ON THE LINE
Kemper, Buzz & Geigel, Jennifer & Newman, Kathy & Jensen, Robert B. & Barnett, Mary
ON THE LINE Nurses Fight Back San Francisco, California A California emergency-care dispatcher received a call from a woman seeking immediate help because she was bleeding uncontrollably. He was...
...Kathy Newman Lavender Advice The Lavender Youth Recreation & Information Center (LYRIC) announces the first on-line anonymous counseling service for "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and questioning people age twenty-three and under...
...Workers even get a paid holiday on Cesar Chavez's birthday...
...We are attempting to share a strong voice with the Tibetans," says Larry Gerstein, coordinator of the March for Tibet's Independence...
...It would end gag rules that prevent doctors and nurses from telling patients about treatment options the HMO or insurance company does not want to pay for...
...That union has helped with fund-raising, has moved more than 300 classes off campus, has organized a one-day moratorium on classes, and has held a campus-wide town meeting to discuss the strike...
...Williams is also a powerful performer...
...Three unions representing almost 5,000 workers—the service and maintenance workers (Local 35), the clerical and technical workers (Local 34), and the Graduate Employee and Student Organization—have formed the Federation of University Employees to do battle with the Yale administration...
...Sinclair encourages readers to get in touch with women on the internet through web sites, nears groups, e-mail, and on-line the vices...
...United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez (Chavez's son-in-law) calls it the union's best deal ever...
...The university also made it clear that it was prepared to wait out a long strike, running full-page ads in local papers with the headline: Yale University: A Great Place to Study and to Work...
...Apparently the irony escaped some of her fans...
...It would establish an independent consumer-watchdog organization to assist patients...
...A pending unfair-labor-practice suit could force Yale to negotiate with the fledgling union...
...In one of her mailings she wrote, "1995 is go-ing to be great...
...contact LYRIC's telephone service at (415) 863-3636, or 1-800- 246-PRIDE...
...Yale also promised to revoke the health benefits of any worker on strike for more than thirty days...
...This subtlety has led to confusion on more than one occasion, however...
...Her health-maintenance organization repeatedly turned down her requests for referral to a specialist...
...Recently, a dairy worker stripped off his shirt in the union's regional office, displaying welts from a beating he said his boss had administered...
...Buzz Kemper The Feminet Mystique: Women on Line The internet is a critical site for women's activism...
...The cooperation among janitors, secretaries, graduate students, and law students may signal a new trend in the labor movement: an older generation of rank-and-file activists teaching a new generation of white-collar professionals how to fight back against downsizing, job insecurity, and disrespect...
...Williams's poetic songwriting is introspective and personal but not self-conscious...
...They live and breathe that contract," she says of the board members...
...Our idea is to change the way the agricultural industry treats its workers," says Guillen...
...The labor disruption began in January, with a two-week grade strike by the graduate-teachers' union when Yale refused to recognize it (see "On the Line," February 1996...
...The woman had tried in vain to summon help with her call bell...
...Dar Williams is currently on tour with Joan Baez...
...In the words of Carla Sinclair, author of Net Chick: A Smart Girl's Guide to the Wired World, "The Net can only continue to be an awesome place for chicks if we are there...
...With a sweet soprano voice that floats effortlessly from plaintive to rejoicing, Williams offers songs of childhood trauma, painful breakups, and the difficulty of organizing activists who are hopelessly stoned...
...A Union As It Should Be Sunny side, Wash ington When the United Farm Workers took on Washington state's Sainte Michelle winery in 1987, few could have foreseen last fall's happy outcome: The first farmworkers' labor contract outside California since 1972 guarantees medical benefits, wage increases, and job security to nearly 200 vineyard workers...
...Meanwhile, nurses are being laid off...
...For more information, contact the e-mail counseling service at lyric.talkline.info@tig...
...In "The Christians and the Pagans," she describes a hilarious scene in which a young woman visits her severe Christian uncle's family with her lesbian lover in tow...
...It is a home filled with trauma and mirth, and she tells her stories with compassion and intelligence...
...In 1959, Gyatso organized 500 monks against the Chinese invasion of Tibet's capital...
...Mary Barnett Dar Williams's Lyrical Politics If you walk through your local record store to the far rear corner—past the latest by Snoop Doggy Dog, past the Three Tenors, and around the corner from this year's Nir- vanawannabe—you may end up in the folk section, where you'll find the name Dar Williams...
...For more information, contact Kit Costello, R.N., or Chuck Idle-son at the California Nurses Association, 145 Market St., Ste...
...I'm particularly excited about our new Congress...
...Part-time and seasonal workers are protected under the new agreement...
...The unions say that if Yale does not settle good contracts this semester, strike actions probably will start up again in the fall...
...Consumer advocate Ralph Nader has called upon Californians to support the measure, calling it "the single most important health-care battle this year...
...Participants include Tibetans and their Western and Turkestani sympathizers...
...Jennifer GeIGBL Class Conflict and the Classroom New Haven, Connecticut An unusual alliance is disrupting education-as-usual at Yale University...
...Meanwhile, during contract negotiations with its clerical and maintenance workers, the university made proposals that would increase subcontracting, add to the number of casual workers, institute a two-tier wage system for new hires, and cut retiree benefits...
...In early February the clerical and technical workers in Local 34 walked off the job for four weeks, while each member of Local 35 donated $100 a week to support them...
...Health care was the nation's most profitable industry from 1989 through 1994...
...For updates on the itinerary, contact the March for Tibet voice-mail service at (317) 579-9015, or its worldwide web site at http://www.@nuvo.net.tibet...
...Thubten Jigme Norbu, the Dalai Lama's eldest brother, and Palden Gyatso are leading...
...She allows the listener to be an invited guest rather than an intruder in her musical home...
...She invites us to peer through the lyrical cracks to uncover her views...
...CA 94103...
...If voted into law, the sweeping measure would guarantee patients a right to safe care and require adequate staffing for all health-care facilities...
...The next communique included the disclaimer, "Dar wants to make clear SHE IS NOT A REPUBLICAN...
...As a result, he suffered a thirty-three-year imprisonment until he escaped, taking with him some of the torture instruments the Chinese use on their Tibetan prisoners...
...For an increasing number of students at Yale, the lessons they learn on the picket lines may be the most important ones they take with them into their uncertain futures...
...Sainte Michelle managers express satisfaction with the contract...
...The first line, "I've never had a way with women, but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could," has caused no end of speculation in internet chat rooms...
...In fact the song seems to have muddied the waters even further...
...In desperation she called 911...
...In April, the service-maintenance workers in Local 35 plan to strike...
...The petition needs 700.000 signatures to qualify for the November 1996 state ballot...
...Together they are circulating petitions for the Patient Protection Act of 1996...
...For more information, contact the national United Farm Workers headquarters at (805 ) 322-5571, or their Northwest regional office at (509) 839-4903...
...and "Playtime," Net Chick intends to amuse the most serious Net navigators and intrigue the uninitiated...
...We're interested in a free and independent Tibet" Concerned people are encouraged to join the march...
...Twenty-five peer counselors will communicate with young people via LYRIC's e-mail and telephone talklines...
...He was flabbergasted to find that the call came from the local hospital...
...These are just two of the horror stories cited by the California Nurses Association, which is spearheading a fight against today's health-care industry...
...Dar...
...Tibet Committee, the Tibetan Women's Association, and Students for a Free Tibet, they plan to cover 300 miles during the forty-five days of the march, which began March 10...
...The union expects gains in the mushroom farms of Texas and Florida, and it is branching out in the Northwest...
...Net Chick offers a provocative look at women on-line, like Deborah Floyd, a dancer who organizes the Institute of Global Communication's on-line African-American Directory, and Trina Robbins, a writer and illustrator of comics who has created a CD-ROM adventure game for girls...
...Sponsored by the International Tibet Independence Movement, the U.S...
...If someone I know is willing to stand in the cold for weeks on end without a paycheck, I usually figure that she has a good reason," says law student Erik Pitchal...
...The Sainte Michelle contract gives a push to the union's struggle to bring collective-bargaining rights to some of the nation's most disenfranchised workers...
...It's worth the journey...
...Over the course of her two albums—The Honesty Room and her newest, Mortal City— Williams's lyrics weave humor and solemnity together so gracefully that the underlying meaning sneaks up on you with feline stealth...
...Rather than put both locals out on strike in midwinter, the new federation split the strike between the two locals...
...What starts as a comedy takes a sobering turn: "The meal had gone without a hitch/till Timmy turned to Amber and said, Ts it true that you're a witch?'" The ability to deal gracefully with such topics would tempt many artists to write conspicuously political lyrics, but Williams's politics are less overt...
...She was JOKING...
...A union as it should be...
...Two years later she was dead of colon cancer...
...Throughout the health-care industry, all eyes are on California...
...She once introduced the song "Iowa" in concert by saying she had hoped it would clear up any confusion about her sexual orientation...
...You can see it in their eyes, their faces—they understand it's their union, a democratic union...
...The alliance with the graduate students has continued...
...415)864-4141...
...1100...
...Hospitals and HMOs say they need to cut costs because they are losing money...
...Her voice rings with clarity, a voice that sings the word "Iowa" as if it were part of a hymn...
...The nurses' union blames "restructuring" for the dangerous cuts in patient care that have accompanied record profits for the health-care industry...
...More tragic is the story of a thirty-four-year-old mother who suffered persistent abdominal and pelvic pain and bleeding...
...We're not interested in negotiating with China...
...Several pages highlight the personal web sites of real he "Net chicks," including Sherman's "Cybergrrrl" and clair's own "Net Chick Clla house" inhabited by virtual per dolls and 1970s-style gadgets like the "magic 8 bra...
...Though the strikers went back to work without a contract, Yale has suffered rebuke from the Modern Language Association and the American Association of University Professors for the threats it used to intimidate the strikers, and for its refusal to bargain collectively with the teaching assistants...
...Rosalinda Guillen, the United Farm Workers' regional director, is encouraged by the February election of a workers' board to enforce the terms of the agreement...
...The California Nurses Association has joined forces with Harvey Rosenfield, author of an auto-insurance reform initiative adopted in California a few years ago...
...It would ban financial incentives to doctors who withhold health services...
...It would prohibit HMOs and insurance companies from arbitrarily denying physician-recommended care...
...Robert B. Jensen MARCH FOR TIBET A small group of marchers are trekking seven hours a day from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., to New York City...
...But the California Nurses Association points out: • Hospital-industry operating profits rose 17.S percent in 1994, the seventh consecutive year of a major increase...
...staffing ratios are reduced to dangerous levels, and less expensive but poorly trained workers are assigned to patient care...
...With such chapter headings as "Entertain Me...
...And it would set fees on large health-care corporations to help maintain emergency assistance, communicable-disease control, and services for seniors threatened with loss of Medicare benefits...
...The women profiled in Net Chick are an inspiration chicks, grrrls, women, and f nists alike to get over the fem mystique, get wired, and get bury Net Chick is available through Henry Holt Company (1-288-2131...
...For more information, Net Chick home page on worldwide web (http://www borganic.corn/people/carla...
...Chief executive officers of the seventy-one largest HMOs received an average compensation of $7 million in 1994...
...In response, the union has launched a lawsuit and is guiding dairy workers who seek to organize workplaces where complaints of abuse are rampant...
Vol. 60 • May 1996 • No. 5
