DATELINES
Hudson, Mike & Jiji, Jessica & Watters, Ethan & Valdes, Cecilia & Smith, Michael & Bernstein, Dennis
DATELINES Pulling the Grass Up by Its Roots HALIFAX, VIRGINIA The white men who ran Halifax County a decade ago didn't have room for Cora Tucker in their monthly rituals. At the meetings of the...
...A McGraw-Hill employee assured him that placing below the national average would not be a problem if he bought their test...
...They know they are not learning what they should be learning...
...But their greatest contribution is moral support for families deprived of a loved one...
...People around you live here permanently, eating out of garbage cans and screaming incoherently...
...Being outside is almost as bad as being a prisoner," says Tapia...
...Michael Smith and Cecilia Valdes (Michael Smith is a free-lance writer based in Chile...
...In practice, though, prolonged incarceration is not so easy to take...
...Welcome to New York City's subway system...
...SANTIAGO, CHILE When Ana Maria Pereira and Eduardo Bustos got married, their honeymoon lasted less than three hours...
...policy in El Salvador...
...You have to pull the grass up by its roots...
...Everything was perfect," she recalls...
...She wrote angrily about having to go to white folks' back doors and about other indignities suffered by blacks in the 1950s...
...I live for those visits," s.ays Pereira...
...Today, they are housed in separate blocks from criminals and allowed two three-hour visits per week...
...And I sat on this man's hat in the seat...
...Many prisoners are parents...
...In the 1*984-85 school year, states using the new Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT 6) all came in well above the fiftieth percentile...
...It wasn't so much that she liked the Republican as that she wanted to show Democrats they can't take black voters for granted...
...Blanca Perez says she lost her boyfriend after he was jailed last year in Concepcion: "He says being locked up took away his ability to love...
...I wish we could be like normal couples...
...Cannell helped file a consumer fraud complaint last March in all fifty states against the four major American test publishers—McGraw-Hill, the Psychological Corporation, the Riverside Publishing Company, and Science Research Associates—charging them with selling deceptive tests that are "injurious to the public interest...
...And she has angered many—both white and black— who don't want a loud black woman making waves...
...About 17,000 of the 37,000 people in Halifax County and the city of South Boston are black...
...Change doesn't come from the top," Tucker says...
...These communal visits in the prison gym are the only vestiges of outside life they're allowed...
...When Tucker was in high school, she won an award for an essay on "What America Means to Me...
...New Yorkers have the right to know that their taxes are supporting a death-squad government in El Salvador," says spokesman Jon Haines...
...These kids are not stupid," Cannell says...
...All week I think sibout what I can bring my husband...
...The county supervisors used to point at Tucker and say, "You," when she wanted to speak at meetings...
...Test-item teaching is obvious," Cannell says...
...Tucker doesn't mind that many people in her home county still resent her...
...Political prisoners are subjected to routines of horror...
...Not all relationships survive...
...When I was arrested, my brother lost his speech for a month and my father still hasn't visited me because it's too painful for him...
...I love all of the people in it...
...In August of last year, Cannell wrote state superintendents and test coordinators asking for rankings of their elementary schools against national averages...
...The hardest part is when the victims are first detained incommunicado—a euphemism for torture...
...I wanted so badly to steal him away, but of course I couldn't...
...She continued her stubborn activism through the 1960s and 1970s and started Citizens for a Better America after a dispute over construction of a county recreation center...
...His study has sent shock waves through the Department of Education and shaken the $100 million testing industry...
...Cora Tucker has been raising hell in Halifax County since she was a teen-ager...
...Winning Democracy has pledged to take legal action against what its attorneys characterize as "selective application" of First Amendment rights in the private sector...
...Nobody offered her a seat...
...When confronted with the evidence of inflated claims, school officials ducked behind the apparent good name of the McGraw-Hill Comparative Test of Basic Skills...
...Privacy is impossible...
...Their December 1986 wedding was the first of six such marriages, bringing high emotional costs to prisoners and the ones they love...
...School districts and state officials are happy with results that seem to prove they are doing a good job...
...When I had my patients tested, the only sixth-grade words they could recognize were the ones that also appeared on the sixth-grade achievement test...
...That same year, Tucker ran as a write-in candidate for governor of Virginia...
...Still, this is our way of making life normal in spite of this cruel and abnormal punishment," observes Bustos...
...Still, I'll never leave my husband alone, because he is the only one I have...
...And Pinochet will never take that away from me...
...I'm grateful to the Lord that I don't feel bitter," she says...
...M.emories of their wedding day are a stark reminder that the visits are really just a bitter-sweet respite...
...Cannell then turned to the testing companies, including McGraw-Hill, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, and Riverside Publishing...
...That's the length of visiting hours at the penitentiary here that houses 110 of the 452 political prisoners held by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet...
...Yet all had tests on their school records showing they were placed correctly...
...The remaining eighteen states did not keep statewide records, so Cannell went to the school districts...
...Ethan Watters (Ethan Watters is a free-lance writer based in San Francisco...
...Amid the clamor of children playing, prisoners hold hands with loved ones and catch up on the week's events...
...Jimmy Carter appointed her to a Presidential commission on women's issues...
...I am horribly envious of couples I see embracing in the park, and of pregnant women...
...A Marriage of Inconvenience...
...That's what is really offensive...
...They claim that our sign would be too 'negative' for food advertisers, yet they accept ads that tell of cockroaches in toothbrushes...
...Last year, she got angry at long-time Democratic state legislator Frank Slayton for suggesting that two men he was defending in a lawsuit had been horsing around when they threw a rope over a tree and talked about lynching a black man...
...Until recently, most political prisoners were housed with ordinary criminals and arbitrarily denied visiting rights and adequate food and clothing...
...Forcibly arrested, held incommunicado for prolonged periods, tortured, coerced into signing "confessions," stripped of peace of mind, and finally condemned to long prison terms, they lose control of their lives...
...As bad as Halifax County is, I love this place...
...Mounting reports of death-squad activity by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran military prompted the organization Winning Democracy in El Salvador, in conjunction with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, to launch a campaign publicizing the atrocities there...
...Bustos and Pereira went out together for four years before he was jailed in May 1986...
...Frank had forgotten who sent him to Richmond...
...They grabbed for their papers, their briefcases, their hats...
...Tucker worked side-by-side with local officials who had been among her toughest adversaries to stall proposals for uranium mining and nuclear-waste dumping in the area...
...I really do...
...Scores showed the kids doing fine and the school districts in West Virginia rating above average...
...Cannell knew the kids were not fine and it didn't make any sense that all the districts in West Virginia—a state with the third lowest college-entrance scores in the country and equally poor graduation rates-were above average...
...At the meetings of the Board of Supervisors, the men in the audience took most of the chairs...
...But when I left I felt so lonely, I cried and cried...
...These days, she says, they call her by name...
...The prisoners made a cake and set up a makeshift chapel in the gym...
...People like black folks who say 'Yes sir' and 'Yes ma'am' and know how to stay in their place," she says...
...A Test that Never Fails BECKLEY, WEST VIRGINIA A young country doctor has been testing the people who test America's elementary school students, and the scores he is giving out are not good...
...And we will do whatever it takes—for as long as it takes— to get the signs up...
...Cecilia Valdes is a reporter for Fortin Mapocho, an opposition daily in Santiago...
...Since she founded her local grass-roots group, she has helped awaken black voters from the long nightmare of Jim Crow...
...Solitude—depriving the prisoner of friends, family, lovers, and life on the other side of prison walls—is a calculated part of the punishment...
...So Tucker, shrunken by cancer, leaned on a cane or crutches at the back of the room...
...In recent years, the focus of Citizens for a Better America has expanded to include environmental issues...
...Tucker's victim plunked his hat in the trash...
...Rest assured, however, that the New York Subway Advertising Company wants to safeguard you from an assault on good taste—with an assault on good taste...
...When she went to Richmond for an assembly honoring black students from all over Virginia, she learned someone had changed her essay to reflect a white view of America...
...You have to remind people every once in a while...
...The result is that companies are getting rich selling tests on which everybody scores well...
...Everybody jumped up—in one motion as if the seats had become electrified...
...Then they plopped their briefcases and hats onto the empty ones...
...It's all kind of funny," Cannell says, "until you see the damage these tests have done...
...Dennis Bernstein and Jessica Jui (Dennis Bernstein and Jessica Jiji are producers of "Contra-gate," a daily report on U.S...
...When he sent these patients to be tested by a clinical psychologist, he discoverd that their scholastic skills were two to three years behind the grades in which they were enrolled...
...If the ad is disturbing," says a Winning Democracy spokesman, "think how much more disturbing the reality is...
...The others internalize the anger, lose self-esteem, and often get profoundly depressed...
...Friends stop visiting and the prisoners lose touch with memories of day-to-day life-going to the corner store, playing soccer in the barrio sand-lot, talking with friends over a beer, riding the bus...
...The dictatorship wanted to separate us, to break us up," Bustos says, "so we decided to join forever...
...Schools concentrate on teaching the answers to the specific questions that appear on the test...
...By the time they get to high school, the healthier ones get angry at the system...
...It was like living in hell then," recalls Pereira, "not knowing if he would come out dead or alive...
...But the rewards haven't come easy...
...The company has accepted ads about AIDS, abortion, and human rights in the Soviet Union," says Cecilia Chacon, New York coordinator of Winning Democracy...
...In 1981, families organized the Political Prisoners Family Group, and they have fought hard for the prisoners' rights...
...When I ask them to do something, they listen...
...foreign policy and covert action, on WBAI in New York City...
...Area leaders describe local race relations these days as progressive...
...But Tucker— who grew up one of nine children in a sharecropping family—says prejudice churns below the surface...
...If we're gonna get our ass kicked," she says, "we just as well get our ass kicked by a Republican...
...When Governor Thomas Stanley tried to give Tucker her award, she kept her hands by her side and refused it...
...But their married life consists of six hours of visiting time a week...
...John Jacob Cannell found that most states in the country currently claim to be above the national average in elementary school achievement test scores...
...Predominantly black districts went strongly for Ha-good and helped him pull off a dramatic upset...
...They organized a boycott of white-owned businesses in 1981 that helped force many to hire more blacks...
...They help each other out and give each other strength, but we are alone...
...The real issue is that, for whatever reason, they won't let this image be seen...
...Most political prisoners kept their activities secret before their arrests, so families are shocked when they are hauled off...
...We had to fight to survive," says prisoner Ricardo Hermosilla, jailed since 1984...
...Districts and states can also purchase a variety of norms from the testing companies...
...And Southside Virginia is probably the most famous place in the world for that...
...But while she now enjoys grudging acceptance from some local power brokers, Cora Tucker doesn't care to be part of the establishment...
...She got only a handful of votes, but the campaign gave her a soapbox to blast Democrats and Republicans for ignoring the needs of black voters...
...You try to ignore the unsanitary sight and smell, since you are more concerned about your safety...
...There's no other chance to show him I love him...
...Gagged on the Subway NEW YORK CITY You step gingerly around a puddle of excrement...
...Still, she hasn't shunned confrontation...
...The text of the banned ad, created by California-based artist John Baldessari, asks commuters, What are your taxes buying in El...
...The company—a private concern with monopoly control over all advertisements run in the city's subway trains—refuses to run an advertisement that's critical of U.S...
...What's more, in most districts and states the same test is given year after year...
...I want 'em to say, 'Cora, you go to hell'" —Mike Hudson (Mike Hudson is a staff writer for the Roanoke Times & World-News...
...But it wasn't until 1975, when she started Citizens for a Better America, that she began to bring change to this southern Virginia county where tobacco and conservatism thrive...
...salvador?, and features the mutilated body of a Salvadoran university professor who was tortured and slain by one of the thriving death squads...
...Such big-name politicians as Presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis send her Christmas cards...
...If your schools don't look good on the "state norm," simply purchase the "local averages" or the "inner-city averages" or the "low socio-economic averages...
...My family hardly knew I was in the opposition," adds Erwin Erices...
...Since Ricardo Hermosilla was arrested, life for his wife and four children has revolved around prison visits and filling the gap left by the absence of the breadwinner...
...Each family prepares lunch on blankets spread on long tables, as armed guards watch at a distance...
...Then one day, hell got in me," remembers this forty-seven-year-old black woman...
...He impersonated a school official considering switching test companies, claiming his school was placing below the national average...
...I don't want people to be grateful to me," she says...
...So Cannell started asking questions...
...They have given me the strength to survive this, but it has been difficult for them," he says...
...They tried to make me sound like a happy little girl," she recalls...
...She had always supported Slayton, but last fall she stumped for Mark Ha-good, his Republican opponent...
...Cannell got started on the project while trying to help teen-age patients who were either chronically depressed or abusing alcohol and drugs...
...I see the attitude of people changing...
...We're simply trying," Haines continues, "to bring out the truth that our Government is funding death squads in El Salvador...
...We need to provide our clients with a positive atmosphere," says company spokesman Danny Trachtenberg,, adding that the ad is "inflammatory" and "would probably encourage vandalism...
...Tucker and the young people who formed the nucleus of her group studied minority hiring in their community and brought Federal pressure on the local school system to stop discriminating against blacks, an issue the local NAACP wouldn't take on...
...But they fought for years, with hunger strikes and appeals to international human-rights groups, and Chilean authorities finally succumbed...
...They are quick to say they prepared themselves for extended periods of isolation since they knew the risks of their political activities...
...Cannell found evidence that the standards used by the test companies to establish "averages" were outdated and misleading...
...Thirty-two states proudly responded with reports showing themselves to be above the national norms...
...As he expected, when school districts took charge of the testing, the results were just as bogus as the state scores...
...Those battles brought out the best in the community, she says: "We were all able to sit down together...
...Her crusades against backroom politics, voting discrimination, uranium mining, and toxic waste have brought her success and rewards...
...In addition, no fewer than 90 per cent of school districts surveyed claim the honor of being above national norms, Cannell reports...
...People have spit in her face, slashed her tires, threatened her life...
Vol. 52 • August 1988 • No. 8
