BEAUTY PAGEANT SEX SLAYING! ms asms m SMSESa INS IDE THE DOPE SCENE BAND IT S A N D B A D W E E D POLITICS!SEX!VIOLENCE!
Cover art by Jere Harley Clinton St. Quarterly is published THE E S H Designed and edited by Centerfold.by Henk Pander free to the public by Clinton St. Vol. 1, No. 2 Lenny Deiner, Eric Edwards Other contributing artists:' Theatre, Inc., 2522 S.E. Clinton St., Summer 1979 CLINTON ST Joe Uris, Beverly Walton Isaac Shamsud-Din, Jerry Krueger, Portland, OR 97202. © 1979 Clinton David Celsi, Mic DeJohnette Ad salesby David Milholland St. Quarterly. QUARTERLY Patriotic eporter A gram of salt Before everyone forgets here are some facts about nuclear war and SALT II. OVERKILL is when you can kill more than 35 percent of your enemy in a first strike. The US and USSR both have overkill up the kazoo. In fact if the US were to lose all of its home 1 ed nuclear capability it still could, using what’s i le air and under water (SAC and Polaris subs) at a mes destroy the Russians. Of course, they could a: J do it unto us. SALT II. of course, will not change this at all. THE NEUTRON BOMB DOES NOT WORK. As a deterrent to a Soviet thrust at Western Europe, the number of neutron weapons needed to stop Soviet armor would make Europe a desert. And the Soviets are equipping many of their tanks with radiation protected interiors. SALT II WILL INCREASE DEFENSE COSTS AND UP NUKE PRODUCTION. For example, to pass SALT II the administration plans to build the complex, gigantic and very expensive MX Nuke Missile system. That’s mobile missiles in trenches always on the move or ready to go over an area of hundreds of square miles. And MX is just starters! THE US POLICY OF LIMITED NUCLEAR WAR WON'T WORK. The Soviet Union has already announced that they will make no distinction between strategic use of Nukes and all-out war. If SALT II WON'T CUT DEFENSE COSTS OR MAKE US SAFER. WHAT IS IT FOR? SALT II will set a sort of equality of destruction at a cost so high as to give the US and USSR a near monopoly on nuclear war in the foreseeable future. Salt II will also relieve the pressure from the people of both nations for an end to the arms race. Nixon’s revenge THE SUPREME COURT IS OUT TO LIMIT YOUR RIGHTS. Recent decisions by the Nixon court point to a rapid erosion of basic freedoms for the press and the individual. Now the authorities can demand not only reporters’ notes, but their state of mind aS well. Newspapers and other print and nonprint media offices can be searched by the Law in fishing expeditions for unspecified things. This is a direct abridgement of the Constitution. Court rulings allowing prior censorship of the Progressive magazine and limiting access to all nuclear information, together with the parts of the Atomic Energy Act, will keep people from knowing of protesting government policy. A curtain of secrecy is falling over all our lives. Coming soon? If the US courts are walking off with the Bill of Rights, in West Germany the government has taken any vestage of freedom left visible. Using the terrorist issue as an excuse, the German government keeps people from working because of vague political associations. It even stamps folks’ passports with negative comments and warnings to other governments. In West Germany every day for a half-hour on TV wanted posters are flashed on the screen. People all over Germany call in to inform on the hapless folks whose faces appear on the screen. A nation of finks. Is Germany showing'the path we soon may follow? The Last Laugh ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. If Skylab hasn’t fallen when you read th is . . .T H £ CLINTON STREET QUARTERLY ANNOUNCES.. .THE SKYLAB IS FALLING, THE SKYLAB IS FALLING LOTTERY . . .Just be the first to name the date and place where Skylab falls, and YOU will win a trip to the actual Skylab crater site (along with the U.S. Government’s own Skylab team of scientists, a doctor, and a PR person) or a full tank of gas, whichever costs more. Armand & Dixie 404 SW 10th Portland 224-9028 Catering Specialists Hours Mon.-Fri. 10-9, Sat. 10-6 FINE WINES & BEER ITALIAN SPECIALTIES MEATS & CHEESES IMPORTED CANDIES , PASTRIES FRESH COFFEE 2
HARD NEWS The Black Hills of South Dakota are sacred to the Sioux people. In 1868 the U.S. gave the hills to the Sioux. But the land has gold and whites The major villain in all of this is the moved in in 1874. Protecting the white Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); miners was the Seventh Cavalry, which which along with other public and was destroyed along with General private interests plan to tap into Custer, in 1876. In among the white underground water supplies to carry reprisals that followed, the land was ore to processing plants. The result taken away by Congress. may make South Dakota into someNow the Black Hills have been thing of a radioactive moonscape. The found to have valuable mineral potenTVA is seen by Indian activists like tial. Uranium and other fuels lie Russel Means as a governmental foot beneat the land. The Sioux stand once in the door for 26 mining companies more to see their special spot made who stand to profit if the region is into a white mans mine. This time, the opened for mining. leavings of mining will leave millions Indian and environmental group of tons of proven cancer causing opposition is growing but like the Four tailings behind. The water table in Corners Coal Power Plant in the western South Dakota will be perSouthwest which uses ground water to manently depleted. ship coal slurry, the oil cruch is a popular and effective excuse to plunder yet another hunk of Indian "One does not land in the once open west. sell the earth upon which the people w a lk" —Tashunka Witko (Crazy Horse) Armand & Dixie 404 SW 10th Portland 224-9028 Catering Specialists Hours Mon.-Fri. 10-9, Sat. 106 FINE WINES & BEER ITALIAN SPECIALTIES MEATS & CHEESES IMPORTED CANDIES PASTRIES FRESH COFFEE The Texas Jaycees have named JA Y CEES mutilation murderer Ben Lach one of the “Outstanding Young Men ' of NAM E America for 1979” . Lach was convicted of murder after KILLER removing the head of a university cleaning woman with a scalpel. The woman died and Lach is doing time. M A N OF The Jaycees say that next year they will take a closer look at their YEAR nomination procedure. PORTLAND SATURDAY MARKET SUNDAY JAZZ AT SATURDAY MARKET October 7 Jim Pepper Quartet October 14 Thara Memory Quintet October 21 Eddie Wied and the Sky Trio October 28 Basil Clark’s Jazz Reunion 1 p.m. On First Avenue under the Burnside Bridge Co-sponsored by Music Performance Trust Funds of the Recording Industries Quality handcrafts • International food Local produce •Free entertainment Every Saturday and Sunday till Christmas Under the Burnside Bridge in Old Town 3
“ We have come a long way in a very few years for having loved the salmon to death. ” KILLING THEM SOFTLY By Bill Bakke Few of us look at it or even spend much time by it or upon it. The Columbia River flows by silently, a grey flood of water, a massive stream in winter or a blue, sky-reflecting mirror in summer. Yet this river has been the home of salmon and trout for thousands of years and the center, the beating heart, of Indian culture in the Northwest. The Indian and the salmon were linked in time, but we have inherited this ancient river and the land it flows from only recently. We reach back to the mythologies of Europe to understand our culture without realizing another cultural heritage exists here. We are largely detached from this land because we have not been limited by it or had to cope with it; we overcame it. We came and. like the Indian animal god, coyote, we are the changers. We have transformed this land and the river to meet our needs, and in so doing we have overlooked and in many ways have destroyed the cultural, birthdefining mythologies that make the Columbia River the source of spiritual and physical nourishment. As we have reshaped this land we have come to realize that its bountiful resources are not infinite. Bonneville Dam was originally designed without fishways. An engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers said, at the time Bonneville was built, that the Corps could not babysit the salmon. In 1978 an ex-director of Washington State Department of Fisheries, now representing the Public Utility District dams on the mid-Columbia, said in a public hearing, that, “we can’t love the salmon to death.” Perhaps we have not loved them enough. In the late 1800s the nonIndian commercial fishery harvested 30 million pounds of salmon annually from the Columbia River. Today, these same salmon stocks which supported this early commercial fishery, the spring and summer chinook, are being reviewed for possible inclusion on the List of Threatened and Endangered Species. We have come a long way in a very few years for having loved the salmon to death. As we lose the salmon runs, we change the life styles and economies of the people living in the Columbia River Basin. As the salmon resource fails, the competition between the user groups becomes bitter and angry as they fight over the few remaining fish. And while they fight each other, the development interests in the Basin have a free hand. Grand Coulee Dam blocked 1,000 miles of spawning and rearing habitat. These were some of the largest chinook in the river, and the commercial salmon fishery greatly benefited from their presence. But there has never been any compensation for that loss. even though 30 years have passed since its construction. Twenty years have elapsed since the salmon run was killed off at Brownlee Dam on the Snake River. The young salmon migrating to the sea in the spring encounter as many as eight dams on their way downriver. It has been determined that a 15 percent loss occurs at each project, yet these losses remain uncompensated. The Columbia River is operated for power production by Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and, in the spring, when the juvenile salmon are descending the river toward the sea, the flows may not exist to move the salmon through the reservoirs, and during low flows many are consumed in hungry turbines. Even though the Army Corps of Engineers is transporting salmon and steelhead around the dams by truck and barge, the fishery agencies want the river to do the transporting, and . that requires adequate flows at the right time to move the salmon seaward. In 1974 there wasn’t enough water, and the juvenile salmon moving down out of the Snake River system sustained a 95 percent mortality at the dams. It has also been found that delay in their seaward migration can cause them not to adapt to salt water; the delay is a function of low flows and dead water in the reservoirs. Only 50 percent of the Columbia River Basin, which was once available for salmon production, is now accessible to them, and what remains is largely degraded so that the salmon habitat is producing less than its potential. Our rivers are like our farm lands, for they are a fertile, foodproducing resource. It is accepted that we protect farm lands with landuse planning, but we continue to lose our salmon rivers because fish production has not been considered important enough when decisions are made to log watersheds, to build hydroelectric dams, or when we take water from our streams to irrigate agricultural land. Yet, if considered, the economic value of salmon is comparable to other resource yields. For example, the Forest Service found that the timber yield value of the Clackamas watershed is worth $14 million, while the fishery yield value is worth $13 million annually. Clearly, the fishery is worth considering, but when fish are not a direct concern of an agency, they are easily overlooked. This is true in federal and state governments. It’s incredible how the work of one agency is undone by a sister agency. The loss of our salmon resource is a very complex problem caught up in heated political struggles and biological shortcuts. The traditional spokesmen for the salmon have been the biologists, and they have been notoriously unsuccessful; partly because they are too careful, they are not good 4
politicians, and they have become addicted to failure. If the salmon is to be rescued, it needs a wider public. Survival it can do for itself; it is up to us to see to it that a home is preserved, securing for the salmon the rights to survival. The salmon and trout are an indicator of land health, for everything that we do ends up in the rivers; and sick rivers and a sore land are not good salmon habitat. Aldo Leopold writes, “Conservation is the protection of the land’s ability to renew itself.” The salmon is a renewable resource. It’s just that as the land is developed, the waters which flow from it receive the insult of sedimentation, thermo-pollution and poisons; the physical changes in the streams which follow assure that they will rear fewer fish. But if the salmon and trout are indicators of land health, then they are also a reflection of the land itself, adapted, as it turns out, to local environments, These environments are not static; they change. The salmon has to adjust, yet it has been found that salmon are adapted genetically to local environments and are genetically changed as those environments change. The salmon, wherever it is found, is a reflection of the special circumstances which make up its habitat; it is of the water chemistry, the vegetation, the rocks, the sun. Changes in these circumstances create changes in the fish. Diversity is considered important to the survival of a population of animals. It is the diverse environments that the salmon are found in that give shape to the fish and to its behavior and life history. In Canada it was found that sockeye salmon, which need a lake for the juvenile salmon to rear in, will spawn in the inlet and outlet streams to the lake. Ones that spawn in the outlet must swim upstream to enter the lake, and the ones in the inlet stream move downstream to the lake. Even though the stream system has sockeye salmon in it, there are at least two distinct races of sockeye salmon using it. A single river may have one species of salmon, but also several races of that species, the races being adapted for survival within certain local habitats amidst that single river system. The salmon have colonized this coast, making a home of each part that is accessible to them. The various species coexist in the same rivers, and the races have exploited, through adaptation, certain sections of the rivers. Natural populations of trout and salmon are a remarkable adaptation to local environments. It is reflected in their genetic diversity which shapes the way they move through a stream, where they spawn, their age structure, their size. The following table is an example of the changes that took place in one population of steelhead after a hatchery reshaped the fish to fit its operations: ALSEA RIVER STEELHEAD WILD 1958 5.4 66.4 25.6 2.6 YEARS AT SEA / l * /2 /3 /4 % REPEAT SPAWNERS 11.1% HATCHERY 1978 4.6 / I 89.9 /2 5.5 /3 5.4% * / l means number of growing in the sea. years spent It is this natural diversity in a trout and salmon population which assures us that there will be future generations. One way that this is expressed, as is evident in the enclosed table, is in the age diversity within a single spawning population. In a natural population of steelhead or salmon, there is a variety in the ages of adults returning to spawn, so if disease or some other catastrophic circumstance were to affect the run. the whole population would not be eliminated in the future. If the spawning population were a single generation, this could easily happen. In the Alsea River, the hatchery steelhead population age structure is concentrated; the 3-year fish are reduced. the 4-year fish are absent, and the numbers of repeat spawners are reduced. This represents a reduced genetic diversity in the population, and that makes the population unstable. Now, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), at the Alsea Hatchery, is trying to breed diversity back into the steelhead population so that it resembles more closely their wild ancestry. The ODFW compared the survival of juvenile wild and hatchery steelhead in the natural stream environment at Trout Creek, a tributary to the Deschutes River. In this research, it was found that hatchery steelhead crossbred with hatchery steelhead had the lowest survival in the natural stream environment. The wild wild cross survived the best, while the hybrid hatchery-wild cross fell somewhere between. It was established that smolt production. the production of juvenile steelhead, from the interbreeding of hatchery and wild stocks, is less than what results from wild fish matings. When fewer juveniles are produced, there are also fewer returning adults in the next generation. It is quite possible for hatchery fish to overpower wild fish when hatchery fish are not isolated from wild fish. Interbreeding results in fewer smolts; wild fish have to survive the rigors of the natural environment, so that only 2 percent of the juveniles will result in returning adults, and the hatchery fish, because of their protected environment as juveniles. return in greater numbers. So, to some biologists, if the hatchery fish cannot be isolated from the wild stock, then the wild stock will eventually be lost. This is a serious problem because hatchery fish are normally not isolated from wild fish, so hatchery “enhancement” can and will result in lowered natural production. Research in Canada on pink salmon has shown that taking salmon “ donor” stock from one dtainage and releasing them in another that the donor stock does not return to the adopted stream as well as the native stock. They stray within the stream or into other streams nearby. Straying can be detrimental because, as was shown, interbreeding reduces genetic fitness of the native stock. This problem is compounded when the donor stock is reared in a hatchery as a brood stock, for they are changed genetically to fit the demands of the hatchery operation. When the donor stock is used to “enhance” the natural production in other streams, the effect is to reduce fitness of the wild stock through interbreeding, and the production of fewer wild juveniles. This is a common practice in West Coast states. Hatcheries are vulnerable to disease because the fish are reared in such dense concentrations. It is common to have a whole hatchery production destroyed because the fish cannot be planted out. If they were, they could infect the wild fish population and establish the disease in a river where it had not been present, where the fish are not resistant to it. Even though this is a quick look at hatcheries, it may serve to show that reliance upon them to increase our sagging fish runs is not altogether a sound biological investment. Hatcheries are a biological tool, a very useful tool, but they are not a panacea. But how have hatcheries gained such importance? They have become important to fisheries management because of the decreased abundance of our wild stocks and the inability, even under the best natural production. for wild stocks to meet the demands of an inflated fishery industry. The wildlife biologist realizes that he cannot secure the future of an elk herd unless the necessary habitat is available. The fishery biologist is under the same constraint, but the hatchery has become the quick fix. The late Mr. Roderick Haig-Brown, a naturalist and writer from British Columbia, says of hatcheries, “They are the easy way, the politically successful way, but dependence on hatcheries reduces the will to attack and solve the real problems of natural production and absorbs far too much money." The demand for fish is always able to outstrip the supply, since the hatcheries became increasingly successful in the 1960s through boosters of the commercial and sport fisheries. Today the troll fishery, which practices no limited entry off Oregon waters, is capable of overfishing the salmon stocks before they reach the rivers. A biologist working out of Puget Sound said that the environmental problems and the adverse effects of genetic damage to the stocks by artificial production is academic now because our greatest worry is to get enough fish back through the interception fisheries to reproduce. Along the Oregon Coast the wild coho salmon stocks have been overfished for a number of years, but only recently has the troll fishery come under season, location and size of salmon restrictions. I do not know a biologist who doesn't feel a cold chill whenever a harvest exceeds 50 percent of a population. In Oregon, bending to the interests of the commercial fishermen. the cut-off level was set at 75 percent harvest of wild coho. When it came to closing the season on an emergency basis just before Labor Day. Jack Donaldson, director of the ODFW, said, “The situation is grave." but he and the Commission kept the fishery open through the holiday, because it would cause too much economic dislocation, even though the harvest rate was al 93 percent of the wild coho run. The commercial fishermen become upset when they are closed down and see surplus salmon at the hatcheries. What they do not want to realize. however, is that hatchery coho can be harvested at a 90 percent level, while wild coho can be safely harvested at the 50 percent level. Since hatchery and wild coho and a mixed stock fishery, both are found in the sea at the same time, in the same places, harvesting hatchery coho at a greater rate results in overharvesting wild coho. When the commercial fishermen are closed down, they turn to their legislators, to the governor, and try to force the ODFW into letting them fish. The ODFW is reluctant to cross the legislators because in future legislative sessions, their budget will be cut or, as in this last session, a biologically unsound program gets rammed down their throat. Stocking out coho fry in Oregon coastal streams clearly is unsound, because the fry rear in the stream and compete for food and space with wild coho, steelhead and cutthroat. Direct competition from hatchery stock has been avoided in Oregon for many years. To change that because a powerful legislator wants it done is bad biology, but doing it is good politics. Commercial and sport fishermen are similar in one important respect: they participate in a consumptive activity. Taking fish without thought about where those fish come from or regard for their perpetuation endangers a renewable resource. It ts the nature of mankind, evidently, to distrust and oppose the guy who is after the same goodie as yourself. As the fishermen—the user groups: trollers, sports fishermen, gillnetters, Indian fishermen—fight each other in and out of courts, the BPA. the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of "The Acoustic Shop' Our entire stock of Martins and Guilds 41% off KU SX M These are the lowest known prices in the nation. Free beginning guilar lessons—no obligation to buy. All strings half price. Phone 239-7191 3928 SE Hawthorne Hours: 10:30am to 6pm Mon-Sat SARMA’S SHOPPE 2001 S.W. 6th PORTLAND, OR-97201 (one block south of The Cheerful Tortoise) 5
Reclamation, state water boards, private utilities, and agricultural interests are making rivers unproductive. Eventually, there will be no more salmon to fight over, yet as the salmon becomes a scarce resource, the fighting among the user groups grows more intense. The Columbia River was once one of the greatest salmon streams in the world. We have grown up with salmon and. consequently, we do not realize what a rare resource it is on a worldwide scale. It is a special phenomenon that is nourished by the very land we live on. To remain closed and disinterested to the salmon’s fate is probably not important to the salmon’s survival, for the salmon can do all that on his own as long as its habitat is kept healthy. But when one realizes that by keeping the rivers clean, one has to check pollutants and keep the soil on the hill; that by doing it Oregon is a better place to live, then it soon becomes apparent that by protecting wild trout and salmon stocks and the waters which nourish them is the only way to keep this coast whole and a fit place to live for fish and for people. Yes. the salmon's habitat is our very own. On the Columbia River, habitat destruction, the elimination of spawning grounds by dams, the manipulation of the river for power and irrigation at the expense of the salmon, mixed stock fisheries, overharvest of wild stocks, user group wars, unrealized compensation for salmon and steelhead losses, and the misuse of hatchery stocks, are leading to the salmon's demise, assuring its status as a threatened and endangered species. This is especially true in the upper Columbia River Basin. To correct this trend and give the salmon a secure future in the Columbia River and in Oregon, there needs to be a coordinated salmon management plan with the authority to make it work. This would be formed from the federal, state and citizens groups involved in “The salmon’s passage is a quiet one, and i f it no longer ascends the Columbia River, few people will know about it, but it will be gone in all its fine diversity. ” JStv/fuid ‘fnnit the problem. Known stock fisheries must be created so that hatchery salmon can be harvested and wild stocks permitted to spawn. Natural production areas must be given protection above other resource considerations, justified on the fact that few unaltered natural production areas exist today in the basin. All the provincial loyalties of government agencies and fishermen’s groups have to give way if the salmon is to survive. Otherwise, the West Coast will repeat the history of the Atlantic salmon fishery. We must learn how to do more than merely take what we want from a resource and begin to give something of ourselves to it, to see it through this crisis. The salmon’s passage is a quiet one. and if it no longer ascends the Columbia River, few people will know about it, but it will be gone in all its fine, full diversity. This country will have lost some of its meaning and richness. What myth will we then be creating about our origins? How wilt we then describe our short stay on this land? SAVE THE FISHERIES OF THE NORTH FORK JOHN DAY RIVER The North Fork wilderness complex is the largest wildland left unprotected in Oregon. The value of the fishery resource is $3.7 million. The North Fork is being managed as a natural production area by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for wild stocks of summer steelehad and spring Chinook. This watershed is the spawning and rearing habitat for 90% of the spring chinook and 70% of the summer steelhead using the John Day River system. The Umatilla National Forest wants to log the watershed but it is more valuable as a production area for anadromous fisheries. President Carter placed it into Further Planning during RARE II, but in order to protect the watershed, the water quality, and the fishery it must be given the greater protection of wilderness. Time is short so please call or write to your Congressman and Senators, for they will be deciding the fate of the watershed in Congress as they vote on what wildlands will enter the National Wilderness System this next month. Representative:___________________ U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515 Senator:_________________________ U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 For further information contact: North Fork Wilderness Council Box 9 Prairie City, Oregon 97869 820-3714 Bill Bakke is a former conservation editor for Salmon Trout Steelhead magazine. Is the Columbia River the most radioactive river in the world? Answer in our Xmas Issue. PORRETTA PIZZA 2239 SE Hawthorne TAKE OUT ONLY BEERAND WINE TOGO 232-2812 KONG HARVEST NATURAL FOODS BEST PIZZA IN PORTLAND Whole Wheat or White Cr- r-t Subs-Salads 2.W se 23S~-S3Sg Hours: Tue., Wed., Th., Sun. 4-10 Fri.-Sat. 5-12 6
Paying the price for a high These scenes are true. Only the names and places have been changed to protect the guilty. The summer of love-peace and good vibes — the dawning of a new age. For a young fella just out of high school, the burgeoning scene around Lair Hill Park was an easy ride on TransLove Airways to an exciting new life. The fuel for that flight came in 95dollar, 2.2-pound bricks that seemed to make everyone grow into cosmicpolitico new beings. What could be neater than to supply all of your friends with this wonderful substance and at the same time make rent for your $99-a-month hippie shack, A dozen years later our friend Emmett is in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city awaiting the shipment of a precious substance. Around him are men dressed to kill — with bulges at their waist and holsters at their side that would do Don Corleone proud. The lastest drought has put many of these folks in perilous financial straights that only a big score can reverse. Everyone is screamin’ and yellin’ to get their bid in to Mr. Big who is in touch with the proceedings by telephone. The tensions and the octave level gets higher and higher as Mr. Big’s agent refuses to let the dealers see any of the offered merchandise. The agent threatens to cut off telephone contact with Mr. Big unless everyone agrees to the then unheard of price of $500 a lb. Finally Emmett cuts the tension and at the same time almost cuts his own throat by breaking into the bags of this suddenly very precious substance. The 10 pounds Emmett will purchase are already spoken for. Tomorrow his phone will be constantly chiming with requests for more. There’s never enough to satisfy the habits of a generation hooked on weed — needing better and better stuff to satisfy their habits. Hooked like they warned us in Reefer Madness? Well, not exactly — but veteran dopers have built up a tolerance level that continues to require high grade reefer. And as the dope culture has spread far and wide across These men are believed to be ARMED AND DANGEROUS America, the demand has far exceeded the supply. It’s a seller’s market and they’ve discovered, as have most American businessmen, that the consumer will pay any price for the desired product. Just like the oil companies discovered in 1973, major marijuana dealers in Portland have found that holding the product back just whets the consumer’s appetite. Our man Emmett, up until December ’78, was able to get bales of high-grade Colombian for $350 a pound — then before Drug dealers are circulating these composite drawings of two young men wanted for several recent armed robberies in Portland’s drug community. The suspects burst into their victim’s home, often when children are present, demanding money and contraband. the holiday season, the big operators held back and only sold the old, driedout summer leftovers. This garbage went like hotcakes through the holiday season and encouraged the top echelon to raise bale price to an average of $450 a pound. It also encouraged the big timers to continue to short shrift the average buying public. The 5-10 top cats are making so much money (a great deal of which comes from coke sales) that they no longer care to serve marijuana smokers with any kind of quality product at a reasonable price. When a number of middlemen refused to move the lowgrade holiday smoke, they we-e summarily cut off. Most of these folks believe in the magic of the weed and try to provide the best possible produce at the lowest possible piice. They came into the business when it was a family affair and high morality governed the trade instead of high sleaze. There is only one ball game in town and you either play by the rules or else. . . . And or else has not been very pleasant of late. It seems that a number of people who have been fronted large quantities of weed have suddenly been ripped off — putting your local tradesmen forever in the debt of certain businessmen — while other tradesmen seem to be setting up private fiefdoms in certain sections of the city that will be defended at all costs. Usually an anonymous tip to the gendarmes will do the trick in moving a tradesman out of the wrong neighborhood. The few remaining respectable dealers like Emmett are facing serious problems. Because of the high demand for weed, the quality continues to be more and more suspect. A lot of the seedy shit movin’ about of late is just the Columbian Connection trying to make weight in a year of severe drought through most of Colombia. If it’s not drought, then it’s increased drug enforcement practices by the U.S. government. The good ol' U.S. of A. ruined the Mexican Connection (remember Acapulco Gold, Oaxacan, and Michoacan) and is now stopping some ships beyond the 2(X) mile limit. Combined with the avaricious nature of those at the top of the trade and the enormous demands of local consumers, Emmett has his work cut out for him if he's to in any way stay true to the vision of that first joint those many moons ago in Lair Hill Park. Whatever Happened to the Mexican Connection? The cutting off of the supply of Mexican weed to the U.S. began with ex-President Nixon’s worldwide “war on drugs” in 1971. The program called for economic assistance to foreign governments, tightening world drug laws and building what Nixon called a CIA-style intelligence operation in the Drug Enforcement Administration, and training foreign narcotics police to form a frontline defense against illicit substances headed for America. In 1975, the State Department, CIA and DEA drafted the Narcotics Control Action Plan for Mexico. The State Department channeled funds and equipment through its Office of International Narcotics Control Matters (INC) to the Mexican attorney general’s office. The equipment included over 30 helicopters, remote sensing devices, high aerial reconnaisance, computer terminals, and telecommunications systems. Combined with the DEA sponsored spraying of paraquat, Operation Condor proved remarkably Successful in disrupting our most substantial source of marijuana. The Mexican government’s acceptance of the program was largely the result of their desire to acquire more police hardware to supress peasant insurgency movements in the mountainous northwestern Mexican states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihauhua (The Golden Triangle) where peasants were trading drugs for guns. The DEA sponsored Operation Condor has led to a system of illegal arrests and tortures that makes a mockery of President Carter's Human Rights Policy. Craig Pyles in the June 4th Village Voice reported that “during the two years it was in Culiacan Mexican Operation Condor arrested over 2.000 people — all duly labeled “narcotraficantes” (narcotics traffickers). But according to a study in the Culiacan correctional facility in 1977 by the Prisoners’ Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, 90 percent of the 457 inmates interviewed were not major narcotics traffickers but poor peasants from the sierra and juveniles from the towns who had been illegally detained and forced to sign confessions under torture in the Ministerio Publico. The method of obtaining these confessions is called by both prisoners and police “la calentada” — the “heat-up.” Specifically, the methods include beatings by fists, rifle and pistol butts; smashing inward with palms open over both ears to break the eardrum; bondage in extended positions, often to extreme dehydration in the hot sun; forcible induction of carbonated beverages through the nasal passages; electric shocks administered over a wet body, especially on the genitals; rape of detained women; submerging the head in buckets of excrement; cigarette burns; prying apart fingers — and toenails, and various spontaneous inventions. “Since the United States continues to fund the Mexican program with an estimated $12 million a year, continuation of that funding should be subject to the constraints of the Harkin Amendment, which prohibits the granting of military and economic aid to countries that engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Given the level of concern shown by the government for the health of America's pot smokers; a turn for the better amongst our Mexican Connec- ■tions is as likely as Doonesbury’s Duke being appointed head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. 7
“First gas, now roads. . . ” _____________________________________ Front St. Shutout Makes Neighbors Roar THOSE i P i o r s RVPPIM' O P LUA Y T O gl>IL.C> L © O S ^ 1 By Penny Allen “ First they take our gasoline! Now they take our roads!!" shouted one angry and alienated man from Multnomah neighborhood as he stood outside Multnomah Elementary School. Despite the school’s topnotch academic standing in Oregon, it has just been closed and many local residents see the closure as a gerrymandered rip-off. No wonder they aren’t too interested in the finer details of “The Plan to Close Front Avenue.” You can’t kick a strong community too many times before it learns to bite. On June 4th, people from every southwest Portland neighborhood gathered to hear Mayor Neil Goldschmidt field questions about his Planning Bureau’s South Portland Circulation Study. The traffic-pattern Study was undertaken originally several years ago to straighten out the mess at the west end of the Ross Island Bridge. Since that time the report has grown to a thorough and futuristic proposal which recommends not only the removal of Front Avenue between the Corbett and Lair Hill neighborhoods but also suggests that the “ found” land be used for housing. The document must ultimately be seen as the Goldschmidt administration’s only gesture towards amending the widespread displacement and gentrification going on in Portland's innercity neighborhoods. But most southwest Portland residents from anywhere further out than Corbett and Lair Hill are having no truck with the Study, and at least a thousand of them have signed petitions protesting the closure of Front Avenue. The whole complex plan has been reduced to a single rallying cry: “They’re closing Front!” Indeed, indignant participants at the June 4th meeting seemed finally to have found an out-let for the general frustration wrought by our eroding gasolinebased system. As a matter of fact, timing of the event just after the school closure, coupled with Goldschmidt’s superficial presentation of the issues (never once mentioning housing) made the whole show look like a deliberate kill. Ernie Munch of the Planning Bureau, who has spent at least five years preparing the South Portland Circulation Study, no longer defends his plan 'well in public. He has also never had the time for small-scale in-depth presentation of his plan in the outlying southwest communities, and of course no idea as radical as removing a highway to build housing could ever make sense without grass-roots support. Goldschmidt distracted the angry crowd by joking about “having already spent enough money on the project to get everybody worried.” The Mayor also agreed with those who suggested that closing Front was one sure way for him to lose an election. Ernie Munch looked like a patsy. Closing Front Avenue certainly would be a hot potato and could indeed inconvenience a great many people. It would also be very expensive. The only trade-off that seems worth all that is housing for Portland’s displaced — sweat-equity housing to be built and owned by those who would live there, a project to be undertaken by a neighborhood-based community development corporation. For anything short of that, closing Front Avenue should be forgotten. On page forty-two of Munch’s South Portland Circulation Study it says, “The new housing should encourage an occupant mix in terms of age, income, family size, owner and renter, and occupation. An emphasis should be placed on the provision of low income housing to assist those low income families and individuals who are currently being forced to leave Corbett/Lair Hill (or you can add Northwest or Albina or inner Southeast) because of rising rents and property values.” Such a good and honorable idea! But many another high-flown intention has somehow slipped out of sight between the neighborhood level and the City Council vote, especially when low-income housing was at stake. “Displacement” may be a fancy word in Mayors’ conferences, but we are unlikely to see Goldschmidt and his people really do anything about it. Blacks Bumped As Rents Rise By Joe Uris Portland’s Black population is facing a forced migration from Portland. As property values rise poor people face an increasingly difficult time finding and keeping affordable housing. While all lower economic levels are effected, the housing squeeze is particularly hard on minority groups. Example: The Irvington neighborhood. By the late ’60’s Irvington was experiencing the fate of many other good inner city areas throughout the nation. Middle class white families faced with an increase in rental properties adjacent to black Albina reacted in terror as black people rented or bought into this once middle class stronghold. Whites sold fine homes for a fraction of today’s worth. Those with the cost of a down payment benefited, but all too few of those were poor people and even fewer were black. Some home owners, unable to sell for a decent price, rented to blacks and others under a program of federal housing for the poor program. The result was some crowding, but also the creation of Portland’s first truly integrated neighborhood. Now all that has changed. Irvington, long popular with the liberal smart set, is now an “in” area. Federal housing money and low cost loans during the Model Cities program, (created to help minorities and the poor in the early ’70s) saved the area from urban decay. The money often ended up being used to stop black movement into a “ good” neighborhood. The white middle class became interested. Many wanted a “ tame” integration experience for themselves and their kids. The fine older homes and convenient location, together with a school whose curriculum is well larded with federal bucks designed to help the poor, has drawn more and more of the new middle class to the area. The result is a boom in the housing market. And the result of the boom, ironically, is the forced disappearance of many black families from Irvington. Blacks who are less than middle class no longer can afford to live in this new middle-class ghetto. The black population of Irvington is down. The white middle class — up. Example: Albina. Once the only neighborhood where black people were allowed to settle, Albina is seeing more and more speculators moving into the area. The reason? The houses are old, well built, often bigger and finer than what is available elsewhere, and the prices are comparatively low. As an immediate result, the amount of available housing for poor people and black workers is diminishing. And this in a city with a less than 5 per cent vacancy rate! Portland has never welcomed the black community. Oregon excluded black folks from the state as part of the compromise which created the state. In the 20’s the Ku Klux Klan was active enough to control much of the state’s politics and to terrorize many minority and Catholic people. The few black people who settled here were mainly laborers, servants and railway workers. The Second World War brought Oregon and Portland it’s first large influx of black people. They came to work in the shipyards. Many brought their families and stayed on after the war. By 1948, most of Portland’s poor arrivals and their war worker white friends were living north of Portland in a federal housing development called Vanport, the state’s secondlargest city. In that same year Vanport was allowed to flood out. The disaster left many homeless. Those that didn’t get the message moved into Albina and the area of what is now the Memorial Coliseum. Since that time Portland’s black population has been forced to move repeatedly. The construction of the coliseum created one such move, the creation of the I-5N freeway another forced move. The expansion of Emmanuel Hospital destroyed 33 blocks of working class black housing as well as a number of popular commercial establishments along Williams Avenue. Similar forced black and white migrations took place on the west side as well. The urban renewal of the South Auditorium area and downtown took their toll. As Lair Hill Park and Corbett became popular with the newly moneyed set, these neighborhoods were upgraded by Portland Development Commission loans and aid. The result? The black population of these areas has virtually disappeared. While it is obviously not just black people who have suffered these displacements, the black community, because of its perilous economic situation, has been hardest hit. The city of Portland through such agencies as the Portland Development Commission, has been following a policy of exclusion toward the lower economic group. This has hit hardest at the most visible and culturally unique of Portland’s poor, its black people. 8
Florynce Kennedy, lawyer, activist, and political maverick, visited Portland recently to address a feminist conference, and to teach a two-week course inThe Politics of Oppressionat Portland State University. The following remarks were excerpted from a tape-transcript of a conversation with her one evening. I’m best known as a feminist because the first work I did nationally that came to a lot of people’s attention was for the feminist movement. But I would call myself a general practitioner rather than a specialist. Most people in politics specialize, like in homosexual rights because they’re homosexual. Naturally, I would be more interested in racism because I’m black, and feminism because I’m a woman. But if a new disease developed, I would be interested in it. Recently I’ve been traveling to nuclear rallies and more black studies groups. I went to Black Power conferences in the past, but because of media whiteout it was rarely given national attention. I’m older so I’ve been into more things. And I didn’t get involved only because of things that happened to me personally. I think there are several kinds of people who get involved in these kinds of things. One is the kind who is uncomfortable with the world—personally uncomfortable. They get involved usually on the basis of their personal discomfiture. At this point, I’m not personally discomforted. In fact, I would tend to avoid getting involved where I’m personally discomforted, if possible. I fight with my landlord only when I’m outraged by something he does. But I do not, as a matter of course, get involved in tenant affairs because my landlord is giving me a problem. I think that splinters people too much. I prefer to move from one area to another, depending on what seems to be the hottest and the most appropriate. As a person who opposed the war in Vietnam, I oppose nuclear proliferation and the Trident missile submarine, which is nuclear powered, I believe. The cost of nuclear proliferation has always been one unfavorable aspect. And then anything that causes women to give birth to 12-toed babies is something you couldn’t very well overlook. I naturally believe that there should be consumer action against the oil companies, on grounds of violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and other trade regulations. This is clearly evidence of runaway corporate anarchy. The tendency is to try to make it look like the OPEC countries are responsible. But the oil companies, the Seven Sisters—Exxon, Mobil, Gulf, Texaco, Royal Dutch, Shell, and Standard of Ohio—are far more responsible and corrupt and greedy. They thought they could steal oil from foreign governments, but the governments are refusing to let them do that. Chase Manhattan and other banks lent millions of dollars to the oil companies, and perhaps the Shah, to hold and control oil. When the Shah lost power, they’re sitting, waiting for their money back. Khomeini is not necessarily going to even recognize the Shah’s debts. So they’re trying to get their money back out of us. Third Party Politics I’m pretty interested in the Freedom Democratic Party. I think that’s pretty important. A lot of people are nervous to work outside the so-called two parties. I like a statement that Dr. George Wald made recently when asked if he thought we -weeded a third party. He said, "I think we could use a second party.” The Freedom Democratic Party is more a caucus within the party. It started with the 1964 challenge to the Mississippi delegation by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party led by Fannie Lou Hamer, who has since died. The idea of the people who are working on the Freedom Democratic Party project is to revive Fannie Lou Hamer in terms of gathering black votes to pressure for issues more than to pressure for candidates, although there may come a time when we would conceivably back somebody like Dick Gregory. In other words, the idea is to garner votes, garner support, and garner voter registration projects within the black community and the gay community. Niggerization of Homosexuals The Harvey Milk situation, I think, is clearest evidence of the niggerization of the homosexual community. It is clear evidence that the community is' held in the lowest possible regard. I mean, there is no lower regard than anyone can be held in than to be killed. If a board of supervisors’ member and a mayor are killed and you give the person who kills them a sevenyear sentence, that’s just like saying they’ve got a hunting license. So that requires coalition. The gay issue is no longer an issue of sexual preference, as 1 see it. Because niggerization is political murder, and the killing of Harvey Milk was a political murder. But the main reason a coalition with the gay community is important is because they are the only ones that seem to have sufficient pride to be enraged and to make an appropriate response to niggerization. Their expression of indignant rage was something that deserves our respect. They may not have a socialist perspective. but 1 haven’t seen any socialists break windows on appropriate occasions lately. 1 happen to think violence is most appropriate and most necessary in a country which devotes as much of its gross national product and national budget to violence. One part of the budget a city almost never cuts is the police budget. I mean violence is what keeps the whole establishment going. One difference between me and a lot of people is that I don’t expect people to do what I do. I don’t expect people to approve of what I do. I don’t wait until everybody decides that this is the thing to do. I rarely quarrel with people over priorities. Because one thing about coalition, as I view it, you accept people where they are, and you proceed from that acceptance to get whatever you want done. 1don’t try to persuade anybody that I’m right nor that they’re wrong. I'm not inclined to tell people how they should express themselves. But I am prepared to show admiration for those people who do what I think ought to be done. So my admiration for the homosexual would not necessarily be shared by everybody. In Defense of Ray I represented Jerry Ray, James Earl Ray’s brother, in front of the subcommittee of the House inquiring into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. I was only there one time. They were attempting to cover up the conspiracy in the Martin Luther King case. They were accusing Jerry Ray of having robbed a bank, along with his brother James, in order to account for the money that the FBI or CIA or police or Ku Klux Klan or whoever really was in on it had given him. It was obvious. You know, smalltime criminals do not have their nose fixed and get passports and go to' London. That’s strictly the CIA’s modus operandi. They had decided to try to tie the brothers into a bank robbery. The bank had already indicated earlier this year that they knew there was no involvement by the brothers because they had film of the robbery. But the subcommittee was going to use that bank robbery story as a cover-up even though they knew that the brothers were not guilty. So we went down there and pointed out that the bank had already indicated they weren’t guilty and that was not the way they would be able to cover up the money. Even though these people all were racists, they just didn’t happen to have killed the guy. At least, if James Earl Ray killed King, he did not do it alone. And Jerry did not collaborate on a bank robbery to get him the money for a nose job. Even if he had been able to get his nose fixed, he couldn’t have gotten a passport unless he had certain help from the government because he got it almost instantly. The real point of it was not to permit them to cover up the story. It was very confusing for a lot of people because they couldn’t see me representing this redneck murderer. But I don’t expect to be popularly supported. I just do what I think ought to be done. And I hope that most people don’t totally reject it. For example, I would like to have seen the Oglala Sioux take the money that they were offered for their land. In that sense, 1 would be against the general feeling. I’d like to see them take the money and buy guns and then take the land. But it’s highly unlikely that they would do that. Pathology of the Oppressed It’s the pathology of oppressed people not to be angry enough to fight their oppressors. The average kid with parents who abuse him doesn’t usually grow up and kill them. The average woman whose husband beats her does not usually kill him. It is not in the nature of the oppressed mentality to respond appropriately to oppression. But I never would have predicted that the Iranians would have blasted forth the way they did. Of course, they got rid of the Shah for Khomeini. But you can’t predict when people's cups will be full enough. That's why it's worthwhile to push. Because the grass is very dry and you just keep dropping sparks, hoping it might catch on. 9
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