Sun Spots

Best news as the SUN goes to press this week concerns Willie Smith, Attica Brother, whose case was dismissed by Judge Bayer in Buffalo on Wednesday. The judge cited destruction of evidence by the prosecution as the reason for his action.
Our continuing concern for the other brothers awaiting trial has been made easier to bear by glad tidings concerning Nelson Rockefeller, Attica butcher and vice-president designate, whose nomination now appears in jeopardy for the first time. 
The Senate Rules Committee is threatening to recall Rocky for more testimony unless he gives satisfactory explanation of some $886,000 in gifts to former cronies and political aides like Henry Kissinger. The House Judiciary Committee has started probing the way in which Rockefeller and family have used financial power for political purposes. 
And now we learn from Newsweek that Julie Nixon Eisenhower says she experienced her "second birthday" on March 1, 1974, the day she invited Jesus Christ into her life. March 1 was also the day Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Halderman, and four Nixon aides were indicted in the Watergate coverup case.
If last week was the Second International Week of Concern, this week it's time to get concerned about a local fight against the war machine as pressing and urgent as the anti-war actions of hallowed memory.
We mean the storm rising over the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan's plans to move next door to the University of Michigan's North Campus. Read about the case again ERIM, the University and war research on page five.
It's also time to lean on our so-called representatives in Washington. Now that we've waved good-bye to Jane Fonda and Daniel Ellsberg and are reading all about them in the pages of the SUN (page 8), the Indochina Peace Campaign is urging us all to write Congress demanding that the Paris Peace Accords be implemented, all aid to Thieu and Lon Nol cut off, all political prisoners in South Vietnam be freed and unconditional amnesty be granted all war resisters. Some appropriate figures to write are Senator Phillip Hart, Rm. 235 and Senator  Robert Griffin, Rm. 353; both in the Old Senate bldg., Washington DC 20515 and Rep. Marvin Esch, Rm. 412, Cannon Bldg., Washington DC, 20515. 
Urgent public notice is that five more Detroit abortion clinics have been cited for deficiencies by the Michigan Department of Public Health. To be shut down for sixty days unless conditions are corrected are Snowden Medical Associates, Summit Medical Center (not the one in A2), Keemer Clinic, Midwest Gynecologists and Women's Health Service. The Women's Health Service, one of the best in the state, was cited for minor violations which are easily corrected. 
The award for villain of the issue has to go to Michigan National Bank, for announcing it will close all accounts with balances under $50 starting next week. The people most affected will be poor and working class people. But according to Michigan National president Al Huff, some exceptions will be made by managers of the banks 33 branches. "Newspaper boys, the bowling league and the Boy Scout Troops," said Huff. "We don't want to discourage that kind of thrift."
You've probably noticed the SUN is somewhat thinner than in past issues. We're thinner too. The switch from bi-weekly to a weekly schedule has disrupted our advertising, circulation, and body metabolism, causing sales and revenue to temporarily decline. The paper is weekly now, so buy it every week. Also make that familiar round to hype to connection or whatever to urge them to advertise in the SUN, sell the SUN in their establishment and offer the SUN a donation/loan.
It's the best of what's left
Five thousand years ago, Moses said, park your camel pick up your shovel, mount your ass and I will lead you to the promised land.
Five thousand years later F.D.R. said lay down you shovel, sit on your ass, light up a camel, this is the promised land.
Today, Ford will tax your shovel, sell your camel, kick your ass, and tell you there is no promised land.
from a poem by Herman Lausen, Jr.