Sunspots

The forced exile of the Blues and Jazz Festival. Drastic funding cutoffs for daycare, health care, legal aid, the People's Ballroom and other community alternative institutions. The go ahead for the Packard-Platt Shopping Center and McDonalds over the objection of thousands of area residents. Refusal to recognize Gay Pride Week. Political strangulation of voter registration efforts.

This city has suffered enough with two years of majority rule by the minority Republican party and its chief goon, Mayor James Stephenson. On April 7 comes the opportunity, greatly aided by preferential voting, to give power back to a coalition of Democrats and Human Rights Party members who held it two years ago. The SUN is presenting here an interview with Democratic candidate for mayor, Albert Wheeler, whose election we believe would mark a positive turning point in Ann Arbor history.

Turnout by progressive youth and student voters is crucial for the mayoral, ward and ballot issues. Unfortunately, the recent antics by Richard Ankli, Frank Shoichet and a handful of Democrats in the Second Ward primary race can only serve to keep the turnout extraordinarily low. Treating the election as a joke (a la Ankli), and threatening to withhold a second choice endorsement of Wheeler in "retaliation" (a la Shoichet), reinforces Watergate election alienation.

Also inside this issue, author John Gervassi interviews ex-CIA operative Phillip Agee, who reveals how the CIA acts to keep the power balance in Latin America in favor of foreign investment plunder. Agee is probably the first CIA-man to become a committed socialist. Speaking of agents, an ex-undercover narc spill the beans inside on how your local nark tema operates.

In a late flash, James Earl Ray, convicted for the slaying of Martin Luther King has been refused a new trial by the appeals court in New Orleans. Ray originally plead guilty when his lawyer told him he would fry in the electric if Ray didn't. The lawyer went on to sign exclusive book contracts guaranteed to make him a mint only if Ray were the convicted killer. Now with a new lawyer, Ray tried to argue that he had been the patsy for a massive conspiracy. Well, assassination buffs, it looks like the coverup goes on.

During the recent occupation by students of the U of M Administration Building, MFP staff members purloined the private phone list of president Robben Fleming. The list includes such noted citizens as Lynn Townsen, chairmen of the board of Chrysler Corporation, 956-3251; chairman of General Motors, 642-0606; the Mr. J.L. Hudson, 963-2535. Then there's Edward Levi, newly appointed attorney general, at (312) 753-3001 and Governor William Milliken at 373-3410.