Datelines

...It retaliated by collecting enough signatures of its own to place the ordinance back on the ballot in a special election in November 1981...

...Divest to point out that many companies operating in South Africa have shut down their plants in the Bay State...

...In a slick multimedia presentation, Brown displayed color slides of dozens of album covers, alerting the audience to the many traces of Satan...

...We just don't consider the running of a mill to be a proper function of the union," says Jim Smith, assistant to President Lloyd McBride...

...By divesting itself of the holdings, Massachusetts has set a precedent for states protesting the support American corporations are giving apartheid, South Africa's system of racial discrimination...

...But Satan is everywhere: No one moved...

...These mills aren't failing...

...You're talking about complete socialism," exclaimed Commissioner William Hunt...

...The mentality of punk is focused around degradation," he said...

...The history of this institution will be significantly altered by what has happened in the last year and a half," concludes Susan Wiltshire...

...Divest during the campaign...

...Her Converse job is a good one, and Langland was pleased to find it...

...The beer and beverage companies responded by plastering the city's six-packs with warnings of huge price increases...

...PITTSBURGH Two years ago, General Motors and the city of Detroit invoked the legal concept of eminent domain to boot residents out of their homes in Poletown so GM could build a Cadillac factory in the neighborhood...

...The law requires municipalities to pay a fair-market price for any property they buy under eminent domain, and operating a plant requires a significant infusion of capital...

...But the fight wasn't over...

...Opponents of the measure out-spent supporters by a margin of ten to one, but their offensive did not carry the day...

...Ford Motor Company assigned someone full-time to sway legislators and dilute the bill...

...Many people at Vanderbilt still wince at the memory, and most will remind you that it was a long time ago...

...Currently at Vanderbilt, a dispute rages over the issue of women's rights, and the university's lapse of vision in this instance is at least as willful as the lapse of 1960...

...The prime backers of the proposal are labor lawyer Staughton Lynd...

...Unruffled by this first brush with industry, supporters of the ordinance collected enough signatures to place the issue on the April 1977 ballot...

...Lawson was black...

...The coalition also brought such black groups as TransAfrica and the NAACP together with predominantly white southern Africa activists...

...On the last day of the session in January, the legislature overwhelmingly voted to override King's veto: 133 votes to 2 in the House, and 23 to 5 in the Senate...

...Her supporters have sought to publicize the case, and one of their unwitting allies has been Dean Vogeli, whose arrogance makes for bad public relations...

...one borough is so short of cash that its police force is driving around in rented cars...

...The Bottle Battle Wasn't Futile COLUMBIA, MISSOURI Litter has noticeably diminished here, thanks to the persistent efforts of Columbia residents to fend off heavy pressure from industry...

...Those statistics aroused more than a few grumblings, and they were greatly amplified by the events of June 13, 1981...

...In the three years it took her to produce those works, Langland also wrote scholarly articles, headed Vanderbilt's Women's Studies Program, and taught at least three courses a semester...

...Harvie Branscomb, Van-derbilt's chancellor at the time, defended the university's position this way: "There is no issue involved of freedom of thought, or of conscience, or of speech, or of the right of protest against social custom...

...The borough officials considered the idea, but rejected it...

...Ron Weisen, second-term president of the United Steelworkers Local 1397 at the Homestead Works...

...Divest...

...The victory was achieved after intense lobbying by members of Mass...

...These strong-arm tactics backfired...

...When the county took over private transit lines, those were failing businesses...

...Eminent domain, which gives municipalities the right to seize property for the public good, has been on the books in Pennsylvania since 1945, when the Municipality Authorities Act was approved...

...The only problem was, she didn't want to leave Vanderbilt...

...Many Columbians took their patronage to the few local merchants who cooperated with the law...

...John Zingaro (John Zingaro is a free-lance journalist based in Pittsburgh...

...Almost half of the valley's 50,000 steel workers are out of work...

...It's no accident," said Brown, that these secret codes never say "anything harmless like 'give me a cheeseburger,' or T love my mother.'" But most of the records he reversed seemed to offer nothing more than a hodgepodge of grunts and groans, though he insisted the words "Satan" and "marijuana" could be detected...

...They're puppets...

...In Youngstown, Ohio, when workers and residents began pooling funds to buy one of the mills, U.S...

...Divest was initiated by two state legislators, Representative Mel King, a leader of Boston's black community, and Senator Jack Backman, from the liberal Boston suburb of Brookline...

...Steel refused even to discuss the possibility...

...The church leadership in Pittsburgh tends to encourage the eminent domain idea...

...By then, supporters of the disposal law saw the issue not only in environmental terms, but also in terms of self-rule: Would this small community be permitted to exercise its will, even if it offended large corporations...

...In November 1982, citizens voted to approve the deposit ordinance by the largest margin of all...

...This time around, the companies hired a public relations firm, and soon Columbians were awash in slick newspaper and broadcast ads...

...But where's their inspiration coming from...

...his offense, in the eyes of the Vanderbilt administration, was to lead sit-in demonstrations at Nashville's lunch counters...

...Nationally, the number of laid-off steel workers exceeds 100,000...

...It's monumentally unfair to ask the workers to sink all their money into these companies...

...We have succeeded in closing the emotional distance between policy-making people over here and the oppressed people affected by the outrageous conditions over there...

...The issue is whether or not the university can be identified with a continuing campaign of mass disobedience of law as a means of protest...

...The public authority could then operate the plant itself or turn it over to another owner—perhaps a group of workers and residents...

...New ideas scare small people," says Rice...

...Under eminent domain, the whole community would pay for the plant...

...It drew support from such politically powerful groups as the state teachers' association and the state employees' union, both of which have pension funds that will be affected by the legislation...

...Divest also had to contend with two powerful paid lobbyists...

...A dozen new jobs have been created, and no new price increases have resulted...

...He managed to place the power and prestige of his university squarely in the path of moral and social progress— and he cloaked that decision in pompous rhetoric...

...Most Tri-State Conference members believe funding will have to come from the Federal Government...

...Last August, Monsignor Charles Owen Rice of Pittsburgh urged local officials in the tiny town of Midland to use the threat of eminent domain as leverage in dealing with a New York-based corporation that had announced plans to close the town's largest employer, a specialty-steel mill...

...Langland was dismayed...

...But if issues change over the years, institutional habits tend to remain intact...

...David P. Thelen (David P. Thelen is a professor of history at the University of Missouri-Columbia...

...Just read it to her, Vogeli had said...

...The mill-town governments themselves are strapped for revenue...

...Catholic Bishops' Campaign for Human Development has granted $35,000 to the Tri-State Conference for educating the public about creating a Steel Valley Authority...

...Mass...

...The letter—typed, single-spaced, and approximately two pages long— informed her that her tenure application was being denied...

...Mass...

...On that particular Saturday, Langland received a call from James Kilroy, the English Department's amiable and sympathetic chairman...

...Vogeli found her scholarship deficient...

...Some rock stars probably think it's a big joke," he said...

...Patricia Lee Farris (Patricia Lee Farris, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, acted as media coordinator for Mass...

...Steel Homestead Works extends across seven boroughs, a majority vote by any one borough council could set up a public authority to lay claim to the entire works, if a reason to do so is demonstrated...

...Such an undertaking, says Smith, would divert resources from "collective bargaining and political action...

...In Weirton, West Virginia, workers themselves have had to capitalize a plant takeover...

...Divest made sure the bill stipulated that the money yielded by divestiture be reinvested in Massachusetts to the extent possible...

...From today's vantage point, Branscomb's rationale sounds anachronistic at best...

...Heavy-metal bands, which cater largely to teen-age audiences, are also minions of Mephistopheles, said Brown, mentioning such groups as Kiss, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Rush, and Blue Oyster Cult...

...The beverage industry doesn't take losing lightly, though...

...This potential for public financing is "an ace in the hole," says Tri-State Conference member Charles Mc-Collester, chief steward for a large United Electrical Workers local...

...Over the next three years, Massachusetts will sell $91 million worth of stocks and bonds in twenty-seven major banks and corporations, including Exxon, Ford, Xerox, and the Bank of America...

...when she arrived, he read her a letter from Jacque Vogeli, the autocratic dean of Vanderbilt's Arts and Science College...

...The economy is going to turn around soon...

...It has bathed in shining moments from time to time and has suffered shabbier episodes as well...

...No Sympathy for the Devil MADISON, WISCONSIN Satan may be lurking in your stereo...

...Representative William Coyne, a Pittsburgh Democrat...

...And it won endorsements from the Massachusetts Council of Churches and the Catholic Archdioceses...

...Millions of containers that had previously been dumped in crowded landfills are now available for reuse and recycling...

...At the end of the demonstration, Brown asked all those who had been converted to come forward and embrace God...

...It will soon be published as a book by the University of Chicago Press...

...In the summer of 1981, however, the Missouri Supreme Court rejected the final appeal...

...It's serious stuff...

...She also left Vanderbilt—as professors eventually must if they are not promoted...

...This landmark divestment bill lifts an immoral cloud from the state of Massachusetts," says Representative Mel King...

...To generate additional support, Mass...

...Vogeli, who had approved tenure recommendations for twenty-nine of thirty-seven men and one of four women during his time as dean, ordered Kilroy not to show Langland the letter or allow her to take any notes on its contents...

...Make it in Massachusetts, not in South Africa," the group's slogan, attracted union support and enabled Mass...

...But representatives of the public employee unions rebutted these arguments, and when the bond market improved substantially in October 1982, "we demonstrated that divestment would actually yield a $2 million profit," says Dick Clapp, a statistician for Mass...

...Still, the idea of using eminent domain has the support of one of the Mon Valley's state representatives, Democrat Thomas Michlovic, as well as U.S...

...The presentation, composed by the Fellowship's national office in Gainesville, Florida, is making the rounds of the nation's college campuses...

...After six years, the campaign can point to tangible success...

...It was one of the few times in King's four-year term that the legislature beat back one of his vetoes...

...She had arrived there in 1975, taking her place in a department whose members have included such eminent Southern writers as John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren...

...He charged that the red ink on the cover of a Marvel Comic about Kiss was actually mixed with the band members' blood...

...Best of all, the streets and parks are not as cluttered with empty bottles and cans as they were only a year ago...

...On election day Columbia residents again resisted industry pressure and voted to retain the law...

...A variety of forces opposed the legislation during the two-year campaign, including, most significantly, the State Treasurer, who claimed divestiture would cause the pension funds to lose money...

...Frank O'Brien, former five-term president of Steelworkers Local 1843 in Pittsburgh, and several Catholic and Episcopal priests...

...Rock-'n'-roll has "the most blatant" links to Lucifer—such as its association with "the free sex movement" on campuses, Brown warned...

...And the apartheid regime itself was represented by a lawyer from the Washington firm of Smathers, Symington, and Herlons, which is retained at a fee of $300,000 a year to do pro-South Africa work in the United States...

...In its lobbying campaign, the coalition targeted the heads of appropriate committees, the Senate president, and the House speaker...

...she had failed, he said, to establish a national reputation in her field...

...We worked on the other key legislators by leafletting shopping areas in their districts, by asking them questions in Town Meetings, and by persuading their own churches, as well as local unions and numerous constituents, to contact them...

...voters enacted the deposit ordinance with a 53.5 per cent majority...

...In a last-ditch effort, the beverage dealers circulated petitions last summer to place the issue on the ballot for a third time...

...The beer, container, and soft drink industries won an injunction and a four-year tour through the courts...

...We found that out at the polls," says the Anheuser-Busch distributor...

...The Bay State Bails Out BOSTON A successful coalition is a rare bird on the Left, much talked about but seldom seen...

...U Editing a special issue of Soundings, a national interdisciplinary journal published at Vanderbilt, analyzing the effects of women's studies...

...So far, the plan has met with mixed reactions...

...She was, by all accounts, a popular teacher...

...Music is either from God or Satan—it's never neutral," said Gary Brown, an earnest young man who led the discussion here...

...Their group soon swelled with support from other environmentalists and civic organizations, including the League of Women Voters...

...But the most nefarious of all, he warned, are the punk rock bands...

...And the U.S...

...From there, the Tri-State Conference asked the Allegheny County Commissioners to fund a feasibility study...

...Activists in Massachusetts recently came up with one, however, and prodded the legislature to sell state pension-fund investments in companies doing business in or with South Africa...

...Though the state's action will not have any direct impact on South Africa, it marks a symbolic demonstration against apartheid...

...many of her colleagues were outraged...

...They were familiar with Langland's achievements as a scholar, which at the time of Vogeli's rkt-down, included the following: 1 Editing and contributing chapters to a book called The Voyage In, a collection of essays about the portrayal of women in literature, soon to be published by the University Press of New England...

...For example, though the U.S...

...Her British novels class had thirty-seven students when she began it in 1975 and 120 the last semester she taught it...

...in December, Coca-Cola organized a meeting of retailers, and soon thereafter, grocery stores decided not to carry canned soft drinks, and beer distributors refused to sell canned beer...

...Recently, it roared into the University of Wisconsin...

...seven were women...

...Among the bands he singled out were The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and Earth, Wind, and Fire...

...Like many states and municipalities, Columbia has been trying for some time to curb the waste generated by discarded beer and soft-drink containers...

...Elizabeth Langland and Jim Lawson each said 'no' to the 'no'—and that makes all the difference...

...The final obstacle was Edward King, the outgoing conservative governor of Massachusetts, who vetoed the bill late in 1982...

...To assist area steel workers, a group of veteran steel activists is promoting the idea of using eminent domain to establish a sort of Steel Valley Authority...

...Smaller stores gained customers and many of the larger ones, which went along with the industry boycott, suffered losses...

...For people living in the Monongahela River Valley east and south of Pittsburgh, the public good means active steel mills...

...That December, the coalition submitted a proposal to the City Council calling for a five-cent deposit on cans, bottles, and plastic containers...

...The protagonist now is Elizabeth Langland, a soft-spoken, thirty-four-year-old professor of English who left Vanderbilt last year to become head of the English department at South Carolina's Converse College...

...Under the leadership of Susan Ford Wiltshire, a tenured classics professor who arrived at Vanderbilt in 1971, a group of the university's women formed an organization called Women's Equity at Vanderbilt and began pressing for reconsideration...

...despite its reputation for academic excellence, the university had been thoroughly unimpressive in offering professorships to women...

...Langland was delighted when her colleagues recommended her for tenure in the spring of 1981—making her the first woman in the department's rich history to be offered that distinction...

...each endorsed the concept...

...The two-hour session included distribution of lyric sheets and playing of tapes to demonstrate "backward masking"—the process of transmitting hidden messages to (or from) Satan by recording in reverse...

...Brewers' Association orchestrated opposition to the ordinance, and with the help of local grocers and beverage distributors defeated the proposal before the Columbia City Council...

...Under eminent domain, the corporation would have to go to court to hold off the community...

...Last fall, however, the Tri-State Conference introduced the idea of eminent domain to four of the Mon Valley borough councils and a group of mill-town governments...

...Obviously people really, really want the law...

...T „ —Josh Kurtz (Josh Kurtz is an editorial intern at The Progressive...

...Here's to victory in other states...

...The bottle ban was supposed to take effect in the summer of 1977, but it didn't...

...The law was slated for January enforcement...

...Steeling Under Whose Domain...

...Kilroy asked her to meet him at his office...

...What they like about the eminent domain idea is that it picks up where other rescue attempts have left off...

...Frye Gaillard (Frye Gaillard, an editorial writer at the Charlotte Observer, is a graduate of Vanderbilt...

...It's almost a religion...

...It was a significant moment for Vanderbilt...

...That dark message is being passed along by members of the Maranatha Christian Fellowship in a sensational road tour entitled, "Is Rock and Roll a Highway to Hell...

...f Writing a book manuscript called Society and the Novel, which is now being considered for publication...

...The drive began in the fall of 1976 among students at the University of Missouri, who organized Columbians Against Throwaways...

...the injunction was lifted, and the law was slated for enforcement that fall...

...Columbians were left on the sidelines as Coca-Cola,, national brewers, and bottle companies brought high-powered lawyers from Atlanta, Chicago, and Kansas City to the Boone County Court House to try to set aside the community's decision...

...Still, Langland caught the gist of it...

...Now steel workers in Pennsylvania are trying to make use of the same doctrine—not to help business, but to take one over...

...Immediately after being denied tenure, Langland filed a complaint with the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and this February she filed suit against the university...

...Where the Tri-State Conference won't be going for support—either moral or financial—is to the Pittsburgh headquarters of the United Steelworkers...

...But the U.S...

...We won over the Public Service Committee chairman by arranging for twenty-seven diverse organizations to testify in favor of divestment at a packed committee hearing on the bill," says Wendy Earle, one of the lobby organizers...

...One of the worst came in 1960, when the university dismissed the Reverend James Lawson from its graduate divinity program...

...Almost fifty people showed up to hear how their favorite rock stars are doing the devil's work...

...These activists, and other supporters, make up the Tri-State Conference on Steel...

...It requires a lot of training and resources that aren't available...

...Industry spent more money on the special referendum than has ever been spent before on any Boone County election...

...Divest, a broad-based coalition...

...At the time of Langland's tenure vote, the university's Arts and Science College had 210 tenured faculty members...