David Dyson: 'No more young men for an old men's war'

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The following are excerpts from David Dyson's presentation to the Central America panel. Dyson is the union label director of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union and the coordinator of the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador.

There's a scene in the movie Missing where Jack Lemmon confronts the am -bassador to this unnamed Latin country and says, "Mr. Ambassador, what are we doing down here anyway?"

And the ambassador turns to him in that cool diplomatic tone and says, "We are here protecting American interests." And I began to wonder about whose interests he is talking about.

Texas Instruments Corp. is moving out of Texas so fast that they're going to have to change their name to El Salvador Instruments, because that's where they're moving.

And they're going to what's called a freetrade zone north of the city of San Salvador, where the primarily. young women spend tremendous hours under miserable conditions putting those little chips in calculators and computers. Depending on the piece-rate, they make about 32 cents an hour. And those calculators and those computers are not sold in Central America, but are sold back here at top dollar.

Now it looks like this crowd is old enough to have some parents in it. And if you are a parent like I am you know about the product Huggies, which is made for North American babies' bottoms.

They're made in a free-trade zone in El Salvador by the Kimberly-Clark Corp. Now Kimberly-Clark, which is head -quartered in Wisconsin, used to be the sponsor of the Lou Grant show on television, until the star of that show started to speak out on Central America. And then lo and behold, Kimberly-Clark withdrew their sponsorship.

We tried to visit Kimberly-Clark when we were down there. They were real happy to have us until they found out we were labor people and then they literally slammed the door in our face.

But before they did, they stuck out through the crack in the door a little brochure which we read with great interest. And it talked about how Kimberly-Clark really liked the climate in Central America. And they weren't talking about the weather! They were talking about jailed trade unionists and bombed trade-union halls and dead trade unionists.

So in 1981 we put together the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador. We started with nine courageous international unions and presidents. In the last few years we have grown to a force of now 25 international unions that have said "No" to the Reagan administration's policy and "No" to the AFL-CIO when it goes along with that policy.

We've taken two delegations of union presidents down there--one in '83 and one in '85. On the trip in '83, we tried to get into Mariona prison, which is the home for whatever political prisoners are left alive in El Salvador.

We have the only video-taped record of what life is like for political and tradeunion prisoners inside Mariona prison. It has been shown on television in England

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We are proud to be part of this mobilization as the world focuses on the issue of nuclear disarmament and watches an act in Geneva. We will be working daily and have been working daily to bring to the attention of the American public what true peace It means not only an end to the nuclear arms race, not only the elimination of nuclear arms, but it also means justice in South Africa. It means an end to intervention in Central America. It means jobs for Americans at home. It means an end to racism at home. It means peace, jobs, and justice. And that's what we're all here to work for. Jane Gruenebaum: cialist Actlon/Don Mahone