Datelines
al., Michael T. Klare et.
Lightning Rod for Protest AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS Like many towns and cities across America that have become "nuclear-free zones," Amherst thought its 1984 declaration was a purely symbolic act—a...
...William W. French (William French is an associate professor of English at West Virginia University in Mor-gantown...
...Michael Heseltine [minister of defense] puts it...
...The netting above is held free of the vehicles by jointed aluminum poles which fork near the top...
...Salaries for Vermont teachers rank forty-fifth in the country, according to a recent study by the Education Association...
...One of the women inhaled broken glass and suffered cuts...
...Michael T. Klare (Michael T. Klare is professor of peace and world security studies at the five-college consortium in Amherst...
...Since 1978, Ecotheater has performed on Wednesday evenings during the summer at nearby Pipestem Park...
...After the town voted overwhelmingly to deny an increase in the school budget to cover the teachers' salary demands, the board cut off negotiations...
...The sense of heritage is so strong...
...A retired nurse tries to figure out how she wants to spend the rest of her life...
...Aided by a K'anjobal translator, it meticulously documented the army massacres, returning with the evidence just in time to prevent deportation of the first eight detainees...
...The Network communicates not only with Native groups in North, Central, and South America, but with indigenous peoples around the world—from the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia to tribal Filipinos...
...It began as a primitive operation: A farm wagon, pulled into position by a van, would become a platform stage, embellished only with a single canvas backdrop and rudimentary lighting and sound equipment...
...We have cases of generational bondage," says Agnivesh...
...They're happy being liberated, but they're faced with the stark reality of what to do...
...At Ecotheater, Lee has produced Samuel French's "Four Men and a Monster" as well as three plays of her own: "Ole Miz Dacey," "John Henry," and "A Double-Threaded Life: The Hinton Play...
...their lives have to go on...
...Government for release of the K'anjobal Indians...
...Originally, Lee set out to write about "the day Hinton died," a phrase she heard from a now-deceased friend and long-time resident of Hinton...
...One of them said, 'We should have left you "to get run over.' " —Samuel H. Day Jr...
...Tiwari, the government's chief spokesman on domestic affairs, bonded labor is "a very small problem...
...The Pentagon has clamped a lid on its construction plans...
...Construction of the GWEN system started in 1982, and last January the Air Force began establishing a preliminary network of fifty-seven towers in states from Maine to California...
...I'm old-fashioned...
...The audience would gather around the wagon and sit on the ground or on folding chairs to watch neighbors—school kids, farmers, housewives, retired folks-perform...
...Lucy Komisar (Lucy Komisar is a foreign-affairs writer who recently spent six weeks in India...
...Tuberculosis and asthma plague these workers...
...Boudah waited until her children were grown to start her career...
...Two policemen dragged me out of the way...
...As an indigenous organization ourselves," says Jose Barreiro, managing director of information for the Network, "we had access to a lot of inside information that non-Indian reporters might have missed...
...The school board's decision represents a "danger for Vermont teachers and teachers everywhere," says Margaret McNeil, negotiator for the local...
...It's just in the last year that the computer revolution hit Indian country...
...In the quarries, workers earn less than fifty cents a day...
...We expected a court injunction, not just to be fired," Tyl says...
...Its role in the K'anjobal case illustrates the usefulness of the Network, both as an alternative news source and as a human-rights monitor...
...When you reach the point that we were at, a strike is the continuation of negotiation," says Emily Tyl, a second-grade teacher and president of the Hinesburg Teachers Association...
...As a result of pressure from activists, Amherst officials agreed to consider the GWEN issue at a special town meeting...
...The teachers walked out April 3, and on April 22 thirteen new teachers crossed their picket line...
...Richard Poe (Richard Poe is managing editor of the East Village Eye...
...Though bonded labor has been illegal in India since 1976, it remains a fact of life...
...But lately the authorities' tactics have become more heavy-handed: In one instance, protesters were arrested and held in freezing conditions in an open pit surrounded by barbed wire...
...Alerted by a telephone network, Cruisewatchers all over south central England track the convoy to its deployment site, watch it throughout the exercise, and follow it back to the base...
...Her most recent Ecotheater play, "A Double-Threaded Life," is built from oral history—people talking about themselves...
...He can get the worker through the help of his counterparts...
...Iowa City, Iowa...
...They are made into moral wrecks with no power to resist...
...The intruder climbed into the cab and left a note on the seat...
...Air Force convoys...
...Breaking the 'Conspiracy of Silence' ITHACA, NEW YORK Early in 1983, a group of Mayan Indians of the K'an-jobal tribe fled across the Mexican border to escape the Guatemalan army, which had driven them from their homeland...
...A theater for people who don't usually go to theater...
...For a while, it looked as though the K'an-jobal Indians would be sent back, to almost certain death...
...I looked at it as some place I'd retire from...
...At first the police were content to disconnect roadside telephone boxes and let the air out of the Cruisewatchers' automobile tires...
...Captives in the Quarries FARIDABAD, INDIA They have no helmets, no masks, and only thin slippers on their feet, yet they toil in the quarries blasting rocks...
...When they were bonded, they were beaten and treated horribly, but at least they got some food...
...Air Force and the British Ministry of Defense, the episode was no laughing matter...
...Most people in this country have no awareness of the kinds of things that are happening to Indians: the police actions in Idaho, the trouble in Michigan over fishing rights, forced removal of Indian people in the Southwest...
...Meanwhile, Native American organizations around the country, spurred on by the Network's "emergency bulletins," began petitioning the U.S...
...They are bonded laborers in debt to contractors or money-lenders...
...Those who try to escape are beaten," says Swami Agnivesh, a Hindu monk, lawyer, and college lecturer who has organized bonded laborers for the past six years...
...The board's offer raised base salaries for starting teachers to $12,300, up from last year's $11,900 but $600 less than the level recommended by an impartial fact-finder and endorsed by the local branch of the state chapter of the National Education Association...
...The cabs have special plastic covers with studs which I had to open to get through," Lee later told Ian Mather, military correspondent of the London Observer...
...asks a 18/AUGUST 1985 man with yellowed teeth who has been working here since 1948...
...So the cast changes from time to time, and as Lee gathers more stories from her neighbors, the play grows...
...Many say thanks, some offer advice and suggestions, a few volunteer to act or write a scene...
...Back in the village, there's a money-lender, a policeman, and a politician," says Mohan...
...When Indians get shot at, it doesn't make headlines," says John Mohawk, the Network's director of information, who charges a "conspiracy of silence" when it comes to Indian issues...
...Flagstaff, Arizona...
...In the stone quarries hardly fifteen kilometers south of Parliament and the Supreme Court, 10,000 bonded laborers are languishing," says Inder Mohan, president of the Delhi chapter of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties...
...Then they were driven distances of up to twenty-five miles to police stations and released at four in the morning without transportation...
...We are also increasing public awareness of the dangerous situation that these preparations for nuclear war represent...
...Then we would have been ordered back to work, and we would have gone back to work...
...Each time you see it, it's a little different...
...they are displaced peasants who couldn't find employment in the villages...
...Theater at the Grass Roots FRAN BELIN Two actors face off in a performance of Ecotheater's 'John Henry.' MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA I recognized the voice on the telephone as that of David Miller, a student of mine...
...The Network quickly dispatched a team to Guatemala...
...After each performance, the actors return to sit on the stage, Maryat comes forward, and a dialogue with the audience begins that often goes on into the wee hours...
...The government is not dealing with bonded labor," says M.J...
...On any given night, however, fewer than a dozen will be acted out, depending on who is available...
...From Maryat's plays, I get a new sense of what people are like here, a sense of the roots and pride," says one resident...
...A Textbook Case of Strikebreaking HINESBURG, VERMONT No one expected it to come to this...
...Maryat Lee is a native Kentuckian who went to New York City and in 1951 produced a play called "Dope...
...A court is now considering their request for political asylum...
...MICHAEL KIENITZ A travel agency in Beirut has seen better days...
...troops and made his way to three camouflaged military vehicles parked in a secluded woodlot...
...A retired railroader pays tribute to the days of the steam engine...
...Seven months later, he organized the Bonded Labor Liberation Front...
...asked Nancy Foster of the No-GWEN Alliance at a county meeting early this year...
...Gettysburg, Harbor Creek, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania...
...The contractor here is in contact with the local police and politician and has a contract with them...
...Swami Agnivesh has managed to free a lot of laborers, but they have nowhere to go," says Rahul Bedi, a writer for the daily Indian Express...
...It omitted mention of binding arbitration and retroactive pay for the nine months teachers had worked without a contract...
...Hinesburg's teachers negotiated with the school board for more than a year without reaching agreement on salary and contract offers...
...There will no longer be a right to strike if the minute you walk out, they can hire replacements...
...Ecotheater actors are not professionals...
...The police appear to have learned a lot from 'controlling' the picket lines during the miners' strike and their intimidation of militant pit communities...
...Rita Flynn Villa, school board chairwoman, says the board did not ask for an injunction because, in an unrelated decision, a court had ruled that "interrupting the school year doesn't present a 'clear and present danger' to an educational program...
...in Pittsburgh...
...Every two weeks, when a twenty-two-vehicle training convoy leaves Greenham Common, the cruise-missile base which for years has been a focal point of antinuclear protests in Britain, peace activists encamped near the gates note the departure...
...But to the U.S...
...By and large, they come from the lowest castes...
...Lee began stringing together a series of monologues and dialogues based on the oral history she gathered...
...One of their forefathers borrowed two bags of rice, and in view of that, generation after generation is working for the landlord...
...THE PROGRESSIVE / 19...
...or Mitch Scott, an insurance man, will be off on business...
...Contending that GWEN's purpose was to "command nuclear weapons during a protracted nuclear war in which everything we seek to defend will be destroyed," the resolution protested the construction of such facilities "in Amherst or anywhere...
...I've come across some of these bonded laborers who were freed...
...The attack on the Southampton women was "a painful reminder of the risks that we face as nonviolent activists," says Peace News, a British fortnightly...
...Amherst residents had no idea the Air Force was planning to build a 300-foot-high nuclear war communications tower smack in the middle of their town...
...It is not a priority...
...Some typify the town...
...Most of the Indians could not speak Spanish, much less English, and they were hard-pressed to provide authorities with the necessary documentation of their persecution in Guatemala...
...Following an appearance by Colonel Dale Condit of the Air Force and emotional statements by residents, the elected representatives voted overwhelmingly to adopt an anti-GWEN resolution...
...This is really the first generation of Native people who have the potential, in terms of education and training, to deal with this kind of information flow," says Barreiro...
...Each character gets up and speaks...
...He tried the front doors and found one of them unlocked...
...Simply by witnessing its movements, we are frustrating this objective...
...Meg Dennison (Meg Dennison is a member oj the Co Writ ers News Service, Inc...
...There is no story line as such, but by the end a portrait of Hinton emerges...
...Britain's Ministry of Defense and the local police are charged with protecting the U.S...
...The vehicle in which Lee left his calling card was a cruise-missile launcher—part of a convoy deployed on maneuvers at a "secret" location in the English countryside...
...According to U.C...
...Lee has written more than thirty scenes for the play...
...He has been jailed a dozen times for his political and organizing activities...
...others are a separate breed...
...Her friend was referring to the time in the early 1950s when the C&O Railroad replaced steam engines with more efficient diesels—closing down the roundhouse that employed 700 men to service the locomotives that pulled long trains across the Appalachian mountains...
...Anywhere" could be Bak-ersfield, California...
...The other, which calls itself Polariswatch, keeps an eye on (and often a body in front of) the convoys that ply regularly between the Polaris submarine bases on the Clyde River in Scotland and the ordnance factory at Burgh-field in Berkshire where nuclear warheads are refurbished...
...But doing so would surely generate even more strenuous community protests...
...Just having someone along who could speak K'anjobal made a tremendous difference...
...What can it possibly mean to 'prevail' in a prolonged nuclear confrontation...
...Where outdoors, David...
...The hundreds of low-frequency radio towers in the GWEN system would relay messages from command centers to bomber bases and Minuteman missile launch facilities, enabling U.S...
...it might wish to challenge the legal status of nuclear-free zones...
...I don't like to strike...
...Some became bonded because of their parents' indebtedness...
...Akbar, editor of The Telegraph, a daily newspaper in Calcutta...
...Dynamite explodes in an adjacent pit, spraying stone splinters and scattering dust...
...For them, the show does not have to go on...
...This is what I've waited to do for a long, long time," she says...
...For a few years, she enjoyed government and foundation support, which paid fifteen to eighteen local youngsters each summer to learn to act, cut cloth, sew costumes, hammer together stage sets, paint canvas and wood—all the skills a grassroots theater demands...
...I don't think Rita Villa thought the Judy Boudahs of the school would go on strike," says Judy Boudah...
...Cruisewatch is one of two British peace campaigns that concentrate on highway convoy tracking...
...I feel very duped...
...Maryat Lee's Ecotheater is a grass-roots theater," he said...
...Amherst was slated to become an outpost of the Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN), a part of the Reagan Administration's effort to build the capability for winning a protracted nuclear war...
...It will make collective bargaining somewhat of a farce...
...On his way out, the newspaper reported, he "came across a group of British soldiers who 'fell about laughing' and made rude comments about American security...
...or someone else will be stranded by a dead car battery...
...David was right: Maryat Lee's Ecotheater is everything a people's theater should be...
...In May, the Network went on line with computerized reports available to subscribers on a weekly basis, thus becoming the first Native American "global" wire service...
...But many of them cannot leave...
...This man owes, he says, "not more than $40...
...It's outdoors...
...When the townspeople of Amherst got wind of the Air Force plan, peace activists quickly formed a "No GWEN Alliance" and petitioned local government to ban construction of the tower in accordance with Amherst's nuclear-free status...
...I'm not striking because of the money issue at all," says Boudah...
...From then on, the convoy is monitored every mile of its way...
...officials to launch atomic weapons after an initial nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union...
...In a field, pasture, meadow, town square, usually now in an amphitheater at Pipestem State Park...
...They said they would take care of us...
...I was amazed to see Phill hanging from the side of the first warhead carrier with policemen tugging at his legs," one convoy watcher recalled recently in a peace camp newsletter...
...Sometimes Sims Wicker, a former mayor of Hinton, will be on a fishing trip...
...Lightning Rod for Protest AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS Like many towns and cities across America that have become "nuclear-free zones," Amherst thought its 1984 declaration was a purely symbolic act—a statement of grass-roots opposition to Washington's nuclear weapons policies...
...The New York Times, alerted by the Network, jumped on the story and ran a sympathetic account of the Indians' plight...
...In Missile Pursuit SALISBURY PLAIN, ENGLAND On a dark night not long ago, a peace activist named Ian Lee, pretending to be a plainclothes police officer, slipped through a cordon of U.S...
...Government surveys have estimated that there are still three million bonded laborers, of whom 2.6 million are in agriculture...
...Columbus, Mississippi...
...About 400 of them eventually ended up living and working illegally in Florida...
...in a vacant lot in Harlem...
...I want to teach...
...Like so many other Central American refugees, the K'an-jobal Indians were soon rounded up by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and prepared for deportation...
...If you're hungry and landless, what can you do...
...A fisherman evokes the pleasure of his favorite activity...
...Wen-atchee, Washington...
...One evening in May 1981 when the guards were not around, Agnivesh took some trucks and journalists to the quarries and liberated 300 bonded laborers...
...Recently, as funding has slowed to a trickle, Lee has turned to senior citizens to be her actors...
...These and other sites have been selected for GWEN installations, according to antinuclear researchers...
...Established two-and-a-half years ago, the Network grew out of Akwesasne Notes, a newspaper with a readership of more than 100,000 published by the Mohawk Nation Council in upstate New York...
...it won't say where GWEN installations will be located...
...Enter the Indigenous Peoples' Network, a Native American-operated news service based in Ithaca, New York...
...Its goal is to thwart the deployment of cruise missiles in Britain by subjecting their training exercises to the glare of publicity...
...Once snared, the worker has few options...
...We exist," says a Cruise-watch brochure, "to show that cruise is not viable in its declared objective of 'melting into the countryside,' as Mr...
...The Air Force could still decide to go ahead with the Amherst site...
...Samuel H. Day Jr., a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board, wrote "H-Bombs on Our Highways" in the November 1984 issue...
...or Windsor, Vermont...
...Ian Lee is a member of "Cruisewatch," a British peace group affiliated with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament...
...The idea of grass-roots theater in rural, mountainous Summers County, West Virginia, intrigued me, so I went to see...
...Boudah resisted initial strike efforts but walked out with the rest of the teachers...
...On another occasion, five Southampton women waiting by the roadside for an approaching convoy were set upon by fifteen to twenty police, who bashed in the windows of their minibus with a crowbar...
...In 1975, she started Ecotheater in Hinton, West Virginia, the county seat...
...He wanted me to visit the theater he was working for during the summer...
...Since the board of the Hinesburg Elementary School replaced twenty-nine teachers after they walked out in early April, this rural farm community has become the focus of a struggle that could change the face of collective bargaining in Vermont...
...Klamath Falls, Oregon...
...I gave up the idea of trying to write down the registration numbers and ran forward, dodging police, to lie down in front of it just as it moved off again...
Vol. 49 • August 1985 • No. 8
