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F.y.i.

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Parent Issue
Month
October
Year
1995
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
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Agenda Publications
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tion that deserves a wider audience; your coverage of pressing political and social issues is truly what great alternative journalism is all about, and your cultural coverage of Ann Arbor is singular.
Thom Jurek
ANN ARBOR

Don't Slam the Poetry Slam!
I tried not to respond but have failed. I shall avoid a debate about Arwulf's various claims about we grunting poets at the beer hall. I teach with a couple of knuckleheads such as himself and have wearied of trying to dissuade him. But that poetic calling which he and Ron Allen imply that they have received is evidently one mean-spirited and misinformed muse. Arwulf's attitude is radically ungenerous; his biases devalue his intelligence. I think I can perceive that vision of Art he seems to think he's in the service of but I can maintain no respect for what, in the plainest of terms, is mere bigotry. And if this is some poetic crusade he's embarked upon, he can feel free to have the last shot.
Loud White Male Francis
Ann Arbor Poetry Slam

Arwulf Responds
Well! Schism, schism, schism. We seem to be generating controversy. I'm sorry to have pissed off Larry Francis and numerous regular participants at the Poetry Slam. As this was some of the only non-laudatory press which the Slam has ever received, I think they'll survive. After all, if it's theatre you want to conjure, you'd best get accustomed to less-than-sympathetic press. I had no idea Ron Allen was a bigot. Thank you Mr. Francis for this provocative insight. The Galerie Jacques/Alexa Lee struggle letters are very exciting! I did want to thank Mr. Jurek for the observations. But as for the article being "too much Arwulf and not enough Jacques," I must explain that most of the copy was based upon Mr. Karamanoukian's actual utterances. I just didn't throw lots of quotation marks about. My perspectives, of course, are always trouble, as I am not nor have I ever been a journalist. If the journalistic format is a confusing one for what I have to say, well, life is full of these incongruities.

F.Y.I.
AGENDA is interested in receiving items from you for F.Y.I. Press clippings, press releases, summaries of local events and any other ideas or suggestions are welcome. Just mail them to: F.Y.I. Editor, AGENDA, 220 S. Main St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104.

Detroit Strikers Holding the Line
As the strike by workers at The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press and their joint business agent, the Detroit News Agency (DNA), enters its twelfth week, the standoff has reached a critical point. "We're making a qualitative leap," Daymon J. Hartley a bargaining committee member of the Detroit Free Press unit of the Newspaper Guild, recently told AGENDA. "Our members, as a result of Knight-Ridder and Gannett and their goons and their attacks on use, are recognizing that these people are trying to kill us and that they'll do whatever's necessary to bust our union." According to Hartley, the rest of the trade union movement--both locally and nationally--as well as the religious community, have come to adopt this strike as their own. The behavior of management in this strike "is really an attack on our human and civil rights," said Hartley. There's no end in sight to the strike, which began on July 13. The 2,500 workers of the two papers (represented by six unions) and the DNA walked out when contract negotiations broke down over a number of issues including equitable pay, job security and others (see AGENDA, Sept. 1995). At press time, approximately 85% of those workers are still on strike (including a handful who have come back to the picket line after having previously crossed the line and returned to work). Despite encouragement from Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, Sterling Heights Mayor Richard Notte and several members of the clergy and the civil rights community, the two sides have made no measurable progress at the bargaining table. The Detroit Free Press management, in early September, offered all its striking journalists the opportunity to reclaim their old jobs, if they would accept working conditions set out by the paper (most notably a negligible increase in pay over three years) and an "open shop" --meaning workers would choose whether or not to become union members--which would essentially destroy the union. The union refused to vote on that proposal. Presently, union officials believe that negotiators for the papers and DNA are backpeddling. They claim that management proposals now on the table are even less generous than before--reinforcing the notion that management is striving to break the unions rather than settle the strike. Hal Stack, Director of the Labor Studies Center at Wayne State University, concurs with this assessment. Stack told the Detroit Journal--the on-line newspaper put out by striking journalists--that he believes company officials forced the strike by offering proposals they knew were unacceptable to the unions. Stack claims the backpeddling on proposals is "standard operating procedure for companies engage in busting a union." "This is not a local strike," Stack told the Detroit Journal. "This strike between unions in Detroit and two multibillion dollar corporations [Gannett and Knight-Ridder, the parent companies of the News and Free Press, respectively]." In contrast to the bargaining table, the picket line has been the site of intense activity. On several occassions pickets have blocked access of delivery trucks in and out of the printing plants. And the increase in hostility with which police and private security forces have responded to picketers has mirrored the financial losses suffered by the papers. Over Labor Day weekend striking workers held a massive parade and demonstration and twice stalled the delivery of combined News and Free Press papers. At one point when protesters were blocking the entrance to the Sterling Heights printing plant, a semi truck, on orders of the company, rammed a locked gate and caused the fence to buckle--resulting in the injury of two picketers. By the end of the weekend there were several incidents of violence, including police tear-gassing the crowd, skirmishes between police and picketers, and picketers damaging 28 newspaper vehicles (including the torching of two trucks). At least five injuries were reported. "It was like Vietnam out there," said striking Mailers Vice President John Peralta, in a report in the Detroit Journal. On the following weekend, again, about 2,000 picketers surrounded the plant and blocked the entrance for ten hours. This time the company responded by airlifting out Sunday papers by helicopter. And at about 4:15 am company trucks drove into a crowd of about 300 picketers. "It was a stunning example of corporate lawlessness," said striking Free Press reporter John Lippert in the Detroit Journal. "Whoever gave the order knew full well people may be injured or killed." That incident is currently being probed by Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga, who may bring criminal charges against senior vice president of Gannett Co., John Jaske (the official who allegedly gave the order for the truck to charge the crowd). In what he stated was an effort to prevent serious injury during demonstrations, on Sept. 14 Macomb County Circuit judge Raymond Cashen ordered that only ten picketers at a time are allowed in the Sterling Heights printing plant driveway. This doesn't affect the number that can remain at other locations outside the plant. The unions have condemned this ruling as unfair, and it remains to be seen if it is enforceable. "Such injunctions are morally bankrupt and fundamentally violate basic human rights--among them the right to a job," wrote unionist Randy Furst in a recent article in the Detroit publication Labor Notes. "Court injunctions were regularly defied in the 1930s and that is why we have a trade union movement today." This strike has been closely monitored by the national media. Its outcome, undoubtedly, will have huge implications for all working people and employers. "The soul of America is at stake here," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, at the Labor Day parade in Detroit, as reported in the Detroit Journal. "It is sad that elements of the media, particularly these two giant companies--Gannett and Knight-Ridder--would join in an assault on working people. We ain't going back to sweat shops and child labor. We've come too far, worked too hard, bled too profusely and died too young to let our work be undone now." Striking workers, some of whom have had to put their homes up for sale due to the financial duress of nearly three months without a paycheck, ask that you help--and mobilize your community to help--in the following ways:--Join the picket line on Saturday nights at either of the two printing plants--16 Mile & Mound Roads in Sterling Heights or on the riverfront at Jefferson Ave. in downtown Detroit;
--Boycott businesses that continue to advertise in The Detroit News and Free Press (some national chains with local outlets include ABC Warehouse, Century 21, Fretter, Hudson's, J.C. Penny, K-mart, Lord & Taylor, Mervyn's, and Target) and those that sell the papers;
--Send financial contributions to the strikers' hardship committee. Make checks payable to "Metropolitan Council of Newspaper Unions" c/o Newspaper Guild of Detroit, 3300 Book Bldg., 1249 Washington Blvd., Detroit, MI 48826;
--Check the on-line Detroit Journal for strike updates at this address--http://www.rust.net/workers/strike.html
--by Phillis Engelbert

New Rules Further Isolate Prisoners
A litany of restrictive new guidelines recently imposed by the Mich. Dept. of Corrections (DOC), dictate who may or may not visit a prisoner, and make more difficult the already complicated visitation process. These changes will result in fewer opportunities for prisoners to see family and friends, and will prohibit some members of inmates' families from visiting at all. These regulations, which came out of the DOC, were approved by Governor Engler's office without first going through the state legislature. One part of the new visitation policy in Mich. prisons prohibits minors from visiting any inmate except a parent, step-parent, or grandparent. And then that minor must be accompanied by a legal guardian or immediate family member. Another rule calls for prisoners to provide a visitor list including immediate family members and no more than ten people. The individuals who can visit a prisoner are then limited to the names on that list, and visitors can only be on one prisoner's list at a time (lists may only be changed once every six months). A third change stipulates that any inmate cited for two controlled substance violations (that means being caught twice with any non-approved drug), may be denied all visits as long as they remain in prison, with no appeal process. A fourth change prohibits all former prisoners from visiting anyone in prison except immediate family members. The implications of these rules for prisoners are potentially grave. For instance, an inmate may no longer receive visits from brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews or cousins under the age of 18. In some cases--such as those where an inmate has agreed to an open adoption in the best interest of their child--it means terminating a parent/child relationship. This is the case for inmate Stacy Barker, when imprisoned, voluntary terminated her parental rights to allow her daughter to be adopted by Ann Arbor residents Marlene Ross and John Taylor. Since the adoption over five years ago, the girl has been brought to visit Barker nearly every week. The new rules prohibit this. Three lawsuits, filed on behalf of prisoners and their supporters on the outside, have failed to stop the new regulations. The cases have called their implementation both a procedural violation of state regulations and a violation of prisoners' constitutional rights to see family and friends on the outside. All three cases were denied by judges and all are being appealed. "For all prisoners, particularly for women prisoners, the result [of the new rules] is devastating," Michael Barnhart, one of the two attorneys that brought the case raising constitutional questions in federal court, told AGENDA. "The Department of Corrections recognizes that contact between family and inmates is critical to their being able to survive in prison....It's a totally ill-conceived, ill-thought-out approach to solving I don't know which problems." To protest these new regulations, write to your State Representative (Liz Brater or Mary Schroer), State Senator Alma Wheeler Smith, and Gov. John Engler--all at State Capitol Bldg., Lansing, MI 48909. To get involved in the campaign for prisoners' rights call Penny Ryder at American Friends Service Committee: 761-8283.
--by Phillis Engelbert.

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