Datelines
Blodgett, Donna Lauren Gold, Bruce Johansen, and Nancy
DATELINES A Guatemalan Woman's Grief NEW YORK CITY When Irma Leticia Chavez speaks, she gesticulates with one arm and moves her other shoulder as if it, too, had an arm attached. Six years ago,...
...Despite its successes, some authors are skeptical of the concept of unionizing freelancers...
...Today, Chavez repeats the stories matter-of-factly...
...Nancy Blodgett (Nancy Blodgett, a free-lance writer specializing in the law, is a member of the National Writers Union...
...They complained about misplaced manuscripts, interminable delays, and the uncertainty of payment...
...Lawyers for the company said he was infringing on the firm's Indian logo copyright...
...I told [editor Robert] Roth about it and he just shrugged his shoulders," DeMuth recalled...
...She was concerned, instead, with raising a family—"a great family," she says, "very honest, dedicated to work, the boys dedicated to their studies...
...When she was released from the hospital, they moved to Guatemala City, but there was no escape...
...Mutual of Omaha does not insure against nuclear war...
...After a few days, it was ripped down...
...Six years ago, she lost the arm and parts of her stomach, liver, and thigh when a member of Guatemala's army attacked her with a shotgun...
...Mutual of Omaha, says Novak, "is claiming that the Mutant shirt is hurting business...
...There she tried to avert politically motivated firings by the head of the maintenance department, Juan Humberto Castillo Vasquez...
...Chavez traces her troubles to her position as head of housekeeping and food services at a hospital in Huehue-tenango...
...And they plan to push their organizing efforts into the publishing houses...
...When he tried to have twenty-seven workers, including Chavez, dismissed in 1978, she effectively blocked the firings...
...The union's ranks will grow, says Eagan, "as writers see us making gains, and see that we are determined to succeed...
...Even though Mutual has unlimited resources," he says, "I'll win because I have a very strong case...
...But the union's leaders remain optimistic...
...Novak says he used the Indian symbol to illustrate that "the first American" might become "the last American...
...Hoping to find her son, Chavez returned to Guatemala...
...Donna Lauren Gold (Donna Lauren Gold is a freelance writer in New York City...
...Novak maintains his "Mutant of Omaha" campaign is free speech protected by the First Amendment...
...But when she speaks of the search for her son, her voice betrays her ordeal...
...Conditions for writers are execrable," says Andrea Eagan, president of the union, "and we are the only group committed to changing those conditions...
...When the world's in ashes, we'll have you covered," Novak's goods proclaim...
...The company was quick to assert that one of its employees had engaged in the vandalism as a private act, not on orders from the corporate officers...
...In response, he came looking for her one night with three other men and a double-barreled shotgun...
...It now has local affiliates in a dozen cities, including Boston, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Tulsa, and Washington, D.C...
...There are some 25,000 free-lance writers in the United States...
...Chavez is currently seeking international support for her search, and came to New York City last June to testify before a United Nations panel on political prisoners...
...Children of six years old write fraude [fraud] in chalk on the walls...
...He takes as his model the company's American Indian trademark—but his version has singed skin and wears bandages...
...Jerry DeMuth said the paper not only lost part of an article of his, but never bothered to pay him for it...
...Buoyed by its Mother Jones victory, the National Writers Union is negotiating with Ms...
...Amounts for the other ten are in dispute...
...Chavez received threats warning her and her family not to press their case in court...
...There she heard the gruesome details of Guatemala's war against its people...
...They say that writers don't show much solidarity for one another and would rather see their bylines in print or their books published than join with other writers in a refusal to work...
...Last Christmas, she sent a message to the Guatemalan Minister of the Interior...
...She received no news of their son until 1983, when a young man who had escaped from the Polytechnic School, an infamous clandestine jail, told her that he and young Chavez had been prisoners together...
...Writers Pen a New Chapter CHICAGO A group of Chicago free-lance writers were swapping horror stories about working for The Reader, the city's popular weekly newspaper...
...Fearing for their lives, Chavez and the rest of her family fled to Mexico...
...This is the first time writers have ever taken collective action to deal with a situation that comes up frequently: magazines closing their doors...
...They recounted their tortures: bags of insecticide placed over their heads, nylon thread tied on their testicles and pulled, slowly...
...During the summer, Novak posted a billboard carrying that message within view of Mutual's headquarters...
...They have enlisted some heavyweights in their movement, including media critic Ben Bagdikian, poet Dennis Brutus, political writer Daniel Ellsberg, poet Carolyn Forche, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, journalist Seymour Hersh, and author Jessica Mitford...
...Shortly after returning home from two-and-a-half years in the hospital, Chavez suffered another blow: Her youngest son was abducted by the Guatemalan military...
...And he was sexually aggressive toward female workers...
...Bruce Johansen (Bruce Johansen is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha...
...To redress their grievances against The Reader, the freelancers decided to join the fledgling National Writers Union, which boasts 2,500 members...
...is notorious for paying late, overediting, not responding, and never sending back manuscripts," says Eagan...
...When The Rebel, a shortlived magazine owned by Larry Flynt, shut down, about fifty writers who were awaiting payment turned to the union for help, says organizing secretary John Dinges...
...The union traces its origins to a writers' conference hosted by The Nation magazine in 1981...
...He has not been seen since...
...The union's greatest accomplishment to date is a contract signed in April 1983 with Mother Jones magazine...
...Castillo Vasquez, a member of the army, had sought to force out staff members and replace them with people obligated to him...
...He points to the nearby Strategic Air Command Headquarters and argues that his parody underscores the futility of attempting to survive nuclear war...
...Even if The Reader's regular writers organized and didn't write for it for a year, The Reader would find other writers" and withstand a strike, says Don Rose, a Chicago free-lancer and political consultant...
...I am not political, but I am certain now of what is happening in my country," she says...
...Frank Novak, the company's nemesis, began selling "Mutant of Omaha" T-shirts several months ago and soon diversified into coffee mugs, billboards, and even television spots...
...The company sued Novak in September to prevent him from selling his wares...
...She met former prisoners, many of whom had been kidnapped as her son had been...
...Shortly thereafter, Chavez's son, Jose Antonio Rodriguez, eighteen, was abducted from a bus stop...
...magazine...
...Chavez was no dangerous revolutionary...
...Novak continues to sell his full line of "Mutant of Omaha" products...
...After all, it's not every day that I get sued by a multi-billion dollar corporation...
...Mother Jones also agreed to pay the author of an assigned article 25 per cent of his or her fee within ten days of delivery of the article...
...And instead of life insurance, he purports to be selling "nuclear holocaust insurance...
...The contract raised minimum rates for free-lance articles by 25 per cent, to a range of $1,000 to $1,500 for a feature story...
...Her family is now a source of grief...
...Those who can't see can hear, and those who can't hear can see...
...A Matter of Mutual Concern OMAHA, NEBRASKA Mutual of Omaha, the insurance conglomerate, has filed suit to halt the sale of some unwanted advertising—an an-tinuclear parody of its business...
...The total settlement was over $50,000...
...Even the blind know what is going on...
...People would look at her, she says, and declare, "The children of Dona Letie are so educated, so well behaved, one can really trust them...
...Now that's funny...
...As a Christmas gift, I ask you," she told him, "in this plastic bag, return the bones of my son...
...We threatened a lawsuit and they paid thirty to forty of the writers in full," Dinges explains...
...The magazine must accept or reject the article within twenty days and it buys the right to one-time publication only, while copyright and all subsidiary rights are retained by the author...
...The union also expects an agreement with the Columbia Journalism Review by the end of the year, and bargaining councils have been set up to work for contract negotiations with Washington Weekly, McCall's, and The Musician...
...Novak's television commercial, which showed an insurance agent selling "holocaust insurance," received one airing on KMTV, Omaha's NBC affiliate, before it was yanked...
...Bystanders said he was taken along with three other youths by men in a Bronco vehicle, the kind favored by police...
...At one time, politics meant little to her...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 12
