DATELINES
Wasik, John F. & Patner, Andrew & Christensen, Jon & Chepesiuk, Ron
DATELINES AIDS Wasn't on the Agenda NEW ORLEANS An observer watching Sue Caves and Barbara Cleaver as they strolled the streets here in August would have found it hard to distinguish the two...
...The Reagan Administration has presided over seven years of the AIDS epidemic and Federal nonreaction to it...
...Frank Lumpkin is one of them...
...AZT is the only Federally approved AIDS drug, but it costs $ 1,000 a month to take...
...And the New Mexico Democratic Party recently passed a resolution requesting that land grants be restored to their original acreage by transferring land now under Federal control...
...He said he'd rather die than give up the ION CHRISTENSEN land...
...Caves refers to a soon-to-runout one-time Federal grant engineered by Senator Lowell Weicker, Republican of Connecticut—and opposed by Indiana Senator Dan Quayle— that supplies the medication to those who can't afford its prohibitive price tag but do not qualify for Medicaid, "Why can't everybody in this country have the medicine that will save their lives...
...Nothing that controversial has ever been mailed out through the school system...
...He consulted with El Consejo, a council of village elders set up in the 1960s to reestablish traditional authority in the Tierra Amarilla Land Grant...
...1 don't see the fairness in it...
...Rowan County citizens were getting the message...
...These are two women whose sons died of AIDS," someone answered...
...And now the women are, as Cleaver says, "disappointed Republicans...
...Flores and many other local people say the land was stolen from their ancestors when Congress turned the community land grant into a private holding in 1860...
...Dissatisfied with the government's response, Link organized a meeting of concerned residents...
...For him and the 3,400 other workers, the shutdown meant the end of a steady job...
...In the beginning, we knew we were going to have to reach the silent majority," Link says...
...Vista del Brazos, an Arizona-based investment partnership that owns the land, wants to sell the property for vacation homes and condominiums...
...Flores, he said, would be held until his supporters remove their fortifications and depart...
...The family of Amador Flores says it will fight to the death to hold the hillside where it has grazed livestock and planted beans for almost twenty years...
...He finished eight years of school before quitting to help work his grandfather's nearby mining claim...
...To do that, Link got up most days at 6 a.m...
...Even the word tierra, Spanish for land, has the power to incite passion...
...Individual payouts range from $17,500 to $1,000...
...One Woman Makes a Difference CLEVELAND, NORTH CAROLINA Until October 1986, thirty-three-year-old Patricia Link was the most unlikely candidate for the role of activist...
...But the men who built and toiled within it are still living...
...We have to be wiser in our decisions and not so pro-industry...
...I know we have the figures," says Caves...
...It doesn't matter how long [the judge] keeps Mr...
...The bureaucrats assured the young housewife that the plant would be perfectly safe...
...Two Republicans became two ex-Republicans...
...On a hill above this sleepy town, a Mexican-American family, in a shepherd's camp bristling with weapons, is holding out against developers...
...Men who had worked there for thirty years have little to show for their tenure...
...While in New Orleans, Caves and Cleaver addressed a candlelight vigil for the 412 people who would be diagnosed with AIDS during the week of the convention...
...A block-long skeleton of a giant, whose nostrils snorted steam and smoke into the air and produced the sinew of the modern age, is dormant and rusting away...
...Flores in jail," warns Pedro Arechuleta, a longtime activist who serves as spokesman for the Flores family and the half-dozen armed supporters who guard the camp...
...After a year at a business college in Salisbury, North Carolina, she had married and settled down to a contented life of taking care of her home and two young children...
...Progress doesn't necessarily mean industrial growth...
...Summer homes for Santa Fe and Albuquerque professionals already dot the valley...
...Getting involved doesn't necessarily mean making great strides...
...At the center of this confrontation is a conflict that goes back more than a hundred years...
...We were heavily insured, we were covered for it...
...They support the Floreses...
...Instead of hard hats, they wear little paper hats carrying the imprints Burger King or McDonald's...
...He registered the deed at the county courthouse and began paying taxes on the entire 500-acre parcel...
...citizens...
...There should be citizen input...
...Amador Flores's Beanfield War TIERRA AMARILLA, NEW MEXICO A real-life Milagro Beanfield War has broken out in the mountains of northern New Mexico...
...He then wrote himself a deed for the land and began using the hill for summer grazing, hunting, and wood-gathering...
...If his claim were successful, Flores would return most of the land to the community...
...I realized the facility was going to be close to so many schools and almost in my backyard...
...Flores also saw that none of the villagers were using the rest of the acreage on the hill...
...Propelled into a leadership role by the crisis, Lumpkin is now running for Congress, and he-sums up the workers' struggle in practical terms: "You have to fight for justice...
...After the platform committee and full convention, over the lonely opposition of Senator Weicker, approved an AIDS plank that said little about increased funding and ignored the recommendations of the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic, the two women led a hundred activists to the credentials checkpoint at the Louisiana Superdome, hoping to meet the President...
...They thought I was gullible and would believe anything they told me," she recalls...
...Varela says they started Ganados del Valle because they realized that "you can't just stand up to the developers and say, 'No, no, no!' You have to say, 'This is what we want, this is what we're going to do, so get out of the way.' "We have to make our land and water productive," she continues, "or the kids will leave this community...
...And he and his supporters proceeded to build five pinon-log bunkers and many barricades and booby traps that block every approach to the camp...
...The void and despair that followed exacted a grim price...
...In both fiction and real life, the standoff is a powder keg...
...Not just for AIDS—but for other illnesses as well...
...Both suits allege fraud on the part of Navistar and have not yet gone to trial...
...I don't think that's on the agenda...
...Earlier this year, SOJC won a settlement from Navistar that will pay the workers $ 14.8 million, to be distributed according to their seniority in the pension plan...
...I think we've gotten crazy with figures...
...I was never much of a joiner or one for getting involved in the community," Link says...
...If people like the President and the Vice President knew one family that has lost someone, two families—you can't see the lack of funding, you can't see people losing their AZT in September...
...They want to meet the President...
...When the injunction had been served in mid-April, Flores had burned it as television cameras rolled...
...The group managed to talk the school board into departing from school policy by allowing REAP to send flyers home with students, urging parents to join forces and help stop the state facility from locating in the county...
...But the response was overwhelmingly favorable...
...She has campaigned against the forced sale of property for a landfill site, for the establishment of a recycling center in her county, and for the creation of a County Environmental Affairs Board...
...My eyes have been opened about health care in this country, about discrimination...
...I had always believed in my country...
...And the proposed site was within a few miles of three elementary schools, one junior high school—and a mile and a half from the Link home...
...End of the Line at Wisconsin Steel CHICAGO Eight years ago, the gates were padlocked at Wisconsin Steel on the southeast side of Chicago...
...But I never took the initiative...
...Jon Christensen (Jon Christensen is a reporter for Pacific News Service, which ran a slightly different version of this story...
...Governor Martin finally understood how seriously the plant was going to affect our lives and that we were not going to accept it," says Link...
...Just a bunch of workers, the members of SOJC feel betrayed enough to keep marching in and out of the halls of government to fight for their lost benefits...
...I may go to jail, but we won't give up," Flores vowed before he was arrested at the hearing in Santa Fe...
...It was quite a milestone," says Link...
...In the years between shutdown and settlement, it is estimated that 600 workers died—many of heart disease and alcoholism, at rates much higher than the population in general...
...Many, however, quietly support the Flores family...
...As one business owner says, "We have nothing to gain and a lot to lose" by taking sides in public...
...She never thought much about environmental issues...
...When the United States took over the Southwest in 1846, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed the property rights of all Mexicans who decided to stay in the United States and become U.S...
...She helped educate the people and education was the biggest factor...
...The way we are doing things—cutting down forests, putting sewage in the rivers, destroying the animal habitat—is causing serious problems...
...Skirmishes over land and water—in the courts, at the ballot box, and on the ground—mark their long war for survival...
...He speaks broken, halting English when forced to switch from his native Spanish...
...Most local residents seem reluctant to talk about the conflict on the hill...
...Ron Chepesiuk (Ron Chepesiuk is a free-lance writer from Rock Hill, South Carolina...
...I'm confused...
...The letter to the editor struck me like a thunderbolt," she says...
...Amador Flores, a soft-spoken, forty-nine-year-old farmer, seems like anything but a leader...
...Isn't that too bad," the woman laughed...
...The truck led a caravan of vehicles down the highway near the proposed plant site...
...Scott Cleaver died in 1984 at age twenty-six...
...has been the rallying cry for movements sweeping through this territory to oust "outsiders" ever since the first Anglo settlers arrived...
...Link says the most difficult part of her new life as an activist is the time it takes away from her family...
...Andrew Patner (Andrew Patner, a writer who lives in Chicago, is the author of "I.F...
...Flores agreed to leave we wouldn't get out...
...Most of all, she wants to see more citizen involvement in environmental decision-making...
...You change the way you look at everything...
...Stone: A Portrait," published last spring by Pantheon...
...But she quickly adds that people can't afford not to get involved, especially if they have children...
...asks Caves...
...At the trial in Santa Fe, villagers testified to their belief that the land on the hill belongs to Flores...
...North Carolina is still seeking a site for the facility and citizens' groups around the state have called upon her to share her experience...
...But what about the hundreds of thousands of families who are not, or who have no coverage at all...
...Later his sister gave Flores the deed to a small farm just outside Tierra Amarilla...
...He started to realize that maybe alternatives should be considered...
...But I don't think figures mean anything to people...
...In The Milagro Beanfield War, John Nichols's best-selling novel recently adapted to film by Robert Redford, a northern New Mexico village rallies behind one man's fight against resort developers for the right to water his beanfield...
...The elders agreed that the land was at one time common land and encouraged Flores to stake a claim to the hill...
...Since 1981,39,000 people have died, 70,000 have the disease, and an estimated 1.5 million are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS and triggers its concomitant cancers and infections...
...They also lost back pay, vacation pay, severance pay, and their pension benefits...
...Michael Caves was thirty-five when he died in 1986...
...When I speak to groups," she says, "I tell them I believe the state should provide documented proof that the facility is a necessity...
...Link telephoned state officials in Raleigh and began asking those questions...
...She helped organize a demonstration in October 1987 in which REAP members loaded a truck with leaking fifty-gallon drums painted with skull and cross-bones...
...Patricia Link's life changed when she read a letter to the editor in her local newspaper...
...The land claimed by the Flores family is part of the 600,000-acre Tierra Amarilla Land Grant given to the first settlers of this region by Spain and Mexico...
...More than a hundred showed up and REAP—for Rowan Environmentalists Against Pollution-was born...
...to organize the opposition and to travel the county, speaking and educating the citizenry...
...The group elected Link one of two co-chairs...
...But Link hasn't had time to savor the victory...
...asked the wife of one delegate...
...Turned away by security guards, the two women faced the television cameras...
...The writer warned Rowan County residents about the dangers of a $30 million hazardous-waste-treatment plant the state was planning...
...While the money is welcome, it wasn't there when the workers needed it most—right after the mill's closing...
...It's pretty hard to come out of this, losing your son and hundreds of others," Sue Caves said later, "without questioning your values, without questioning what you believe in...
...However, Judge Kaufman ruled that Flores never had legal title to the land...
...Until recently, all the workers had was a faint hope vested in a group headed by Lumpkin known as the Save Our Jobs Committee...
...The plant was slated to burn and treat about 90 million pounds of hazardous waste annually...
...Link's life has changed as other environmental issues consume her attention...
...The deed says his parcel extends to la cuchilla, the ridge across the creek from his house...
...As for the settlement with Navistar, the workers "accept the fact that we lost something," says Lumpkin with an air of resignation...
...They came to New Orleans with the assistance of Mobilization Against AIDS, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, in hopes of persuading Republican delegates to adopt a platform plank calling for sound AIDS policy and with fainter (but still real) hopes of meeting with President Reagan and Vice President George Bush to bring the AIDS crisis home to national leaders...
...Then Governor Jim Martin came to town about a year ago, and the protesters complained to him about the state's plans...
...DATELINES AIDS Wasn't on the Agenda NEW ORLEANS An observer watching Sue Caves and Barbara Cleaver as they strolled the streets here in August would have found it hard to distinguish the two Southern Californians from thousands of other Republican women who descended on the city during the party's national convention...
...But when the gates closed, the benefits were lost in a maze of court filings, corporate denials of responsibility, and political finagling...
...For the workers of Wisconsin Steel, memories of the last days of the Machine Age are bittersweet...
...This is not a Spanish-land-grant case," the judge said, and reminded observers that New Mexico courts have ruled those cases were settled long ago by acts of Congress...
...Developers and investors such as Vista del Brazos look at Tierra Amarilla and see a prime location for a ski resort to the east of town...
...We didn't want to do it...
...I was a card-carrying member of the throw-away society...
...A lot of questions had to be asked...
...The descendants of Spanish and Mexican settlers look at Tierra Amarilla and see their home of many generations...
...John F. Wasik (John F. Wasik is a free-lance writer in the Chicago area...
...What's going on here...
...Big business is always going to have their ideas and opinions voiced automatically," she says...
...Sad and bereaved, but not quiet...
...We had to do it...
...Flores believes that gives him the right to a strip of land running up the hill his family now occupies all the way to the ridge that drops off the other side...
...Food, soda pop, and small monetary contributions show up at the camp almost every day...
...If I was asked to do something like bake a cake for a fundraiser, I would do it...
...The high-paying, blue-collar jobs are gone...
...Ganados del Valle is helping to reestablish traditional livestock and weaving businesses in the area with no-interest loans and cooperative marketing ventures...
...Signs posted along the fence surrounding the current armed camp read Tierra o Muerte—Land or Death...
...Back at the encampment, Arechuleta says they did not expect justice from the court...
...Their lawyer, Thomas Geoghegan, says they may be owed as much as $80 million, but they voted to accept the settlement, choosing to take what they can get now rather than wait several more years...
...I knew the plant could not be accepted at face value...
...The silent majority has to be demonstrative or we are not going to be heard...
...Now they hope to attract wider attention by holding out on the land and, eventually, to force the developers to negotiate...
...We believed the local citizens would oppose the incinerator once they knew what it meant for their families and the county's future...
...I didn't know about styro-foam cups and so patronized McDonald's," she says with a laugh...
...Antonio Manzanares and Maria Varela run an agricultural cooperative in Tierra Amarilla...
...In mid-November 1987, the North Carolina Waste Water Treatment Commission dropped Rowan County from its list of potential sites for the plant...
...Caves, a sixty-one-year-old realtor from Long Beach, and Cleaver, a fifty-year-old hairdresser from the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, are both longtime Republicans and supporters of Governor and later President Ronald Reagan...
...Navistar still faces a $65 million suit brought by the Federal Pension Guaranty Benefit Corporation, which has picked up the interim pension benefits so far, and a $ 125 million suit by EDC Holding Corporation, a holding company that Envirodyne set up to shelter it from liability and excessive losses...
...It's a terrible thing to say...
...Lacking support from the independent union that represented Wisconsin Steel's workers, the SOJC got a lawyer of its own and filed suit against Navistar to regain their benefits...
...Under the terms of a union agreement, Navistar, a former owner of the mill, then known as International Harvester, was to have guaranteed the workers' pension benefits when it sold the mill in 1977 to an undercapitalized holding company controlled by Envirodyne, Inc...
...Unlike most other delegates and GOP boosters here, however, these two women came to political activism only recently—and their activity has propelled them away from the Reagan Administration...
...Patricia emerged very quickly as a leader...
...I think Patricia had a great deal to do with that," Rowan County manager Tim Russell told one newspaper...
...Lumpkin worked at Wisconsin Steel for more than thirty years...
...Rowan County—her county—was one of two finalists in the state's search for a site...
...Vrdolyak became a Republican last year and is now running for Cook County clerk...
...See "Waiting for the Brimstone," March 1984 issue...
...Although the union filed a suit, it later dropped it without fanfare...
...Democratic Representative Bill Richardson has sponsored a bill directing the Attorney General to investigate the possibility of fraud in the land-grant transfers...
...It was a question of getting the word out...
...At a June hearing in Santa Fe, Judge Bruce Kaufman, who had earlier ruled that the property legally belongs to Vista del Brazos, ordered Flo-res jailed on contempt-of-court charges for refusing to obey an earlier injunction ordering his family and friends off the land...
...At the time, the union's lawyer was Edward Vrdolyak, then the powerful Democratic alderman and committeeman of Chicago's Tenth Ward...
...Four hundred came to a meeting to hear Link, other REAP members, and environmentalists speak about the dangers of hazardous waste...
...You're rich and you can have the medicine,' and 'You're not rich and you can't.' "My son's medical bills were just under $300,000...
...But if you reach one person and they in turn reach other people, you can make a difference...
...For Sue Caves and Barbara Cleaver each had a son who died of AIDS...
...Here on Tierra Amarilla hill, they fight for land...
...Tierra...
...Throughout the Southwest, the descendants of the first Spanish and Mexican settlers are desperately struggling to preserve traditional rural communities...
...And they participated in an emotion-laden "die-in," at which they chalked the names of their sons on silhouettes of bodies on the sidewalk in front of city hall...
...Even if Mr...
Vol. 52 • October 1988 • No. 10
