Datelines
al., Helen Cordes et.
The Demon in Devil's Swamp BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA Sixty-five-year-old Dave Ew-ell Jr. shakes his head from side to side as he watches muddy, chemical-laden water gush onto his family's farmland...
...Often he would lie on his belly and drink from the clear, cool ponds in the swamp...
...It was disappointing, but it just reinforced the David and Goliath aspect of what goes on down here, and that helps us...
...The ridge top across from her house has been reduced to rubble and the creek runs brown, choked by muddy debris originating in the strip mines...
...On his deathbed, he made her pledge never to allow strip mining on the land, and she has been fighting with the local coal operator, Matthew Baker, to keep this promise...
...The herd was the first hit...
...But under a new state law, Wooten has regained the legal advantage...
...We don't want to see anybody unemployed," says Robinson...
...If one town or country prohibits nuclear weapons work, plant owners can just move their operations to a more economically desperate area, leaving behind unemployed workers who are bitter toward the local peace activists," says Don Lipmanson, Mendocino County coordinator of Jobs With Peace and co-author of Down the Federal Drain: The Impact of Military Spending on Mendocino County...
...If they do join a union drive, they often face bitter resentment from their husbands...
...Organizing clerical workers will become the top priority of the labor movement, and it's starting at the universities...
...The new law is the most visible success of the three-year-old coalition, an increasingly dynamic force for progressive social change in Eastern Kentucky...
...Roger Pollak (Roger Pollak is an editorial intern at The Progressive...
...It's going to be rough, though, the loss of jobs...
...It takes quite a bit of education...
...WILLITS, CALIFORNIA Steve Rosenberg owns Murphy's Law, a pub on Main Street in Willits...
...They're bias-tin' and it's shakin' my house so bad it's cracked the foundation...
...That Haig was greeted with open arms and pocketbooks is hardly surprising, since he was chiefly responsible for developing the Reagan Administration's policy of "constructive engagement" toward South Africa...
...Baker's deed is one of thousands that speculators bought around the turn of the century, before strip mining was common practice...
...Until a few weeks ago, he displayed a colorful "Nuclear Free Zone" poster in his front window...
...The cleanup will include a portion of Devil's Swamp, but not nearly the entire area that has been contaminated...
...We had a beautiful place here, and I think it's a shame industry can come in and destroy it...
...It's the Kleenex theory of management," says Fleming...
...You use up a worker, then throw him or her away...
...We saw that the stuff they'd been eating in the swamp was burning their mouths and taking the hair off their legs," Ewell says...
...Kay Glass, a Willits housewife sitting in a nearby booth, agrees...
...The statute limits application of the broad-form deeds to mining methods— mostly deep mining—in use at the time the agreements were signed...
...It looked into fifteen acts of Israeli vigilantism in 1982—including two incidents in which Jewish settlers killed Arab boys—and found that in no case was a full investigation carried out because sympathetic officials intervened on behalf of the settlers...
...For a forty-five minute speech to 300 United Jewish Appeal members at the New York Hilton two years ago, Haig received $25,000...
...It's still a sleeper but it's becoming a significant movement," says Rahke...
...And sometimes they may like their supervisors...
...Eugene Stein (Eugene Stein is a free-lance writer in New York City...
...The hysteria centers on a proposed referendum to prevent any activities "directly related to nuclear war...
...With a small group of friends who make up "Artists for Responsible Energy," Robinson succeeded in placing the issue on the ballot for June, but in March a county judge indefinitely postponed the vote...
...It'll take planning...
...They filed suit in 1980 against Petro-Processors, United States Steel, Copolymer, Uniroyal, Dow, Ethyl, Shell, American Hoechst, Exxon, Allied, and Rubicon...
...The danger we face comes from within," warned Israeli President Chaim Herzog in February, referring to a wave of anti-Arab violence in the occupied territories...
...Unions Move on Campus NEW YORK CITY When clerical workers at New York University gathered at a strike rally a few months ago, one after another came forward to complain of ill treatment and low pay...
...At the far end of the counter, a middle-aged man in work clothes snarls, "I'm against it," and waves off further questions...
...David Colfax (J...
...The levee around the pit had busted and the stuff was just pouring onto our land—millions and millions of gallons," he recalls...
...Nevertheless, Israeli investigators recently decided not to arrest the mayors' would-be assassins because the arrests and subsequent disclosures would implicate a high government official and members of the security services...
...That means more people can get involved and on their own terms...
...You have to explain to them it's not a professor that's causing the problem, it's the institution...
...Devil's Swamp served as a park for the children...
...Most of the organization's steering committee members and staff are native Kentuckians...
...Baker had a broad-form deed granting him the right to mine the coal on her property, any way he could get it...
...A few blocks down the street, an unshaven Terry Robinson sits amid the clutter of old books and campaign literature...
...And to the delight of his audience there, he took a swipe at the South West African People's Organization, the black party fighting for independence in Namibia...
...Ewell's parents and eight brothers and sisters settled on this land in 1940...
...And although his fee at the $250-a-plate Israel United Appeal went undisclosed, chances are it was no small potatoes...
...It seemed to be a ripe field...
...The little people have to do something...
...Petro-Processors of Louisiana constructed a disposal pit on the hillside bordering Devil's Swamp in 1968, and shortly thereafter the troubles began...
...Next stop, El Salvador...
...Petro-Processors called them up and offered them each $ 10,000, and $20,000 to my brother for the cattle...
...Now if folks like Elizabeth Wooten want to say 'not in my backyard, thank you,' they'll have the legal power," says Beverly May, an organizer for the Kentucky Fair Tax Coalition, which led the successful reform effort...
...The coalition now has thirteen local chapters and some 700 active members in fifty-two counties across the state...
...Szakos and the coalition expect to press the issue in the next session of the legislature...
...He said he had been at NYU for fifteen years and had nothing to show for it...
...As a multi-issue organization we provide a vehicle for folks with a wide variety of problems—polluted wells, broad-form deed fights, or whatever," says Szakos...
...It's not like columns of people on an assembly line in an automobile factory...
...But this land is my life, and I'm going to do all I can for it...
...Universities are here, they're stable, and they're not going to close their doors and move to Taiwan," explains Lee Fleming, a former clerical worker at Columbia's School of Journalism and now an organizer for District 65...
...Colleges also tend to be more sensitive than corporations abdut their reputation in the community...
...A hydraulic cylinder is a hydraulic cylinder...
...He said if we didn't do something now, we'd never be taken seriously...
...Defense is the only marketing frontier...
...And the water— if you ain't got good water, you ain't got nothing...
...I don't know, I just don't think it's right," says Ewell on his way down the hill toward his red pickup truck...
...Environmental Protection Agency finally took action of their own...
...Miriam Lacob (Miriam Lacob is a South African writer who lives in New York City...
...And clerical unions face stiff opposition from the school administrations...
...They had no permanence, no real local support.' But those people were wrong...
...The sponsors of the resolution "don't realize how they're affecting people...
...The coalition focuses on people who've never participated in politics before...
...A lot of people have said that Eastern Kentucky can't be organized," says Joe Szakos, the coalition's founder...
...Unsuspecting landowners never dreamed their property could be devastated as a consequence of signing the deeds...
...It is polarizing this community of 4,000, located about 140 miles north of San Francisco...
...We'd take our horses back there and swim and fish and hunt," recalls Ewell...
...Because pay scales are low, as many as a third of all clerical workers leave each year...
...We had inquiries from the different college groups," says Bernice Krawczyk, an organizer for District 65 of the United Auto Workers...
...Our traditional markets— earthmoving and agricultural equipment—haven't come back from the recession," says Jerry Riggs, Remco's operations manager...
...There were squirrels, rabbbits—big old swamp rabbits—crawfish, and all kinds of trees and flowers...
...Haig decried the "squandering of blood by terrorism through so-called wars of liberation...
...In the Plaza Restaurant at the center of town, Heather O'Connor is taking a break from waitressing...
...The policy has transformed the U. S. Government from a reluctant ally into a wholly sympathetic supporter...
...Colleges and universities employ half a million clerical workers across the country...
...State-Supported Terrorism THE WEST BANK An Israeli government report, suppressed for more than a year, reveals that Israeli police, military, and security services are acquiescing in vigilante attacks against Palestinian civilians on the West Bank...
...Ewell estimates the award barely covered his legal bills...
...I've heard it expressed, 'How can a university say you shouldn't have union?' But what Yale said was, it can best work with employees individually, without having another party involved...
...There are other difficulties...
...We're good at making those," says Riggs...
...They say, 'Look what happened to the Vistas and the Appalachian Volunteers...
...Eventually, the entire herd of cattle perished, and Ewell and his family filed suit in 1975 against Petro-Processors and the companies that used the dump, including Dow, Foster-Grant, Copolymer, Exxon, Shell, Rubicon, Allied, and Ethyl...
...Helen Cordes (Helen Cordes is a free-lance writer in Baton Rouge...
...It's hard not to be when you're afraid of losing your job...
...They were hysterical," he says...
...The report, released in February, was written by a high-level government commission headed by Israeli Deputy Attorney General Ye-hudit Karp...
...It's what my daddy lived for and what he left all of us...
...Our clerical staff works on a one-on-one basis with supervisors...
...When workers at Cornell went out on strike, "there were some men who told their wives if they didn't scab and come home with a paycheck, they'd get the shit beat out of them," says Barbara Rahke, a former clerical worker at Boston University and now a District 65 organizer...
...But the economy isn't so good...
...He told the South African-supported Multi-Party Conference in Namibia that President Reagan is "keenly concerned about the hopes and aspirations that would ultimately lead to a free, independent, and sovereign Namibia...
...The land is all there is, really," he says...
...Ewell quickly called a lawyer, who advised caution...
...Peace in One County...
...Most clerical workers at colleges are women, who tend to be less confrontational then men, says Krawczyk...
...In recent years, clerical unions have begun to penetrate the walls of academia, successfully organizing not only at New York University but also at Yale, the University of Connecticut, Columbia, nine state colleges in New Jersey, and the University of California system...
...General Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State, traveled to the apartheid state in February as a guest of the Manpower and Management Foundation, a business organization...
...landed a visit with the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roelof "Pik" Botha, with whom he reportedly has a warm friendship, and conferred with several other South African officials...
...The swamp itself was covered with a blackish, shiny scum, and the Ewells had no difficulty discovering the source of the problem...
...How is it possible that they [the government] take measures against each Arab stonethrower yet fail to bring to justice settlers who open fire [on Arabs...
...Peace activists have to consult with Remco workers and management to develop a workable conversion plan," Lipmanson says...
...Equally vexing is the government's failure to uproot the two organized underground, right-wing Jewish terrorist groups that operate on the West Bank...
...And the calves—their mouths were swelled up and they couldn't suck their mothers...
...Robert I. Friedman (Robert I. Friedman is a foreign affairs writer based in New York City...
...During the lobbying campaign [for the broad-form deed bill], we'd call up one member and he'd call up and down his hollow to get the whole family to participate," Szakos says...
...At least we've got people thinking about it, and that's something," Robinson says...
...A smaller Jewish terrorist group which calls itself TNT (Terror Against Terror) is thought to be composed primarily of orthodox Jewish immigrants from the United States...
...In 1983, the coal companies paid less than $3,000 in taxes on some $8.2 billion worth of coal assets...
...During the winters, several hundred Black Angus—the farm's mainstay-would graze in the warm bottoms of Devil's Swamp, growing fat on the hotweed and grasses that lined it...
...I think the referendum is a good idea," she says...
...State officials acknowledge there are many dead parts of Ewell's land that won't be touched by the settlement...
...I decided I couldn't support it," says Rosenberg...
...But I don't like them making those parts for the missiles...
...Law enforcement in the occupied territories is "lackadaisical" and "ineffective," the report noted...
...It requires more than self-righteous peace crusaders mouthing platitudes about converting Remco to solar...
...When you organize blue-collar workers, they see the boss as the bad guy," says Fleming...
...And it emphasizes local involvement at all levels...
...Despite the hardships, Wooten plans to stay on the hillside farm where she and her husband raised eleven children...
...We worked hard to get the tax in this year's legislature, but the Kentucky Coal Association pulled out all the stops" and the bill was tabled, says Szakos...
...Somebody doctored it so that it reads, "This is not a Nuclear Free Zone...
...This intolerance, which contains hints of a danger of civil war, is without doubt the most dangerous threat we have known...
...We'd be happy to convert to other things, but there just isn't a very big market out there for woodsplitters...
...The Remco plant sprawls next to the railroad tracks on the south end of town across from the Safeway, and its hodgepodge of ugly gray buildings holds 200 workers...
...And in January, they reached a landmark settlement under which the companies will remove wastes from the pit and the soil beneath it...
...After persistent pleading by Ewell, the state of Louisiana and the U.S...
...You just don't," the lawyer said...
...Transiency also poses a problem for unions...
...The poster now rests on a shelf behind the bar, up above the beer steins...
...In addition, their commitments at home leave less time for organizing...
...The estimated price tag of the operation is $50 million...
...The coalition's next major goal is passage of an unmined minerals tax to force coal owners to pay their fair share of state revenues...
...Right now, the coal company is stripping back up there at the head of the holler," Wooten says...
...shakes his head from side to side as he watches muddy, chemical-laden water gush onto his family's farmland near Baker, Louisiana...
...When you organize white-collar workers at a university, most people don't see the institution, they see their supervisors...
...DWARF, KENTUCKY From Elizabeth Wooten's front porch in Tribbey Hollow, the devastation of strip mining is everywhere apparent...
...I'd support a ban on the transportation of nuclear materials through town, but not this...
...Five years later, just as the case was set to go to trial, the rest of the Ewell family caved in to industry pressure...
...Remco, one of the biggest employers in the county, does 25 per cent of its work for Pentagon contractors...
...All the defendants were found liable, but the judge would not permit damages in excess of the fair market value of the land, which amounted to only $30,000...
...I had tears in my eyes...
...Rubinstein says Shin Bet, Israel's FBI, has the names of the suspects, as well as some verbal and physical evidence...
...Remco manufactures hydraulic cylinders for the Pentagon's nuclear missiles...
...Clerical unions can often tap support from sympathetic students, faculty, and other unions on campus...
...When Crime Does Pay NEW YORK CITY Old soldiers never die, they just trot off to South Africa...
...Even veteran antinuclear activists have their doubts about the referendum...
...Donald Stevenson, director of employee relations at Yale, agrees...
...They're going about it in the wrong way...
...they don't deserve this mess...
...While in South Africa, Haig said in his inimitable way that attempts at reforming apartheid had not yet reached the "exclamatory" stage...
...asked Karp, who resigned from the commission last spring because the government failed to act on her report...
...You don't sue industry...
...We don't think our people need to be in a union," says Robert Early, vice president of personnel for Columbia...
...I'd vote for it...
...But winning an initial union election is generally difficult...
...In the next five years, the growth rate will be tremendous...
...There was an elderly black man who was so terrified of public speaking, his hands were trembling on the microphone," says one office worker who recently joined the union...
...Universities oppose unionization for the same reasons that big business opposes unionization: money and power," says Rahke...
...for two years she has been without running water...
...An acrid odor hovers in the air as the brew swirls about the ghostly skeletons of cypress trees, discarded chemical drums, and floating trash that cover the once-verdant bayou called Devil's Swamp...
...According to Danny Rubinstein, veteran West Bank correspondent for the Israeli paper Davar, the most secret and violent of the Jewish terrorist groups is the one that attempted to assassinate three West Bank mayors on June 2, 1980, grievously wounding two of them with car bombs...
...But he changed his mind after receiving a couple of phone calls from customers threatening a boycott...
...Payoffs," Dave Ewell says scornfully...
...He realizes that he and the Artists for Responsible Energy have alienated some members of the community, particularly over the question of jobs...
...Mining activity on the hill above her property has contaminated her well and plugged her plumbing with mud...
...As a result, the coalition was able to flood the Kentucky legislature with hundreds of telephone calls on a day's notice—an unprecedented grass-roots mobilization in the mountain region...
...Haig received $30,000 from the Manpower Foundation, a South African newspaper reported...
...David Colfax is a free-lance writer in Boonville, California...
...This group claimed responsibility for the December 1983 attempt to blow up the holiest Moslem shrines in Jerusalem—the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa Mosque...
...During the eight-day jaunt, the internationally acclaimed wordsmith squeezed in two fund-raising dinners for the Israel United Appeal, the South African equivalent of the United Jewish Appeal...
...Now I got six daughters and a bunch of grandchildren...
...Cards and letters to our representatives seem sort of puny...
...When strip mining arrived in the 1940s, Kentucky courts sided with the coal companies that held the deeds, and the hill folk were "broadformed," as they call it...
...Until recently, the company held the upper hand...
Vol. 48 • May 1984 • No. 5
