DATELINES
Juffer, Jane & Koeppel, Barbara & Kroeber, Arthur R. & Davidson, Osha
DATE LINES Sanctuary Crackdown Nabs Reporter ALBUQUERQUE The story of two women from El Salvador seeking sanctuary in the United States for their unborn babies seemed important to free-lance...
...There are seventy-two such institutions in the country, at least one in every state, set up under Federal grants dating back to 1862...
...Living in the United States," she says, "I never used to feel afraid of that kind of activity...
...He told the City Paper, Baltimore's alternative news-weekly, about the incident and a reporter called APL to get the university's side of the story...
...It is debatable to assume that research and extension programs designed primarily to serve the needs of the 50,000 largest U.S...
...The union has also given women access to low-cost credit...
...She did not cross the border with them, and she didn't ride in the same car with them—precautions she felt were adequate...
...The SEWA bank, a cooperative effort built on the deposits and membership fees of union members, offers loans of up to $1,200 to women for purchase of equipment needed for their trades or businesses...
...Corbett's former supervisor isn't authorized to talk, but Edward Cochran, assistant to the director for external relations at APL, says, "It was a relatively minor incident...
...Corbett is suing Johns Hopkins for compensatory and punitive damages under a Maryland law covering "wrongful firing," on the grounds he was fired for opposing the university's practice of violating the free-speech rights of demonstrators and himself...
...While most activists are celebrating the hard-fought victory, some say, "Wait and see...
...Public defender Tova In-dritz, who represents Martinez, is trying to get the charges dismissed on First Amendment grounds...
...Absolutely not...
...Land-Grant Colleges Return to Roots DAVIS, CALIFORNIA A landmark victory for the family farm was recently won after an eight-year-long court battle challenging the University of California's bias in favor of big agribusiness...
...APL's response was a written reprimand, stating he had refused to do an assignment and was hindering the university from working effectively...
...California is just the beginning—repercussions from this case will be felt at land-grant institutions across the country...
...DATE LINES Sanctuary Crackdown Nabs Reporter ALBUQUERQUE The story of two women from El Salvador seeking sanctuary in the United States for their unborn babies seemed important to free-lance journalist Demetria Martinez...
...Johns Hopkins receives more Federal dollars for research and development than any other university...
...Terry Corbett, a photographer who had worked for Westing-house for nine years, answered it, was hired, and began work in February 1986...
...It was a natural: women fleeing political persecution to give birth in a strange land, the infants due in December 1986...
...That's why she wasn't surprised when Remer-Thamert called her in August 1986 with an idea for the Journal's traditional front-page Christmas story...
...Every journalist should be losing sleep over this," she says...
...The University of California is the nation's premier land-grant system...
...The machine was cited during the trial as a prime example of how research that benefits agribusiness hurts family farms...
...The job was to blow up the face of every demonstrator to a four-by-five-inch head shot and make twenty-five copies of each...
...Walter Goldschmidt makes the same point...
...The book tells, for example, of the devastation wrought by development of a mechanized tomato harvester designed at the University of California in the 1960s...
...She remembers the INS investigators coming to her apartment to ask about Remer-Thamert...
...He found diesel-powered mini-plows, mini-planters, and mini-harvesters in use in one-acre rice paddies...
...That's how naive I was about the possibility of being indicted...
...Soon after, he had an interview with someone in the personnel office...
...One-third of SEWA's women are Moslems, who had to overcome their traditional seclusion to join...
...The other half is getting the university to implement the decision," he says...
...Remer-Thamert asked her if she'd like to go along...
...His first assignments were to shoot passport photos of employees and pictures of machine parts APL researchers were designing for the Government...
...I wanted to see the route, to see the expressions on their faces, to be there—not after the fact, when they had handkerchiefs on their faces and were given prepared statements...
...She has written extensively about the response of mainline denominations to undocumented Central Americans, and many of her story ideas come from local ministers...
...Most of all," says the photographer, "I just want to be exonerated...
...The ruling is only half the battle, according to Gene Severens of the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska...
...California Judge Raymond Marsh ruled that Congress, in passing the act, wanted to promote research on "projects that are intended to preserve and foster the small family farm system of agricultural production...
...Osha Davids (Osha Davidson is a free-la writer based in Mechani ville, Iowa...
...The author of this plea wa James Kendrick, the Unive sity of California's retiring vi president for agriculture ar natural resources...
...Bhatt sees grass-roots economic organizing as the key to political power for working women...
...Arthur R. Kroeber (Arthur R. Kroeber is a correspondent for Pacific News Service in southern Asia...
...He also learned that the APL photography staff had some other, less technical duties: During the demonstrations, they photographed the protesters...
...Ela Bhatt, SEWA's founder, worked in the Indian Textile Labor Association for seventeen years before realizing that Western-style, factory-based union organizing does not confront the problems of Indian labor...
...Our politics is that the women should have incomes," she says...
...his conscience wouldn't permit it...
...He was also not asked to work on a certain "rush job for the Pentagon," which kept his colleagues busy one day, and kept him from printing in the lab...
...Another third belong to the lowest groups in India's hierarchy of caste...
...She believes the INS is trying to make an example of her...
...Afraid that he might be asked to do the same, Corbett told his supervisor he simply couldn't...
...Even in California, there are hints that change may come from the inside...
...About the practice of photographing demonstrators and compiling posters of head shots, Cochran explains, "The photos are posted in the guard room of the security headquarters so the guards can be familiar with these people and do their jobs properly...
...They've been fighting this tooth-and-nail and you can expect them to resist in any way they can...
...farm-ing units are in the public in terest...
...Government maintains, however, that the charges against Martinez are unrelated to her work as a reporter...
...Jane Juffer (Jane Juffer, an associate editor of Pacific News Service, wrote "Abuse at the Border" in the April issue...
...policy in Central America...
...Corbett decided to go public...
...Local activists were angered but not surprised at the indictment, on related charges, of Remer-Thamert, a longtime vocal opponent of U.S...
...The decision also holds that the university's agricultural research should also benefit rural residents and consumers...
...They were driven to money lenders—who charged interest of 10 per cent a month or more...
...Government policy there...
...California's 66,000 small family farms should be the "prime beneficiaries" of the Federally funded research projects, ruled the judge...
...The intelligence community shares our files all over the East Coast...
...She met the two women at a train station in Juarez, introduced herself as a reporter, and took notes in her orange pad...
...Whether a piece of machinery is designed to benefit the small farmer with only one acre, as in Japan, or the large grower with tens of thousands of acres, as in California, is up to the designer...
...In fact, the university has said it will appeal the ruling-all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary...
...If implemented properly, the ruling will mean more research into the effects of and alternatives to pesticides," says Debra Jones, executive director of the California Action Network...
...But SEWA members get more than better wages and working conditions...
...The indictment also haunts her reporting—and she fears it may haunt others...
...Although the paper did not assign the story or know of her plans, he thinks it was a legitimate story idea...
...As it turned out, though, her editors decided on a different story for Christmas...
...The case has serious implications for freedom of the press, and the Government has chosen a vulnerable target—a twenty-seven-year-old Hispanic woman who lives below the Federally set poverty line as she tries to make a living as a free-lance writer...
...They want to scare journalists who try to seek out information about Central America and who document church opposition to U.S...
...The leadership of the state Agricultural Experiment Stations and Cooperative Extension urgently need to begin adjusting their programs so that the public interest is served," it said...
...When we did an action at the Johns Hopkins graduation, a security officer came up to us and said, 'We knew you were coming.'" For six months after he was fired last August, Corbett faced hard times...
...It's an organization for self-employed and home-based women workers, and some 20,000 have benefited...
...These people were exercising their First Amendment rights, and I didn't think they should be photographed for that...
...He tells of his happy surprise while visiting a Japanese village in 1980...
...More than a year later, the U.S...
...Founded in 1972, the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) has set up eight cooperatives in the city and surrounding countryside for workers in such exploitive trades as street cleaning and handloom weaving...
...Corbett said no...
...that is, workers have no formal relation to an employer and are not protected by national wage and safety laws...
...It's not part of any great conspiracy...
...Her immediate thought when she heard of their pending arrival was that she could use it as the Christmas story she did as a regular religion writer for the Albuquerque Journal...
...I couldn't get unemployment pay, because Hopkins said I had been 'insubordinate.' I finally found work with another photographer, but not before my wife and I went through all our savings...
...Not only should they have a share in the cake...
...Martinez's trial, set for this summer, will be the first for a journalist on charges related to the Sanctuary Movement...
...Women—who, in poor families, are often the main wage-earners—are heavily represented in the informal sector in such occupations as cigarette making, laundry, and street sweeping...
...Government indicted the reporter on four counts of inducing and transporting "illegal aliens...
...His options: He could leave the job altogether, or the office would help him find work elsewhere in the university, but it wouldn't be as a photographer...
...Martinez is a self-assigning reporter who usually writes one religion article a week for the Albuquerque Journal and also contributes to the National Catholic Reporter, for which she is a columnist...
...The cooperatives have freed women from the traditional system of informal labor, in which contractors supply raw materials and pay workers a minimal sum according to the amount of work done...
...Eight years after the harvester's introduction, the average size of a California tomato farm was 363 acres, and the number of such farms had dropped from 4,000 to 600...
...The U.S...
...It will mean the development of more nutritious and better-tasting foods...
...Within twenty-four hours of leaving home, Martinez was back, satisfied she had laid the groundwork for a Christmas story and possibly other articles related to the Sanctuary Movement...
...Technology per se isn't the problem," says Goldschmidt...
...Professor emeritus of anthropology and psychiatry at the University of California, Goldschmidt is the author of As You Sow, a groundbreaking 1947 study of the social and economic effects of agribusiness on two California rural communities...
...The Hopkins interpretation is different...
...Now I'm scared to death...
...At the heart of the case is the century-old Hatch Act...
...Barbara Koeppel (Barbara Koeppel, a free-lance journalist, is a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board...
...In 1986, the total amounted to $445 million, $334 million of which was earmarked for APL, most of it from the Department of the Navy for research on such items as the Trident submarine and cruise missile...
...But there are also encouraging signs that some of the nation's land-grant institutions are ready to reassess the way they make research decisions before they are taken to court...
...The average size of a California tomato farm was thirty-five acres in 1964, when the first mechanical harvester was developed, but the machine was designed to be used on farms with a minimum of seventy-five acres and to reach peak efficiency at 150 acres...
...Are they used by the Pentagon...
...It reflects insubordination...
...Many white male journalists go out, assist Central American refugees, write books about them, and sell them to publishing houses...
...It contributes to their problem...
...The next day, Corbett was fired for being "uncooperative...
...In June 1987, his supervisor assigned him a rush job: Make a negative and eighteen copies of a rough layout for a thirty-by-forty-inch poster to be labeled 1987 Protesters, featuring head shots of ten demonstrators...
...Now, for the first time in her reporting career, she is nervous about interviewing undocumented people...
...I expected to be subpoenaed or maybe even assigned to cover Remer-Thamert's case," she says...
...Later, she and the minister met the women in El Paso...
...We're seeing the turning of the tide," says Tim Murphy, associate director of the Rural Coalition, a national rural-advocacy group...
...If convicted, Martinez faces up to twenty-five years in prison and $750,000 in fines...
...Working Women Form Co-ops AHMEDABAD, INDIA In this bustling mill town of 2.5 million people, a union is writing new chapters in the history of India's labor and women's movements...
...That continues to haunt me...
...The possibilities are wide open...
...Martinez wonders, "Why me...
...With a small photographic staff, we can't allow people to select what assignment they're going to do...
...This decision is long overdue," says Susan DeMarco, coauthor with Jim Hightower of Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times, a study of the land-grant colleges...
...The lawsuit, brought by the California Action Network in behalf of family farmers and farmworkers, charged the university with misusing the Federal funds, which were intended to benefit small farmers, consumers, and rural residents...
...A controversial column appeared in California Agriculture in 1986...
...It wasn't in the job description," he says...
...we also want to have a say in what kind of cake there should be...
...The machine also, critics calculate, caused the loss of 18,000 jobs for field workers...
...they gain self-respect and independence, rare for women in this male-dominated society...
...We do photograph the people who pass out leaflets at APL, and they have never objected...
...When the task was finished, Corbett recalls, the stack of photographs was half a foot high...
...But the indictment of Demetria Martinez shocked people here, Martinez most of all...
...Why am I singled out...
...He was told he wouldn't be working in the photo lab any longer...
...What Martinez never expected was that her decision to accompany the Reverend Glen Remer-Thamert, a local Lutheran minister, to greet the women in Juarez, Mexico, would have a startling consequence of its own...
...The idea clicked, and she agreed to make the trip...
...He'd had a call from an attorney in San Salvador asking if the minister would help two pregnant women who wanted to give birth in the United States in December...
...I want the university to admit they were wrong...
...According to Baltimore peace activist Max Obu-szewski, when groups such as his do civil disobedience or distribute leaflets at Pentagon-related sites like APL, they— and their license plates—are routinely photographed...
...I wanted to dig deeper into the Sanctuary story," says Martinez...
...Photographer Blows Whistle, Loses Job BALTIMORE The Johns Hopkins University want-ad for an industrial photographer was straightforward: The Applied Physics Lab (APL) needed someone with technical experience...
...APL, Corbett soon learned, was the scene of repeated demonstrations by antiwar groups...
...The university not only does not help small farmers," says DeMarco...
...When the cars stopped from time to time on the trip from El Paso to Albuquerque, she talked with the refugees...
...I would almost bet my job on it," Federal prosecutor Don Svet told the Albuquerque Journal...
...What they designed, however, would soon spell trouble for the photographer...
...Terry Corbett, however, refused to do the assignment...
...There is nothing value-free about research that consistently benefits the fewest and the biggest," says William Hoerger, the attorney who has handled the plaintiffs' case since 1982...
...Bhatt estimates that almost 90 per cent of the Indian labor force is employed in the "informal sector...
...The decision also challenges the widely held notion that the increase in the number of giant farms, concentrated in the hands of fewer farmers, is simply the effect of value-free technological advances...
...Poor women had always found it difficult to get even small loans from India's nationalized banks...
...As for the newspaper, assistant editor Ken Walz says it supports Martinez, who continues to contribute articles...
...There were more protests over the year," Corbett says, "but I was never asked to take pictures, since they knew where I stood...
Vol. 52 • May 1988 • No. 5
