ON THE LINE
Bauerlein, Monika & Bechle, Greg & Rockstead, April & Udesky, Laurie
ON THE LINE Beyond Shelter for the Homeless MINNEAPOLIS Until recently, many residents and officials here thought of homelessness as something that happens in bigger, poorer cities back East or...
...One investigator taped an interrogation in which he repeatedly asked about a nude figure of a girl Sturges had photographed...
...Up and Out of Poverty Now...
...She doesn't want help," says Steve of his ex-wife...
...And that, says Semien, smacks of racism: "Obviously, their check on me was, 'He's a young black kid, he's got dreadlocks, and he's bringing in pictures of young nude white girls, so let's go arrest him...
...The combination of housing and social services is what persuaded Jenson...
...Greg Bechle (Greg Bechle is a free-lance writer in Missoula, Montana...
...Sacred vision-quest sites have already been pulverized, according to medicine man Virgil McConnell, and fish have disappeared from one stream...
...ON THE LINE Beyond Shelter for the Homeless MINNEAPOLIS Until recently, many residents and officials here thought of homelessness as something that happens in bigger, poorer cities back East or out West...
...One of his biggest commercial clients, the Marin Ballet, canceled its contract with him after learning he was under investigation for child pornography...
...We'll be happy to work with anyone," says Mack, "if they come in and apply...
...They charge AMI exaggerates biological factors contributing to mental illness and overstates the benefits of drug treatment...
...The program also offers a range of social services, from child care to counseling on drug and alcohol abuse...
...Finally, in 1987, activists and officials sat down together and designed a new program called Dignity Housing...
...You would find most family members saying there has to be a way to get treatment before absolute crisis and, probably, total humiliation occurs—not only for the family, but for the mentally ill themselves," Madison chapter president Carol Grogan says, noting that many respected local professionals reject the idea of forced treatment for those who pose no imminent danger...
...When you have a clear mind, you can help others out and not be selfish...
...The limestone mountains rise like an island from the vast sea of the Great Plains, an area about twenty-five miles in diameter featuring gentle quiet canyons, sweet water, ponderosa pine, and quaking aspen...
...But activists point out that the program wouldn't work if it were run by "do-gooders," as they call traditional service-providers...
...Joseph Semien, a specialist in making negatives from slides, whose clients include Sturges, had taken some of the photographer's negatives to the lab for processing...
...From this brew of heavy metals, gold is precipitated out of the ore...
...members have been squatting in vacant houses owned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development since May 1. The department didn't budge, but after a few weeks of takeovers, local officials stepped in and offered to cooperate with the activists...
...Laurie Udesky (Laurie Udesky is a free-lance writer in San Francisco...
...The ultimate tonnage for all Landusky heaps would retain more than a billion gallons of solution of unknown concentration...
...Not any more...
...Whole mountains are obliterated, vast holes are dug in the earth...
...It took five years to hit cities that had a lot of problems, like Philadelphia, and it's taken a few more years to hit Minneapolis...
...The sacred Sun Dance, a four-day ritual of dancing, praying, and fasting, is traditionally performed nearby, on land a few miles downstream from the mine...
...My wife could have died...
...Until I came here, there was nobody who understood...
...Red Thunder is trying to stop the mine expansion, but the blasting continues...
...That's exactly the difference between these takeovers and other actions we've done before," says activist Chuck Viebahn...
...They seem to have found the carrot-and-stick solution to a problem we've always had: We'd get people into housing and then they'd drop out of the social-services part of the program," he says...
...One concerned whether he knew the seriousness of child-pornography charges...
...It is also entering the aquifer of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, a thirty-five-square-mile piece of land just north of the mines, with about 5,000 inhabitants...
...Another woman was dancing for her granddaughter, born here with a rare neurological disease...
...There are others of the girl doing gymnastics...
...Cyanide heap-leach mining is ripping them apart, and toxic chemicals are flowing into their waters...
...Since the investigation began, Sturges has been devastated materially and psychologically...
...The need for AMI remains great...
...In fact, the members say they know of friends whose spouses are now living on the streets, and fear for their own loved ones...
...Our primary goal," says Dignity Director Alicia Christians, "is not to create nice houses and nice civic-minded citizens...
...Rhonda Snell was dancing for her daughter, born mentally retarded when she lived on the reservation...
...Mike, who remains married to his wife, maintains a separate house for her to live in...
...No medication, we know does not work," says Mike...
...Pegasus and the state don't give a damn...
...And, in addition to his loss of earnings, he has run up hefty legal fees...
...For centuries, they have been essential to the people who live there, the Gros Ventre and Assiniboin...
...The FBI confiscated all his equipment and records and put him out of business for weeks...
...The spouses feel they are representing the interests of their partners...
...A Zortman-Landusky analysis admits, "The exact long-term concentrations and fate of the discharged cyanide solution is not known at this time...
...This whole situation has brainwashed me into thinking I'm some kind of evil person," he told one reporter...
...Then they say they have all the answers...
...They must also develop plans to get work or an education and show progress within six months...
...The forty-three-year-old photographer, whose works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and have appeared in art galleries here and abroad, has been thrust under the scrutinizing lens of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the San Francisco Police Department...
...Though the spouse group is something that's relatively new to AMI, the mission of fighting the stigma of mental illness is not...
...The Sun Dance is a healing dance done for others...
...The families are the ones who see the true behavior," Ed says, "but there is a tendency among many doctors to question our views as not being objective...
...Coping with a Spouse's Mental Illness MADISON, WISCONSIN "We are angry people," Ed explains, "but we're not complaining, just asking for understanding for our fears and feelings...
...Yet in one hour, a doctor supposedly has the ability to decide whether a person needs medication...
...The most dangerous thing for us right now," says activist Jackie Heine, "is that some organization, or the city, or a church, is going to come and say, 'Okay, we're going to help you, and in exchange you do what we say.' " —monika bauerlein (Monika Bauerlein is a free-lance writer in Minneapolis...
...In a statement prepared later, the lab said it was merely abiding by the law, which requires the reporting of suspected child abuse...
...In the creek, mine tailings clog beaver dams, and many people report the fish have disappeared...
...Hanging in there has enormous costs," both emotionally and financially, he says...
...It was just kind of like an underground," says Harriet Shetler, a founder of both the local and national groups...
...What is obscene in this affair, Sturges says, "is that police officers and FBI agents looked at photos of innocence and saw obscenity...
...For now, city officials seem willing to try working with Up and Out of Poverty Now!, though somewhat uneasily...
...The Sturges/Semien case has awakened local activists and artists to the fact that their relatively liberal city is no refuge from the current climate of hysteria plaguing the arts...
...In 1990, expected use will be 254 million pounds...
...And it isn't only the Sun Dance that is at risk...
...So they are getting involved in nationwide coalitions to combat right-wing efforts to undermine the First Amendment...
...Semien had just started his business a few months before...
...It hurts my heart to see the destruction here...
...We can't give them houses just because they're militant," says Patricia Mack, a spokeswoman for the Minneapolis HUD office...
...They don't do to prisoners what they have done to us [artists]," he says, noting his new compulsion to engage in self-censorship...
...AMI represents the interests of the mentally ill in in political arenas, makes mental-health professionals more accountable to consumers and families, fights damaging stereotypes, and lends support to families...
...Portions of the range have been blown to bits in gigantic explosions, the bits piled up into mounds, and the mounds sprinkled with cyanide...
...The founders, who discovered each other in the late 1970s through word of mouth, established the national network by mailings to groups they had read about in magazine articles...
...When Semien figured out why they were arresting him, he demanded to see an attorney...
...In 1988, 142 million pounds of cyanide was produced in the United States, mostly for mining...
...His last article for The Progressive concerned oil-and-gas development on Black-feet land along the Rocky Mountain Front, April issue...
...I think our fight is almost lost, but it would be easier to lay down and die than to see these mountains go...
...Lots of people go up into the mountains to fast and pray...
...What if there is gold in the Sun Dance ground...
...And FBI agents have bothered his friends...
...We're staying in these houses...
...All previous mine expansions, which have occurred yearly since 1980, have gone through without the filing of environmental-impact statements...
...Even as AMI criticizes some mental-health professionals, the organization itself has come under fire from patients-rights activists...
...In the last few months, an aggressive group of Minneapolis activists has been taking over vacant houses, attracting media attention and embarrassing public officials...
...They are not doing their jobs, they're not listening to us—it's incompetence...
...Already, the mining explosives disturb the rituals...
...Sturges was not arrested, but his slide processor was...
...Sturges, looking pale and thin nine weeks after his ordeal began, describes his sense of incredulity that anyone would think of his work as pornographic...
...It is one of four mines operated by Canadian-based multinational Pegasus Gold, Inc., and one of at least sixteen cyanide heap-leach gold mines in the country...
...Most disturbing to Sturges, however, is the chilling effect on his ability to practice his art...
...And now, Minneapolis is about to experiment with a novel way of moving homeless people into permanent housing...
...That's too slow to satisfy either activists or local officials...
...homeless people, they maintain, must have a large part in the program, including its leadership...
...At first, I was in a state of shock," he says, "but now I'm angry...
...They have called up people I haven't seen in twenty years, since college, asking them about my character and my sexual proclivities...
...Most of the Alliance's members are parents of mentally ill adults...
...One quart of the solution used to process gold will kill a human...
...We're on the battle line," says Ed...
...Where marriages do prevail, many professionals avoid contact with the family, afraid that they may violate their confidential relationships with patients—too strict an interpretation of the rules, the spouses argue...
...To do this, you must be serene...
...The search and seizure of Sturges's life work and possessions stemmed from a phone call to the San Francisco police from someone at Newell Color Lab...
...The FBI has five years to build its case...
...She points out that the Department has a program under which low-income housing groups can lease HUD homes for the symbolic price of a dollar a year...
...Philadelphia is on the minds of local officials because it pioneered the type of housing program that Minneapolis is now considering...
...Once inside the confines of some of the canyons, however, it becomes evident that some of the mountains are simply gone...
...We provide teachings against alcohol, which has been ruinous to native people...
...Mental illness is something that is terrifying to everybody," Ed explains...
...You must be sincere with your prayers...
...They share the burden of marriage to someone with serious mental illness and gather here once a month to exchange individual experiences and insights: how to deal with spouses who reject them, friends who don't understand them and don't seem to try, psychiatrists who exclude them, and lawyers who accept only simple divorce cases...
...This is not a symbolic occupation where we go in and demonstrate and leave...
...only seven other children in the country have it...
...But this right, he says, was denied him...
...All he would talk about is her genitals," Semien recalls...
...she asks...
...But we've shown them that we're not going away any more...
...One teaspoon of a 2 per cent cyanide solution will kill a human...
...The move reflects growing dissatisfaction on the part of local officials, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, with Federal low-income-housing policy...
...So far, HUD officials appear less than impressed by the continued takeovers...
...In a place like Minneapolis, people thought for too long that it was enough to give the homeless a blanket and a cup of soup, and they would go away," says Cheri Honkala, spokeswoman for the activist group Up and Out of Poverty Now...
...Will they take it...
...And the trend is accelerating...
...Many of his subjects, Sturges says, are individuals he has photographed for years—some since birth—and many of his photographs are commissioned by the families...
...Using cyanide to dissolve gold out of rock is nothing new...
...But I thought, it was a picture of a nude kid and nude kids do have genitals...
...If Pegasus Gold, the state of Montana, and the U.S...
...The Eastern city, which has a homeless population of about 15,000 and an estimated 20,000 vacant and boarded-up houses, went through a bitter conflict between squatting activists and local government officials in the mid-1980s...
...Newell's customer-relations manager called the police after noting frontal shots of a nude young girl with her father...
...They even snatched a copy of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita from his bookshelf...
...Mountains of Cyanide HAYS, MONTANA The Little Rocky Mountains and all that live in and around them are in danger...
...The pornographer cares only about the existence of his or her subject as an object of sexual desire...
...The answer, for this group, is found in continuing to use AMI as a personal support network—long after estrangement from their partners—and as a political outlet...
...What is new is the scale of the mining in Montana...
...They can handle cancer, and everything else, but not mental illness...
...But the activists say they've already waited long enough for HUD to fulfill its promise, made last fall, that 10 per cent of HUD homes would be turned over to groups working for low-income housing...
...Several hours later, when the San Francisco police produced a search warrant, the agents and officers rifled through years of Sturges's work, damaging photographs and negatives and carting away all of his camera equipment, computers, file cabinets, and address books, as well as thousands of negatives and prints...
...After performing a Sun Dance, Rhonda Snell voices her concerns...
...Bureau of Land Management have their way, an expansion will swallow up more of the mountains...
...Too much is lost...
...The Landusky mine is at the headwaters of King Creek, which flows through the reservation...
...Distinguishing his images from those of a pornographer, Sturges maintains that pornography "focuses on the body of the subject and ignores entirely the . . . person-hood...
...In Minnesota, that would mean about eighty properties...
...They have seen their loved ones improve while taking medication, and rapidly deteriorate when treatment is stopped...
...She's going to be a street person, and all I can do is sit here and watch it happen...
...for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer...
...One person would be in Michigan and run into someone on vacation and say, 'You know there's a group in Madison?' " Since then, local, state and national chapters have grown exponentially...
...I'm talking about the worst hell you can think of," says Ed...
...and added, "You've either got to be some kind of a saint or a nut...
...The Zortman-Landusky mine, on BLM land on the southern edge of the Reservation, produced 106,400 ounces of gold in 1989, representing 6.5 per cent of total U.S...
...The law in question states vaguely that processing labs must report "exhibition of the genitals...
...All charges against Semien were recently dropped, but he says it will be a long time before he forgets how thoroughly his life has been disrupted...
...When Innocence Is Called Obscene SAN FRANCISCO On April 25, Jock Sturges answered the door to his San Francisco apartment and found FBI agents waiting outside...
...The cyanide that is turning ore into gold at this mine, the Zortman-Landusky, is making lots of money for Pegasus Gold, Inc...
...April Rockstead (April Rockstead is an editorial intern at The Progressive...
...With these data in hand and a growing number of complaints about overcrowded facilities, many local officials are beginning to think beyond shelter toward the provision of more low-income housing...
...But the spouses staunchly defend the biological-basis model of mental illness and insist it is rarely ameliorated except through medication...
...The person you were married to is ill, not getting treatment and, sometimes, not even food or shelter," says Diane...
...The concept is straightforward: Dignity buys properties from the Federal Government at 20 per cent below market price, rehabilitates them with the help of homeless people, and then rents them to homeless people...
...A lot of guns and badges were in evidence," he recalls, "and they were not smiling...
...At Dignity, tenants are required to participate in such community activities as block clubs and parent-teacher associations in their new neighborhoods...
...What we're trying to do is develop a base, a community that is going to fight like hell for more long-term changes...
...output...
...The activists also remain skeptical about the newfound alliance...
...The Indians are concerned about religious as well as environmental implications...
...After all," says County Commissioner Mark Andrew, "it's a group that routinely breaks the law...
...Because Sturges's photographs include nude studies of children and their parents-all of which, he says, were done with parental consent-he is under investigation for child pornography...
...Her last article for The Progressive was an interview with Bernadette Devlin in the July issue...
...At first, all I could imagine is that it was a drug raid and they had gotten the wrong house...
...Most of the spouses who have resorted to divorce, says Rick, did so with great reluctance...
...A tenth of a milligram per liter will kill fish, and one-twentieth of that will interfere with fish reproduction...
...Zortman doesn't even drink their water...
...Who are they to tell me whether she needs medication...
...And even though the city has dropped its charges against Semien, both he and Sturges could still be charged with child pornography by the FBI...
...Red Thunder is based on native traditions," says activist Nadine Alvar-ado...
...But this time an indigenous religious/environmental group called Red Thunder is demanding one...
...At the modest office of the Alliance for the Mentally 111, five members of a support group have agreed to a special meeting in exchange for a promise of confidentiality...
...Arriving from a distance, the visitor senses no threat...
...But the heaps "would be expected to retain a minimum of 500 million gallons of cyanidated solution of unknown concentration...
...there are now about a thousand across the country...
...They say that if the laws were interpreted uniformly, the laws would suffice...
...The blasting destroys the serenity...
...The politics of law and the politics of medicine make us fight...
...Others tell of single-parenting, even while their spouses live with them, citing such problems as frequent police visits to their homes, dramatically reduced family incomes, and credit-card bills racked up by ill spouses...
...Those who eschew treatment are truly hurting the mentally ill, they say, noting that 30 per cent of the homeless are estimated to be mentally ill...
...What do you do...
...It's like the plague...
...These are people who look me directly in the eye, who trust me, and who are happily and healthfully uninhibited about themselves...
...To keep the heat on, the Minneapolis group has continued housing takeovers despite pleas from the city to stop...
...It hopes to restore native teachings and bring them back...
...It was unbelievable," says the soft-spoken twenty-seven-year-old processor...
...The state is owned by Pegasus...
...In the sweats, we counsel, just talk to people through the teachings and try to get people to open their eyes...
...In the past three years, they have watched shelter use in the city jump from about 400 people per night to about 1,000...
...The [children] and their families are my sincere friends," he says...
...Developed in 1887 in Scotland, the process was put to immediate use in the Wit-watersrand gold fields of South Africa...
...only seventeen have been leased so far...
...Among the images that interest the FBI is a series of a father and daughter on a nude beach, shown leaning against each other, smiling...
...The agents fired questions that Sturges found baffling...
...It's no secret that the reason why we have a homeless problem today is the Federal Government in 1980 gutted low-income-housing programs and social-service programs," says Jay Jenson, director of the Minneapolis Community Development Agency...
...But we're feeling it...
...The issues of whether danger to others or self should be the prerequisite for involuntary commitment and whether patients should have the right to refuse treatment not only put the group at odds with activists concerned about patients' rights, but also divide members themselves...
...On the same day that Sturges's possessions were seized, Semien was dragged out of bed by San Francisco police officers, taken to the local police station, and handcuffed to a bench for six hours...
...Steve, for example, recalls that when he was undergoing counseling for depression after the onset of his ex-wife's schizophrenia, his therapist asked him, "Why are you with her...
...But in our own city, too many people fall through the cracks...
...If the "fate of the discharged cyanide solution" is unknown, other facts are public information: that when the mining process ends, the company plans to punch holes in the plastic liner holding the cyanide solution, and that the aquifer feeding the Fort Belknap Reservation flows from south to north, right through the area of the mines...
...The mountains fall...
...Some were spontaneous shots of families at play on a nude beach...
...A clear mind is a strong mind...
...the latter figure includes a growing number of women and children...
...No one knows the long-term effects of low doses of cyanide on humans...
...of the individual depicted...
...He then spent two days in jail...
Vol. 54 • September 1991 • No. 9
