Short Subjects
What, after all, can one tell the readers of DISSENT about the ghastly events at Attica? That prison conditions are shameful throughout the country, driving convicts to desperation? That the...
...On balance, the Hatch acts protect the public employee from the politician less than they protect the politician from the public employee...
...Terry Lectures $7.95 ©Q Yale University Press New Haven and London ©© in Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press SHORT SUBJECTS (continued from page 526) vote...
...And this, precisely, is the kind of situation being created in American society, in overwhelming part by those who have power and use it without humanity or restraint (as at Kent State, Jackson, and now Attica), and in contributory part by those out of power who indulge in mindless revolutionary rhetoric which leads others to destroy their lives...
...That prison conditions are shameful throughout the country, driving convicts to desperation...
...Chances are, however, that he will avoid partisan primary contests and controversy, and confine his suffrage to the safe anonymity of general elections...
...That it is largely unknown to the outside world is no accident...
...But, for the oppressed, not enough is done much too late...
...While protecting the public employee from political coercion, these laws also deny the public worker the right to participate actively in political affairs even if he clearly chooses voluntarily to do so...
...There is a fascinating story here—and a bitter lesson—which has finally been told by a leading participant in the events, B. C. Dutt, who, in a slim book, sheds light on this strange and dramatic episode of modern history.* The revolt lasted approximately one week, badly shaking the British in the process and unquestionably firming up their determination to settle their business with India and to get out as quickly as possible...
...Ten million state and local government employees are also limited in their political participation...
...None of the participants in this struggle, with the exception of the youthful and innocent leadership of the ratings, showed up well—particularly the Con gress leadership...
...The former fire-bomber serves notice that he plans to keep the heat on—in the political kitchen—not in the streets...
...That once negotiations with the prisoners had been undertaken, there was no reason why they could not have been extended several days longer, in the hope of avoiding bloodshed...
...B. C. Dutt, a 22-year-old rating swept into prominence because of his personal integrity and courage, tells the fascinating story from the strike's immediate causes—food, matters of discipline, etc.—to the explosive matter in which it briefly threatened to engulf all Indian armed forces...
...He may not hold office of any kind in a political or campaign organizafor tion...
...It is not, perhaps, the absence of heaven so much as that of hell which a secular culture finds intolerable...
...This part of his story has the drama of the Black Sea mutiny aboard the Russian cruiser S. S. Potemkin, lying off the port of Odessa...
...That the authorities in these, as in other institutions, have become trigger-happy, eager to shoot down "the bastards...
...More than 2 million federal employees are deactivated by the Hatch act...
...The "mutiny of the innocents" was a nuisance to the leaders, including those of the Muslim League...
...Once it comes to be felt, even if only by minorities, that the men in power are habitually ready to abuse their authority, to resort to force arbitrarily or prematurely, then the bonds of democratic allegiance are snapped—even if, meanwhile, all the necessary formalities continue to operate...
...Nonfederal public workers, except teachers, who are employed in activities that are fully or partly financed by federal funds are covered by the Hatch Act...
...In excess of 12 million Americans work for public agencies today...
...A democratic society rests, or should rest, not merely on a system of formal arrangements—votes, parties, legislatures, executive authority, minority rights, etc...
...There is one point, however, that requires immediate stress...
...John Kenneth Galbraith, in testimony before a Senate committee in the spring of 1969, urged that such firms as General Dynamics and Lock...
...Amplifying in the November 16, 1969 issue of the New York Times Magazine, Galbraith succumbs to the conventional wisdom regarding public employees and political rights: `By pretending that these essentially public firms are really private . . . we leave them free to engage in a good deal of lobbying and other political activity . . . by men who, for practical purposes, are public employees...
...What remains of western civilization now stands at the seventh and last door in Bluebeard's Castle...
...The overwhelming burden of guilt and responsibility lies on the authorities, from Governor Rockefeller down to the local prison officials...
...To make substantial improvements in police behavior, we must become serious in the attempt to create a more civil society...
...This silencing occurs just when we are urging the discontented and the disenchanted to speak out—not sit in...
...A unified India, product of a spontaneous and elemental groundswell of its people, was scarcely in the cards...
...Legislation should be enacted guaranteeing that there be no discrimination against any employee of an agency receiving federal aid, assistance, grant, subsidy, or other support because of political affiliation or activity...
...His task is to use established procedures for resolving grievances...
...The Hatch Act, which for 30 years has denied first-class political to federal employees, also applies to antipoverty workers...
...Then, again, if we can only hold out until the hatched outnumber the unhatched, the existing law may effectively nullify itself...
...SOME OF us are a "hatched" generation...
...First by fiat of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and later by congressional amendment to the Act, employees of OEOsupported agencies are prohibited from taking an active part in politics...
...he may not be an elected precinct comrights mitteeman, nor may he serve as a partisan polling official...
...By 1975, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 20 percent of the labor force will be employed by some unit of government...
...But few, however, have heard of the mutiny of the Indian Royal Navy that took place in 1946 and, at its peak, involved no less than 20,000 Indian ratings (seamen) aboard ships anchored in Bombay harbor, who took up arms against the British in a movement that appeared on the verge of spreading into the Indian Army and Air Force...
...In the light of the present Pakistan tragedy, the war of two peoples (West Pakistanis and East Bengalis), one may again reflect somberly on the partition of the continent into Muslim and Hindu segments...
...SHORT SUBJECTS truncated India and Pakistan...
...and in some states and communities a public employee may not under any circumstances give a political contribution to anyone...
...who within the year were to take command of a * Mutiny of the Innocents, by B. C. Dutt, SindhuPublications, Hind Rajasthab Chambers, 6 OakLane, Fort, Bombay-1, India...
...Something else is needed: a degree of concord, civility, and mutual restraint among the component groups of the society, especially those that are in sharp social or economic or political conflict...
...To Dutt, the mutiny is another precious instance that all who dwell in India are brothers under the skin...
...If this trend continues, we may well achieve a "silenced majority...
...Why could they not wait...
...Millions more in the quasi-public sector, for example those employed in the antipoverty effort, are now also affected by Hatch Act restrictions...
...The truth is, however, that the effects of such actions, multiplied through the recent years, could be just the opposite...
...Nehru, disturbed by the fact that negotiations might be interrupted while the British put down the mutiny, and Sarder Patel, organizational men of the Congress, exhorted the men to surrender...
...a frightful but, alas, all too convincing diagnosis of what is happening to the "culture", as America leads the world in rejecting wisdom and knowledge for more comfort, which is turning out to be comfortless"—Louis Finklestein $5.95 Riding in patrol cars in Detroit, walking the beat with Chicago policemen, observing the scene in Boston police stations, and sitting in the police communications center in Washington, sociologist Reiss studies the person-to-person interactions of police and public...
...Abandoned by the political leadership of the freedom movement, the mutineers were forced to surrender and suffer the usual re prisals...
...His book reminds us of the sharp turns that history might have taken at decisive moments, were it not for the action of small numbers of men...
...Consider the young ghetto-dweller who, impressed by the need to organize the neighborhood for the good of its residents, abandons block-burning for block-building...
...A major section of the laws thus makes it illegal for anyone to solicit campaign contributions from federal and other public employees...
...The point was, India's freedom was in the offing, but it was to be a negotiated freedom including the partition that would lead to the creation of the Islamic state of Pakistan with a truncated East Bengal to become East Pakistan at the insistence of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League...
...to elect—not reject...
...Some damned-fool warden has been quoted as saying the rebellious prisoners had to be subdued in order to preserve "our free society...
...5.00...
...The number of U.S...
...The behavior of policemen, Reiss concludes, is no more civil or humane than that of the population they serve—nor can we expect it to be...
...Public officials, fearful of a threat to their own job security by unionized and politically active public employees, zealously guard the restrictive features of the assorted Hatch acts...
...This number is substantial today, and inevitably will multiply under the pressure of expanding federal grants to the states...
...citizens whose political rights are formally or informally restricted through the federal Hatch Act or its state and local equivalents is appalling...
...all other parties, including the Com munist party, urged the men to return to the call of duty...
...News of the revolt, as if by mutual understanding, has been suppressed both by British—and Indian authorities (at that time, represented by the Indian National Congress under the leadership of Nehru, Gandhi, Patel, etc...
...And this holds even more for the men in power than for those without it...
...nor may government emworks ployees accept donations, even if voluntarily offered, from other public employees...
...The strike committee of the ratings, caught up in events largely beyond their grasp, begged the national Indian leadership in vain to take command...
...But the agency for which the young organizer is a community-fund settlement house which, although privately incorporated, has enjoyed an infusion of federal antipoverty money since the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964...
...In addition, there are serious proposals to bring large segments of the defense industry under direct government operation, in part for the purpose of applying the Hatch Act...
...What, after all, can one tell the readers of DISSENT about the ghastly events at Attica...
...IF GOVERNMENT were to become the "employer of last resort" for the more than 3 million unemployed citizens, the ranks of the "hatched" will of course be swelled by that number...
...He may be a passive member of a political party, and of course he retains the right to express himself within limits, and to The big and little Hatch acts, which today (continued on page 648) Nostalgia for barbarism can grow inside high civilization...
...He takes a job as a worker for an antipoverty agency...
...As a result, all its employees are now, because of the federal relationship, "hatched...
...Given their premise of seeking a peaceful transfer of power from British to Indian hands, along with partition, this reaction was not difficult to understand...
...Residents of the ghetto, urged to follow the political process rather than the torch, face dismissal from their jobs if they too zealously heed this advice...
...Such arrangements are essential, yet they are not sufficent, for a healthy democracy...
...Properly so, in Galbraith's view, as he chooses not to challenge the wisdom that relegates millions of American workers to second-class citizenship...
...Is it useless to speculate what may have occured had the mutiny appeared in a different guise to the politicians?—that is, as an opportunity to seize power unconditionally and without being beholden to British generosity...
...For section 16 of the Hatch Act provides that in localities where the majority of voters are government employees, regulations may be adopted "permitting such [employees] to take an active part in political management and campaigns...
...But if we declare them to be public employees, they will be restricted in their political freedom by the Hatch Act, as are all other avowedly federal employees...
...Will it open that door, and what lies beyond...
...The community organiza will educate the residents, and help them register to vote...
...In due course, protests over conditions are registered with city officials...
...Of the active political parties in Bombay itself, only the Socialists seem to have come forward on behalf of the seamen's cause...
...The Hatch Act itself should be amended to assert the right of public employees freely and voluntarily to participate in politics without restriction and without interference from public officials...
...All this every decent person already knows...
...The Indians refer to it as their "First War of Independence...
...A post-culture is one that has learned how to build 'hells on earth, in politics and in the economic process...
...abound in the nation, were originally intended to protect the political rights of public emtion ployees against the pressures of elected officials and political leaders...
...The revolt of the ratings was one of those bizarre episodes of history—a history that might have been...
...But Gandhi was horrified by the potential for violence in the situation...
...to vote—not violate...
...f. q WE HAVE ALL HEARD Of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, an abortive revolt of the Britishled Indian Army, more or less under the command of men out to save the dying remnants of the Mogul Empire, and directed against the British...
...All communal difference—Hindus' and Muslims'—are cast aside for the moment in a display of fraternity...
...Why this urgency to kill...
...The community organizer warns that the people in the neighborhoods will rise up—not to riot—but to vote against those who seem not to care about the problems and the people of the ghetto...
...heed be converted into public corporations since practically their entire business is with the federal government...
...I think it's time we unhatched the hatched...
...to give the legislative and political process a chance...
...Large numbers of public workers now rely more on union contracts for their job security, rather than on civil service and Hatch acts...
Vol. 18 • December 1971 • No. 6
