Thousands picket for Tribune strikers

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1986 to parade rotting fetuses, Blackwell wants the city health department to oversee cremation or burial of fetal tissue. On Jan. 8, he pushed an ordinance through the allmale city council requiring hospitals and clinics to have city permits and to report abortions in writing to the city.

Dr. Stanley E. Broadnax, city health commissioner, reported last September that the ordinance would be an expensive "duplication of state law." He noted, "It would add nothing to the quality of care provided...Disposal of tissue is done appropriately now. Therefore, we recommend no ordinance for Cincinnati."

Civil libertarians and feminists warned the City Council that the proposal was unconstitutional. Akron passed a similar rule in 1978, but its restrictions on abortion rights were struck down by the March 16: Los Angeles Assemble: Century 10 a.m.

CHICAGO-The newspapers and TV often describe demonstrations as being "reminiscent of 1960s' antiwar protests." However, it is very rare for the media to call a demonstration "reminiscent of the 1930s' labor wars." This is just the way that last month's mass solidarity picket of the Chicago Tribune was described.

On Jan. 4, some 8000 to 10,000 trade unionists responded to the call of striking unions at the Chicago Tribune for a massive show of solidarity. The Chicago March 9: Washinaton, D.C. Washington, Assemble: Mall at 10 a.m. March to Lincoln Memorial Rally: Lincoln Memorial SAFE AND LEGAL etss _ÎЮ· ÜôПёdtöoцёT0üéN0u 0 päj.0,öt Typographical Union No. 16, Chicago Web Printing Pressmen's Union No. 7, and Chicago Mailers' Union No. 2 have been on strike since July 18.

While circulation is down slightly due to a union boycott campaign, scabs are printing the paper pretty much as normal. Teamster delivery drivers have been regularly crossing the picket line. The Tribune management had carefully prepared a union-busting campaign beforehand and has been playing hardball at the bargaining table.

In this situation, the Unity Council of striking unions called for a major support demonstration. When the Tribune got wind of this, their attorneys rushed to get a court order to forbid mass picketing at the demonstration. This maneuver catapulted the picket line to the center of media coverage on the day before it was scheduled.

At dawn, the bulk of the demonstrators assembled at the main plant gates on Grand Avenue. Tribune delivery trucks were still driving through the line, protected by police on horseback. As a returning delivery truck tried to enter the plant, the line held firm.

Police tried to open a path through the picket. After confrontation, the cops decided that it was just physically impossible for the truck to get through the line. The truck then turned back. For the first time since the strike had begun, the gates of the plant were closed.

Unfortunately, the militancy of the strikers was not supported by the union leadership. From a powerful sound truck parked across the street, the officials consistently called on the strikers to respect the terms of a "consent decree" between the union and the Tribune, which specified that the union must not block the gates.

By 8 a.m. thousands of trade unionists were assembling for a rally across from the gates, which was addressed by prominent Chicago-area union leaders. A contingent of several thousand members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) won special applause from the crowd. The IBEW members all wore buttons saying, "I will never let organized labor down."

The police began to pick fights as the crowd began to disperse after the rally. By the end of the day, 48 trade unionists were arrested—including five members of the firefighters' union.

One magnificent demonstration will not win the strike. The militancy and solidarity of the pickets will have to be repeated and extended if the situation is going to be turned around. But the Tribune mass picket shows that mass working-class action is not a dream or wishful thinking. It is a real possibility in the United States in the 1980s.

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By CARRIE CHICAGO-This city's first baby of 1986 was born just five seconds after midnight on New Year's Eve. Not surprisingly, the proud mother was a teenager.

Teen pregnancy has become a major phenomenon in Chicago. Public Health Department statistics show that the teen pregnancy rate here is 45 percent higher than the national average.

The numbers are staggering. According to recently released figures, some 25,000 teenage girls in Chicago become pregnant each year. Of these pregnancies, it is estimated that as many as 75 percent are unplanned and unwanted.

But the problem of unwanted teen pregnancies is by no means limited to the Chicago area. Each year more than a million teenagers across the United States become pregnant. Some 30,000 of them are under age 15.

The sheer number of pregnant teenagers has forced social agencies and educators to abandon the time-honored practice of simply labeling these teens as "wayward girls" and then forgetting about them. Suddenly, a plethora of studies and surveys have been released on the subject.

One of the most widely-publicized reports was released by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research center in New York City, which conducted a study of teen pregnancy in 37 countries. According to key findings in this report:

* The teen pregnancy rate in the United States is the highest in the developed world;

* The teen pregnancy rate in the United States is twice as great as Canada's rate and ...Cutbacks (continued from page actually rose by 3 percent nationwide between 1982 and 1983.

The key to reversing these trends is increased health and nutrition programs for infants and pregnant women. But com -munity health centers are targeted for cuts in 1986. The National Health Service Corps, which provides physicians for the centers, would also be cut.

According to Sara Rosenbaum of the Children's Defense Fund, the cuts in these two items will mean a quarter-million fewer patient visits this year. Two-thirds of the affected patients will be women and children and 80 percent will be poor.

The president's budget for fiscal 1987, which will be voted on by Congress this month, is expected to include an additional $1 billion in cuts in programs for the poor and $10 billion in cuts in pensions and medical programs.

Attacks on affirmative action Reagan also used the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebrations as a platform to urge a rollback of minority-oriented hiring goals for federal contractors. Reagan said in a radio address on Jan. 18 that King's "I have a dream" speech could be interpreted as a stand against affirmative action quotas.

This is nonsense. Urban League President John Jacob responded, "If the administration wants to be a Rambo-like destroyer of civil rights gains, it should not pretend that its efforts are good for Black citizens."

The executive order establishing guide -lines for hiring women and oppressed nationalities was issued 20 years ago in response to the mass civil-rights protests of the time.

But Blacks continue to be excluded from better-paying jobs. In a 1978 survey of union locals in the building trades, for example, Blacks accounted for only 2.8 percent of plumbers and pipefitters, 2.3 According to federal guidelines, this will seven times as great as the Nethel rate;

* American teenagers are no more sexually active than teens in other countries;

* While Black teens in the United States have a higher pregnancy rate than whites, whites alone have nearly double the rate of British and French teens.

Some commentators have tried to place the blame for teen pregnancy on erotic rock videos and sexually suggestive television shows. However, studies on the subject universally point to a much more basic explanation: American teens still don't know enough about birth control and still don't have ready access to it.

A study funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, for instance, found that a percent of sheetmetal workers, and 4.2 percent of carpenters.

If anything, the overall situation for Black people is worse than it has been for many years.. Blacks suffer the highest poverty rate (almost 36 percent) since 1964. According to an Urban League report released last month, Black families have, on the average, 56 cents to spend for every dollar that whites have.

A crisis in housing Nor has de-facto segregation in housing improved since Martin Luther King Jr. led civil rights marchers through a white suburb of Chicago in 1966. This is due in large part to continuing racist practices by realtors and lending institutions. In Chicago today, for example, less than 4 percent of the Black population lives on the North Side. And they live mainly in pockets of poverty close to the Loop.

In Boston, although the Black population increased 21 percent between 1970 and 1980, almost all of the increase was confined to already-existing Black neighborhoods. In Cleveland, complaints of housing discrimination doubled last year over 1984. There were two cross-burnings by racists in December.

In Philadelphia, according to a doctoral thesis by Ira Goldstein of Temple University, only 3 percent of the city's 365 census tracts are fully integrated. The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations reports 49 cases of racial disputes over housing from 1981 to 1984. In the latest incidents, on Nov. 20 and 21, 1985, MEDIAN AGE INFANT MORTALITY RATE LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH CHILDREN BORN TO UNMARRIED WOMEN surprising number of teenagers still believe old myths such as "a girl can't get pregnant the first time she has sex." A survey of teenage mothers conducted by the National Opinion Research Center found that few were familiar with the IUD and most had never even heard of the diaphragm.

Given this situation, it is understandable that researchers have found that only about one in three sexually active American female teenagers between ages 15 and 19 uses contraceptives at all.

Until recently, efforts to make simple information about birth control more readily available have met heavy resistance. Just this past summer, for instance, all three major TV networks refused to broadcast a public service announcement by the American College of Obstetricians and several hundred racists demonstrated in front of the houses of Black families who had moved into white neighborhoods.

A rational society would respond with emergency funding for new and rehabilitated housing, a nationwide program of low-cost rent control and no-interest mortgage loans, and strict enforcement of federal antisegregation laws.

Instead, public housing grants were reduced 40 percent in 1982-83, and some $200 million more will be cut from urban development grants this year. Housing assistance to low-income people is slated to be cut, and grants for the construction of rental housing in poor neighborhoods will be eliminated.

Where did the money go?

From 1982 to 1985, about $110 billion has been slashed from federally funded social programs. During the same years, federal interest payments to the banks increased by $124 billion. In addition, military spending rose from $159 billion in 1981 to $292 billion last year.

Democrats in Congress have been as complicit as the Republicans in handing funds for social needs over to the bankers and the military. Recently, Democratic Party congressmen stated their agreement with the idea of a bipartisan "grand coalition" to advance new proposals for budget cuts. But the Democrats also demanded that the new "coalition" discuss a BLACKAMERICALN NUMBERS LIFE AND DEATH La death per 0 me mate 19.2 deaths per 1000 live births 73.7 years › years _178.8 ye 11.8 years SOCIALIST ACTIOI

BLACK YOUTH

WHITE YOUTH OTHER STATISTICS MEDIAN FAMILY INCOME PERSONS BELOW POVERTY LEVEL VOTED IN 1984 PRESIDENTAL ELECTION Gynecologists solely on the ground that the announcement included the word "contraception."

This type of narrow-minded attitude toward sex education, however, no longer reflects the thinking of most people in this country. According to a recent Planned Parenthood study, 64 percent of the parents surveyed believe they have little or no control over their children's sexual activity and believe outside education is necessary. As high as 80 percent of the adults indicated that they favor television messages about birth control.

In places where teenage pregnancy has reached almost epidemic proportions, some school administrators have been willing to reach even further for a realistic solution to the problem. At Chicago's DuSable High School-where nearly a third of all of the female students have become pregnant in recent years—a medical clinic was set up that dispenses free birth-control devices to students.

Other clinics modeled on similar lines now exist in a small number of public high schools throughout the country. The results have been dramatic. In St. Paul, Minn., where the first clinical program was established in 1973, the number of births to teen students between 1977 and 1984 fell nearly 50 percent.

Despite the success of these clinics, it seems highly unlikely that they will become a widespread phenomenon. Gov -ernment officials, who have done next to nothing to help address the problem, have lost little time in complaining about the cost of the few programs that do exist.

In Illinois, state officials estimate that teen pregnancies cost approximately $853 million last year for the medical, welfare, and the handful of other social programs that already exist.

If a lasting solution is to be found to the social crisis caused by teen pregnancies, however, birth control simply is going to have to become more available. Wishful thinking on the part of parents and government administrators just isn't going to make this problem disappear.

tax increase-a further people and the poor.

Despite Martin Luther King Jr.'s illusions in the Democratic Party, he put primary emphasis on action in the streets to win Black rights. "We must go forward to mass action," he said.

On Jan. 20, thousands of people around the country marked King's birthday with marches and rallies. Close to 500,000 turned out in Atlanta and 60,000 in San Francisco. Support is building for the Feb. 15 march against racism in Philadelphia and the April 19 demonstration for Peace, Jobs, and Justice in San Francisco. These demonstrations prove that, despite heightened attacks by the government, King's method of mass action is very much alive.

LIVING ARRANGEMENTS OF CHILDREN UNDER 18 YEARS • 50.2% WITH MOTHER - 2.9%6 WITH FATHER 5.0% WITH OTHER RELATI - 0.9% WITH NONRELATIVES 41.0% WITH TWO PARENTS 15.1% WITH MOTHER - 2.1% WITH FATHER 1.3% WITH OTHER RELATA 0.5% WITH NONRELATIVES • 81.0% WITH TWO PARENTS 79.7% 187.8% GRADUATES• COLLEGE 13.7% | 24.8% •25-34 years aid-1985 UNEMPLOYMENT 14.9% RATE• 15.9% December 1985 FEBRUARY 1986 5

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LOS ANGELES-The longest food -workers' strike in Southern California history ended in defeat Dec. 29, as the multibillion dollar supermarket industry succeeded in extracting major concessions from 22,000 meatcutters and Teamsters.

Three days earlier the meatcutters, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), rejected the employers' "last and final offer" by a 55percent margin.

But UFCW International President William Wynn rode roughshod over the VONS Build Labor Solidaritı TOP UNION BUSTIN BOR ALLINCE AGAINST CONCESS to receive and deliver food virtually 1250 struck supermarkerts.

Another mortal blow to the strike was the fact that the supermarket clerks, organized into separate locals of the UFCW, continued to work. The UFCW, the result of the recent merger of the Retail Clerks International Union and the Amalgamated Meatcutters, was formed to prevent this kind of conflict. Under the leadership of William Wynn, however, the power of the union was turned against the membership rather than the boss.

The foodworkers' strike highlights con -tradictory aspects of labor struggles today.

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