Datelines

...today it is a playground for the million-plus residents of metropolitan San Juan, less than thirty miles to the west...

...We're in there for the long haul...

...He taught us to defend our rights so that we wouldn't have to put up with so many injustices," Ana Reyes, a great-grandmother who became an early activist in the parish, says of Olivares...

...His bond was set at an unprecedented $1 million, though the sum was later cut in half...

...Maria de la Luz Hernandez used to have great difficulty in speaking, even in her native Spanish, before a city commission...

...borders...

...Parents opposed to censorship and other attempts to impose fundamentalist-Christian values on their children lost the battle over Deenie but have enjoyed some victories, most recently when the county school board voted to keep Go Ask Alice in the high-school libraries...

...Mahogany is the prize the Forest Service seeks...

...I The Army Corps of Engineers and Puerto Rico's Aqueducts and Sewers Authority both plan major reservoirs in the area, and no one knows what the effects of clear-cutting will be...

...Promoting lawlessness" is what Olivares is doing, charges Harold Ezell, regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service...

...It was a complete turnaround in my life," he recalls...

...Martinez faces up to ten years in prison for the perjury conviction...

...However, a Federal appeals court reversed the dismissal...

...We're by definition on the defense, but we realize this is not a one-time thing," Christine Winokur says...

...Albert L. Huebner (Albert L. Huebner is a freelance writer based in southern California...

...The groups have scored successes in various campaigns, including pressuring police to crack down on drug trafficking, cleaning up dirty supermarkets, and lowering auto insurance rates in minority communities...

...But this time, the message may finally be getting through...

...Martinez was returned home to Colorado to face charges including attempted murder and possession of an explosive device...

...They are now preparing a response...

...Often the service itself decides if a disabled person's trip is important enough to consider: A doctor's appointment is good enough for a ride...

...So they began blocking buses, the action they're best known for...

...It's unknown what effect the plan will have on wildlife, water quality, erosion, and the forest's tourism and recreational values," says Cindy Gines Sanchez, a biologist who opposes the plan...

...The Reagan Administration expects "Federal agencies to generate their own funds," she says, "and mahogany would help the Forest Service fill its coffers...

...In numbers that grow each year, ADAPT members meet APTA at its convention site, block buses, chant outside its hotel, and gain the sympathy of the bus-riding public...

...But Father Olivares pushed and challenged us to prove our mettle...

...No one was ever charged with the bombings...

...Five years ago, Olivares became pastor of historic Our Lady Queen of Angels Roman Catholic Church, affectionately known as La Placita (Little Plaza), with the largest congregation in the sprawling Los Angeles archdiocese...

...Finally, the Forest Service has published the plan and its accompanying Environmental Impact Statement only in English...

...No," responded ADAPT member Arthur Campbell, "there's no law saying we can't...

...In the early 1970s, he often represented individuals who were charged with crimes by the Government to keep them from their political work...

...The school system is undermining the authority of parents regarding values and morals by having those materials available," Wilson says, adding that the school system "enforces secular humanism and the promulgation of immorality...

...There is no law saying you can't ride city buses," argued an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, when disabled protesters in one of the dozen cities with active chapters of ADAPT sought ACLU support for their bus blockings and subsequent arrests...

...A?l state charges were eventually dismissed...

...Martinez's supporters says he is guilty of nothing more than being a forceful legal advocate for farm workers, prisoners, and political activists...

...ADAPT, however, says paratransit is only cheaper because it is such an inferior service—and they compare it to the segregated accommodations for blacks before the civil rights movement...

...II The Forest Service plans to bulldoze twenty miles of roads through the area to get to the trees...

...The Deenie incident spawned three anti-censorship organizations (with some overlapping membership...

...Last spring, U.S...

...In 1980, Martinez attempted to cross the U.S.Mexico border at Nogales, Ar-' izona...

...District Judge William Browning had dismissed the case, citing the "appearance of vindictive prosecution" by the Government...

...Local-option rules have been tested in court repeatedly, but local option still rules...

...But the challenges policy has been tested, he says, and appears to be working...

...He lived in the world of stock-market investments and real-estate deals as corporate treasurer for the Claretian Missionaries, who work primarily in Latino communities in the United States...

...immigration officials six years ago...

...Christine Winokur, an active member of the anti-censorship coalition, was shocked at the banning of Deenie...

...The struggle began last year, when members of the local chapter of Citizens for Excellence in Education asked to have Deenie removed from elementary school libraries...

...Despite the apparent vin-dictiveness of the Government, Martinez's defense attorneys were not allowed to bring testimony about it...

...William Steif (William Steif writes frequently for The Progressive from his base in the U.S...

...a clearer definition of grounds for a challenge are needed, according to administrator George Thompson...

...Olivares showed other church leaders "a concrete way to put their faith into action," says McNeil...

...waiting lists are often several months long...

...I became outraged that some people would tell the community they were more moral and that their idea of morality would prevail...

...But his constituency, inside and outside the church, extends far beyond parish boundaries...

...A few weeks after the last charges were dismissed, Martinez walked out of his front door to meet the gun barrels of more than a dozen FBI agents and police...

...There are problems, of course...

...Sentiment is changing," said some APTA delegates this year...

...Fearing for his life, he went underground...

...The relaxation tapes, part of a long-standing guidance-counseling program, were okayed at the local school level but have yet to be reviewed by the county media committee...

...A Lift for Disability Rights DETROIT People in wheelchairs demonstrating and blocking buses have become a familiar sight to officials who attend the annual conventions of the American Public Transit Association (APTA) each October...

...i Olivares's immersion in the United Farm Workers' struggle was the first in a series of "conversion experiences," as he calls them, that have marked his personal transformation from a "highly autocratic" priest and church financial officer to a leader in Southern California of the movement for social justice...

...Forest Service has its way...

...Six thousand acres of mahogany in eastern Puerto Rico may fall, if the U.S...

...Then, as California's farm-labor movement expanded in the 1970s, Olivares met Cesar Chavez...

...A jury acquitted Martinez in the second case, and charges related to the third bombing attempt were dismissed because the police lost the evidence...

...But we can't even get on the bus...

...paratransit systems were supposed to reduce the waiting time, abandon waiting lists, and stop restricting riders to specific "trip purposes"—practices to which no public-transit system subjects its nondisabled riders...

...Olivares set up "an un-public sanctuary" on church grounds a few years ago to serve as a counseling center for refugees...

...But his most lasting contribution to UNO has been the development of other leaders, says Larry McNeil, a community organizer who supervises UNO...

...It has been surprisingly hard to get civil-rights veterans to see ADAPT's point, though...

...And we were being pretty effective...

...The system's media committees, composed of parents and educators, chose to keep the book, but the Gwinnett County school board overruled them in a decision later upheld by the state school board...

...The defense intends to appeal the verdict after sentencing...

...And the fight is over segregation...

...The group publishes an occasional four-page newsletter and distributes it to members, schools, public libraries, and the news media—and also posts it in supermarkets...

...The court endorsed APTA's position of "local option"—letting local transit systems decide what is "best" for the disabled people in their communities...

...The land is part of the 28,000-acre Caribbean National Forest, also known as El Yunque...

...Virgin Islands...

...Within the past year-and-a-half, the objects of attack—for offenses ranging from profanity and "pervasive sexuality" to mentions of drug use, masturbation, and child molesting—have included Judy Blume's Deenie, Norma Klein's Confessions of an Only Child, Young Miss magazine, and the fictional drug-abuse diary Go Ask Alice...

...Lincoln S. Bates (Lincoln S. Bates is a free-lance writer in Atlanta...

...What we oppose is the magnitude of the logging proposed here...

...The Government had decided to press charges stemming from the border incident five years before...

...The .challenged books contradict the schools' regulations prohibiting use of crude and profane language, says Theresa Wilson, a leader of Citizens for Excellence in Education...

...A lot of the cases were trumped-up charges, so they were cases that were winna-ble...

...Here he used the organizing lessons learned from the farmworkers' movement to promote social activism and to help form UNO-the United Neighborhoods Organization...

...policy in Central America...

...We have to come around the long way and go in the back door all the time," says Mark Johnson of ADAPT...

...But they could find none that worked, none that would even stop for them, members charge...

...She and her supporters said the tapes are "hypnotic," "guided fantasy," and "a form of witchcraft...

...Puerto Rico's Natural Resources Department has taken no position on the Federal plan, but Hilda Diaz Sol-tero, one of its former executives, is helping the eleven groups fighting it...

...Gines helped draft a fourteen-page complaint to the Forest Service on behalf of a group of eleven Puerto Rican environmental organizations...

...His stance has invigorated the growing movement against U.S...

...Martinez was found guilty of "eluding inspection," a misdemeanor...

...Father Olivares is one of the most important links between the Central America nonintervention movement and the Latino community," says Carol Wells of the Nicaraguan Task Force in southern California...

...But APTA itself has not made that official, and that is what the disability activists want...

...This is a "moral issue," says Olivares...

...The largest is the Georgia Coalition Against Censorship, originally known as the Gwinnett Citizens for Freedom in Education and recently renamed to reflect an intent to help other counties and school systems also facing trouble from book-banners...

...Thompson also thinks some teachers feel threatened or intimidated by the spate of challenges...

...Fighting censorship, says Coalition vice president Pam Davis, requires grass-roots organization and strong parental involvement, contact with the press and the American Civil Liberties Union, and careful preparation for hearings and the introduction of expert witnesses such as writers and child psychologists...

...Forest Service officials in Atlanta say they are "impressed" with the environmentalists' objections to the El Yunque management plan...

...U The management plan fails to identify and protect critical habitat for such endangered species as the Puerto Rican parrot and a variety of copui, or tree frog...

...Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, through an intermediary, suggested ADAPT members try out the city's buses—some of which, he promised, have lifts...

...He told American officials he was Jose Reynoso Diaz, an American citizen, even though the passport in his possession stated that Reynoso was a Mexican citizen...

...Judge Fred M. Winner, presiding over the Martinez trials, had called a secret meeting with the prosecutors, saying he wanted to "get them all...

...More than a hundred people in wheelchairs and as many supporters converged on the city's Renaissance Center Westin Hotel chanting Access...

...So ADAPT is trying to achieve through direct action what the law fails to provide...

...Lifts on buses are inevitable," APTA executive committee member Richard F. Davis told the group...

...As for public declarations of sanctuary, they serve the vital function of challenging Americans "to really think about what we're doing in Central America...

...Opposition will continue as well...

...Priest Among the People LOS ANGELES As a young priest in the late 1960s, Father Luis Olivares seemed destined for a life built on his skill in navigating the corridors of church politics and finance...

...And the island's governor, Rafael Hernandez Colon, opposes the logging and has asked the Forest Service not to do it...

...Out-of-town visitors in wheelchairs aren't eligible for such "public services" at all...

...Following a ten-day sentence, Martinez was hours from being deported to Mexico when immigration officials discovered Reynoso was Martinez...

...without a translation into Spanish, Puerto Rico's principal language, the Forest Service "has not provided for adequate public participation," the coalition contends...

...Ezell contends that the real issue is control over U.S...

...The pain of burying our own fellow [workers] killed in the fields for no other reason than wanting to have a decent life" impelled Olivares away from the "very Anglo" training he had received at seminary...

...We're not opposed to some logging," says Gines...

...Theresa Wilson, who thinks the media committees are rigged because they invariably vote against the challenges, insists that appeals on the tapes will proceed...

...A 1982 law requires transit systems to provide at least a minimal level of service...

...Olivares's participation in the Van Nuys campaign broadened his appeal...

...Winner planned to install hidden cameras and told the prosecution he would grant them a mistrial any time they requested it, but they should "wait until the defense had put on its case so the prosecution would know the defense's strategy," according to an affidavit sworn by one of the prosecutors...

...Police carted them off in one of the vehicles that cities use to provide segregated rides for the handicapped, to a makeshift jail in an old gymnasium...

...Located in the Luquillo Mountains, the forest sheltered Carib Indians for more than 200 years...

...Some people attribute the friction to conflict between the residents who reflect the older, rural Gwinnett County and the newcomers who are more affluent and educated...

...Shortly after moving to La Placita, Olivares began to take an active role in the protracted struggle to keep General Motors from closing its Van Nuys plant—one of the most broad-based campaigns of its kind in the country...

...H Rivers from El Yunque flow to twelve water-treatment plants providing twenty million gallons of potable water daily...

...Maggy Zanger (Maggy Zanger is a staff writer for The Tucson Weekly...

...Firmly rooted in the churches of the predominantly Latino east side of Los Angeles, UNO, along with a counterpart in another minority community, has grown into the largest and most influential grass-roots organization in the city...

...And the school board now has a policy for dealing with challenges from would-be censors, the one that led to the recent retention of Go Ask Alice...

...This year ADAPT met APTA in Detroit...

...They want to take control of public education and turn it into private education, and I believe in public education...

...The defense was barred from presenting evidence about the unrest between the Government and the Chicano community in the early 1970s or about the indictments for the bombs...

...As the number of refugees seeking assistance at La Placita soared in recent years, and as he heard refugees tell of U.S.-supplied bombs and bullets used indiscriminately in the Salvadoran countryside, Olivares became an outspoken critic of U.S...

...Judicial and prosecutorial misconduct was found, and the charges were dismissed...

...After he fled, Martinez's brother, also a lawyer, and five other leaders in the Chicano community were killed in two car explosions in Boulder...

...Martinez's own legal troubles began in September 1973,' when he was indicted on more than twenty-five state and Federal counts in three mail-bombing attempts in Denver...

...But the effect is the same...

...This year, APTA delegates attending the opening-night reception were forced to hike in through the rear entrance of the Ford Motor Company's Greenfield Village because protesters in wheelchairs blocked all other entries...

...He has acquired a wide following, says McNeil, because he works "with the two institutions that probably offer the most hope for social change—the church and the American trade-union movement...

...One leg of that journey began in 1975, when he arrived at Our Lady of Solitude Church for his first long-term parish assignment...

...The complaint charges that: 1i The Forest Service plans to log on slopes as steep as sixty degrees without knowing the effects of heavy rainfall on the area's shallow, unstable soils...

...APTA insists that the separate paratransit bus service is all right for disabled people and less costly than equipping large city buses with lifts...

...Meanwhile, Martinez was becoming a legend in Southwestern Chicano communities where Viva Kiko was frequently seen and where letters and poems circulated from him in exile in Mexico...

...People in wheelchairs are kept off most of the nation's public-transit systems because local transit authorities generally choose to offer a separate system of mini-buses or vans for "the handicapped...

...The plan to log it is part of a "new Federal management trend," Gines says...

...It would be wrong for GM "to further increase profits by sacrificing the work force...

...That clash galvanized the opposing camps...

...It was tough," she recalls...

...Following the verdict, the judge ordered him into custody until he posted a $50,000 bond...

...These were the people who were organizing to change things," Martinez recalls...

...The first mail-bomb trial ended in scandal...

...The law required only that 3.5 per cent of a system's Federal funds be spent on the effort...

...A civil-rights movement started because people had to ride in the back of the bus," says protest organizer Mike Auberger...

...Martinez was in various courtrooms for five years, as he was tried for three bombings in both Federal and state courts...

...Tropical Forest Goes Timber SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO The only tropical forest the United States has is about to be logged...

...If it costs more to assure an equitable system, the rules can be ignored...

...For four years now, members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) have been protesting at the trade group's meetings, first in Denver, then Washington, then Los Angeles...

...APTA won...

...Late last year, he publicly declared La Placita a sanctuary for Central American refugees—the first church in the archdiocese to do so...

...Seventeen demonstrators were arrested in downtown Detroit on the Monday of the convention and another thirty or so on Tuesday...

...Trials of an Activist Lawyer TUCSON, ARIZONA For thirteen years, Francisco "Kiko" Martinez has been subjected to Government harassment, culminating in his conviction for perjury in October for allegedly lying to U.S...

...The effort to restrict materials in schools is hardly npvel, but this one in metropolitan Atlanta, in one of the nation's fastest-growing counties, just northeast of the city, m.^y add a new dimension...

...These segregated "special" services require preregistra-tion and are woefully inadequate...

...El Yunque, whose highest peak is El Toro, at 3,532 feet, is home to about 240 species of trees—from the huge tabon-ucos in the lower forest to crooked palo colorados at the fog-draped higher elevations...

...and We Will Ride!—the same slogans they've been chanting for four years...

...a visit to friends or a journey to a party is not...

...The most recent of Olivares's conversion experiences grew out of events in Central America...

...Olivares rebukes Ezell for "playing on an anti-immigrant mood in the country and feeding the fire of prejudice and racism...

...intervention...

...But not changing enough...

...But there was a catch...

...ADAPT's fight with APTA started when the trade association, angry at Carter Administration rules requiring city transit systems to equip up to half their buses with lifts, took the Department of Transportation to court over its rules implementing the nondiscrimination provisions of the Rehabilitation Act...

...Empty Shelves in Georgia GWINNETT COUNTY, GEORGIA Last spring, a parent here sought removal from the county schools of audio tapes used to help students relax...

...Saying he was armed and dangerous, the police issued "shoot to kill" orders for Martinez...

...Mary Johnson' (Mary Johnson is the editor of Disability Rag, a magazine devoted to the rights of the disabled...