Datelines

...As if to demonstrate Gilbert's claim, an innovative Seattle theater, The Empty Space, commissioned some one-act plays by local writers this spring, and three of the plays dealt with nuclear war...

...Wells, a member of Performers and Artists for Nuclear Disarmament, settled in Seattle last year, after working in theaters in New York and throughout the country...

...As the nuns became acquainted with the people of Bennettsville, they heard some of the Hanes workers complain about pain in their arms, wrists, and hands...

...The nuns began to meet workers from other Hanes plants...

...And still they get no answer...

...Benally's question, What will become of our life?, has been asked for more than 150 years by Indians whose rights have been sacrificed to "progress...

...So far, some 400 families have voluntarily moved, mostly to Flagstaff, fifty miles to the southwest, and neighboring towns...

...I know why the Government is tearing my people from their place of birth," says Pauline Whitesinger, resident of Big Mountain...

...Even afterwards, the pain can continue, leaving the wrist permanently weakened...

...We found women who were laid off because they were so sick," says Sister Imelda, speaking with a soft Texas accent...

...My apartment here is $300 a month...

...I think that's invidious discrimination or denial of equal protection, that they're forcing Indians to move where they have never before forced non-Indians or Caucasians to move...

...Though the company's move may be largely public relations, Sister Imelda is hopeful that some good will come of it...

...She settled in this dirt-poor town of 9,000 people with an unemployment rate that exceeds 20 per cent...

...Armistice helped launch a small-craft flotilla last year to blockade the nuclear-armed U.S.S...

...They know nothing of the witchhunts and the blacklists that left an earlier generation of artists so scared and apolitical...

...But in 1974, Congress passed the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act, requiring the land to be partitioned between the two tribes...

...We plead for help but get no answer...

...We would like to develop additional areas on Black Mesa and market that coal for the mutual advantage of ourselves and the tribes," says Gary Melvin, senior manager of environmental control for Peabody...

...The Play's sea'ttle Loretta Endless is a beautician...

...John Gilbert is the dean of Seattle actors, performing here for twenty-five years...

...This spring he organized a benefit for Medical Aid for El Salvador...

...There will be no wool to sell or for the women to weave...

...While pursuing her "career in beauty," she discovers that nuclear war is very bad for human hair...

...Her condition was diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome, a disease similar to tendonitis...

...We need the mountain to live...

...It's a non-threatening way of dramatizing the issue and helping people to start dealing with it," says Lovesong author Ed Mast...

...Actors, musicians, and poets put on an all-night performance marathon in a church—and raised $4,200...

...In the course of their investigations, the nuns, members of the Texas-based Sisters of Divine Providence, also learned that Hanes had been cited by the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1980 for allegedly subjecting workers at its Galax, Virginia, mill to "excessive muscular stress...

...Endless is actually a character in Permanent Wave, one of a half-dozen new plays on the Thing the bill here commemorating the thirty-eighth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima...

...This year, Living Newsreal has been performing Lovesong, a distillation of the blockade experience, in living rooms throughout the Seattle area...

...Also we need the sheep to live...

...In addition, Kazanjian points out, the local Trident submarine base makes the threat "so immediate" that actors can hardly avoid thinking about nuclear war...

...With the help of labor and religious groups, the two nuns set up the Citizens Commission on Justice at Hanes, a national panel whose members include Studs Terkel, Bella Abzug, Julian Bond, and Gloria Steinem...

...Meeting little success with local management, the nuns contacted officials of Consolidated Foods Corporation, Hanes's parent company in Chicago...

...Information about the extent of the ailment" may finally be researched and disseminated, she says...

...asks Navajo Alice Ben-ally, sixty-two...

...We knew they were after these minerals, but the only way they could get their hands on it was to make it look like there was a big fight between the two tribal councils—which the Government set up," says Banyacaya...

...Navajo leader Kee Shey is from Big Mountain, a section of the tribal land where resistance to relocation runs high...

...The Government's relocation effort may make it easier for Peabody and other companies to expand their mining ventures...

...The pay is on a piece-work basis, and averages about $4.50 an hour...

...She told the nuns her wrists felt like "wrung chicken necks flopping around...

...Though no one of the stature of Bertolt Brecht has yet to emerge, political theater is alive and well, and living in Seattle...

...Unconventional Mission bennettsville, south carolina When her stint teaching sugar plantation workers in Louisiana ended two years ago, Sister Imelda Maurer looked for a new home base...

...In New York it was $750...

...But an informal survey compiled by the nuns with the help of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union turned up 137 apparent cases among just 2,000 workers...

...The Government has ordered fences erected, livestock reduced, and residents relocated...

...What will become of our life...

...Sharon Marble (Sharon Marble is a free-lance writer in Flagstaff, Arizona...

...it has two extensive mines operating at Black Mesa, located mainly within the reservation...

...DATELINES Off the Reservation flagstaff, arizona In the high desert country of northeastern Arizona, the Government is moving 9,000 Navajos and 100 Hopi off their traditional land, paving the way for private energy companies to expand operations...

...Ohio when it entered Puget Sound...

...The Navajos and the Hopi have lived together in Arizona since 1882, when the Government established a reservation for them...

...There's a lot of potential for change...

...Peabody Coal, one of the many energy companies operating on the reservation, has high stakes in the resources of the area...

...Hanes, the leading hosiery maker in the country, was ignoring workers' complaints and hampering disability claims, the nuns concluded...

...This is the first time there's been removal of people," says Flagstaff attorney Dale Itschner, who has represented some Navajos facing relocation...

...If the sheep are gone, we will have no mutton to eat...

...Thomas Banyacaya has been an interpreter for the Hopis since 1948...

...Hanes, in turn, established a medical task force to study the incidence of wrist and hand ailments in its plants, and the company has put together a council on social responsibility to advise management on worker and community issues...

...I will not relocate even if I am forced to...

...The young people who are coming along are especially active," says Gilbert...

...You feel that your one voice can make a difference," says John Kazanjian, assistant artistic director for The Empty Space, because "the population [in Seattle] isn't so densely concentrated...

...If enough damage is done to the nerves, tendons, and joints in the hand, surgery is required...

...They want to get rid of us, but we will not leave what our forefathers and the Holy People have given us...

...The factory, employing more than 500 people, runs three shifts twenty-four hours a day turning out thousands of pantyhose a week...

...It wasn't long before Maurer and her partner, Sister Bernie Galvin, became concerned about the working conditions in the local Hanes hosiery plant...

...Joe Adcock (JoeAdcock is theater critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer...

...Your artist has got to be aware of the nuclear threat," says Rebecca Wells, the actress-writer who wrote and performs in Permanent Wave...

...The company was fined a mere $100 by OSHA...

...Our elected officials don't care about our situation...

...If there were fewer people living on the land, there would be fewer left to protest the mining projects...

...Theater in Seattle is plentiful and diverse, and it carries a remarkable strain of political concern...

...They were too weak to control...

...It holds our prayers...

...Through propaganda, they spread to the world's attention that there is a Hopi-Navajo fight over this land which is actually not true...

...The nuns set out to improve the working conditions at the plant, but as soon as company managers found out about their concerns, a notice went up on the mill bulletin board, branding the two as union organizers and warning workers not to talk to them...

...She recognized the symptoms of tendonitis, a disorder caused by the stress of graspDAVIO ROLFE Sister Imelda Maurer tending to workers at Hanes hosiery plant ing, turning, and twisting at a very high speed over a long period of time...

...Mary Ellen schoonmaker (Mary Ellen Schoonmaker is a free-lance writer based in Brooklyn, New York...

...He, too, is suspicious, blaming the Government and the private energy companies for inventing excuses to move the Indians off tribal land...

...The threat of nuclear war is a very important part of life now, and the artist acknowledges the age he or she lives in...

...I think Seattle artists find it easier to get involved in political concerns than New Yorkers do because you have to hustle so damn hard in New York just to pay the bills," she says...

...A Seattle peace group, Armistice, has a "theater chapter" called the Living News-real...

...The nuns were told that company records for the year ending July 1982 showed only twenty-nine cases of tendonitis among 18,000 workers in Hanes knitwear and hosiery plants...

...The company nurses would tell them they must have slept with the windows open or were worried about something," Maurer recalls...

...Rose Bennett, thirty-one, who worked in the Hanes mill at Rockingham, North Carolina, for twelve years, had been sewing up to 1,000 stock-1 ings a day—until her arms be- j came paralyzed...

...Big Mountain is for the people who live here," says Shey...

...There is a large subsurface coal deposit and other energy resources where the Big Mountain people live...

...The Government claims it is relocating Indians to resolve an alleged dispute between the Hopi and Navajo Tribal Councils, but many of the Indians say there is another reason...

...They tried to freeze us out," Maurer says...

...More than 300 machines whirl at top speed, knitting stockings, stitching up the feet, and sending them to production workers—all women—who sew the legs together...

...Gradually, she turns into something else: a peace activist...