Datelines
al., K. Sullivan et
Why Scientists Step Out STANFORD, CALIFORNIA "Welcome to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy," proclaims a wooden sign at the main...
...In the United States, it controls almost half the retail market...
...They go back out into the suburbs and kick up their heels...
...Government to Marcos for the continuing use of air force and naval bases in the Philippines...
...As the debate continues, the ranks of protesters are swelling...
...Our actions delayed the bankruptcy for six months, and we're not finished yet," says Rachel Duell, a nurse at the hospital and a spokesperson for the All-Peoples Congress...
...Wherever Diokno speaks in the United States, the goons appear...
...And in June, a Federal judge declared the Medical Center bankrupt and scheduled a meeting of creditors to settle its debts...
...Make this your last drop," they said, and the drop was painted blood red...
...Coffee is the number one source of revenue for both governments," says Ann Lor-etan, national spokesperson for the campaign...
...Lawrence Livermore Lab has always had a political mission," explains Mary James, an engineering physicist...
...cities, as well as in Canada and Japan, urging the company to stop purchasing "bloody coffee...
...Most of the 90,000 treated yearly could not afford a private hospital," says Reda Bacon, president of Local 2254 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME...
...General Foods has refused to meet with religious activists on the issue, but campaign organizers say they will not call for a formal boycott of the company until all channels of communication have been tried...
...The Marcos Goon Squad Comes Calling WASHINGTON, D.C...
...For forty years, scientists there have been designing nuclear weapons for America's arsenal...
...In both countries, only 5 per cent of the coffee growers dominate production, and government policies favor the largest landowners...
...Jersey City, just across the Hudson River from New York City, is among the twenty poorest areas in the country: The official unemployment rate stands at 16 per cent, and it is twice as high in the black and Latino communities...
...Let's put people on the board who care about these services葉he people who use them...
...General Foods sells more coffee than any other company in the world...
...At issue is a $6.2 million research proposal submitted to the Center by the nation's three nuclear weapons development labs有awrence Liv-ermore in California, and Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico庸or the development of nuclear-pumped x-ray laser weapons to be used in space...
...The War Grinds On CHICAGO Huge signs depicting blue cans of Maxwell House coffee recently greeted employees and passersby at twenty-eight General Foods plants around the world...
...In May, in-terfaith vigils were held here and in other U.S...
...When some Filipino film stars turned up at the Washington Convention Center recently, so did the goons, crunching up leaflets the anti-Marcos pickets were handing out...
...military aid, is being used to fund the war in Central America...
...They would come and take our pictures on the picket lines葉hat was the extent of the harassment...
...But it's a nervous smile...
...Any political statement a person can make to reverse that likelihood is important...
...But a couple of hired thugs recently appeared at a press conference organized by a group of Filipinos opposed to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos...
...The lab has always been devoted to "pure" research and has never accepted classified projects, a tradition that has attracted many scientists eager to avoid weapons research...
...The nationalized Salva-doran coffee industry provided $268 million to the government of El Salvador in 1980, and the government of Guatemala received $ 155 million through a coffee export tax...
...Carolina Mancuso (Carolina Mancuso, a freelance writer in New York City, is affiliated with the All-Peoples Congress...
...The director of the lab says the research proposal will be evaluated solely on its "scientific merits," even though two-thirds of his staff opposes the project...
...They did not return...
...A Public Hospital Going Private JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY Public hospital care can no longer be taken for granted here, residents are discovering...
...The presence of the goons is intended to frighten members of the Filipino community into silence, the activists say...
...When the thugs show up, the anti-Marcos people keep an eye on them and smile knowingly to one another...
...And, according to John Harris, director of operations for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, many people are beginning to question the overall role universities have traditionally played in the arms race...
...The press conference, sponsored by the Congress Task Force of the Coalition Against the Marcos Dictatorship, was called to protest the latest payment of $ 1 billion by the U.S...
...In January, the coalition prevailed in Federal Court, successfully arguing that the government cannot declare part of itself bankrupt...
...The men had been leaders in a predominantly Filipino cannery workers' union...
...More than 2,000 Stanford students have signed petitions, and the student senate has gone on record against the weapons contract...
...The board, however, re-filed for bankruptcy under a separate section of the law...
...it would entail development and testing of high-speed x-ray detectors designed to evaluate nuclear explosions...
...This is not a typical setting for political drama, but many of the Center's scientists and staff have recently signed petitions, called meetings, and otherwise protested the role they have been asked to play in the arms race...
...Opposing this research is the loudest political statement I can make...
...Odette Taverna of the Congress Task Force says the presence of such thugs at anti-Marcos activities has increased since the dictator's visit to the United States last September...
...But the difference here is that people are fighting back...
...The protest signs are part of a new international ecumenical campaign to persuade General Foods not to buy coffee from El Salvador and Guatemala until human rights violations in those countries come to an end...
...The faculty senate has called for a study on the volume and character of Stanford's weapons work...
...The directors of the Jersey City Medical Center葉he only public hospital serving one million people in the surrounding county預re trying to turn the hospital into a private, non-profit operation...
...When we had pickets during the Philippine defense minister's visit, the Philippine consulate had its own pickets and their security and goons hovering around...
...Arthur Jones (Arthur Jones is a contributing editor of The Progressive...
...Robert Mayer, a twenty-five-year-old vacuum technician at the lab, would be responsible for overseeing the construction and maintenance of a new electron beam line if the research proposal were approved...
...But the new proposal would change all that...
...I would have to be schizophrenic to build that beam line...
...Now they actually have counteraction...
...The board of managers is made up of people who don't care anything about Jersey City," says the Reverend Walter Hankerson, pastor of Welcome Baptist Church...
...But there is some concern the harassment could take a more serious turn...
...To remain neutral on this issue is to be in compliance with that political mission...
...The roughnecks in double-knits muttered to the woman checking press credentials that they'd been sent by a man named Peter or Pierre...
...Michael McConnell (Michael McConnell, a freelance writer in Chicago, has written for the National Catholic Reporter, Other Side, and Christianity and Crisis...
...Guerrillas in both countries are burning coffee crops to cripple the economies and bring their governments to the negotiating table...
...Coffee, along with U.S...
...The closing of city hospitals has reached epidemic proportions nationwide in recent years," observes Bill Sullivan, a Medical Center ambulance driver and AFSCME steward...
...The coalition hopes to place a health-care referendum on the November ballot to keep the hospital operating at full capacity and staff and to establish a governing board that represents the community...
...According to the Filipino-activists, many of the "security" men who pop up uninvited at various events are members of the Marcos entourage who remained behind in Washington after Marcos departed...
...Now they're trying to inject their politics into my work...
...At the press podium was Philippine Senator Jose Diokno, "the most widely respected opposition figure in the Philippines today," according to conference organizers...
...AFSCME joined with two groups to keep the hospital public葉he United Nurses Organization, representing more than two-thirds of the 1,800 hospital employees, and the All-Peoples Congress, a national organization that includes tenants, clergy, and senior citizens...
...Before the Marcos visit," says Taverna, "there was nothing overt...
...But instead of the usual motto, "Good to the last drop," the cans carried a different message...
...But opposition of labor and community organizations blocked the attempt to change the status of the hospital...
...Why Scientists Step Out STANFORD, CALIFORNIA "Welcome to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy," proclaims a wooden sign at the main entrance to the 480-acre site in the rolling foothills of the San Francisco peninsula...
...It seems to me that the world is going in the wrong direction, toward a nuclear confrontation," says Roger Miller, an accelerator physicist who has spent twenty-two years at the Stanford Center...
...They are urging consumers to appeal to General Foods to stop buying Guatemalan and Salvadoran coffee...
...Those involved in anti-Marcos demonstrations are painfully aware of the murders of two Filipino activists in Seattle two years ago...
...Miller has joined some 300 colleagues in signing a petition that urges the Center to reject the laser weapons contract...
...Last December, the hospital's board of managers filed for bankruptcy, laid off more than 200 workers, and shut down three floors of the Medical Center葉he first steps in trying to recast the hospital as a private institution...
...When we met with Stanford President Donald Kennedy," recalls Mayer, "I told him that working on a beam line for a nuclear weapons lab would result in actual mental harm for me, given my conscience...
...Kathleen Sullivan (Kathleen Sullivan is a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay area...
...For fifty years, the Medical Center has taken in patients regardless of their ability to pay, treating some 16,000 inpatients and 70,000 out-patients each year, many of whom are poor...
...The gravelly-voiced senator, imprisoned under martial law for two years without charges, was until last year the chairman of the Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines...
...They were turned away at the door and told to come back with passes, which they said had been "unfortunately left at home...
...The research would take place at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lab, which depends for its work on electron beams from the Center...
...There's nothing in the District of Columbia's yellow pages under "Rent-A-Threat" or "Goons To Let...
...In response to the church vigils urging General Foods to cease trade with Guatemala and El Salvador, the company sent a memo to all its offices, declaring, "Business corporations have neither the right nor the competence to make such policy determinations...
Vol. 47 • August 1983 • No. 8
