DATE LINES
Milich, John E. & Ervin, Michael & Goertzen, Donald & Chepesiuk, Ron
DATELINES Environmental Sleuth Battles Bureaucrats ALBANY, NEW YORK New York is an old, highly industrialized state that is heavily polluted. Ward Stone is the state's only wildlife pathologist,...
...I organized protests...
...Stone's detection of major toxic-dump sites and his crusade against pesticides have earned him public recognition and awards, but his breakthroughs usually bring him bureaucratic troubles...
...But it's highly regarded by many who cover the public-school beat for the mainstream media...
...The Compact of Free Association," he says, "is a contradiction in terms...
...Instead, it destroyed the local economies, used the people as radiation guinea pigs, took their land for military bases, and blew up their islands...
...Yes," continued the senator...
...more than a year later a Federal judge lifted the ban on grounds that it violated the teachers' First Amendment rights...
...How many people live on Rongelap...
...They'd been polluting without a permit for decades," he emphasizes...
...One morning in 1954, we saw the sun rising in the West...
...He was assailed by the corporate giant and gagged by DEC commissioner Thomas Jorling until data withstood every challenge...
...And Stone has given several hundred public talks in the past decade without accepting a single fee because "that might confuse my message...
...The snow was radioactive ash...
...Ordained as a minister, he nonetheless resigned as pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in 1974 because, he says, "Civil rights has always been my main interest and first love...
...Stone thinks it is his continuing call for a probe of DEC's "scientific malpractice" at Reynolds that prompted the commissioner's recent crackdown on him...
...Eleven times a year for the past fourteen years, Schmidt and a volunteer staff of his fellow Chicago public-school teachers have put out a tough-minded little newspaper called Substance...
...Environmental issues have not been a priority with the Cuomo administration," says Larry Shapiro, environmental lawyer for the New York Public Interest Research Group...
...He, like the other 105 participating veterans, opposes U.S...
...Just before the rally, Jor-ling defused it to a degree by admitting he'd made a mistake—he partially rescinded his orders and apologized to the environmental groups...
...Incompetent school-board decisions provide a lot of copy, too—such as the spending of $6 million to rehabilitate twenty-one schools, only to close them three years later...
...policy toward the Central American country...
...In this work, Barnette draws upon many years' experience in civil-rights work in Charlotte...
...In August 1986, he was a member of the first Witness for Peace Black Delegation, which conducted a two-week fact-finding tour of Nicaragua...
...Stone's latest round of difficulties began in late 1987 when he concluded that Reynolds Metal was poisoning the St...
...Three days later, their skin began to blister...
...Three days after that, their hair was falling out and the eighty-six people on Rongelap that day were evacuated to Kwajalein, the island hosting a U.S...
...He argues that the negotiating process between the Micronesian Congress and the U.S...
...In fact, Substance broke one of the major Chicago education stories of the decade when it reported in 1985 that the school board was investigating charges against James Moffat, a principal who was once the second-highest official in the school system...
...These cries of "foul" touched off four Chicago teacher strikes in the 1980s...
...They ultimately had to back down...
...The only question I have is why we're rare...
...After that, I said it wouldn't happen again...
...Stone's disillusionment with bureaucracy began in the mid-1970s, when his warnings to DEC officials about widespread polychlorinated bi-phenyl (PCB) contamination in the Hudson River and Mirex poisoning in Lake Ontario went unheeded...
...Thirty-five environmental organizations signed a letter to Cuomo urging him to restore the legislature's funding...
...On May 2, Jorling lobbied Governor Mario Cuomo to veto a line item of $225,000 the legislature had voted to foster Stone's investigations, an appropriation outside the regular DEC budget...
...The motto of Substance is, "Where ignorance is standard, intelligence is subversive...
...nuclear-weapons tests in the 1950s...
...Today, Barnette works as a machine-shop inspector, which allows him time for his activism...
...Admiralty Pacific will remove the metallic refuse before it's shipped, but the company will not guarantee that the remainder is nontoxic...
...He'd rather drive home across the state at night than bill the taxpayers for a motel...
...I traveled a lot...
...In 1979, the board banned the teachers' group that was publishing the paper from distributing Substance or any other of its publications on school property...
...Hinchey attributes Jorling's repeated statements demeaning Stone's "scientific rigor" and the "litigation quality" of his research to "resentment or jealousy or fear of those within or outside" DEC...
...His experience there has compelled Barnette to be a hard-working minority-outreach coordinator for the Carolina Interfaith Task Force on Central America, a nondenominational watchdog organization with chapters throughout the Carolinas...
...The U.S...
...Every year, American doctors visit the people of Rongelap to examine them for the effects of radiation poisoning...
...Ron Chepesiuk (Ron Chepesiuk is a free-lance writer based in Rock Hill, South Carolina, who writes frequently for The Progressive's Datelines...
...policy in Nicaragua and Central America," Barnette says...
...The people also suffer high rates of leukemia and mental retardation...
...Barnette didn't want to wait for a court decision...
...I made my decision...
...Barnette visited Nicaragua's Atlantic coast, where many blacks live...
...Jorling's turnaround was hailed as an important victory, but Stone's staunch-est supporters aren't satisfied...
...Being right is not enough," Stone says...
...In the meantime, the Admiralty Pacific Company is offering landfill to increase the Marshalls' total real estate...
...Here in the United States, people of color face unemployment, Federal cutbacks, racism, et cetera, while hundreds of millions of dollars are sent to support death and destruction in Central America...
...They intended to take humanitarian aid—thirty tons of food and medical supplies—to the beleaguered nation the Reagan Administration had declared America's dangerous enemy...
...It got to the point where I couldn't devote full time to my ministry...
...We've been called everything from right to left, basically for disagreeing with people," Schmidt says...
...Stone subsequently requested an investigation of various DEC personnel for neglecting to identify the Reynolds PCB emissions...
...One is never far from water on Ma-juro, the capital of the Marshall Islands...
...It grants independence to the Republic of the Marshall Islands, but allows the United States to veto foreign-policy decisions by the Marshalls which are deemed "incompatible" with U.S...
...Donald Goertzen (Donald Goertzen is a writer who recently returned to the United States after six years as a Mennonite missionary in the Philippines...
...At some points, the land mass is only as wide as the highway...
...Substance regularly exposes the cooked-up budget deficits the school board proposes at the beginning of each school year when it's time to negotiate union contracts-deficits that turn into budget surpluses at year's end...
...The "sun" was actually the Bravo nuclear-bomb test over Bikini Atoll...
...But under the circumstances, I don't think we could have done any better...
...He's on the national steering committee of both Veterans for Peace and Veterans for Peace Action and works closely with the Washington-based Blacks Against Contra Aid...
...And Substance will take on its own as well...
...Jorling's action set off a firestorm of protest...
...trade embargo...
...policy in Central America...
...Says reporter Phil Ponce of the local CBS affiliate, "They're a well-respected gadfly, and it's not rare for them to hit pay dirt...
...We Will Not Fight Another War' CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA The Reverend James Barnette was excited when he learned in June 1988 that he would go to Nicaragua as part of the first Veterans for Peace Convoy...
...On June 3, 300 people held a rally at the state capitol to send a message: Hands Off Ward Stone...
...Why aren't there a thousand more like us...
...He dropped out of teaching for a few years to devote his full attention to activism...
...On trips to Washington, members' hotel rooms were wiretapped...
...But there is some hope that the governor has become more sensitized...
...foreign policy by making the connection between the war against Nicaragua and the benign neglect toward racist South Africa...
...Editorial writers, columnists, private citizens, and activists across the state expressed outrage...
...Government, which vowed to develop the Territory toward political and economic independence...
...And he said he would find $230,000 for Stone from DEC funds to compensate for those Cuomo vetoed...
...The Atlantic coast is Nicaragua's poorest section and it has suffered the most," he says...
...But Marshall Islands Senator Tony DeBrum maintains the compact can be overturned...
...Basically, Schmidt says, to keep the bureaucracy honest...
...American-style breakfasts have become popular here...
...He was a conscientious objector, and his teaching position in a Chicago ghetto school counted as alternative service...
...Ward Stone is the state's only wildlife pathologist, a legendary fighter of pollution who has uncovered hundreds of toxic-dump sites in his twenty-year career...
...It's a harsh watchdog that specializes in exposing the follies of the school system's hierarchy, a bureaucracy Schmidt describes as "sleazy, self-serving, entrenched, and piously corrupt...
...The legislator says Stone's data have always withstood legal and departmental challenges, indicating that he may soon launch an investigation of DEC's failure at Reynolds...
...I really didn't understand how the bureaucracy worked...
...foreign policy...
...Through the fogged-over window on my right, I could make out the ships in the bay...
...The move structurally linked Stone's research with cases involving possible litigation, effectively preventing him from speaking with anyone outside DEC...
...I wanted to find out firsthand what was happening there...
...Schmidt finds it amusing that Substance has a particularly high readership among principals and administrators: "Maybe they want to see how much we know about them...
...The whole Republic of the Marshall Islands could disappear in fifty years if the shrinking ozone layer results in the melting of the polar icecaps...
...If it's a controversial issue, which is usually economic, you're going to pay a price somewhere...
...Government know that we will not fight another war while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer...
...To my left, across the dining room, I could see the beach facing the open sea...
...Children laughed and played in it...
...He shuffled the pathology unit again, this time into the Bureau of Environmental Protection, but imposed vague restrictions limiting Stone's disclosures to the press...
...We were right about those places, but our memos were ignored for years," Stone recalls...
...Thirteen [DEC] scientists and engineers had data going back several years that would have indicated that...
...I was going to show the hypocrisy of U.S...
...Two weeks later, Jorling transferred Stone's Wildlife Pathology unit from the Division of Fish and Wildlife to the Division of Environmental Enforcement...
...Along with the other former Japanese-held islands of Micronesia, the Marshalls became part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific, administered by the U.S...
...He's never taken a vacation and works long hours seven days a week...
...Its main theme was that substitutes hadn't had a significant raise in seven years...
...If PCBs were missed [at Reynolds], they'd be missed anywhere else in the state...
...However, they always vote absentee...
...A Watchdog Guards the Public Schools CHICAGO In a dingy, cluttered office on the edge of downtown Chicago, George Schmidt carries out his latest subversive activity...
...Schmidt's activism goes back to the Vietnam years, when he helped soldiers publish antiwar newspapers...
...Customs told the veterans they couldn't cross the border because their plans to leave the vehicles in Nicaragua violated the 1985 U.S...
...But then the court ruled in late September that the Customs Service was wrong...
...trade embargo has made poor people and blacks suffer the most...
...But when the convoy reached Laredo, on the Texas-Mexico border, U.S...
...My job is to educate black people about U.S...
...The convoy leaders decided to take the Treasury Department, parent agency of the Customs Service, to court...
...Government was unequal and unfair...
...A one-meter rise in sea level and the Republic is no more...
...Instead, he made plans to buy his own vehicle, an old Olds-mobile Omega, organize his own convoy, and make the five-day overland journey to Nicaragua around the time of last fall's Presidential election...
...Schmidt figures Substance must be doing something right, since the school board has tried to suppress it...
...Read Substance and engage in a subversive activity...
...John E. Milich (John E. Milich is a free-lance journalist in Ithaca, New York...
...I was disappointed when the judge ruled in our favor," Barnette says with a smile...
...That's right...
...Most of the original staffers are no longer in teaching, Schmidt says, but Substance rolls on with a circulation of 1,800...
...Maybe its foreign policy had changed since Vietnam...
...The United States took the Marshall Islands from Japan during World War II...
...I was willing to give the U.S...
...The group is concerned that poor people and blacks in America will be victims of the political situation...
...Schmidt had returned to substitute teaching for barely a year when he joined with other substitutes to put out the first issue of Substance, which was a single mimeographed sheet...
...No one lives on Rongelap...
...Substance is such a grassroots operation that staff members sometimes have to dig into their own pockets to print it...
...They may try to take away your freedom to speak about it, or they'll probe your equipment...
...I now know that the department is ineffective from the commissioner on down...
...We must let the U.S...
...More than 65 per cent of the people who were less than ten years old at the time of the blast have thyroid problems...
...I am happy that he is getting the money, because I know he'll use it more effectively than anyone else within the department," says Maurice Hinchey, chair of the state assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee...
...A few hours later, they were suffering nausea, diarrhea, and sharp pains in their eyes...
...I think Cuomo finally understood the tremendous public anger over what he and Jorling were doing to Ward Stone," Shapiro continues...
...military communications facility and missile-test range...
...Why is Substance needed...
...Moffat is serving a prison term for sexually molesting students in his charge...
...However, that $230,000 must come from other programs with DEC, which isn't funded adequately to begin with...
...They propose to bring in 1.4 million tons of garbage from the American West Coast every year for the next quarter-century...
...customs agents wouldn't let it through...
...I was looking forward to the confrontation...
...He uses the media to blow the whistle on corporate polluters and bureaucratic incompetence...
...The air was heavy with the smell of pancakes and frying bacon...
...There has to be a lot of house-cleaning...
...You won't get your personnel requests approved, or your budget will disappear...
...In the process, the environmental sleuth often embarrasses his superiors at the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC...
...It has run several front-page stories on the inflated salaries and benefits of officers of the teachers' union, many of whom make more than the highest-paid teachers...
...That was my first trip to Nicaragua," Barnette recalls...
...And, as if soil were not already in limited supply, Rongelap and three other islands were destroyed by U.S...
...Michael Ervin (Michael Ervin is a free-lance writer in Chicago who writes regularly for The Progressive...
...But, though DeBrum and others plan to pursue their case at the United Nations, DeBrum does not really expect any change in the status quo...
...The women suffer miscarriages twice as often as normal...
...Stone battles DEC's lethargy by combining scientific expertise with a high energy level...
...Land is scarce in this tiny nation of 40,000 people living on thirty-one atolls...
...He sent letters to the Reagan Administration announcing his intention and declaring that he would go to Nicaragua or he would go to jail...
...You represent the people of Rongelap, Senator...
...interests...
...The Americans also retain their military base on Kwajalein for thirty years...
...And he was able to see the consequences of U.S...
...Information on the full extent of the radiation damage was withheld from the Marshallese until after their plebiscite...
...In any large bureaucracy, there has to be an ongoing critical analysis from within to make sure it is functioning properly...
...Like other displaced Mar-shallese, the people of Rongelap, now numbering 320, regularly vote for government representatives...
...Government a chance...
...Giff Johnson, editor of the local Marshall Islands Journal, believes there is a fifty-fifty chance the people will approve this proposal...
...I had even named my Omega 'the Nelson Mandela.'" As an activist, Barnette is a member of several organizations that direct their energy, time, and resources in opposition to U.S...
...The experience really upset me...
...After that we weren't so surprised when it started to snow on our tropical island...
...A legal battle ensued...
...In a 1983 plebiscite, a majority of Marshallese agreed to a Compact of Free Association with the United States...
...Our tiny unit consistently finds pollution that others in the department have overlooked," he says...
...No One Lives on Rongelap' MAJURO ATOLL, MARSHALL ISLANDS Senator Jeton Anjain and I sat in a steamy coffee shop talking about relations between the United States and the Marshall Islands...
...Lawrence and Raquette rivers with enormous amounts of PCBs...
Vol. 53 • November 1989 • No. 11
