Datelines
Datelines Watching the Death Train Roll hands seemed but feeble symbols of protest. We watched the train disappearing into the Western darkness, slits of machine gun turrets visible from behind....
...It's one of the most creative plans we've seen in a long time," says James P. Shannon, executive director of the General Mills Foundation, which contributed $40,000...
...Doug O'Harra (Doug O'Harra is a free-lance writer in Anchorage...
...A few yards in front of me, a banner decrying "The Nukes of Hazard" was unfurled across the tracks...
...These critics were the Council's own employees, who claim the NCC often ignores the rights of its own workers...
...Laverne Booker, a secretary who was active in the organizing drive, disagrees...
...The train kept coming, and I stepped out of the way...
...Ivan and his association are attempting to block the lease sale in the courts...
...Paul's seventeen neighborhood councils to assess taxes and expend funds...
...We proved that the project by its very nature is against the national interest, and we also showed that the project could have been carried out in a different way, on a smaller scale, using Brazilian resources which would not mortgage our foreign exchange and would develop our own capacities...
...I'm not aware of any place that has been as forthright about raising the issue as St...
...We would get no further chance to delay, even briefly, its mission...
...When the church embraces humanity, we will be included in that embrace...
...Along the tracks, dawn still tardy, candles lit the faces of people young and old crying silently...
...That claim, in turn, was disputed by a Texas newspaper that quoted an unnamed military source who said the train probably was transporting nuclear warheads...
...We get the information out through our publications, our talks, our short courses...
...Finally the train's horn sounded, its headlights glaring into our eyes...
...about sixty of us were at a railroad crossing in the town of Vancouver...
...A Base for Brazilian Dissidents RIO DE JANEIRO The white mansion with its battered wrought-iron balconies overlooking a quiet street here may have been built for a Nineteenth Century coffee baron...
...Management at the Methodist Board also has taken a harsh view of employee organizing efforts...
...The workers "don't understand their employer," an official complains...
...NCC: Practice what you preach, the demonstrators' buttons demanded...
...Now that they've returned to Brazil, they spend much of their time in "church-related" work, says Betinho, whose political involvement began with the Catholic student movement in the late 1950s...
...Seals and whales—including the endangered gray whale—migrate through or near both areas...
...They preached to management from the Council's own past statements, including this 1954 declaration: "The churches themselves own property, invest funds, and employ labor...
...It's a diet, and a lifestyle, they are proud of...
...Often their policies have been no better than those which the church condemns in the secular world...
...Lawrence Island village of Gambell, charges that the Federal Government violated Alaska law by not considering native rights in planning the Norton Sound sale...
...Daniel M. Berman (Daniel M. Berman, the author of "Death on the Job," currently lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he is completing a book on occupational health...
...The influential role of Rand has itself raised criticism...
...PAUL, MINNESOTA City leaders here are considering a novel proposal to revamp local government—one that would allow elected neighborhood councils to assume broad responsibility for deciding how city money should be spent in their areas...
...Department of Housing and Urban Development, and more than one million dollars from local foundations and corporations...
...Council workers won pay increases totaling 22.5 per cent over the three-year period, though Holcomb says that still leaves them considerably behind the New York City average for workers in similar jobs...
...We're being set up for failure...
...Betinho is a former political exile, as are the other two co-founders of IBASE, Marcos Ar-ruda and Carlos Afonso...
...Now a District 65 organizer says the union is aiming for larger pay increases than those won by the National Council's employees...
...Eleven people in Colorado and six in Washington were arrested for refusing to get out of the way...
...Talks moved slowly at first, as both sides waited to see what would happen a few flights down...
...This decision will be made only after citywide discussion, he says...
...The mayor is vague about whether city government would give neighborhood councils lump sums out of municipal coffers...
...It's very hard to give up the notion that the whole menu of city services isn't going to be there...
...No, these were not Jerry Falwell's troops, summoned once again to do battle with the liberal ecumenical agency...
...That the train didn't even seem to slow down, although I was clearly visible in its path, came as a shock...
...The white train rumbled by...
...Latimer is also considering handing some municipal services to private industry...
...If they have a massive blowout, you can kiss the fishery goodbye...
...The public would, in theory, decide which services are essential and which are not...
...Suddenly there were no words...
...The move toward decentralized decision-making was conceived by Democratic Mayor George Latimer and the Rand Corporation, which Latimer hired late last year to analyze St...
...It is U.S...
...The employee association also criticized the church group for publicly backing the expansion of day-care programs for working mothers while refusing to set up such a system for its own employees...
...A certain scene kept replaying: The train rushes toward me...
...And the workers suggested that racism and sexism led management to underpay its workforce, which is about three-quarters women and 60 per cent nonwhite...
...By December, the Rand Corporation is to produce a detailed study for implementing the plan...
...Last spring, the firms bid $798 million for the right to explore and develop almost 900,000 acres of outer continental shelf on two lease sites, Norton Sound and St...
...The first white car behind the locomotive rolled by, then another and another...
...What we're really talking about is a public discussion of what citizenship means in the 1980s...
...A similar controversy surrounds the St...
...Even if there is a public debate after the Rand study has been made, how can a volunteer citizens' group argue against figures that have gone into their computers in Santa Monica [Rand headquarters...
...Founded two years ago in the midst of Brazil's abertura, the "opening up" of political freedoms, IBASE has published thirty-one books on a wide range of domestic social issues...
...We don't want to direct the social movement," says Herbet de Souza (Betinho), one of IBASE's co-founders...
...Police were preventing protesters from blocking the train's right-of-way...
...The Latimer-Rand project has its supporters, however...
...Today, equipped with an Apple II computer and a Xerox copier, it serves as the office of IBASE, the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis...
...But critics are wary...
...At home, I could not sleep for a long time...
...Allison Engel (Allison Engel is Middle West editor for Pacific News Service...
...We do not become directly involved in politics...
...For the first time in our history, the church itself has become a factor in the delegiti-mation of the established order, in the process of political transformation...
...Its closest parallels in the United States are the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., a progressive think-tank that publishes papers and holds seminars, and the Midwest Academy in Chicago, which trains community organizers...
...We want a delay until we can be sure nothing is going to happen to the fish...
...The people and villages I represent are seeking to protect forever the fish, wildlife, and fauna that form the lifeblood of the Yupik Eskimo people...
...In the meantime, the idea is being applauded, ridiculed, questioned, and dissected in newspaper editorials and at neighborhood meetings...
...We've had very little contact with the outside and have always maintained our life without disruption...
...Those remaining in public hands, he says, will be required to operate more like businesses...
...The sites are in fragile marine environments...
...Paul...
...Our candles aglow in the crisp spring air, we waited for two hours...
...The popular movement has very little information, and their questions are almost infinite...
...Jerry Jenkins, the community participation coordinator for the city, says many neighborhood organizers have questions about the plan...
...Barbara Yuill, a Washington free-lance writer, assisted with research for this story...
...But now oil and gas companies are moving in, threatening Stebbins and other communities that ring the Bering Sea...
...The white train was estimated to contain about 100 hydrogen bombs that would be carried on a new Trident submarine, capable of transforming hundreds of cities into thermonuclear infernos...
...The death trains are rolling...
...But if the Government did send a trainload of empty boxes halfway across the country, the nuclear shell-game mentality is no longer being used just to confuse the Russians...
...A very few institutions monopolize its production and distribution...
...Domestic business is starved for orders and credit, while international banks continue to demand austere policies to extract repayment of Brazil's $85 billion debt...
...Would rich neighborhoods fare better than poor ones...
...In 1980, the retail value of the fish caught in the Bering Sea was estimated to be more than $2.6 billion...
...So far, Rand has suggested such safeguards as allowing poorer households to pay less for services...
...Now the contract dispute is over, but animosity remains...
...By 3 a.m...
...The train was past...
...The sales are part of Interior Secretary James Watt's accelerated five-year plan to open the U.S...
...We wish to make sure that changes are done without destroying our way of life, our values, and our desire to continue to depend on the land," says Peoples...
...Under the plan, city revenues would continue to pay for some services, while user fees or pay-as-you-go tolls would finance others...
...IBASE's goal is "the democratization of information," he adds...
...We're not out to stop development," says Gene Peltola, vice president of the association...
...Brazil's economy is in terrible shape, with unemployment rising, and an annual inflation rate in excess of 100 per cent...
...The union will have a "great positive effect," she says...
...He blames the staff association for much of the delay in signing the contract, suggesting that the unionists took "too personally" the tough language that flew across the bargaining table...
...Watching PORTLAND, OREGON A special train passed near our home this spring, traveling from a factory that assembles nuclear bombs in the Texas panhandle...
...asks Kiki Sonnen, a community organizer...
...Paul," says the city finance director, Peter Hames...
...In a few hours the train—changing its route in an attempt to dodge protesters— would be passing about a dozen miles north of our home in Portland...
...As it stands now, he adds, "the people believe that their environment and resources are in jeopardy...
...That area is one of the most productive in the world," says Henry Mitchell, president of the Bering Sea Fishermen's Association...
...It's a lot of hard work...
...We were dealing with a military mindset, the kind that caused Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a mentality of murder...
...But we want to get involved and get the protections built into the notice of sale...
...They "no longer work out of a sense of understanding of the church...
...A large oil spill would "eliminate not only the salmon, it'll eliminate us too," says Borgie Larson, president of the False Pass village council...
...IBASE is a dissident voice, criticizing the programs of the Brazilian government and offering economic alternatives...
...We've survived without assistance for a long time," says Peoples...
...Organizing the Lord's Workers NEW YORK CITY Angry protesters crowded into New York's "God Box," the drab, twenty-story Manhattan office building that houses the National Council of Churches (NCC) and many of its member denominations...
...coastline to private interests...
...It has attracted $ 150,000 from the Ford Foundation, $100,000 from the U.S...
...We won't be puppets pulled by a string...
...Residents fear that the oil and gas drilling will jeopardize their subsistence economy...
...Somehow, I had expected it to stop, at least long enough for me to be dragged out of the way by the police...
...A call came to our house late one night...
...Several hundred people camped along the railroad tracks in scores of communities, watching a locomotive pull ghostly-white boxcars toward the new Trident submarine base in northwestern Washington state...
...You go out onto the ice and you have to wait," says Tessie Peoples, a resident...
...We want to be of service to it...
...That question is often asked here, so an advisory committee of private citizens and public officials will be working with Rand representatives to come up with possible answers...
...What we did was analyze this $60 billion mining project in great detail, using the government's own documents," says Betinho...
...In communities across America's heartland, citizens armed only with candles and their consciences are also being officially viewed as the enemy...
...As far as our people are concerned, Norton Sound is our supermarket," says Ivan M. Ivan, president of the Association of Village Council Presidents, representing fifty-six villages in southwestern Alaska...
...A few days later, one newspaper quoted unidentified "military intelligence sources" as saying the white train had been a decoy, carrying only empty boxes...
...There has to be a different way" to settle such problems, Carillo says...
...The villagers want assurances that their well-being and their culture will be guaranteed...
...Still, IBASE's work clearly expresses a strong political point of view...
...The banner fell as the train's cowcatcher brushed it aside...
...And if they do build in safeguards," he asks, "how many hoops do you have poor people jump through in order to get services...
...Why should it surprise you...
...Norman Solomon (Norman Solomon is co-author of "Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation...
...IBASE has been most controversial in the area of Brazil's national economic policy, particularly with the publication of Carajas: Brazil Mortgages Its Future, a study of the massive Carajas mining venture...
...I step out of the way, letting it pass...
...Jerry Serfling, business agent for the St...
...They angrily insisted, and management vehemently denied, that the Council—strongly pro-labor in public pronouncements—adopted a "corporate-style labor relations strategy" to destroy the NCC workers' association...
...And what responsible government means in an era of fiscal crises...
...George Basin...
...The two sides settled their disagreements in April, four months after the workers' previous contract expired and just a few hours before a final strike deadline...
...We think it will give all cities some examples to follow as they are shifting from tax-based financing to other methods...
...The small candles in our Northern Light in St...
...Government policy neither to confirm nor deny that nuclear bombs are actually aboard those specially designed train cars...
...A Lease on Life STEBBINS, ALASKA Half the year, the people of this remote village on Alaska's western coast risk the shifting, windswept ice of Norton Sound to hunt seals and other marine mammals...
...The fight was "a strain on both parties," says management's chief negotiator and personnel director, Emilio Carillo Jr...
...Upstairs from the NCC offices, the religious labor wars continue at the Methodist Board of Global Ministries, where workers voted late last year for representation by District 65, the clerical and professional arm of the United Auto Workers...
...The Latimer-Rand proposal would cut back city-provided services, while empowering St...
...Management's bargaining team— including a male Hispanic personnel director and his assistant, a black woman—said such charges were ridiculous...
...And they were not fashionable neo-conservatives, accusing the church leaders of being soft on communism...
...Paul local of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, says he knows of no equitable user-fee system anywhere...
...We will not work with or for the federal government, which represents interests opposed to the people's interests...
...a friend asked...
...Our wages start out lower," explains the organizer...
...Particularly upsetting to the workers were the Council's initial proposals to freeze wages for a year and weaken the lapsed contract's affirmative-action clause...
...Another suit, filed by Stebbins and the St...
...If we are really going to let the neighborhoods choose services, what happens if we all decide to use each other's libraries and close our own...
...A suit filed in March contends the leasing violates four Federal acts protecting Native rights, three constitutional amendments, and common law...
...But we do not see it as our role to lead a campaign around Carajas, and thus substitute ourselves for the authentic leaders of the social movement," says Betinho...
...A police officer pushed me away from the tracks...
...we will be treated like human beings...
...environmentalists, commercial fishing groups, and Aleutian villages have sued to block development of the leased tracts...
...What emerges from these works is a sharp critique of Brazilian society and an impassioned plea for a redistribution of wealth and power...
...Whatever version is finally adopted, the debate so far has been highly unusual...
...Paul's finances...
...And as long as abertura continues, this progressive organization may take on an increasingly influential role in Brazil's continuing social ferment...
...The 350 villagers of Stebbins rely on seal, salmon, and reindeer for the bulk of their food supply...
...It's like going to work from nine to five...
...The contract is "the best we can get without a strike," says staff associatkm President Desma Holcomb...
...For minutes we stood in absolute silence, stunned...
...Stay back—for your own safety," he said...
...George Basin sale...
...IBASE has also "worked with trade unions, slum neighborhood associations, and with groups tied to the opposition political parties," he says...
...In the course of the contract fight, the workers have staged candlelight vigils, prayer services, and even a "sick-out...
...Steve Askin (Steve Askin is Washington bureau chief for the National Catholic Reporter...
Vol. 47 • July 1977 • No. 7
