What a way to make a living

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On May 14, Wanda Feathers, a 28-year-old package sorter with a three-year-old daughter, wore a black arm-band to work. She was protesting what she called "part-time poverty." She is employed at United Parcel Service in Oakland, Calif., and can get only 15 hours work per week. She cannot support her family on her take-home pay.

"I've been here seven years and all I get is 15 hours a week," she said. Management cut her and other employees back from 20 hours weekly two months ago and shifted work to other terminals.

Wanda Feathers is just like most workers in this country. She wants to earn a decent, honest living. But when you read the newspapers these days you can see that honesty and hard work is not where it's at. If this young woman would only become a gun-runner for Presi -dent Reagan she could clean up.

The televised investigation of the Iran-contragate scandal reveals the real nature of the so-called "high morality" of those associa -ted with contragate and the gov -ernment. Sometimes the hearings sound like a scenario written for a Marx Brothers movie.

The scene where the wrong Swiss bank-account number was given and some lucky business -man wound up with an extra $8 million in his account could have been written for "Duck Soup." And the "patriotic" gun-running ex-general who sought to make a fortune from U.S. taxpayers by buying "our" military weapons cheap and selling them dear to Iran could have been written for Groucho, himself.

A person has to have a strong stomach to sit through the contragate hearings. Most sickening is the gentle, almost humble way the investigators question the murderous thugs sitting before them. The questioners almost break into tears when they ask the witnesses to report their war recordsespecially their bombing of Vietnam during that criminal imperialist invasion.

What the viewer is witnessing is a love affair between those doing the questioning and those who carried out the criminal activities being investigated. The "defendants" had in reality done exactly what this country has done secretly for many years.

Capitalism in action

There is hardly an oppressed underdeveloped country that has not felt the whip of U.S.

I LIED TO CONGRESS AND TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL McFARLANE ST THE PRESIDENT DID ABSOLUTEL NOTHING WRONG IN THIS DEBACLE...

imperialism across its back.

Openly or in secret, the United States has intervened in these countries to protect the interests of yankee capitalists. So it's no wonder that the "investigators" are being gentle.

Watergate investigators were harder on Nixon because here were two bunches of bums, the Democrats and Republicans, and one crew was pulling dirty tricks on the other. That was a no-no.

But contragate is capitalism in action. That's the real way the system works.

Both parties are determined to I LIED ABOUT THE TIMING OF ARMS SALES TO IRAN. I TRIED TO COVER UP DAMAGING NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL DOCUMENTS. .... BELEYE ME signs reading "Go Home NOW."

Marchers were uncertain what would await them as they reached the square. Jerry Falwell, TV preacher and heir to the debtand scandal-ridden PTL club, had come to town to organize a counter-rally right beside the NOW rally.

Although organizers of the NOWsponsored rally were forced to get various permits, insurance, and pay for police protection, no such fees were required of the anti-choice bigots. The area directly in front of the stage had been fenced off with double rows of bike racks to separate the two groups.

Falwell's crowd proved to be only 200. He told reporters that PTL needed $1 million by May 18, said his prayers, and left after a half hour. Most of his supporters left with him.

It was a great day for freedom of choice in Cincinnati. Even the Cincinnati Enquirer, which is editorially opposed to abortion, admitted in the front-page headline of its May 17 issue that "NOW Outrallies Abortion Foes."

The Enquirer also stated that "Abortion protesters who attempted a counter-demonstration to Saturday's massive pro-choice rally were, in the end, out-shouted, out-numbered, and just plain fenced out."

SAN FRANCISCO Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) chapters in San Francisco and the East Bay sponsored a spirited reception on May 15 in honor of working women's week and to give awards to outstanding women trade unionists. Because there had been so many strikes in 1986, CLUW decided to honor groups instead of individuals.

The first union presented an award was Local 2 of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union. The CLUW member presenting the award described the militant Local 2 women, a large number of them Latinas, as "representing a movement that defies tradition and stereotypes and says that all women of all races can unite.

The next group honored was the crush the Nicaraguan revolution, if at all possible. They would like to use hired thugs instead of United States troops because they know that the people of this country would not allow another Vietnam to develop without a fight. So it must be kept secret. Millions of dollars have gone into this example of "Texas chain-saw imperialism" in Nicaragua. And when Congress temporarily stopped aid to the contras, money was raised from every tin-horn dictator in the world to finance the killers in the interim.

I started out with the story of Wanda Feathers, who was fighting part-time poverty in order to raise her daughter. Her child, like all our children, should have a nutritious diet, free quality child-care centers, good schools, decent housing, and good health care. Her parents should be able to make a living wage. That's what should be happening in our country.

Instead, what we are watching is the immense waste of our tax monies on a crew of murderous thugs who are out to destroy the Nicaraguan revolution—all in the name of "freedom" and "demo -cracy."

Immigrant Asian Women's Advocates, a group organized to educate Asian women workers on their rights. The women accepting the award reminded the audience of the need for unions to reach out to the unskilled and recent immigrant workers in their native tongues and to organize the unorganized.

The TWA flight attendants, who are still on strike after 14 months, were also recognized, as were the Chicana cannery workers of Teamsters Local 912 in Watsonville, Calif. These workers had struck for 19 months and endured incredible hardship to save their union. The Watsonville women have been a special inspiration to the labor movement for their courage and perseverance.

The last group to be honored were the Kaiser Hospital workers. These women emphasized that their fight against the two-tier wage system was crucial to the future of the entire labor movement.

ACTiON Closing date: May 22, 1987 Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Asst. Editor: MICHAEL SCHREIBER Staff: Paul Colvin, Suzanne Forsyth, May May Gong, David Kirschner, Hayden Perry, Joe Ryan, Carole Seligman, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

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Union women honored