2/26/00
- California newspaper publisher banishes news
about gays, abortion
2/25/00
- Tennessee judge overturns 94-year-old
rape conviction
- Slavery said to flourish in Niger
- Human rights violations in Burma criticised
2/23/00
- Crackdown on sex slavery
2/21/00
- Tehran
blow for hardliners
2/20
- Lynching
exhibits tell 'a story that needs to be told'
2/6
- Nongovernmental
organizations are fighting - and winning - social, political battles
- With optimism and chaos, a new town begins
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By LOUINN LOTA
LOS ANGELES (February 26, 2000 12:34 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - A group of California
weekly newspapers has created an outcry with its
refusal to publish news favorable to gay or
pro-choice viewpoints.
More than a dozen editorial employees of two of
the papers have quit since the policy was
enforced.
The papers are distributed free to 126,000
households and businesses in San Luis Obispo, Paso
Robles and Atascadero. So far, they have received
about 400 cancellation requests. And last week,
about 100 people protested outside the San Luis
Obispo County courthouse, some carrying signs
that read "No Bigotry in My Town."
At the same time, however, the papers have picked
up 13 new advertisers because of their stand, says
chief operating officer Todd Hansen. "We've
received 400 e-mails this week that are just
positive and supportive."
The controversy stems from a community calendar
listing for Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians
and Gays, Bisexuals and Transgendered Persons.
It ran in the Atascadero Gazette from Nov. 25 until
Feb. 17, when editor Ron Bast was told the owner
had ordered the listing pulled. Bast said he was told
there were to be no stories that showed gays or
abortion in a favorable light.
He has since quit, saying he believes the paper
failed in its mission to provide unbiased coverage of
the community.
Gay rights activists said they were appalled by the
action of owners Mary and David Weyrich.
"He has the right to do this, of course, but the part
that upset me personally is that he had a great
deal of support starting out because he was
representing this as a true community newspaper,"
said Robyn Murphy, past president of the Central
Coast Gay and Lesbian Alliance.
The Weyrichs published a statement about their
philosophy in Thursday's editions:
"The issue has everything to do with integrity and
nothing to do with journalistic ethics. ... Call us
old-fashioned, but it hasn't been too many years
since our professed beliefs were the accepted norm
in America. Society has changed to the detriment,
we believe, of us all as a people."
Hansen said the Weyrichs are not dictating
content, "just our philosophy, which has been clear
from day one."
He said the Gazette papers also refuse advertising
from nightclubs and tobacco companies.
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By AMY GREEN
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (February 25, 2000 9:11
p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - A judge on
Friday overturned the conviction of a black man
accused of raping a white woman 94 years after
the defendant was lynched by a mob.
Ed Johnson was hanged in 1906 from a bridge
spanning the Tennessee River by a mob that
included Hamilton County Sheriff Joseph Shipp. The
mob was angry that the U.S. Supreme Court had
agreed to stay Johnson's execution and to consider
his case.
"God Bless you all. I am an innocent man," were
supposedly Johnson's last words.
Hamilton County Criminal Judge Doug Meyer
overturned Johnson's conviction at the urging of a
defense attorney haunted by the case since
discovering it 30 years ago during unrelated court
research.
"It really is hard for us in the white community to
imagine how badly blacks were treated at that
time," Meyer said as several observers in the
crowded, small courtroom murmured in agreement.
"It's still a continuing struggle."
The victim, Nevada Taylor, was walking home from
her job in downtown Chattanooga when she was
raped. She testified at Johnson's trial she thought
he was the attacker, but she wasn't sure.
Leroy Phillips, the attorney who filed the petition on
behalf of Johnson and his now-deceased family,
argued that Johnson didn't get a fair trial because
of an all-white jury and the judge's refusal to move
the trial from Chattanooga, where there was much
publicity about the case.
After the lynching, Supreme Court justices held
Sheriff Shipp, his chief deputy and four members of
the mob in contempt of court.
Shipp's grandson, Nicklin Dobbs, 78, called Friday's
hearing a publicity stunt for a book Phillips wrote
about the case.
"It's water under the bridge, as far as I'm
concerned," he said. "We can't go back and undo
things that were done 90 years ago."
-top-
The
State Department's list of human
rights violations is particularly long in
the case of Burma.
It says the country's military rulers
have continued to suppress the
pro-democracy movement by
preventing their elected
representatives from convening
through means of intimidation and
arbitrary detention.
Members of the security forces are
alleged to have committed serious
human rights abuses, including
killings without trial and rapes.
The US document, which was
published on the Internet, says the
Burmese military intensified its
campaign against the National
League for Democracy NLD led by
Aung San Suu Kyi after the NLD
established a ten-member committee
to act on behalf of the parliament in
1998.
From the newsroom of the BBC World
Service
-top-
The anti-slavery association in Niger,
Timidria, has said that slavery is still
rife in all eight regions of the country.
The head of the association, Iglas
Wailler, made the claim in a speech
to a conference on slavery in the
southern town of Maradi.
He estimated that there were about
twenty-thousand people serving as
slaves in Niger, mainly from the
Tuareg, Fulani and Jam Songhai
communities. He said that slave
owners were usually traditional rulers
and clergymen, while their victims
were usually from a class of people
known as untouchables.
Mr Wailler said that young female
slaves suffered sexual demands from
their owners, while male slaves were
often castrated or branded with hot
irons. Other conference participants
criticised the absence of clear
legislation about slavery, which they
said made it difficult to stamp out.
From the newsroom of the BBC World
Service
-top-
Sex trafficking is set to overtake
drug-running
The United States is looking at ways
to stem the growing trade in sex
slaves - an illegal market officials
fear will overtake drug trafficking.
A State Department official told a
senate hearing that international
criminals were moving away from
"guns and drugs" to marketing
women.
Up to 2 million women world-wide are
forced to work as prostitutes.
"There are weaker
restraints and
growing demand,"
Harold Koh,
assistant secretary
of state for human
rights and labour,
told a senate
sub-committee on
Near Eastern and
South Asian affairs.
Each year, 50,000 women are taken
to the US to work as sex slaves,
officials said. Feeder countries
include Ukraine, Albania, the
Philippines, Thailand, Mexico and
Nigeria.
Trafficking of women and children
"may be the largest manifestation of
slavery in the world today," said the
panel chairman, Sam Brownback.
Enslaved
A 20-year-old Mexican woman told
the hearing that her quest for a
better life turned her into a sexual
servant.
"I was enslaved
for several
months, other
women were
enslaved for up to
a year," said Inez,
a native of
Veracruz who wore
a disguise in case
that traffickers
retaliated against
her family.
"We worked six
days a week and
12-hour days," she said.
"We mostly had to serve 32 to 35
clients a day. Weekends were even
worse."
Mr Brownback, of Kansas, spoke of
meeting some women victims during
an information-gathering trip to Asia
in January.
"They are told they will be taking a
job as a nanny and are given money,"
he said.
"Then they are taken across a border
and held against their will."
Inez said men in Mexico promised her
work at a restaurant, but then said
she owed them a "smuggling fee" of
$2,500 that she had to pay off by
selling her body.
Law enforcement officials raided the
brothel - but while some of the
traffickers had been prosecuted, Inez
said others escaped capture and
returned to Mexico.
"They have even threatened to bring
our younger sisters to the United
States and force them to work in
brothels as well."
Protection and prosecution
Bills aimed at curbing sex trafficking
have been introduced in the House of
Representatives and the Senate.
Officials urged senators to back
efforts to curtail the trade with a
three-pronged strategy of prevention,
protection and assistance for victims,
and prosecution of traffickers.
But they warned against using
sanctions, warning that such
measures would only worsen the
economic conditions that made
women vulnerable to sex traders.
Iranian reformers look set for a
convincing victory in the race for
parliamentary seats in the capital,
Tehran.
Pro-reform candidates are leading in
28 of the capital's 30 seats.
The news is a blow to the hardline
conservatives, who have already been
routed in other parts of the country in
the polls for the 290-seat parliament,
or Majlis.
According to
nationwide results
announced so far,
reformists have
won 137 seats to
the conservatives'
44, with
independents
taking around 50.
The figures mean
reformers are set to oust hardliners
from the parliament for the first time
since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
President's brother leads
With about 15% of Tehran's more
than 3m votes counted, election
officials said Mohammad Reza
Khatami, the leader of the biggest
pro-reform coalition and brother of
the president, was in first place.
Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani,
the candidate backed by
conservatives, was trailing in 27th
place. He could still be in the running
for one of the four seats to be
determined in the second round of
voting.
Candidates must poll at least 25% of
votes to enter parliament in the first
round.
Jamileh Kadivar,
the wife of
President
Mohammad
Khatami's
moderate culture
minister, was
second in the
capital's polls
while the
pro-reform brother
of Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei held
third place.
With most results known, the
outcome of Friday's elections was
being seen as a triumph for President
Khatami, whose attempts to push
through reforms had previously been
blocked by parliament.
In the new parliament, his agenda is
expected to include early changes to
laws on elections, the press and the
judiciary system.
However efforts to implement reforms
could still be frustrated by the
hardline supreme leader, who has the
final word.
Foreign welcome
Western leaders have welcomed the
election results.
Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime
Gama, speaking on behalf of the
European Union, said: "There is of
course still a long road ahead in Iran,
but the signals sent by Iranian voters
clearly justify the reform path."
"This is a clear signal of the Iranian
people's interest in modernisation,"
UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said.
"It is welcome confirmation that our
policy of dialogue with Iran is
correct," he added.
The German Government welcomed
the reformists' gains as
"encouraging", and said it was
pushing ahead with plans for Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer to visit
Tehran, probably in early March.
Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit
said anti-secular groups in Turkey
would no longer see the Iranian
Islamic revolution as a source of
inspiration. He said he hoped Iran
would no longer attempt to export
the revolution to other countries.
The United States welcomed the
strong showing by moderates, saying
the Iranian people had shown they
wanted "openness and engagement".
Israel, too, issued a cautious
welcome.
Rout in the provinces
During the campaign, conservatives
warned that the principles of the
1979 Islamic Revolution would
receive a fatal blow if the reformers
were victorious.
The hardliners had
hoped to appeal to
voters in provincial
areas, but it did
not happen.
Results from the
provinces gave
President
Khatami's
supporters two
seats for every
one held by the
conservatives.
The conservatives failed to win a
single seat in the provincial centres
of Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad and
Bandar Abbas.
Lynching exhibits tell 'a story
that needs to be told'
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
BALTIMORE (February 20, 2000 12:28 a.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - On a cold morning in the
middle of February - Black History Month - Jerald
Phoenix stands before the blood-red statue of a
maimed and lynched woman. He cannot look for
long.
When he finally speaks, his voice matches the
tamped pain in his eyes. "It's disgusting," he says,
shaking his graying head in the basement of the
Great Blacks in Wax Museum.
"It happened. That's all." But he cannot let the
image go, and anger rises in his voice. "What did it
prove?" asks the 64-year-old black military veteran.
"That's what I want to know. What good did it do?"
More than he may realize. In recent exhibitions
documenting lynching, galleries and museums have
used evil for good.
They show black men hanging from poplar trees
and the unashamed, smiling faces of white
spectators. They are disgusting images of American
history kept from textbooks and classrooms and
long considered too disturbing for public display.
But they are more powerful, say those who now
exhibit them, when used to teach the young and
remind the old.
"When you're sitting with the original photograph,
you can't deny that it really happened," said
Andrew Roth, co-owner of the Roth Horowitz
Gallery on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where a
separate exhibition of 60 lynching photographs
taken between 1883 and 1960 has drawn
thousands, many willing to wait hours in the winter
cold.
The pictures are grotesque. Many are actual
postcards, dispatched like vacation mementos, as if
the traveler had seen a national monument instead
of a lynch mob.
The postmaster general outlawed such mailings in
the early 1900s. Sale of the cards - once done
door to door - also was banned. But cards secretly
circulated, often as warnings to blacks.
"This is the barbecue we had last night," reads one
on display at the Horowitz gallery. Hanging from a
chain are the remains of Jesse Washington, lynched
in 1916, offense not noted.
White men and boys stare at the camera. One man
grins. The postcard is signed by a Texas man who
could not spell a three-letter word: "Your sone
Joe," he wrote.
Another shows a group of white men in a stand of
tall trees. Above them is a burned corpse. On the
postcard's other side, in ornate, old-fashioned
script: "Warning. The answer of the Anglo-Saxon
race to black brutes who would attack the
womanhood of the South."
The lynching occurred in Georgia in 1902.
"It's graphic. It's horrifying," Roth said. "But people
are disturbed in a very positive way. It's an
awakening."
The exhibition was scheduled to close in February
but will continue another month to accommodate
overflow crowds.
"We've never had this kind of reaction before and I
hope we never do again," said Roth. "The response
has been overwhelming."
The photographs are part of the Allen-Littlefield
Collection, which is on deposit to Emory University's
Robert W. Woodruff Library.
James E. Allen, an antiques dealer, spent more than
10 years collecting lynching artifacts. His quest
began with a phone call from a colleague who
found a photograph in an old roll-top desk in
Macon, Ga.
"In America, everything is for sale, even a national
shame," Allen wrote in the afterword to "Without
Sanctuary," a recently published book of his
discovered photographs.
Allen put ads in magazines, established a Web site
and mailed thousands of fliers. He paid from $15 to
$30,000 for each photograph. The money was
provided by a friend, John Littlefield.
Roth put them in his gallery after hearing about
Allen's book.
Seeing the images is hard enough. Talking about
them is harder still.
Words do not come easy, even at the black wax
museum in Baltimore, a city where
African-Americans make up more than 65 percent
of the population.
Phoenix rode a bus from Pennsylvania to visit the
museum's lynching exhibit.
"Black people are too easily intimidated," he said.
Elmer Martin, a social work professor at Morgan
State University, spent three years researching
vigilante violence before opening the Baltimore
exhibit with his wife, museum director Joanne
Martin, in 1998.
"There are some that feel the horrors of our past
are best left alone so they won't leave emotional
scars on our children," he said. "But there are more
who think it is a cathartic experience for our people
- a mourning for us."
Elmer Martin found little legal documentation.
Whites were rarely arrested, let alone convicted.
Often, judges, elected officials and police officers
went along with the killings.
As many as 10,000 blacks have been lynched since
the late 1880s, Elmer Martin estimates, based on
data culled from national archives, newspaper
clippings and lists kept by the NAACP and
Alabama's Tuskegee Institute.
Photographs in the Maryland museum are similar to
the those being shown in New York. But there is
more.
The Martins also display wax replicas of lynching
souvenirs - human extremities pickled in glass jars -
once proudly displayed in the windows of white
shopkeepers and handed down like heirlooms by
white families.
Phoenix stood transfixed by the museum's wax
recreation of Mary Turner's 1938 murder. The
Georgia woman was tortured and killed after she
threatened to sue the white men who lynched her
husband.
Eight months pregnant, she was hanged upside
down to "teach her a lesson," according to news
stories. Her stomach was slit and her unborn child
ripped out. Its skull was smashed by the boots of
white mob members.
The Martins want visitors to feel saddened, but not
bitter.
"This is a story that needs to be told. We decided
that what did exist wasn't thorough enough," said
Elmer Martin, referring to the small number of
lynching exhibits in this country.
"If you can look at it objectively, then we haven't
done our job," he said.
To Joanne Martin, even more disturbing is the lack
of knowledge among young blacks.
"They think it's not real, that it's out of a movie or
TV," she said. "They can't believe it. Because most
black people have forgotten about the lynching
experience. Most white people have forgotten
about the lynching experience."
Other human atrocities are more easily mentioned
and mourned, she said. The Holocaust, for example.
Whites "can say, 'Well, that didn't happen here. It
happened in Germany. And we weren't part of it,'"
said Joanne Martin.
And older blacks who witnessed the lynching of
someone they loved often want only to erase that
memory, she said.
"Black people knew to be afraid and to keep quiet."
That has changed, but violence continues.
In 1998, white supremacists tied a black man
named James Byrd Jr. to the back of a pickup truck
and dragged him along a Texas road until his body
fell apart. For Byrd's murder, two men were
sentenced to death and another to life in prison.
"There's good and evil still," said Hazel Dukes, head
of the NAACP in New York. Displaying images of
horrors past is necessary, she said. "You have to
stay forever vigilant."
NANDO 2/6/00
Nongovernmental
organizations
are fighting -
and winning -
social, political
battles
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Christian Science Monitor Service
The Web site of the Christian Science Monitor, source of this
article.
By BRAD KNICKERBOCKER
(February 6, 2000 12:19 a.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) - In Bangladesh, a shop
owner receives a $175 "micro loan" to expand his
business. In Kenya, a woman joins the activist
"green belt" movement to fight deforestation. In
the western United States, churches join forces to
save salmon and redwoods.
Around the world, private, nonprofit organizations
are fighting - and winning - major social and
political battles. Most are small, grassroots groups
working at the neighborhood or village level. Others
are spread across continents with hundreds of
thousands of members and a variety of
sophisticated organizational structures.
But in virtually every part of the world, these
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are having a
major impact on governments, corporations, official
international organizations like the United Nations
and the World Bank, and - most importantly - the
lives of people and the health of the planet.
Working together, individuals and private groups
around the world have had major impact on
international trade pacts like the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), on security and
safety matters such as the use of land mines, and
on such economic issues as the new requirements
that forest products in some parts of the world be
certified as environmentally friendly.
"The past few years have seen a remarkable
growth in the number and prominence of such
groups and their ability to precipitate change," says
Curtis Runyan, who studies NGOs for the
Worldwatch Institute in Washington. "They have
cajoled, forced, joined in with, or forged ahead of
governments and corporations on an array of
actions as disparate as the decommissioning of
nuclear reactors, brokering cease-fires in civil wars,
and publicizing the human rights abuses of
repressive regimes."
It's hard to put an exact figure on the number of
such groups. Some - such as those fighting
slavery, women's suffrage organizations,
humanitarian associations like the Red Cross - have
been around for more than 100 years. But the
numbers have accelerated rapidly in recent years.
The Yearbook of International Organizations reports
that there now are more than 26,000 international
NGOs - more than four times as many as existed
just 10 years ago. Runyan estimates that there are
about 2 million grassroots citizens' groups in the
United States, at least two-thirds of them created
within the past three decades.
Lester Salamon, a political scientist at the Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore who specializes in
alternatives to government, calls this phenomenon
"a global association revolution that may prove to
be as significant ... as the rise of the
nation-state."
There are two reasons behind this rapid growth:
First, governments around the world are becoming
more democratic and less authoritarian and,
second, advancing means of communication allow
citizens and activists around the world to share
information and strategies.
Many of these groups deal with environmental
issues or - more broadly - the "sustainability"
movement encompassing economic development,
environmental protection, social justice and quality
of life.
"Numbers themselves ... do not convey the power
of this movement," says Paul Hawken, a successful
business entrepreneur and author of several books
on sustainable business practices. "What does are
the underlying mental models and frameworks that
inform it."
In a recent Internet discussion moderated by the
Sierra Club, Hawken said, "In the past, movements
that became powerful (Marxism, Christianity,
Freudianism) started with a set of ideas and
disseminated them, creating power struggles over
time as the core model was changed, diluted, or
revised.
"The sustainability movement (estimated by
Hawken to include 30,000 groups in the US and
100,000 worldwide) does not agree on everything,
nor should it.
"But, remarkably, it shares a basic set of
fundamental understandings about the earth and
how it functions, and about the necessity of
fairness and equity.... This shared understanding is
arising spontaneously, from different economic
sectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts. And it is
absolutely growing and spreading worldwide, with
no exception. No one started this worldview, no
one is in charge of it, there is no orthodoxy."
Paul Ray, a sociologist and market researcher who
focuses on values, calls people who share such
interests "cultural creatives." Such folks - about 44
million in the United States alone, Ray estimates -
take a more global view of economic and social
issues and tend to be more altruistic and less
cynical than other segments of society. They also
are more likely to be involved in volunteer
activities.
"A major change has been growing in American
culture," Ray wrote in American Demographics
magazine. "It is a comprehensive shift in values,
world views, and ways of life.... They are eager to
rebuild neighborhoods and communities, committed
to ecological sustainability, and believe in limits to
growth. They see nature as sacred, want to stop
corporate polluters, are suspicious of big business,
are interested in voluntary simplicity, and are willing
to pay to clean up the environment and stop global
warming."
This philosophical outlook and willingness to engage
in activism - which is growing in other parts of the
world as well as in the U.S. - was evident during
the protests at last fall's World Trade Organization
meeting in Seattle. Aside from the handful of
anarchists who trashed some buildings and got
most of the media coverage, there was a large
network of environmentalists, human rights
activists, labor organizations and others concerned
about the economic and social impact of the
secretive, government-sponsored WTO.
While it may have appeared to TV viewers that
spontaneous protests caught local officials by
surprise, NGOs around the world had spent months
developing strategies for expressing their concerns
in Seattle. As a result, a broad nonpartisan effort -
one that saw consumer advocate and Green Party
presidential candidate Ralph Nader team up with
conservative
Republican-turned-Reform-Party-candidate Pat
Buchanan - was able to slow the WTO negotiations
to a halt.
The spread of global communications in recent
years has made it possible for activists like those in
Seattle to find out quickly about each other's work
and to join forces for maximum impact - often in a
way that lessens the traditional power of
governments.
"The most powerful engine of change in the relative
decline of states and the rise of nonstate actors is
the computer and telecommunications revolution,"
Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, wrote in
Foreign Affairs magazine. "Widely accessible and
affordable technology has broken governments'
monopoly on the collection and management of
large amounts of information and deprived
governments of the deference they enjoyed
because of it. In every sphere of activity,
instantaneous access to information and the ability
to put it to use multiplies the number of players
who matter and reduces the number who command
great authority."
A major point in the growth of NGOs was the United
Nations Conference on the Environment and
Development (the "Earth Summit") in Brazil in 1992.
More than 100 governments were represented -
largely due to the pressure of nongovernmental
advocacy groups, some 1,500 of which were
accredited by the U.N. to take part in the
discussions.
A coalition of about 350 humanitarian and
arms-control groups from 23 countries pushed
through an international treaty banning the
manufacture, distribution and use of landmines.
Jody Williams, head of the U.S.-based International
Committee to Ban Landmines, was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Her main weapon, she
said, was e-mail.
Over the years, the World Bank often funded
programs that disrupted indigenous people and
promoted industrial development at the expense of
the environment. Under pressure from NGOs, the
World Bank backed away from massive dam
projects in India, Malaysia, and China. The bank
has begun working closely with such groups as
Oxfam International. Today, more than half of all
World Bank projects involve input from NGOs.
Nongovernmental organizations also have
influenced major international corporations. Nike
has been pressured to improve working conditions
for its overseas employees. After years of criticism,
Home Depot recently announced that it would shift
to lumber products that are independently certified
as having been harvested "sustainably." Chevron oil
company is working with the World Wildlife Fund to
ensure that its operations do not harm the
environment.
Such influence, say political scientists Margaret
Keck at the Johns Hopkins University and Kathryn
Sikkink at the University of Minnesota, is the direct
result of what they call "transnational advocacy
networks."
"What is novel in these networks is the ability of
nontraditional international actors to mobilize
information strategically to help create new issues
and categories and to persuade, pressure, and gain
leverage over much more powerful organizations,"
they write in their recent book "Activists Beyond
Borders." "Activists in networks try not only to
influence policy outcomes, but to transform the
terms and nature of the debate."
From relatively wealthy American suburbanites to
African villagers to residents of "megacities" in
South Asia, the ability to communicate rapidly and
affect change is expected to continue growing.
"Both in numbers and in impact, nonstate actors
have never before approached their current
strength," observes Mathews of the Carnegie
Endowment. "And a still larger role likely lies ahead."
(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science
Publishing Society
NANDO 2/6/00
With optimism and chaos, a new
town begins
Copyright © 2000 Nando Media
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press
By TED ANTHONY
EDGEWOOD, N.M. (February 6, 2000 12:08 a.m.
EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - The squat little
building just off Interstate 40 was brimming with
humanity. It was atrociously hot. Foreheads shone
with sweat and emotions ran high. On this summer
night, high in the Sandia Mountains, democracy
was breaking out.
Facing the public were five men who had thrust
themselves willingly into the vortex. Larry Keaty,
Bob Stearley, Howard Calkins, Chuck Ring and Gary
Chemistruck - all regular guys on their final evening
as private citizens - were getting an eyeful of the
road ahead. It was bumpy.
The good people of this patch of the Estancia
Valley, in ways as varied as their faces, were
demonstrating that they cared. They talked issues.
They demanded results. They threatened lawsuits.
They shouted and barked, berated and chided,
cajoled and denounced. Occasionally, they even
praised.
For years, people in this unincorporated area of
central New Mexico that rose from homesteaders'
pinto-bean fields had groused about how they were
being governed. They were tired of orders being
handed down from the county seat in Santa Fe, so
many miles away and so alien in its priorities. Like
many in the West, folks around here wanted to
decide things for themselves. So some figured that,
instead of answering to a far-off government,
they'd assemble their own from scratch.
Now the five men at the pushed-together wooden
tables, identified by paper name tags in Lucite
holders, were embarking on the latest embodiment
of America's most basic endeavor -
self-government. They'd come forward from the
populace, endured elections, rented out an office in
back of the Homestead Restaurant to be the Town
Hall.
In a few hours, they would become fathers. The
new arrival would be rambunctious, assertive and
self-determined, ready to make the kind of glorious
mess that only democracy can.
At 12:01 a.m. on July 1, 1999, with $1.85 in its
coffers and the office furniture on the way, the
Town of Edgewood was born.
"We are a people capable of self-government, and
worthy of it." - Thomas Jefferson, 1807.
Little is more fundamentally American than the right
to chart one's own destiny.
It was the foundation of the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution. It was a
defining element of the frontier movement that
settled the West. And now, at the beginning of the
21st century, it connects Edgewood with that
heritage.
Originally called Venus and then Mountain View,
Edgewood sits over the Sandias from the valley
that contains Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest
city, 35 miles west. The mountains form a natural
barrier that, in recent years, has helped prevent
urban sprawl from oozing eastward.
Edgewood also is located in the largely empty
southwestern corner of Santa Fe County, 50 miles
from the courthouse that governed it until last
year.
For much of the 20th century, it was an
unincorporated settlement populated largely by
bean farmers, descendants of settlers who'd come
from the likes of Kansas and Nebraska in the early
1900s. But years of drought eventually parched the
farms, and Albuquerque drew Easterners seeking
moderate climes. Edgewood became an alternative
for Albuquerque natives - a place where land was
cheap and plentiful, houses were scattered and
restrictions were few. Though the storied Route 66
ran through Edgewood, it wasn't until I-40 came
through in 1965 that a cluster of road-oriented
businesses took hold near Exit 187.
Talk of incorporation surfaced in the early 1980s.
Edgewood needed tax revenue, which in New
Mexico's unincorporated communities reverts to the
state. People wanted their government around the
corner, and they wanted to encourage
development but also keep a small-town flavor.
Growing frustration with decaying roads finally led
some residents to form an incorporation committee
in 1997, and a special election was held early last
year. Incorporation won, 136-29, and 600 citizens
began preparing for the day they would officially
become the state's 102nd municipality.
Elections for public officials were held in May, with
110 of 250 eligible voters casting ballots. Larry
Keaty, a retired systems analyst who helped lead
the incorporation drive, ran for mayor unopposed.
Chemistruck tied with two other candidates at 55
votes and secured his council seat the next day at
the Homestead Restaurant in a Western-style
runoff - a card game. He drew the seven of
spades.
That meeting last summer, the night before
incorporation kicked in, was quite a spectacle. The
crowd, spilling out the doors, recited the Pledge of
Allegiance. Sixty-nine people stood and spoke,
some angrier than others. Most were arguing about
the issue that had stolen center stage -
annexation, a plan to fold more land and more
citizens into the newly incorporated area.
Some didn't want in. Why, they asked, should the
town be expanded before it's even on its feet? How
did annexation benefit them? Others shot back with
an exhortation: Give new government and new
ideas a chance.
Marcia DeLeon thought a smaller area would be
better for Edgewood. Angus Campbell worried about
his rising property assessment. Ray Seagers
lamented years of "taxation without representation"
and lauded the town's coming together. And
though some folks were suspicious of the new
government, Tim Oden said the alternative was
worse. "I would rather leave my faith in these
gentlemen than the county," he said.
"Relax a little bit. Take it a little slower," advised
William Bassett, who belongs to an old Edgewood
family that vocally opposed majority-rule
annexation.
Keaty sipped from a water bottle, taped the
proceedings on his microcassette recorder and
generally kept his cool. The new councilmen
watched and spoke up occasionally. At times they
seemed quite statesmanlike. Occasionally, though,
a look crossed their faces: What, it seemed to say,
have we gotten into?
From much of the crowd, though, emanated an
excitement that the future was, finally, in local
hands. "Now," said Keaty, "we have a voice."
"The qualifications for self-government in society
are not innate. They are the result of habit and
long training." - Thomas Jefferson, 1824.
"If someone had told me 10 years ago that I'd be
running a town, I would have said, 'You're out of
your gourd, mister,'" Larry Keaty says.
It is now mid-September, and the 70-year-old
mayor sits in the honeycomb office that is Town
Hall, clutching his ever-present water bottle. The
phone rings. "Town of Edgewood, this is Larry," he
answers. In red T-shirt and slipper-like loafers, he
nonetheless manages to look reasonably mayoral.
Edgewood's first three months have hardly been
uneventful. Visible outside the window behind
Keaty are dump trucks and backhoes being used to
clear land for Smith's, a large supermarket complete
with bank and pharmacy. It will augment the
smaller John Brooks store down the road and allow
more people to buy groceries here instead of
Albuquerque. Gross-receipts taxes from town
businesses, which went to the state before for
general distribution, are now flowing into Edgewood
and giving it money to operate.
Nearly 3,900 more acres have been annexed into
the original 589, most of it open land, all of it
belonging to people who didn't object. The town,
facing virulent resistance and threats of lawsuits,
dropped plans to assimilate reluctant landowners.
The five who govern seem an unlikely bunch,
perhaps. But are they? Keaty, a St. Louis native, is
a retired systems analyst. Stearley and
Chemistruck, born in Nebraska and Albuquerque
respectively, work at Sandia National Laboratories.
The Texas-born Ring, a retired state police captain,
is a woodworker. Calkins, the only one born here, is
retired from running a local water company.
Each is affable, well-spoken and solicitous. They're
citizens. They care. In a democracy, that means
they're qualified.
Now their days are filled with the kinds of questions
that high-school civics students tackle. What
brand of democracy is best - direct or
representative? How much say do the people have?
How much discussion and debate should there be
before a decision is made? How fast should
Edgewood grow? What services should it offer
citizens?
In the West, where the idea of rugged and even
extreme individualism is prized and mythologized,
community has been more important than myth
might suggest. Movies and novels tell of people
who came west to be themselves and make their
own laws. The town is usually mere backdrop to
individual drama.
But in a vast, sparsely populated landscape like
New Mexico's, settlements and the human
interaction they offer are crucial - as much in the
21st century as in the 19th.
"You could drive for 100 miles and never see
anything but an antelope," says Roger Makin,
spokesman for the New Mexico Municipal League,
which represents the state's cities and towns. "So
when you do find a community, it becomes very
important."
"No man has greater confidence than I have in the
spirit of the people. ... Whatever they can, they
will." - Thomas Jefferson, 1814.
Larry Keaty answers the phone. He sounds weary
and professional - less like a neophyte, more like a
mayor. "Town of Edgewood," he says. No more
"This is Larry."
It is a quiet afternoon in late January, six months
into Edgewood's life, and governing has kept Keaty
up nights. The Edgewood slogan, "Town Under
Construction," seems quite apt at this moment.
Governing's burden has set in. Rifts have opened.
Council members talk of late-evening calls from
complaining citizens. Stearley has found himself at
odds with Keaty and is running against him for
mayor in March, when Keaty, Ring and Calkins are
up for re-election. Calkins calls Stearley
"unprepared" and says he doesn't take his office
seriously enough.
Keaty bristles at what he calls "vociferous
naysayers" - folks outside the incorporated area
who refused to be annexed but are now "trying to
control what the town does." Ring says Stearley
overemphasizes public consensus and is reluctant
to make tough decisions. And Stearley, who says
he enjoys the community's "renegades," accuses
Keaty of ignoring the people's will. "It is a railroad
job - on all issues," Stearley says. "He's trying to
steamroll us."
And so it goes.
It's politics, born from people's different opinions
about the way the world should work. Governing is
rarely easy, whether it's in Washington, Santa Fe
or right here behind the Homestead Restaurant. It
can wear on a man.
"I said I wasn't going to make this a profession, and
I don't intend to. Four years from now, if I do my
job, I will be so drained that I won't have the
energy to do it anymore," says Chuck Ring, who
has been forced to turn down woodworking jobs
because of the time commitment that being a
councilman requires.
Then there are the issues, especially the vigorous
debate about whether to install sewers. Supporters
say businesses won't come to Edgewood without
them. Opponents favor sticking with septic tanks;
they say sewers make construction too easy and
could eventually beget Albuquerquian sprawl.
Nobody doubts the area will grow, and most want it
to. But the mantra of "controlled growth" means
different things to different people, and evidence of
activity is everywhere.
A new middle school opens this year, and plans are
under way for a "town center" of sorts, including a
real town hall of brick and mortar and a
neighborhood of houses on smaller lots. The town
has bought a road grader. Additional annexations
from the community's 6,000-strong populace -
voluntary annexations - are imminent. Keaty, trying
to attract business, boasts that the town offers
building-permit approval in less than two weeks.
The town's tax base is up to $50 million, Keaty
says, and by year's end 15 new businesses will be
open or nearly open. Smith's, the supermarket,
opened late last month with 40 local jobs, and its
parking lot is packed - which Stearley predicts will
lead to Edgewood's first traffic light. McDonald's
breaks ground this month near the I-40 ramp.
Sonic, another burger chain, is coming, and
7-Eleven is building a store that will sell alcohol
under new town ordinances.
Edgewood has adopted the state's less-stringent
sewage-treatment laws instead of Santa Fe
County's. That, Stearley says, has paved the way
for a new bed-and-breakfast, a Montessori School,
a Tastee Freez and a pediatric clinic.
The lesson: The arcana of municipal government
can really shape a place. What's happened here
since July means people not only can find work
closer to home but can get at services without
driving to the city. It also means a choice is
hurtling toward Edgewood: suburban or rural? Or
both?
Edgewood turned seven months old last week, held
together by chewing gum and verve. If it lasts -
and why not? - those five guys will be remembered
as founding fathers. Maybe one day they'll get a
statue or a building bearing their names.
"It's hard for me to think what this place will look
like in 50 years," says Howard Calkins, who's been
around since the bean-farming days. "But I hope
it'll be something where folks can say, `These
people did pretty well with their town."'
For now, they're simply crafting their own
community - negotiating workaday squabbles, liking
and disliking each other, dealing with constituents,
hopscotching forward. And doing it themselves:
Everything is theirs, even the mistakes.
Big ideas on a small canvas. Laws in action. People
deciding, together, how they want life to be. The
glorious mess that is American democracy, alive
and kicking just off Interstate 40, on a plateau
under the vast New Mexican sky.