund wastes in open storage lagoons or pumping them into underground rock formations...

...This decision upheld the community's right to protect itself from a clear and present environmental danger," Cyr says...

...At least once a year, worker-members of each co-op call a general assembly to approve accounts and operating procedures, and to elect a board of directors and a committee of auditors...

...Figuring the cold would prevent fire and traffic hazards, officials let them be...

...I'd call it callous disrespect...

...Few believed they would last the winter...

...Affiliated cooperatives provide health care, social security, retailing, consumer education, high-tech research and development, and recreation...

...We felt beloved for ninety-nine years...

...But tepees kept the women dry, and the endless bundles of warm clothes and sleeping bags from supporters protected them from the unusually cold winter...

...Tests have shown that groundwater supplies in the area of Sandusky, Ohio, have been contaminated with phenols, arsenic, and cadmium...

...They tried to hide everything...

...The Pedersen farm was immediately besieged—letters threatening to burn it down, telephone wires cut, boards with long nails sticking up on the farm road, the tractor tampered with, the electric fence cut, NATO men spying about...

...Earlier this year, Local 592 lost a protracted battle to organize Cambodian line workers at the New England Shrimp Company in Lynn, Massachusetts...

...After the civil war, facing the problems of Basque education and employment, Arizmendi blended workplace democracy with Catholic social teaching...

...Together, the co-ops employ almost 20,000 people in the four Basque provinces of Spain...

...When a man was arrested for the rape of more than thirty-eight Columbus women, and released that same day on bail, the group demonstrated inside the courthouse "with a red carnation for each of his victims, plus a white one for the next one," Gerckens says...

...If you go home, union nie...

...But Elsa and Sven Erik Pedersen came to the rescue and invited the thirty to forty women over to their place...

...Arthur D. Little's Defense Department contract was to develop detoxification methods for nerve gas, and the company says it kept on hand a self-imposed limit of only 100 milliliters of nerve agents and worked with only about a third of a teaspoon at a time...

...Marvin Wanetick (Marvin Wanetick is Super-fund Director of Environmental Action in Washington, D.C...

...But a state court disagreed last February and upheld the ban...

...Greenham Common Comes to Denmark RAVNSTRUP, DENMARK On the busy highway alongside Denmark's Fingerup Military Training Base, a metal tower rises above the trees...

...Keith A. Sinzinger (Keith A. Sinzinger, former managing editor of the Federal Times, is a free-lance writer in Washington, D.C...

...The company claimed that the huge, gaping, open-pit landfill—dug out of a geological chalk formation—was practically impermeable and wouldn't leak for at least 100 years...

...Most of the employees signed the letter...

...We anticipated some opposition," says Triner, "but not anything like what has happened...

...Another farmer, a national guardsman, lets the women take all the water they need from his well...

...After three weeks, the women were evicted...

...Food is supplied inexpensively by a farmer who sells his organically grown crops and by solidarity groups in the Copenhagen area...

...The company took to accepting wastes from leaking dumps being cleaned up under Superfund, the Federal toxic waste program begun in 1981, and disposing of them at the Emelle landfill...

...Some people say the cooperative movement here started because of the people, because the Basque people are different, but that is not true," says Mendizabal...

...Having survived, the women gradually won acceptance...

...A native of Mexico and a two-year employee of Century, Ornelas earns only $5.50 an hour, though he is "head floor boy...

...It also allows public-health commissioners to take a more active role in safeguarding communities from potential health threats...

...This is where it's got to be won now-right in the street...

...The majority of people sign everything," says Michael James, a meatcutter for Century for nine years...

...Environmentalists have made a priority of winning more stringent amendments before final passage...

...I've never seen anything like it," says Ed Cyr, a member of Toxic Alert...

...In August, the state's highest court came down with its decision: It upheld the ban...

...After learning of strong initial support for the union, the company launched a two-pronged attack, first delaying a unionization vote through a series of specious appeals to the NLRB, then pressuring, cajoling, and threatening individual workers to vote down the union...

...In June, the local had approached Ike Karchakian, president of Century Meat Packing Company, with membership cards signed by thirteen workers...

...Going home is no bueno," he tells them in a mixture of English, Spanish, and Polish...

...Organizers informed the workers that the letter was not legally binding and advised them that if they walked off the job, they could not be held to the agreement...

...Labor in the Days of Reagan BOSTON Thirteen of the sixteen workers at Boston's Century Packing walked the picket line in humid, 90-degree weather...

...Attorneys for the company argued that its $800,000 contract was protected by a constitutional supremacy clause giving defense work immunity from local laws...

...Now all of a sudden people don't like what we do...

...Ed Rader and Ken Lizotte (Ed Rader is a Boston freelance writer...

...To protest the handling of rape cases, the women staged demonstrations in the downtown district of Columbus...

...The system—particularly Ohio's judicial system—seemed to be the problem...

...The remainder is reinvested, with at least 20 per cent posted to a company reserve fund and the balance distributed among individual worker accounts-payable after they leave the coop...

...They did not question whether a man owns his wife's body," says Billie Khan, cofounder of Sisters of Justice...

...The union might ordinarily have pinned its hopes on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), arguing that Karchakian wasn't bargaining in good faith...

...It was the kind of situation where normally the case would be closed," says Arthur Koutsis, an organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 592...

...Superfund is up for reauthorization this fall, and environmentalists have formed a "Superfund Coalition" to propose amendments that would mandate permanent treatment of Superfund wastes whenever the technology is available...

...The Caja not only monitors the balance sheets and business plans of its associated companies, but also advises and finances new cooperatives in the Basque region...

...She has lived at the camp since last winter...

...It researches new products and methods to keep the firms competitive in changing markets...

...Many of the women, previously active in the National Organization of Women (NOW), were dissatisfied with the limitations of NOW, which encouraged women to work within the system...

...They only wondered whether that ownership extends even when a divorce is pending...

...At Ulgor, the pioneer company of the group and Spain's leading manufacturer of consumer durable goods, first-ever losses in 1984 prompted a restructuring that abolished 1,000 positions— about one-third of the work force...

...In years past, the demonstration probably would not have been necessary...

...Not all the group's actions are public...

...But in the last few years, a cloud has darkened relations...

...In 1979, Chemical Waste Management, Inc., opened a state-of-the-art landfill near Emelle, Alabama, in the rural west-central region near the Mississippi border...

...Although regional unemployment rose to 22 per cent last year, Mondragon still managed a net gain of fifty jobs...

...Each co-op member, regardless of pay or position, holds one vote...

...After word leaked out, a dozen people appeared at the next city council meeting, two dozen at the following...

...Out in the street, Rico Or-nelas walks the line...

...By law, 10 per cent of each company's annual surplus is allocated for cultural and educational programs...

...Husbands are exempt from rape charges in Ohio...

...Instead, the Committee designed a bill that gives the EPA wide discretion in allowing waivers on clean-up standards and timetables, denies potential and current victims a fair chance to hold polluters accountable in Federal court, and limits community right-to-know provisions...

...One night, some Sisters painted the Columbus courthouse with the number of rape victims for the month...

...Students were getting their diplomas and a mushroom cloud loomed in the background...

...After four months at Greenham Common, Kia found her way to Ravnstrup on Denmark's mainland...

...Democratic decision-making lies at the heart of Mon-dragon...

...Courtrooms frequently become theaters for the group's public displays of outrage...

...In April 1985, the company appealed to the state Supreme Judicial Court, which placed an injunction on the city's ban while it considered the case...

...Our grounds are pretty tenuous as a Massachusetts company dealing with a Massachusetts community," says Triner, who notes the corporation's dismay over the whole controversy...

...The theory of deepwell injection is to pump the wastes down under the water table, but they don't always get that far...

...It's just so hard to get test results from the company," says Linda Munoz, former head of Alabamians for a Clean Environment...

...On another occasion the Federal Building was "redecorated" with slogans...

...She and the other women now live there without an income...

...While the reinvestment policy ensures a steady capital supply, the Caja Laboral Popular is responsible for the group's continued growth...

...By 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) informed community activists that the landfill was leaking, but how much it was leaking was something that neither the company nor the EPA would say...

...Linking these different concerns into a sophisticated economic community is the Caja Laboral Popular (Bank of the People's Labor), which serves as the credit union...

...If they did, they'd have such a problem with the public," says Gerckens...

...Pearson and other members of Northern Ohioans Protecting the Environment are hoping to shut down the wells with an $800 million damage suit they have filed against Chemical Waste Management, Inc...

...And we didn't expect the kind of political flap we got with the council...

...I learned at Greenham that you can do something...

...The employees walked...

...The Peder-sens' home was often a refuge for a warm bath and a beer...

...The Mondragon cooperativistas are true owners...

...In the fall of 1983, city officials and residents learned that the company was testing five lethal nerve and blister agents in a new, secret, high-security laboratory...

...We know they have lost at least forty-five million gallons of toxics during the pumping, and we know that they keep operating even while leaks are happening," says Merle Pearson, who lives about a mile from the site...

...Calling themselves the "Sisters of Justice," and wearing black robes, the protestors passed out leaflets and carried signs highlighting the plight of domestic violence victims...

...One day at college in California, I saw a cartoon about a graduating class," Kia says...

...Ken Lizotte is a New England-based author and journalist...

...The EPA could shut down the toxic merry-go-round by insisting on permanent treatment for Superfund wastes, but—given the regulatory record of the Reagan Administration—that doesn't seem likely...

...The union did tell them, after the letter had been signed...

...Arthur D. Little will leave it up to the Defense Department whether to appeal to a Federal court...

...Parallel Sisters chapters were formed at two northern Ohio NOW chapters, because the women recognized, says Gerckens, that "you have to back up those letters and lobbying with a little something extra...

...To Gerckens, this violation of property is consistent with the group's belief in nonviolent protest...

...Co-ops Conquer the Basque Country MONDRAGON, SPAIN Snuggled in the dense green mountainsides of the Basque country, Mondragon has become famous for its experiment in large-scale worker cooperation...

...So began the vigorous "Fire Fred" campaign, an attempt to defeat the judge who, the Sisters claimed, blamed women "for leading men astray...

...they viewed it as a victory, and they feared for their jobs if they didn't go along...

...Unfortunately, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, loath to increase cleanup costs for either the polluters or the waste handlers, has rejected this approach...

...Soon the constituency grew to several hundred people, almost all of whom lived within a mile of the facility...

...Shortly after meeting with the local, Karchakian circulated a handwritten letter promising the workers a fifty-cents-an-hour raise immediately and the same raise in six months if they agreed to repudiate the union...

...the words "nerve gas" were not mentioned...

...What the people have done here until now is an experiment—an experiment without an ending...

...The big thing we did not anticipate was the National Campaign Against Toxic Hazards organizing a local group to fight this...

...Cambridge residents were also annoyed at not being informed directly by the company...

...As with other kinds of businesses, the Mondragon co-ops have to respond to changing economic conditions, but they do so in a radically different way...

...Despite the possibility of arrest, Sisters rose in the middle of a rape trial and shouted that the accused should not be released because he was dangerous...

...Starting with a small stove plant in 1956, the Mondragon group of worker-owned, democratically controlled enterprises now includes some 100 factories, forty-four schools, seventeen housing developments, and nine agricultural firms...

...The Superfund Stench WASHINGTON, D.C...

...If that makes you sick," a Sisters of Justice flier read, "join the court watch, and hear what happens every day" in the court of one of the judges, Frederick T. Williams...

...Limle was also absolved of rape charges because Shannon was dead when penetration occurred...

...It's up to the union to tell us what's right or wrong...

...Women aren't safe on the streets," she says, "so why should men's property be...

...Jack Limle, the man who raped and killed Pat Shannon, was found not guilty of murder by a three-judge panel which ruled that the killer's drunkenness made the death "an accident...

...I said to my boyfriend, 'Hey, is this where I am going?'" She quit college, left the United States, and traveled to England, where she discovered Greenham Common...

...Sisters of Justice' Take on the Courts COLUMBUS, OHIO When Pat Shannon, a Columbus, Ohio, resident, was kidnapped, raped, and beaten to death in 1982, a group of fifteen to twenty women came together "to do something about it," says Anne Gerck-ens, one of the members...

...Their actions are a form of grieving "for victims of wife battering, rape, abductions, murders, incest, pornography," says Judy Byrd, a Sister from Canton...

...Almost 300 people responded right away, and in eight weeks we were on national television...

...Ron Ridenour (Ron Ridenour is an American free-lance writer in Copenhagen...

...But Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy says the meeting revealed nothing more than general plans for expansion...

...To the employees' surprise, Karchakian agreed to negotiate a contract within thirty days...

...Local politicians were not happy when the women squatted on a small section of twenty-five acres controlled by a government institution and rented to a local farmer...

...They're happy as long as they can get the wastes where they can't see them...

...Each makes a capital contribution upon joining a co-op and shares in its surpluses or losses...

...I grew up feeling like most kids, that you can't do anything to change the world," she says...

...They claimed the small forest was a fire hazard with the women there, and that nude women running about was a traffic hazard...

...We walk into the NLRB," says organizer Ted Mc-Naught, "and we feel like we've lost already...

...They lied to people...

...The EPA, which oversees Superfund, has gone along with the companies' strategy of moving wastes from one leaky landfill to another...

...But under the Reagan Administration, the NLRB has consistently ruled against workers and unions, forcing them to reconsider their options for resolving labor disputes...

...It is possible to translate this experience—not in the same way, but in similar ways...

...On orders of the state, the company has drained the liquids from ten of twelve lagoons, but a pile of PCB-laden sludge, thirty feet high and six acres across, still awaits disposal...

...A young woman bicycles toward the tepees, past a sign that reads: Military Area/ Entrance Forbidden...

...Holly Metz (Holly Metz is a free-lance writer in Hoboken, New Jersey...

...With more than 600,000 deposit accounts, the Caja is Spain's twenty-fourth largest financial institution and one of its most profitable...

...But opponents could imagine several scenarios that might result in an accidental release of the su-pertoxic war gas—a major fire, an explosion in the boiler room, a plane crash, an earthquake, or a bomb...

...Workers also vote, by department, for representatives to a social council, which oversees such issues as pay and workplace safety...

...Across the road, under a bridge, sit six tall tepees...

...Some of this waste is destined for the Emelle landfill, but much of it will be pumped down six deepwell injection wells that have been operating since 1976...

...The women use "the image of witches as a symbol of wise women who were wiped out," says Gerckens, a co-founder of the group...

...But in the days of Reagan, we take nothing for granted...

...Not one of the women was arrested...

...Arthur D. Little had met with key Cambridge officials in January 1983 to inform them of the firm's intentions for the lab, says Alma Triner, vice president for public relations...