Datelines
Siegel, Linda Carleu-Jones, Rex B. Wingerter, David Luberoff, Barbara Yuill and Steve Askin, and Len
Yellow Is the Color NEW YORK CITY At age thirty-eight, after suffering two miscarriages, Eleanor Sherman gave birth to her first child, a healthy, pink-cheeked baby boy. But when he was ten months...
...he also bowed to an extremely effective coalition...
...Why was Grant's carotene level so high...
...Sher easily pushed his bill through the Assembly, but when it got to the State Senate, it ran into a political roadblock erected by big oil companies and private electricity suppliers...
...One person can do a lot if you scream loud enough," she said...
...I don't like them fooling around with my kid...
...Some mail never arrives...
...Nicholas called the action illegal, went to court, and began a fight to save 1199...
...But Al-Fajr continues to publish undaunted...
...We have serious concerns about this underdeclaration, which, according to your own statements, is arbitrary and not based on actual analytical data," wrote Taylor Quinn, associate director for compliance at the FDA's Bureau of Foods, to Gerber...
...All in all, however, the elections marked the coming of age for gay power in Boston...
...As the only major black-led union in the AFL-CIO, 1199 is the civil rights movement's closest labor ally...
...But a review of the stories censored by Israeli authorities during the first half of 1983 casts doubt on the military's explanation...
...would dismember and destroy your national hospital union and all it stands for...
...11 A seven-paragraph story on how the military sealed off the bedrooms in the homes of six Palestinian students two months after they were arrested on suspicion of throwing a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli vehicle...
...These infringements represent one form of the harassment Al-Fajr suffers...
...Its membership has doubled during the past decade and now stands at almost 150,000, while the rest of RWDSU has stagnated at about 85,000...
...He met with each of the union's nineteen districts and filled the union paper with broadsides against RWDSU...
...Last year, a Hebrew edition was launched, written, and produced by Israeli Jews and Hebrew-speaking Palestinians...
...Beta carotene is a pigment found in such vegetables as carrots and in the fat of plant-eating animals...
...David Luberoff (David Luberoff, a free-lance writer, covered Boston's recent elections for The Tab, a Boston-area weekly newspaper...
...Israeli soldiers have marched in and ripped political posters from the office walls...
...Delegates narrowly ratified the course of action Nicholas recommended...
...Nicholas won the first courtroom battle in December, when a judge refused to allow Heaps to block the union convention...
...Quills that Won't Quail JERUSALEM Sam'an Khoury has little control over the contents of his own newspaper...
...Intensive counterlobbying by labor, the League of California Cities, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Citizens for a Better Environment, and the city of San Jose reversed most of the major amendments and won passage of the bill...
...Our people—plumbers, electrical workers, fire fighters—are affected most," says Peter Cer-vantes-Gautschi, business agent for the Santa Clara County Central Labor Council...
...What would it do to him...
...She was not content to let the issue slide by and pursued this problem avidly and relentlessly...
...Nowhere was there anti-Jewish language, nor was there glorification of PLO violence against Israel...
...it is converted to Vitamin A in the liver...
...And gay and lesbian rights have won the open and strong support of incoming mayor Raymond Flynn, even though the Alliance endorsed his opponent, Mel King...
...The Israeli military prohibits distribution of the paper in the two areas in which Palestinians predominate—the West Bank and Gaza...
...RWDSU President Alvin Heaps moved to dissolve 1199's national organization last October, and won backing from Doris Turner, leader of 1199's New York district, which includes almost half of the nationwide membership...
...Following the disclosure two years ago that Fairchild Semiconductor had leaked extremely hazardous chemicals into the public water supply of a San Jose neighborhood, communities in the hi-tech belt known as Silicon Valley began organizing on the issue of toxics...
...The skirmishes between 1199 and RWDSU leaders began last year when Heaps blocked a move to merge both with the Service Employees International Union...
...His allies charge that Heaps and Turner made a deal to divide 1199's resources: Heaps, they say, will get money needed to continue paying high wages and benefits to RWDSU officers and staff...
...We're the tail that wags the dog, and the dog is scared...
...Some days the office telephones are disconnected...
...A conservative backlash before the election induced the outgoing city council to weaken a fair-housing bill that had protected gay men and lesbians...
...I said to people who asked me about it, 'You had better get used to it.'" As Boston's 1983 municipal election marked the emergence of the city's blacks as a political force, it also saw the city's gay and lesbian community flex its political muscle for the first time...
...According to a military spokesperson, Al-Fajr is especially troublesome...
...There are others...
...Nonetheless, Heaps shocked 1199 leaders when he unilaterally moved to dissolve the hospital workers' division...
...It's always nice to beat the big oil and electronics companies," says Cervantes-Gaut-schi...
...Her young son has now returned to ruddy good health, and Sherman has taken some satisfaction from her efforts...
...The U.S...
...I heard more about the kiss than I did about any of my stands on the issues," says Scondras, a long-time neighborhood activist...
...Spontaneous demonstrations, wild applause, and frequent outbursts of heckling, jeering, and hissing punctuated the five-day gathering...
...The Afflictions of Infighting PHILADELPHIA Guards warily watched entrances to Philadelphia's Her-shey Hotel, and metal detectors electronically scanned each person entering the posh ballroom as 300 unionists from around the country gathered here to try to bandage a festering interunion dispute involving hospital workers...
...Nicholas used the convention to demonstrate that labor and civil rights leaders—both Nicholas and Turner are black—support him...
...When Al-Fajr manages to publish, it runs stories designed to draw public attention to the plight of Palestinians living under occupation...
...The National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, commonly known as "1199," has a proud record of social activism and successful organizing...
...11 A story about the arrest and detention of a rabbi from the anti-Zionist orthodox religious group Neturei Karta...
...Five of thirteen Council candidates endorsed by the Alliance won their races and another two have indicated they support gay rights...
...Some of the items cut from Al-Fajr last year included: H Six paragraphs reporting that an Israeli military court had sentenced a Palestinian mother and her two daughters to two months in prison for failing to tell the police that her husband had a revolver in the house...
...The hospital workers will attempt to disaffiliate and go independent, seek their own AFL-CIO charter, or merge with another union...
...Al-Fajr's records show that of 605 articles written during a six-month period last year, 32 per cent were completely blocked by the censor, 13 per cent were partially cut, about 5 per cent were irreparably altered, and a handful were simply "lost...
...The hospital union has been an autonomous division of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) since 1973...
...The Boston election was probably the most significant period for gay men and lesbians in the city of Boston," says Brian McNaught, an aide to outgoing mayor Kevin White...
...What's important is people were involved for the first time in large numbers as openly gay persons," says Eric Rofes, leader of the Alliance...
...When he gets them back late the following afternoon, more than half have been deleted...
...Turner, unable to oust Nicholas from the national presidency in a union election, would be appointed to head a new hospital division...
...In one brief committee meeting, Senators tacked on eighty-five amendments proposed by the energy industry...
...The provisions designed to prevent spills into urban water supplies were passed intact...
...11A letter to the editor from a reader in Switzerland expressing solidarity with an Al-Fajr journalist jailed for possessing banned publications...
...11 A review of The Bitter Year, published by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, D.C., detailing Israeli human rights violations against West Bank and Gaza Palestinians...
...Heaps's lawyers indicated at the hearing they would go ahead with a plan to try to put an appointed trustee in charge of 1199, replacing Nicholas and other elected leaders...
...Sherman is "a prime example of how consumers can effect change on their own," says Bonnie Lieb-man, staff nutritionist at the Center for Science and the Public Interest...
...And the presidents of three liberal AFL-CIO unions—the Service Employees, the Machinists, and the State, County, and Municipal Employees—implicitly endorsed Nicholas by addressing the convention, which Heaps boycotted...
...Cer-vantes-Gautschi was able to persuade the head of the California State Federation of Labor that labor's representatives should resign from the organization, leaving the oil and electricity companies to fend for themselves...
...In title, Khoury is the managing editor of the English-language Palestinian weekly, Al-Fajr, published in East Jerusalem, but in fact, he is at the mercy of the Israeli military censor...
...Sheer terror was running through my mind," recalls Sherman...
...to the public safety or to public order"—language derived from the British Defense Emergency Regulations of 1945, which were promulgated to combat Arab and Jewish resistance to Britain's rule over Palestine...
...For the Beechnut product, FDA tests showed an average level of 1700 per cent of the allowance...
...Wingerter attends An-tioch School of Law in Washington, D.C...
...As a result of her efforts, new labels for Beechnut and Gerber products appeared on the shelves in December...
...Palo Alto State Assemblyman Byron Sher—a liberal Democrat from a district in which even conservative Republicans tend to support environmental causes—introduced state legislation to regulate underground storage...
...Sherman did that and more...
...every working day, he must send the day's stories to the censor...
...More gay people registered to vote than ever before, and more candidates sought the endorsement of the gay and lesbian community than ever before...
...Steve Askin is the Washington bureau chief of the National Catholic Reporter...
...A lot of us in labor are reaching out to form progressive coalitions...
...The law is not as effective as the original proposal," says Ted Smith, leader of the Toxics Coalition, "but it is stronger than any other legislation, proposed or enacted, in the other forty-nine states...
...The doctor told me only to stop feeding him yellow and orange vegetables...
...Its readership includes various Israeli peace groups, such as Peace Now, and many small antiwar organizations that sprang up following the Lebanon invasion...
...For the past year, Sherman has prodded the food companies and the Government to correct the labels...
...We can push and shove like that on a picket line...
...From the beginning we considered it our issue...
...From now on, anybody who professes to be a liberal in this city has to embrace gay rights as part of their platform...
...Coretta Scott King sent a message finding it "ironic that at a time when you are celebrating ten years of struggle and progress unparalleled within the labor movement there are forces at work who...
...But now Henry Nicholas, a former $38-a-week orderly at New York's Mount Sinai hospital who rose to become 1199's president, says his union's very survival is at stake...
...But when he was ten months old, the baby's skin turned a yellowish orange...
...The pistol was rusted and unusable...
...At the convention, most 1199 activists seemed to wish they could put the fight behind them...
...Sam'an Khoury tries to fill the newspaper's pages with reports of land confiscations, arrests and detentions of Palestinians, allegations of beatings and torture by Israeli security forces, destruction of Palestinian homes, and hunger strikes in Israeli prisons...
...And many homosexuals were deeply disappointed by the reelection of long-time antibusing conservative James Kelley, whose City Council district includes South Boston and the liberal South End, home to many gay men...
...Ironically, it was an unfavorable review...
...The attempt to gut 1199 turned the December convention into a bitter conflict between Turner's New York delegation and the rest of the membership, which unanimously backed Nicholas...
...The issue of gay rights had a significant impact on the race," says Larry Rasky, consultant and pollster for Flynn's campaign...
...Rex B. Wingerter (RexB...
...We are now larger than the parent," said outgoing 1199 Executive Secretary Moe Foner...
...At 4 p.m...
...But the victories were not without cost...
...Barbara Yuill and Steve Askin (Barbara Yuill is a free-lance writer...
...recommended daily allowance, and that Gerber's was listed at 120 per cent of the allowance...
...Local governments passed ordinances regulating the storage of underground chemicals, and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition was formed, bringing together the Sierra Club, public health professionals, and the Santa Clara County Central Labor Council...
...Lenny Siegel (Lenny Siegel is director of the Pacific Studies Center and is working on a book called 'Where the Chips May Fall: The Social Impact of High Technology...
...And the military authorities shut down Al-Fajr for a month and a half in 1981...
...This editorial focus has drawn the ire of Israel's military, which can legally censor, ban, or stop the distribution of any printed material that it deems "prejudicial...
...No article suggested violence or rebellion against Israel's sixteen-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza...
...The gay and lesbian vote, organized by the newly formed Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance, was wooed by every major mayoral candidate...
...Gay Power Comes of Age BOSTON On election night in Boston, after returns showed he had won his city council race, David Scondras kissed his lover, Robert Krebs...
...The labels, he added, "should convey more realistically the Vitamin A content...
...Unlike most environmental campaigns, this one was led by organized labor...
...Attention is also paid to the activities of Palestinian communities outside the occupied territories, and news about the Palestine Liberation Organization is closely followed...
...We welcomed the opportunity to work with environmental, community, and other nonlabor groups...
...Linda Carleu-Jones (Linda Carleu-Jones is associate editor of the monthly Toys, Hobbies & Crafts...
...To her surprise, Sherman also noticed that the Vitamin A content of Beechnut's four-and-a-half-ounce jar of strained carrots was listed at 870 per cent of the U.S...
...At first, industry marshaled its forces through the Council for Economic and Environmental Balance, an organization that included labor leaders on its board and worked in support of nuclear power...
...The day's editorial was usually suppressed...
...Then, with Turner's support, he pushed through a constitutional amendment stripping the hospital workers of their right to disaffiliate...
...Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later found the" Vitamin A content of Gerber carrots was actually 1190 per cent—almost ten times the level listed on the jar...
...Let's fight the bosses," said New York delegate Edward Kay...
...Its journalists have been arrested and interrogated and its offices fire-bombed...
...Sherman quickly took her child, Grant, to a pediatrician, who diagnosed him as having carotenemia, a condition caused by an excess of beta carotene in the bloodstream...
...She checked the labels of the commercial baby food she had been feeding Grant and discovered that carrots, an inexpensive filler, were the major ingredient, after water, in many of the products, including such popular items as turkey and rice, strained mixed vegetables, and vegetables and chicken...
...Some infants are fed three or four jars of baby food a day...
...The kiss, televised by at least one local station, ushered in a new era in Boston politics...
...A Triumph over Toxics CALIFORNIA When California Governor George Deukmejian signed the Groundwater Protection Bill into law last September, he not only established strict new standards for the underground storage of toxic chemicals...
Vol. 48 • February 1984 • No. 2
