NOTES IN THE NEWS
Notes in the News The People Yes It is a rare poll of public opinion that shows eighty-one per cent of the people solidly committed to one side of a hotly controversial issue. Yet this was...
...military installations where thirty-two Philippine civilians have been killed within the last two years—"incidents" which inspired the thirty-two black coffins carried by the Manila demonstrators...
...But these cold war interpretations evade the real issues...
...No longer is a conservationist likely to be either a visionary or a wealthy man with a private island in Maine...
...Americans remain uninformed...
...President Johnson has launched a fresh drive, and while opposition is forming, this year offers the brightest hopes yet for wiping out this chauvinist stain and restoring our immigration policy to a rational level...
...Clark Field has become a focal point of the frustrations and humiliations of those Filipinos who feel that they are not masters in their own house, that their sovereignty is undermined by the special privileges of Americans...
...We hope the first distribution of 100,000 meets with a popular demand for several million copies —and that they are all put to good use against extremism...
...Croix, Inc...
...local boosters are understandably eager...
...If an extremist attack comes, the PTA urged, it should be brought out in the open, and it outlined ways to do this...
...This defense comes none too soon because the rightists, tightly organized in a number of susceptible communities, move swiftly...
...Moorhead, the PTA did not believe all this was happening: "Then we thought it would go away and that, if we didn't publicize it, it wouldn't grow...
...Maintenance of communication between the races...
...The results: Favor...
...George Gallup on thirty years of feeling the public pulse: "The public generally is ahead of Congress—particularly on any kind of change or reform...
...Croix River—a lovely boundary water between Wisconsin and Minnesota —for recreational development has attracted national attention and bipartisan support, demonstrates the soundness of the President's judgment...
...Nevertheless, the United States has shown more concern for military aid than for economic assistance...
...Responding to the danger, the national PTA leadership has begun a campaign to help its local chapters protect themselves from extremist inroads...
...The balance sheet under present economic arrangements holds little hope for change...
...About seventy-five per cent of the children of school age are not in school...
...Although this is nearly double the level of desegregation that had been achieved a year earlier, it is deplorably low considering that a decade has passed since the Supreme Court's desegregation decision...
...The National Congress' pamphlet proposed that its PTA chapters urge school boards and library boards to adopt written policies placing responsibility for deciding upon courses of study, books, and teaching and library materials with the school and library staffs...
...Although the sugar planters and other landlords supported this arrangement, and probably still prefer it, such legislation impoverished the country as a whole...
...Business leaders in Mississippi have generally stood on the sidelines during the long racial strife...
...Yet this was precisely the outcome when the Gallup Poll last month asked a representative sample of Americans if they favored a negotiated settlement in Vietnam—one which would involve dealing with, of all demons, the Chinese Communists...
...Peasant families and young people are crowding into Manila's slums...
...This predominantly agricultural nation has been unable to industrialize because its low agricultural productivity, and other income sources, do not yield enough capital to develop the country's extensive mineral and other natural resources...
...It gives American goods immunity from Philippine tariffs and unlimited access to Philippine markets in return for a system of preferential quotas for Philippine raw materials on the American market...
...The PTA Checkmate One of the most useful steps taken by the National Congress of PTAs in its campaign to checkmate far right forays against public education and its supporters, is to provide a methodology for local PTA defense against the extremist bands...
...Another point is that in addition to the one hundred captive chapters, there are others whose PTA programs, designed to keep residents truthfully informed about their public schools, are obstructed or harassed by rightists...
...Teachers have been harassed by telephone and by mail for opposing such ultra-right doctrines as "Get the U.S...
...The power company has a perfectly adequate alternate site on the Mississippi, where the area's industrial growth has centered in the last seventy years, but the same cool, clean water that makes the lower St...
...The truth is that the Filipinos are breaking away from a long tradition of friendship with the United States and showing increased hostility to some of the policies we pursue in their country...
...The national PTA body suggested enlistment of community representatives in efforts "to consider sound, democratic ways of dealing with extremist pressures...
...The only resistance to the new order, the Council stated, should be "through established procedures in the American tradition of resort to enlightened public opinion, the ballot boxes, and the courts...
...Once the rightists capture a PTA chapter, she said, they disaffiliate it from the PTA Congress, which supports the United Nations, school integration, and Federal aid to education —three of the pet hates of right-wing groups...
...The Philippine economy is growing, but not fast enough to provide for its population, which increased by almost one-third since 1948...
...Under the forty-year-old quotas, immigration from a particular country has been limited to a certain proportion of the U.S...
...The PTA in Trouble One of Robert Welch's standing orders to his Birch Society legions— "Join your local PTA at the beginning of the school year . . . and go to work and take it over"—is now showing results that gratify the forces of the ultra-right and alarm supporters of the public school system...
...The proof of this statement can be seen in the fact that the ultra-right will sometimes conduct simultaneous assaults against a community public school system, one or more teachers, and some of the texts used in classrooms and school libraries...
...K The state travel director estimates that tourist spending in 1964 dropped by about $50 million from the previous year...
...Our businessmen and investors should be regulated by the decisions of the Philippine government, just as they are regulated in other countries overseas...
...Paul and Minneapolis...
...In Pampanga in Central Luzon's rice bowl, a handful of wealthy families possess vast estates cultivated by debt-ridden sharecroppers, many of whom participated in the Huk revolt...
...Senator A. Willis Robertson, Virginia Democrat, wants to retain the quotas, and his frankly prejudiced reason reflects the feelings of much of the opposition to their repeal...
...f "Look gift speakers in the mouth...
...But we suspect the mood of Congress and the nation is more accurately reflected in the statement of Senator Ernest Gruening, Alaska Democrat, that the abolition of the quota system "reincarnates what was long the fundamental idea, ideal, and practice...
...Last month in these pages we quoted this reflection by Dr...
...These land-hungry peasants note with mounting resentment the many thousands of unfilled acres within the barbed wire fences of the U.S...
...Since there are 47,000 PTA chapters in the country and twelve million PTA members, the capture of one hundred chapters by the rightists might not seem too disturbing...
...The Mississippi Economic Council, the state's chamber of commerce, has issued a call for "positive action [furthering] justice, harmony, and continued development" in Mississippi...
...citizen" or other relative living here...
...Strengthening of public education...
...Establish the policy that controversial resolutions and motions proposed at one PTA meeting cannot be voted on until the next meeting—to prevent a Birchite blitz at an extremist-packed meeting...
...The trade agreements act and parity tended to freeze the pre-war pattern of the Philippines as producers of raw materials and consumers of American goods...
...Filipinos are resentful and to command attention their young activists turn to street demonstrations...
...The fact that the fight to save the St...
...It must develop a class of entrepreneurs and investors to replace landlords and agriculturalists...
...The figures compiled by the reliable Southern Education Reporting Service further indicate that the performance in the old Confederacy is best in Texas, which has 7.26 per cent of its Negro children in public schools with whites...
...Croix is only one of thousands of rivers, lakes, and hillsides that must be preserved from commercial and industrial exploitation if the America of unspoiled natural beauty is not to merge into a coast-to-coast urban wasteland...
...out of the United States...
...The local PTA meetings may then be invaded by Birchites who trumpet these charges and portray the chapter and National PTA Congress as supporting or condoning "pro-Communist" public schools, teachers, and texts...
...Thousands of college-trained youths, unable to find jobs, stand idle and discouraged on street corners...
...Children have been sent to school with tape recorders so that the totalitarian rightists can decide whether the teacher is thoroughly American...
...We must accept the changes in our relationship from the old benevolent paternalism and accord this land of 7,000 islands and thirty million citizens a new respect as one of the emerging nations of Asia...
...The amount of money spent on new plants in Mississippi in 1964 declined twenty-eight per cent from the 1963 figure...
...Among them are these: il A Cleveland, Ohio, manufacturer, invited to build a third plant in Mississippi, replied, "We won't consider expanding in Mississippi until the state and its people join the Union again...
...It has been immensely difficult to focus the interest aroused by "Save the St...
...But like businessmen elsewhere, they respond quickly and positively to any challenge when it begins to cost them money, and there are signs that Mississippi business is stirring itself in an effort to reduce racial violence and lawlessness...
...81% Oppose...
...Would you like to see President Johnson call such a meeting or not...
...Since zoning cannot be retroactive, the power company, with a local zoning permit already in its pocket, would not be legally affected...
...The President is no Thoreau of the Pedernales...
...The bill sidesteps the issue of the plant site...
...It is long past time to stop asking a prospective newcomer to our shores where he is from, and start asking the much more pertinent questions of what he can do for his chosen country, or if he has loved ones here with whom he would be reunited...
...The background of the St...
...And the St...
...It must promulgate tariffs that selectively keep out foreign products until home industries have been built up...
...Set a definite, reasonable time for adjournment...
...The Magnolia State has only fifty-eight of its 296,000 Negro children in school with whites, and in Alabama ninety-four of 293,000 Negroes attend school with white youngsters...
...Hopefully, the almighty dollar may be more effective in bringing the state back into the Union...
...It also advocated that the community be informed of these policies by the boards, and that the respective boards establish procedures for dealing with complaints on curriculum, teachers, text books, and library books...
...The question for the United States, as a former colonial power and as a present ally, is what new policies can be worked out to keep our two national interests from conflicting...
...It would use the restrictive zoning technique tried out on the Cape Cod National Seashore to protect the lower stretch of the river...
...Now any factory worker with an automobile and boat trailer has an obvious stake in wise resource policy...
...This system greatly favors peoples of the British Isles, Ireland, and Northern Europe, whose quotas are relatively so large they are seldom filled, and discriminates against Southern Europeans and peoples elsewhere, whose quotas are so small there is often a long wait...
...Sometimes the press has fought the totalitarian rightists on school issues...
...The Laurel-Langley Trade Agreements Act of 1955 is a modified version of the old preferential trade rights secured by the United States in 1947...
...This strikes us as an eminently sensible and humane policy...
...Find out why they want to speak and whom they represent...
...The present rate of desegregation makes a mockery of the Supreme Court's historic decision...
...Old Fashioned Welcome One of the more stubborn smudges on the image of the United States is its system of national quotas and racial barriers that constitute our immigration laws...
...But on occasion, as in Ohio, where the vigilantes put a courageous teacher through a shameful ordeal (see "The Slander of Dan O'Brien," by David Hess, in the December issue of The Progressive), the press was totally silent when it should have been thundering with outrage...
...The State Department should cease "blacklisting"—the denial of U.S...
...In some thirty-four states, these or similar "rabble-rousing" tactics have been reported by state PTA Congresses...
...Croix" because there is no agency in Minnesota, or in Wisconsin, with responsibility for deciding land-use priorities...
...8% Significantly, the Gallup Poll reported, the proposal "appeals equally to both Republicans and Democrats and to people in all areas of the country...
...At first, said Mrs...
...The city's modern hotels, fashionable shops, and conspicuous consumption by the wealthy make urban poverty cruder by contrast...
...Parity, guaranteed by amendment to the Philippine Constitution, gives American citizens unrestricted commercial access to the nation's resources—its land, forests, and minerals...
...Some American reporters were quick to attribute the Manila demonstrations to outside agitation from Communist China across the South China Sea, or to Sukarno's Indonesia...
...But it has been growing...
...To preserve a long-standing friendship, we should begin by granting the Philippines the same sovereignty over bases that we have already given to other allies...
...Unlike Japan and the NATO countries, the Philippine Republic has not yet been conceded the right to try American servicemen involved in crimes against Philippine nationals...
...In the nearby town of Angeles, which elected a socialist mayor before World War II, the Filipinos can see the cocktail bars and the houses of gambling and of prostitution flourishing...
...and the U.N...
...11% No Opinion...
...Filipino nationalists have always asserted that they were not anti-American, but pro-Filipino...
...The Twin Cities population, already short of public outdoor recreational facilities despite Minnesota's "land of sky-blue waters" reputation, will more than double, to four million, in the next thirty-five years...
...population originating in that country as revealed, first in the 1890 census, and later the 1920 census...
...For the sake of America's school children and the preservation of the sanity of the body politic, we are grateful that the Parent Teacher Associations have begun a coordinated program to defend themselves and the nation's schools against the extreme right...
...embassy...
...The public schools—where the free mind is supposed to be nurtured, and where the right to know and the right to discuss are meant to be passed on from teacher to pupil as the breath of democracy itself—have been subjected to some suffocating vigilantism...
...Present laws have become so inadequate that while 100,000 immigrants entered the United States in 1964 under the quota system —leaving 51,000 quota visas unused— more than 167,000 entered outside the quota system, and another 3,800 came in under special legislation...
...They know that the American soldiers who crowd their streets enjoy extra-territorial immunity, which means that they are assured of trial by an American military court instead of by the Philippine judicial system...
...Mrs...
...Moorhead predicted new attacks against the PTA, notably in California and Florida...
...There has been no significant industrial activity along the peaceful bluffs of the lower St...
...report the findings to a PTA membership meeting...
...What is needed is a network of land-use authorities empowered to make the crucial decisions, and more politicians who, like Senator Nelson, can understand and articulate the growing public demand before it is entirely too late...
...They are after public education itself...
...It urged "a vigorous education campaign to make the community aware of the importance of freedom of speech and freedom to read, to teach, and to learn...
...This is by far the strongest stand for civil rights on the part of any substantial Mississippi organization in modern times...
...At the low end, trailing off into virtual invisibility, are the hardest of the hard core white resistance states: South Carolina with one per cent school desegregation, Alabama with three-tenths of one per cent, and Mississippi with two-tenths of one per cent...
...Our economic aid program should be redesigned to include long term loans for internal development of the Philippines...
...So far the extreme right, through take-overs or pressure, have succeeded in getting an estimated one hundred local PTAs to withdraw from the National Congress of Parents and Teachers...
...Jennelle Moorhead, president of the national body and a teacher in Eugene, Oregon, recently disclosed this figure...
...Times change...
...Gallup was referring mostly to public opinion on domestic issues, but this newest poll on Vietnam shows that also in foreign affairs, public opinion is well ahead of the policy-makers in our government, this time ahead of the Executive establishment...
...They miss the central fact—that while the demonstrations are new, the discontent they express is long standing...
...Croix would be of far more economic value to the metropolitan complex as an outdoor recreation area than as another industrial valley...
...The evidence is now being weighed by the Minnesota Water Pollution Control Commission...
...The result is massive poverty, unemployment, and a tremendous burden on public facilities...
...f An aluminum fabricator in Mc-Comb reported, "We lost at least $250,-000 in sales last year because of people refusing to buy Mississippi-made products...
...This is an extraordinary verdict— one which we hope will command the serious attention of President Johnson as he gropes for a way out of the worsening mess in Vietnam...
...Croix dispute can be stated briefly: The Northern States Power Company wants to build a huge, coal-fired electric generating complex—the first unit alone would require a half-mile long coal pile and a 785-foot smoke stack—below Stillwater, Minnesota, on a stretch of the lower St...
...The High Cost of Racism Racial strife, violence, bombings, and murder in Mississippi are having a seriously depressing effect on the economy of that state, already the poorest of all the states of the Union...
...entry visas to Filipino writers, journalists, and scholars considered "anti-American...
...The Conservation Struggle President Johnson's emergence in his State of the Union message as a militant conservationist brings a welcome political luster to an old and commendable struggle...
...If someone at a PTA meeting comes up with "a loaded, unanswerable question, ask him to rephrase it...
...This was the question asked by Gallup interviewers: "It has been suggested that President Johnson try to arrange a conference with leaders of Southeast Asia and China to see if a peace agreement can be worked out...
...The symbol of their resentment has become Clark Air Base and areas in and around other U.S...
...Our official policy, an energetic defense of the status quo, is turning pro-Filipinism into anti-Americanism...
...The upper 100 miles or so, and a Wisconsin tributary, the Namekagon, would be designated "wild rivers," and protected by acquisition or easements...
...It cannot be ignored and should not be unlawfully defied...
...Only ninety minutes from Manila by car, Clark is carved out of the fertile and troubled province of Pampanga — commonly known as "Huklandia," the postwar battleground of the Communist-led agrarian uprising by the "Hukbala-haps...
...Orientals are almost totally excluded...
...Two Per Cent Desegregated Of three million Negro school-age youngsters in the eleven Southern states only 2.14 per cent—63,850—are now attending public schools with whites...
...It then suggests "Ways to Combat Undemocratic Pressures on PTAs, Schools, and Libraries...
...In any case, just as one poisoned well in the entire United States would be one too many, a single PTA or school system permeated by the antidemocratic doctrines of the ultra-right is one too many...
...It must transfer capital from agriculture to industry...
...Aesthetics aside, the group also points out, the lower St...
...Enacted forty years ago in a somewhat hysterical era of anti-Communism, xenophobia, and the "yellow peril," these laws, with few basic modifications, have withstood the efforts of every President from Herbert Hoover through John F. Kennedy to have them repealed...
...f A large retailing chain in Michigan has discontinued the purchase of Mississippi textiles until the racial climate there improves...
...f "Keep the community and the press supplied with facts about PTA purposes and projects...
...It strengthens the nation's human resources by establishing standards, and at the same time holds out a friendly hand to families now divided by a crazy-quilt of immigration laws...
...We fervently hope so...
...Minnesota politicians seem reluctant to become involved...
...Croix since the timber boom played out before World War I. The plant would bring a local tax bonanza...
...The Filipinos' disagreement with our policies has been quietly pointed out by them in the past, but for the most part it has been ignored by the American press and officialdom in Washington...
...Croix National Scenic Waterway...
...Storm over the Philippines News pictures from Manila recently showed Uncle Sam being burned in effigy by thousands of Filipinos crowded in front of the heavily guarded U.S...
...His presence in the ranks indicates that there is at last broad, if inarticulate, support for wise conservation policy...
...Its recommendations called for: ^1 Order and respect for the law, with equal treatment of violators...
...The danger posed to river life by the tons of heated water the plant would spew out—thermal pollution, it is called—has been a key argument used by a citizens group called "Save the St...
...In an unprecedented declaration of concilation, the state's largest business organization proposed a four-point policy for adoption by local groups throughout Mississippi...
...Some of these defenses-by-democratic-process can readily be adapted to their own use by school boards, library boards, town councils, and community organizations that fear the establishment of Birchite beachheads in their midst...
...This program for action is described in a pamphlet which the National Congress is sending to all its chapters across the country...
...It is a splendid pamphlet, and we heartily congratulate the PTA for bringing it out...
...Minneapolis-St...
...Such a constitutional guarantee is a serious restriction of Filipino economic freedom by the United States over a former possession...
...This assures that decisions will not be made by an extremist minority that outstays the moderate majority...
...Tennessee follows with 5.33 per cent...
...But the fight also illustrates the formidable problems conservation forces must surmount if they are to focus this new interest sharply enough to achieve their goals...
...Titled "Extremist Groups—A Clear and Present Danger to Freedom and Democracy," the pamphlet outlines the differences between the thinking and tactics of extremists and the democratic beliefs and practices of most Americans...
...The rallying of law-abiding elements, the work of civil rights forces, the actions of Federal Courts and the Department of Justice to secure compliance with the Civil Rights Act, and the cut-off of Federal school grants to lily white schools should together produce a much higher percentage of school desegregation in the South, in the border states, and elsewhere with next fall's school openings...
...For a copy (price fifteen cents) write to the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, 700 Rush Street, Chicago, Illinois 60611...
...American State Department and military intransigence will only evoke more and more extreme nationalism of the type expressed in the demonstration signs, "White Monkey Go Home...
...The capture of as many Parent Teacher Associations as possible is designed by extremists to rob schools, teachers, and school boards of citizen support, as a move preliminary to far right control of education...
...President Johnson has proposed abandoning this system in favor of "preferential admissions based on the advantage to our nation of the skills of the immigrants, and the existence of a close family relationship to a U.S...
...Paul is not the only city complex in the nation expected to double in size by the year 2000...
...Last year was the worst yet...
...Croix, only half an hour from the twin cities of St...
...Fair and impartial registration and voting procedures...
...Appeals on moral and Constitu-tutional grounds have made little headway in improving the lot of the Negro in Mississippi...
...Usually he can't because it's a 'canned' question...
...In January, he urged the Minnesota Conservation Commissioner to deny the company permission to divert river water, on broad "health and welfare" grounds...
...Among the proposed safeguards are: % Appoint a PTA committee to become informed on extremist groups, their tactics and "front organizations," and their incursions against PTAs, schools, and libraries...
...And those who control education, as was pointed out in the October issue of The Progressive ("Birch vs...
...Then he, with Senator Walter Mondale, Minnesota Democrat, as co-sponsor, introduced a bill in Congress to establish the St...
...base, while their families suffer for want of rice...
...Schools"), can rule the country...
...We recognize," the Council stated, "that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been enacted by the Congress as law...
...The extremists are not really after the PTA," she said...
...out of the U.N...
...Signs saying "Down with Parity" and "Laurel-Langley Trade Agreements Must End" vented Filipino hostility at American special privileges in the economic life of the Philippines...
...bases...
...Since outside help has failed, the Philippine nation must take strong measures to industrialize itself...
...To many Americans it was just another anti-Yankee demonstration like those in Asia, Africa, and Latin America...
...Croix a swimming and fishing paradise, and one of the most popular boating waters between the Great Lakes and the West coast, also makes it attractive to a plant needing vast quantities of water for cooling its condensers and generators...
...One response to those who find the statistic reassuring is to ask: "How would you like your children, or your friends' children, to attend a public school whose PTA has been taken over by Birchers...
...But to others accustomed to the image of the Philippines as a "showplace of democracy" developed by American benevolence, the Manila incidents came as something of a shock...
...Senator Gaylord A. Nelson, Wisconsin Democrat, conducted Senate field hearings in Stillwater in December...
...The Wall Street Journal recently outlined some of the negative developments of the past year or so that are causing Mississippi businessmen concern...
...Robertson finds quotas compatible with basic American tradition since "the first American settlers were of Nordic stock...
...The demonstrators called for more than Philippine jurisdiction over U.S...
Vol. 29 • February 1965 • No. 3
