Organizing Neighborhoods: Gary and Newark
Krickus, Richard J.
Except in the labor movement, working Americans have rarely participated in massaction organizations. Sociologists have found that the college-educated American is more likely to participate...
...When World War I cut off this labor pool, blacks, Southern whites, and Spanish Americans followed in the footsteps of the Serbs, Croats, Lithuanians, Greeks, and Italians who had come before them...
...If middle-class champions of a "new populism" remain insensitive to the cultural chasm that separates the "cosmopolitan Left" from Americans of modest means and education, and if mores, life-styles, and economic problems rooted in class or ethnicity are not taken into account, the prospects are dim for building a nationwide populist movement...
...The confrontation, a topic of much conversation in the social clubs that abound in the North Ward, did take place in the summer of 1971...
...Management had told the workers that their pollution abatement demands were nonnegotiable...
...Steve Adubato, the grandson of an Italian immigrant, was born in the old First Ward, North Newark's original Italian enclave...
...He spent long hours in rap sessions with potential supporters, and while mustering his forces in the 114 Italian American sections of the Ward he made a move he had been contemplating for some time...
...This first victory was proof that the people might take on the corporations and win...
...Conclusions In the past, European immigrants helped forge labor unions that provided working people with the means to bargain effectively with management...
...After successfully resisting the machine's effort to scare him off, he decided to take the offensive and run for chairman of the North Ward Democratic party...
...In private, Tony gleefully predicted that at long last he was going to get "S.A...
...The people, moreover, realize that the machines that once thrived in every major city in New Jersey are losing their effectiveness, even though they are by no means defunct...
...but they feel they are being asked to pay the debt American society owes to its nonwhite citizens...
...But the blacks informed him that "if he expected to win their votes, he better move the brother down into the living room...
...Soon coke ovens and blast furnaces mushroomed, forming a large industrial complex...
...Lake County, Indiana Lake County's population clusters around the grimy industrial cities that were built along the shore of Lake Michigan early in this century...
...CCC has demonstrated that through collective action working people can force government and industry to act in the public interest and not merely serve the rich and powerful...
...Soon the kooks on the Right and the old pols in the county Democratic machine took notice...
...Wright said he selected Joe because he was a Slovak, of the same background as many of the workers...
...Some of CCC's early, most avid opponents have been won over and have joined...
...Gary, the largest, was founded in 1905, when the U.S...
...RICHARD J. KRICKUS His competitive spirit aroused, Tony—who had been a high school football star—tried again the following year...
...Brimful with confidence, CCC, throughout 1971, slashed away at the corporate Leviathans of Lake County...
...Barnes and Wright canvassed Lake County's bars, churches, streetcorners, mills, union halls, and shopping centers...
...One thousand delegates, representing 143 organizations, attended...
...CCC is working on this score with the Washingtonbased Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is building a case for the city against the steel companies...
...Company representatives publicly speculated that, if the variance were repealed, U.S...
...He grudgingly gave in to his cousin's pressure and ran against an opponent who had controlled his district for 40 years...
...Tony said many of the people did not know who their present district leader was and few had ever voted in a primary...
...There was competition for political offices and intraparty dispute, and candidates were wedded to a politics of patronage and paternalism...
...consequently the city could not accurately assess the company...
...They recognize that the black man in America has been abused and that the black community desperately needs help...
...Steel, two for the ordinance, and four were undecided...
...Wright asked Joe Sedlak to help him enlist members of the Izaak Walton League, the 2 The Chemical Workers' Union has been unable to gain a foothold in the Dupont dynasty...
...When U.S...
...For Newark is already revenuestarved, and North Ward residents pay a disproportionate share of the city's property tax, which is one of the highest in the country...
...Jim Wright did not exploit ethnic loyalties in organizing CCC...
...Adubato circulated through the black neighborhoods, conferring with countless people...
...Wright saw that it was time to enlist them in bringing about long overdue progressive changes...
...Within the memory of most voters, their elected officials always have loyally responded to the tug of the corporations...
...According to Gary's Air Pollution Department, U.S...
...Imperiale, a five-foot six, 230-pound hulk of a man, has tried to fill that void...
...J. David Carr, general superintendent of Gary Steel Works, U.S...
...Let us consider, against this legacy of low blue-collar participation in community affairs, CCC—the Calumet Community Congress of Lake County, Indiana—and the North Ward Democratic party of Newark, New Jersey...
...By now, skeptics who had avoided them inquired how they could become involved...
...Were the Italian Americans of the North Ward to leave the city, the consequences RICHARD J. KRICKUS would be grim...
...It's crooked, it's not for me...
...Given his length of service in the Newark school system, and through his activities in the teachers' union, he knew all the Italian American teachers who lived in the North Ward...
...The first is that theunion is playing ball with the steel companies because it fears that the do-gooders in CCC may in one way or another interfere with production andthus jeopardize jobs...
...There are numerous working-class communities in the United States where it would be feasible to build similar organizations for people power...
...In the 1968 Indiana primary, Robert Kennedy swept the black districts of Gary and the white ethnic areas of the county...
...While his moral support was vital, his financial help was even more crucial...
...The Italians brought with them an extended family system, and a keen distrust of outsiders that was exacerbated by nativistic discrimination...
...But Richard Hatcher responded: "We are shocked by the thinly veiled blackmail threats that the corporation might have to close down the mills if it is compelled to clean up its mess...
...In the past the machine had won so handily that it had written off the black voters...
...Collective action—it sounded un-American...
...Sociologists have found that the college-educated American is more likely to participate in voluntary interest groups than the American who didn't finish high school, drives a truck, and lives in a working-class neighborhood...
...The rate of lung disease is four times as high as the average across the United States...
...A number of young workingclass college students, "day students" liv ing at home, joined in during the Dupont fight...
...In the 1971 election for the Assembly two seats were up for grabs in the district...
...Thomas, a community activist, was a good prospect for his talent hunt...
...Adubato was fully aware of the odds against him when he set his sights on the office of Democratic district leader...
...The old pols delivered jobs and such favors as fixing tickets or taking care of more serious indiscretions...
...Nor did his opponents' accusation that he "kept a nigger in his attic" hurt him with his black allies...
...ORGANIZING NEIGHBORHOODS: GARY AND NEWARK Adubato's team of reformers (a label they reject because it is associated "with naive dogooders" who often harbor distaste for the people they help) canvassed the neighborhoods with zeal...
...Many people who never before had cast a ballot in a primary voted for Adubato's slate...
...In this fashion he identified leaders in the black community who were potential candidates...
...The CCC organizers observed that whatever the specific orientation of the members, their solidarity grew as they fought together...
...Imperiale had announced in the spring that he was a candidate for Democratic district leader in his neighborhood (although he was a registered Republican and could not vote for himself) and would put up a slate of delegates who, he bragged, would elect him party chairman...
...During the strike, Mike Barnes and Carl Kafentaris worked with homeowners from 17 suburban developments in Ross Township...
...Steel had convinced the City Council that there was no known method of controlling coke-oven pollution...
...Tony said he understood...
...But they ignored the voters' needs concerning such neighborhood matters as street lights and signs and truck traffic—things the "boys" had been taking care of in the past when they were getting started...
...All of Imperiale's candidates lost, as he did in his race against Joe Ceres, a young teacher who still lives in the house his immigrant grandfather purchased in 1922...
...Wright, a six-footthree, 205-pound former steelworker, was convinced that Wallace's appeal to his old workmates was a result of being disenfranchised from decisions that profoundly affect their lives...
...He also has noted a growing sophistication among the electorate...
...Like the voters of Lake County, the residents of Newark have legitimate reason to be cynical about government...
...It won a partial victory over the Northwest Indiana Public Service Company which, according to CCC, had bilked customers out of their deposits, arbitrarily calculated rates, and cavalierly shut off gas and electricity...
...Adubato, who had developed rapport with the black community over the years, found other blacks who were eager to run on his slate...
...Out of the ashes of the 1967 riot, two militant spokesmen emerged for their respective communities...
...He hoped the office would provide him with a platform and leverage to develop a new style of politics in the Italian American community...
...The old "intermediate agencies" that once took care of their demands—the political machine, the church, and the patronage system—are fading from the scene or no longer work effectively...
...In 1969 Adubato was prepared to do battle with the Addonizio machine which, not yet stricken by scandal, conspired to defeat the "nut" who dared to take them on...
...Some 40 teachers had been fired, ostensibly because they were incompetent but in fact because of their union organizing...
...They were committed to a new style of politics and were willing to pay a price for that commitment, if need be...
...Today, a small but growing number of their descendants are organizing to deal with the multitude of problems in white working-class communities...
...The democratic Left has prematurely discounted the persistence of ethnicity and ignored the correlation between ethnicity and class...
...After much hustling, he wrangled support from the area's clergy for tuition to attend Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation in nearby Chicago...
...Immigrants from eastern and southern Europe migrated to this corner of northern Indiana to work in the factories and mills and on the railroads...
...Other elected officials were union officers, welfare workers, housewives, working students, clergymen, a cook, a roofer, a municipal employee, and a steelworker...
...Italian Americans control the City Council today, but the demise of the Addonizio machine and the election of a black mayor produced a leadership vacuum in the North Ward and widespread concern among its residents about their future...
...Black and Spanish American delegates were a visible part of the founding Congress...
...108 knew the county's public and private institutions did not pay proper attention to them...
...In the next few years, swamps were drained and dunes leveled, a railroad to Chicago was constructed and a port dug...
...And surely he was aware that politics provided a source of socioeconomic mobility for white ethnic Americans of an immigrant and working-class background...
...RICHARD J. KRICKUS Indiana Save the Dunes Council, and other public-spirited citizens into a single organization that could provide the strikers with community support...
...Adubato, a man of short, broad-shouldered stature and with a rough-hewn face, has a tough mind and will that thrive on conflict...
...Herbicide wastes, hydrochloric acid, and sulphur dioxide were dumped into shallow holes, excreted into the Calumet River, or pumped into the air...
...When it became apparent that Adubato, by now a skilled political tactician, had built an effective network of energetic activists, the opposition was dumbfounded—and wondering what kind of payoff Adubato intended to offer all "his people...
...Steel, and other, smaller industrial cities —such as Hammond, Whiting, and East Chicago, Indiana—sprang up along a 26mile stretch of Lake Michigan...
...They understood that the "black problem" was symptomatic of a larger problem—the failure of our society to allocate resources and deal effectively with urban blight...
...Three days after the founding Congress, an emergency senate was held...
...The teachers, he argues, did not wish to strike...
...he's a liar...
...There was Joe Sedlak, a Cedar Lake Catholic priest, who was active in a host of community activities ranging from educational reform to pollution abatement...
...Politically savvy residents charge that the destiny of Lake County, Indiana, is decided in Pittsburgh and Wilmington, not in Gary, Hammond, or Whiting...
...In the past such utterances would have been seconded by Gary's mayor...
...They were an indigenous cadre of dedicated people, on intimate terms with the voters of the area...
...A regional multi-issue organization had distinct advantages...
...Adubato collared his friends, neighbors, and fellow teachers and persuaded them to join him in forging a new political movement in the North Ward...
...We were militant...
...The contractors had ignored the people because they had anticipated that the working-class homeowners would remain passive...
...Now other problems seemed open to citizens' action...
...There are few streets in Newark the residents boldly traverse after dark, and "protection" from any quarter is welcomed...
...They possess a sophisticated understanding of power, and espouse a new style of politics that welcomes the participation of the people and stresses the collective needs of the community...
...Then setting his sights on CCC he said, "It is incongruous that a coalition of religious, educational, labor, and ecological organizations would embrace outsiders to promote a unity of purpose locally...
...The Italian American subculture is a persistent fact of life there and discrimination against Italian Americans a real issue...
...Yet these "disenfranchised" voters now comprise 20 percent of the North Ward's population...
...Just prior to the council session held to consider the ordinance, CCC learned that three councilmen planned to vote for U.S...
...Adubato: "Right off the bat I won 20 percent of the votes necessary for election to the chairmanship...
...Beginning in the mid-1960s, he won widespread support among the community's whites for his security activities (his men patrolled the neighborhood nightly) and his ambulance service...
...She apologized and told him she had to drop out...
...By that I mean we consistently worked hard to get out the vote...
...That also was the reaction of his cousin Tony George, an employee at Prudential Insurance, when Steve first approached him...
...The solution was simple enough—and inexpensive...
...Several days before the election petitions were to be delivered, he received a call from her...
...From February through June 1970, Wright and Barnes, helped by volunteer organizers, conferred with approximately 300 people...
...Faced with facts, dates, and samples, many government officials and corporate executives demonstrated their ignorance...
...By late summer, grass-roots people, volunteers, and groups that had participated in past actions were ready to form an organization of citizen-action groups...
...When CLUE was formed, the strike was in its fifth week...
...The machine had firm control of the chairmanship...
...Most people they spoke to were still in the grip of rugged individualism: "I'll take care of my own problems...
...yet he was aware that to ignore ethnic distinctions would have jeopardized CCC's success...
...At that time one congressman, four county freeholders, three state senators, the sheriff, the county clerk, four of nine city councilmen, and two state assemblymen resided in the North Ward...
...Imamu Baraka (Leroi Jones), the black nationalist poet, reputedly spoke for a dominant segment of the black community, while Tony Imperiale worked the white side of the street...
...Both communities are predominantly workingclass, and blue-collar workers have played a prominent role in both the Lake County "Congress" and the reform of Newark's North Ward Democratic party...
...In a TV interview he said of Adubato: "I don't like Steve...
...The old pol, by delivering a small group of loyalists, beat Tony two to one...
...Bishop Grutka survived the charge that he was a soldier of "godless Communism," and the party machine's failure to destroy CCC suggested to the people of the county that perhaps boss Krupa and "his boys" were not as powerful as most of them had believed...
...Steel to calculate its own taxes, and for years the collectors have accepted the company's figures...
...Teaching school, in the eyes of many youngsters from blue-collar families, is an escape from the factories, in which their parents toil, into the "professions...
...Within a couple of months Dupont agreed to a nine-point pollution abatement program...
...While Imperiale's men drove around the community in sound trucks, Adubato's people were quietly setting up the machinery for victory—face-to-face contact with the ward's voters...
...Steel for its failure to pay a fair share of taxes and for its refusal to take proper precautions against the pollution that poisoned the air and water in the communities surrounding its mills...
...Sewer covers were cemented over and a faulty storm sewer system was repaired...
...Adubato knew that in order to wrest the chairmanship from the old pols he had to overcome voter apathy...
...Steel might be forced to close down the offending mills...
...Other industries followed the example of U.S...
...And there was Carl Kafentaris, a draftsman and part-time VFW bartender, who for years had pestered his neighbors to get together and force the contractors who had built their homes to fix the faulty sewer system...
...Imperiale received national-media exposure after the riot...
...ORGANIZING NEIGHBORHOODS: GARY AND NEWARK...
...A cross section of Lake County's population—workers, professionals, small businessmen, students and housewives, Republicans and Democrats, and even a few Socialists—cheered the guest speaker, Nader Raider John Esposito, when he indicted U.S...
...This competition has fostered fear and suspicion in both communities...
...Since fall 1970 Adubato has been working as a "community specialist" for Rutgers University in the North Ward...
...Steel Corporation purchased a massive tract of land for development...
...In the City Council chambers the councilmen faced a packed crowd and voted 9 to 0 to repeal the variance...
...In the June 1971 primary election, when Adubato won over Imperiale in his district, two symbols were presented to the people and they chose the one representing decency and respect for their intelligence...
...Inland, Republic, and U.S...
...when such a move might well only lead to divisiveness and polarization which in the end could only harm the potential for progress in the community...
...Six years ago he decided to become involved in politics...
...Reflecting upon his success, Adubato has said, "We were better politicians...
...People who had never considered voting in the primaries were "turned on...
...Behind closed doors corporate executives did their best to persuade him to withdraw his support from CCC—to no avail...
...Their initial reaction bordered on disbelief...
...Determined yet unsure of his prospects, he plunged into the rough-house politics of the North Ward's Democratic party...
...As the people observed these confrontations, they recognized that so-called experts often were uninformed, lied to cover up, and, thus exposed, were vulnerable to citizen action...
...As CCC won a series of victories, the fledgling organization began to gain notoriety throughout Lake County...
...In a city where one often waits precious hours for desperately needed medical attention, the ambulance service—though only a part-time operation—is an attractive organizational ploy...
...With their support, Adubato's team defeated the machine —as, since then, it has in every election...
...Pollution, health, schools—whatever the issue—they soon found it was necessary to gather facts...
...Adubato astounded them when he suggested that the party become more responsive to community problems...
...Gibson has begun to complicate life for the bookmakers and petty white-collar criminals, but Newark still is a beehive of illegitimate activities...
...The first substitute who came to mind was his wife...
...He has been a school teacher for 15 years, and has the reputation of an odd-ball "nigger lover" for his outspoken support of the civil rights movement...
...The thrust of Imperiale's campaign revolved around race and Adubato's reputation as a "nigger lover...
...but if he dared to take on Imperiale, he would be resoundingly defeated...
...But, by and large, the growing number of people who had become involved in CCC stood firm...
...Until we started to support the teachers," says Sedlak, "the average citizen of Cedar Lake did not know we had access to files of that [board of education] office by law...
...The black community's support, however, would not give him sufficient votes for victory...
...Yet some people, made of sterner stuff, prepared to fight back through neighborhood improvement associations...
...This area, consisting of northeastern Indiana and parts of adjacent Illinois, is known as the Calumet region...
...In November, however, many of the whites who had supported Kennedy in the primary voted for Wallace.' This prompted pundits to conclude that Lake County's workingclass whites were moving toward the Right...
...They did, for seven years...
...And it is unlikely that anyone but an Italian American could have created the political organization Steve Adubato built in Newark's North Ward...
...He was threatend with bodily harm, verbally abused, and publicly ridiculed when he questioned the budget of his party's chairman...
...Newark's North Ward In the early 1950s, Newark's large Irish and Jewish population began to flee the city for the suburbs...
...Educational reform, exposure to the media, and the existential reality of social change have produced a growing self-awareness among working-class white ethnics in the urban North, and young leaders have begun to emerge...
...Lake County residents have suffered additional exploitation through the "legal" activities of corporations, which have deprived them of clean air, pure water, and—as Nader's Raiders now are attempting to demonstrate— from unfair personal-property and real-estate tax arrangements...
...Workers charge that the union leaders wield power in an autocratic fashion, that they concentrate their efforts on mill issues but ignore the problems that plague the rank and file in their neighborhoods, and some will tell you that the "big boys in the union are in too tight with the County Democratic machine...
...It has been a practice of U.S...
...In February 1970 he returned with Mike Barnes, a one-time Catholic seminarian, who had been active in community organization on the West Coast, then in Cicero and in a Mexican American neighborhood in Chicago...
...Steel saw that its old dodge for excluding coke ovens from the pollution ordinance had lost credibility, it went on the "economic offensive...
...Reggie Thomas and his wife first met Steve immediately after he had been informed that Mrs...
...Under Sedlak's leadership 40 different groups, amounting to over 300 people, formed the Citizens' League to Upgrade the Environment—CLUE...
...Even in Lowell Township, a focal point of the KKK and Birchers, residents asked CCC to help them get repeal on a decision to rezone their area for a massive trailer camp—and under CCC pressure, county officials, who had refused to budge, were forced to comply with the residents' wishes...
...Tony, a soft-spoken but determined man, won his neighbors' trust...
...Adubato turned on other "Tony Georges" —housewives, blue-collar workers, and schoolteachers...
...Several days later it ended...
...The old pols scoffed at his candidacy...
...and 10,000 Puerto Ricans...
...U.S...
...The convictions of former Newark Mayor Addonizio and Jersey City's Mayor Whalen suggest that such "enterprising" officials will in the future experience closer surveillance...
...Besides, they were socially less insular than most of their neighbors...
...The Calumet Community Congress was organized around issues germane to residents of a predominantly working-class area...
...For years, they had put up every spring with the flooding of their homes, when a nearby river overflowed its banks and inundated the storm sewers that backed up into their basements...
...And so many Italian Americans still reside in the nation's "Little Italys," despite rising urban blight...
...The schoolteachers became his largest reservoir of political activists...
...Since then it has been allegedthat the union has been pressing Steelworkers to withdraw from CCC...
...His immediate aim was to provide community support for the striking teachers...
...You crazy...
...For the first time in his memory Sedlak observed genuine community interest in the Township's schools, and he decided the time was ripe to organize a citizens' action group to deal with education...
...In the wake of the union victory at Dupont, Joe Sedlak returned to Cedar Lake to find a school crisis in Hanover Township...
...The North Ward's population is 100,000— consisting of 70,000 whites of whom 90 percent are Italian American...
...Perhaps the most important point CCC has made in Lake County is that deCCC has charged that Inland Steel's Indiana Harbor Works in East Chicago had been dramatically underassessed...
...But they had lived under these conditions for so long they thought it futile to resist...
...This required developing his own network of political activists who could run for district-leader posts...
...Krupa formed a counterorganization, called it Americans United, and attempted to pick off supporters of the Congress through a red-baiting blitz...
...Mayor Hatcher's color is not the only novelty of his administration, for he is both honest and dedicated to the welfare of the city's residents—indeed a novelty in Gary and Lake County, where corruption has persisted for over half a century...
...As election day drew near, they resorted to threats and verbal abuse to frighten away the young dissenters...
...Brandishing a law-and-order platform, he subsequently won a city-council seat, a post he later gave up to run for mayor...
...RICHARD J. KRICKUS 110 School in Hammond, the Calumet Community Congress was officially founded...
...The organizers of this expanding network were largely community activists and bluecollar workers who at the outset had scoffed at the need for research...
...The coalition of the groups mobilized against Dupont now began to organize a network throughout Lake County...
...I don't trust him...
...In conjunction with the strikers, CLUE conducted neighborhood demonstrations, circulated literature on the magnitude of pollution emanating from the Dupont plant, and badgered company execu tives...
...Few people voted in the primaries for district leaders, and a slate consistently favorable to the machine had always elected a member of the "club...
...He had to convince the numerous people who detested Newark's corrupt politics that it was in their power to defeat the machine...
...Get into politics...
...Today the single largest white enclave in Newark, a city where 61 percent of the population is black, is the North Ward...
...Adubato said he 116 did not believe that Tony himself would do such a thing...
...Besides, they were impressed that he took the trouble to elicit their votes...
...Some 1,200 voters lived in their district, and the Georges spoke with most of them...
...Thirty-year-old Ken Tucker, one of the union representatives who solicited Jim Wright's help for the Dupont strikers, was elected president...
...Yet people grumbled about pollution and high taxes, and they 1 Wallace captured 16.4 percent of the votes castin Lake County in the 1968 presidential race...
...He was geographically distant from the Dupont workers, but psychologically sensitive to their problems for he "had been there himself...
...Reggie said that Steve's straightforward manner impressed his wife, and she agreed to run for district leader in her neighborhood...
...The company had refused to take out building permits or to specify what specific installations it had built...
...He won his first election, and this victory allowed him to peer into the inner councils of Newark's Democratic party machine...
...A mass-action organization, spreading over Lake County and including parts of adjacent Illinois, would permit CCC to exert power over the entire region.3 Unlike single-issue organizations, which often dissolve upon achieving their goal, a multi-issue organization maintains the interest of its members because, on this larger scale, fresh battles are always at hand...
...They needed experience in organizing their communities and in developing tactics that could produce results...
...Her son worked for a construction firm that was in tight with City Hall, and he had been told that if his mother went through with the election, his job would be jeopardized...
...Finally, the union leadership is fearful that, should the rank and file band together in an effective organization outside the mills, these samepeople may one day represent a threat to thepresent union leadership...
...When the Italian immigrants settled in the United States, they, like other ethnic groups, sought shelter among their own...
...The agenda was to provide support for a coke-oven ordinance scheduled to be voted upon by the Gary City Council the following week...
...The strike was less one between the black community and the white teachers—Carol Graves, the president of the union is black, as are many of its most active members—than a reflection of a power struggle within the black community...
...The Italian Americans who have chosen to remain in Newark share with their nonwhite neighbors the grave urban problems—crime in the streets, declining services, and troubled schools—and they compete with them for jobs, living space, and services...
...He had to build support among the community's Italian Americans...
...These strong family ties and primary group relationships have fostered among their children and grandchildren an unrivaled attachment to their original neighborhoods...
...The County Democratic boss, John Krupa, said that CCC was "masterminded by the forces of godless, atheistic Communism...
...The Calumet region was the only area in the United States with a major coke-oven problem not controlled by law...
...While many of them were "militant Italians," they resented the crass exploitation of ethnic loyalties and petty political payoffs, which robbed the people of the opportunity to take part in matters germane to the well-being of their neighborhoods...
...The workersin the Dupont plants belong to independent locals...
...The Georges defeated their opponents by a two-to-one margin...
...In Gary, air particulate counts average over 130 micrograms per cubic meter annually and at times exceed 400 micrograms per cubic meter...
...we beat them at their own game...
...Many skittish community people stood firm because the Bishop stuck to CCC...
...Steel's coke ovens produced 59,400 tons of air pollution annually...
...4 Perhaps the single most important supporter of the Congress at this juncture was the Catholic bishop of the Gary diocese, Andrew Grutka, who had been a steelworker in his youth...
...Yet, though Imperiale remains an important symbol of security for many residents, another leader with a different kind of political organization has also emerged in the North Ward: Steve Adubato...
...The real issue was that some elements in the black community wanted to destroy the power of the union...
...Racial moderates, they were not emasculated by the guilt that prevents many middle-class liberals from effectively relating to blacks...
...On the frigid Saturday evening of December 5, 1970, at George Rodgers Clark High 4 During this red-baiting campaign, Steelworkers in CCC reported that some union officials began to"bad mouth" CCC...
...The John Birch Society and the KKK, both of which had sizable support in the suburban and rural areas of the county, charged that the CCC was a Communist front and had national, subversive objectives...
...Steel, all have been cited for their failure to pay their equitable shares of real-estate and personal-property taxes.6 CCC officials assert that the steel companies have employed numerous dodges to escape an accurate assessment of their taxable property...
...Through the nonpartisan North Ward Educational and Cultural Center, which he has helped form, he hopes to develop appropriate programs in these areas for the blue-collar residents of the North Ward...
...Politics was a business...
...Jim Wright, who was a staff member of the Lake County Inner-City Task Force, a coalition of churches working with Gary's blacks, rejected this analysis...
...Several churches and clergymen withdrew their support, and some community groups dropped out...
...These young activists had acquired political savvy in their union and come to reject the machine's paternalism...
...One of the strengths of his slate was that the schoolteachers, businessmen, housewives, and blue-collar workers who supported him did not hold political jobs and felt able to secure employment under their own power...
...This includes Imamu Baraka, the Mayor, and the more traditional moderate leadership...
...The repeal of the coke-oven variance, less than two weeks after CCC was founded, had an intoxicating effect on its members...
...A small cadre of voters who held political jobs could be counted on to vote for the machine's slate, and usually that was enough...
...There is a consensus among progressive Italian Americans in Newark that if the whites who remain in the city were Irish, WASPS, or Jews, Trenton would not have dared to wash its hands of the school crisis as it did in early 1971...
...There are three schools of thought which purportedly account for the union's displeasure with the Congress...
...He is the first man the university has hired to work in a white working-class community...
...Second, many union officialsare a visible part of the County Democratic machine...
...Wright says, "They saw us as the guys who could deliver" and help them with problems of "wildlife, clean air and water, and recreation...
...They decided to call their regional organization CCC—the Calument Community Congress...
...But he was deeply disturbed to see the old pols ignore the needs of the people when it was within their power to alleviate community problems—they were too ORGANIZING NEIGHBORHOODS: GARY AND NEWARK 113 busy peddling favors and stuffing their pockets...
...Under the chairmanship of George Patterson, a retired Steelworkers' organizer and survivor of the 1936 Memorial Day Massacre at Republic Steel, the delegates elected officers and adopted a program...
...RICHARD J. KRICKUS One aspect of the strike that disturbed Adubato, though ignored by the media, is that the Italian American teachers believe they are being treated as pawns...
...And they discovered, in turn, that by gaining a ORGANIZING NEIGHBORHOODS: GARY AND NEWARK 109 clearer understanding of a problem, the necessary tactical action would present itself...
...It was aimed at combating pollution, political corruption, and inequities in state and local tax laws...
...Parroting the charges circulated by Birchers and the KKK, he claimed certain individuals and groups in the CCC had a history "dedicated to destroying the American way of life...
...They were welcomed by the voters who were struck by their candid discussion of community issues...
...The political science literature indicates a correlation between education, income, social status—and participation in political activities...
...Today qualified Italian American teachers, as a result of time in service, expect to be promoted to better jobs, as administrators and principals...
...Despite Adubato's militant defense of the Italian Americans in the North Ward, he remains on good terms with the city's black spokesmen...
...Their young opponents discussed matters of real concern to the voters...
...Because Gary did not have a cokeoven ordinance, the city stood to lose several hundred thousand dollars in federal "pollution funds...
...his long-term objective was to turn the residents' attention toward an issue they had long neglected...
...While the worker may win significant victories at the plant through his union, the coalition of interests controlling the laws in his community is generally immune to his demands...
...Right up to the final day, com .ORGANIZING NEIGHBORHOODS GARY AND NEWARK 111 munity groups led by CCC lobbied for the ordinance through neighborhood meetings, phone calls, and letters...
...A few weeks prior to this interview, a bullet pierced the living-room window of the Adubato home...
...U.S...
...Although the national media might call the workers of Lake County "conservative," Wright was confident that when provided with alternatives, they would move in a progressive direction...
...she agreed to run with him...
...If an alliance for change in the urban North is ever to develop between blue-collar whites and their black neighbors, it will be forged with the help of indigenous community spokesmen like Adubato...
...Not in protest against the blacks, but against the forces in our society that inadvertently or by design are playing off the have-nots against the have-littles...
...Sedlak knew nothing about pollution, and he lived in Cedar Lake, some 30 miles from the East Chicago plant—why pick him...
...He recognizes, however, that they will be relegated to this demeaning position if they do not organize and mobilize their power in protest...
...When they talked about WASPS, they meant the corporate establishment and those institutions and interests that command the resources enabling them to do something about Newark's plight but refused to act...
...And they could use the boost of a political victory...
...3 Since then CCC has been decentralized...
...He lost out in the primary, and Ken Gibson beat the incumbent Hugh Addonizio, who had been indicted for corruption...
...Department of Health, Education and Welfare reports that, at levels of 100 micrograms per cubic meter, persons over 50 are subject to increased death rates and young children are likely to experience an increased rate of respiratory disease...
...The Dupont fight also provided the organizers with the opportunity to watch people in action, and the men and women who had demonstrated leadership gained legitimacy in the estimate of other organizations and spokesmen...
...Until June 1971 the consensus was that Adubato's stock had risen at a time when the Addonizio machine was ailing...
...CCC now offers the people of the Calumet region the option to participate in a progressive movement for change led by men and women from their own communities through a democratic organization...
...Intelligent, idealistic, but toughminded, Adubato accepted the stark truth that patronage and self-aggrandizement motivated many politicians...
...Steel was stunned by this reversal and reputedly dispatched three PR men from Pittsburgh to Gary to investigate what was going on...
...But Adubato's supporters didn't scare easily...
...Adubato asserts that the Italian Americans who remain in the center city with their nonwhite neighbors should not be treated as expendable citizens...
...this time, as customary, he chose a woman for his running mate...
...The democratic Left should work with the fledgling community organizations and reform factions that are making their appearance in working-class, white ethnic communities...
...The U.S...
...Conservationists who had never dared to take on the corporations were impressed...
...Adubato has found that the working people in the Ward, including the black workers, have been ignored by local, state, and federal housing, by manpower and educational programs...
...Bishop Grutka was publicly denounced by boss Krupa for endorsing the Congress...
...Steel, responded to Esposito's charges by denying that the company had created any special health hazard and said that it was carrying its proper tax load...
...As he looked behind the veneer of respectability that masked the city government, he was appalled...
...Wright was certain that the organizational experience blue-collar workers had acquired in their unions would prove an asset in a fight to form a massbased citizens' organization...
...Born and reared in the Ward, these men and women in their mid-twenties and early thirties were sensitive to its problems...
...According to CCC's evaluation of public records (i.e., taxable real estate and business property) and the company's own estimates, Inland should have been assessed $20 million more than it was in 1971...
...112 cisions affecting the common welfare had been made by corporate executives who had not been held accountable for these actions —and that, instead, the people must be given sanctions enabling them to check on "antisocial decisions" made by private interests...
...These sons and daughters of factory workers, truck drivers, and day laborers had little trouble relating to the blue-collar residents who live in the Ward...
...Today Gary is a predominantly black town and has elected its first black mayor, Richard Hatcher...
...Wright jumped at the opportunity to work with a small independent labor local, some 300 strong, in its strike against Dupont Chemical in the Lake County town of East Chicago.2 The union wanted to write into its contract a pollution clause, to curtail the fumes the workers suffered in the plant and the filth that was fouling the air, water, and land where they lived...
...They were prepared to settle wtihout a raise...
...The chairman, who is elected by the ward's 98 district leaders, has the potential of considerable power in city and county politics...
...He attributes this to education and exposure to the mass media, especially TV...
...During the 11-week school strike that erupted in January 1971, Adubato supported the striking schoolteachers...
...Organizers were threatened, leaders intimidated, and outsiders friendly to CCC were followed by seedy-looking heavies...
...in the fall of 1970 the Catholic Church was the primary source of CCC funding...
...This old fact of life has resulted in a cynical view of politics...
...Tony Imperiale, state assemblyman elected in November 1971 on an Independent ticket, is a karate teacher, one-time city councilman and candidate for mayor, and the leader of the North Ward Citizens Committee, a paramilitary organization that first attracted attention during the riot...
...Except in the labor movement, working Americans have rarely participated in massaction organizations...
...Sedlak organized the Citizens for Quality Education...
...Through a previous variance, the coke ovens had been exempted from an air pollution ordinance...
...Newark's recent, notorious history is pockmarked with graft and open collusion between the "mob" and city officials...
...20,000 blacks...
...But Adubato's persistence and idealism broke through Tony's apathy...
...Barnes organized the homeowners, and under steady pressure the developers were forced to deal with the problem...
...After each successful battle new groups joined in...
...Adubato's candidate won, but so did Imperiale...
...but racial quotas are effectively restricting them to their present positions...
...Area chapters have been set up throughout the Calumet region...
Vol. 19 • January 1972 • No. 1
