Yonkers racists forced to desegregate housing

Scan page 7

SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1988 7 By YONKERS, N.Y.—This city, the fourth largest in New York state, has become, in the words of Federal Judge Leonard Sand, "a national symbol of defiance of federal civilrights orders."

Yonkers has spent millions of dollars on every possible legal maneuver to preserve segregation in its housing and schools. On Sept. 10, however, the city council finally approved a court-ordered plan to desegregate the city's housing.

The vote came one month after Judge Sand levied large fines against the city and four city-council members who had attempted to block the plan. By September, the fines had mounted up, and the city was taking steps to implement a series of service cutbacks and layoffs of municipal workers.

Legal moves to desegregate Yonkers began 13 years ago when Winston Ross, after a lifetime of racial oppression in Yonkers, filed a segregation complaint with the school board. Getting nowhere, he went to the state and then to the federal government.

After another five years, the Justice Department finally filed a suit, later joined by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), against Yonkers.

In 1985, Judge Sand found Yonkers guilty of four decades of intentional segregation in housing and schools. For the first time-and 31 years after the Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools—a government suit linked housing and school segregation.

Gerrymandering, discrimination The Yonkers case was both more clearcut and the officials more intransigent than Sad state (continued from page 1) created between 1973 and 1985 were low-paying jobs. By 1987 average weekly earnings had dropped to the wage level that prevailed in the 1960s.

• Children are the fastest growing population beneath the poverty line, especially among Blacks, Latinos, and single-parent female households. Incredibly, nearly 50 percent of Black children live in poverty.

• Twenty percent of American families have zero worth in terms of financial assets.

• The report also documents who has profited from this misery: The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans now own 86 percent of all financial assets and 57 percent of the nation's net worth.

A program to solve the crisis Many working people realize that Dukakis and Bush have no solutions for this social crisis. On the contrary, both these candidates and the political parties they represent are responsible for the growing gap in the distribution of America's wealth.

The only way to solve this crisis is to Black residents of Yonkers confront racists who oppose desegregation of housing.

in other cities. The city council never expected the laws to be enforced. The city was forced to admit that it had gerrymandered the voting districts so Blacks couldn't dominate a district, and that it had discriminated in hiring city workers.

This January, a majority of the city council agreed to a consent decree to build 200 units of low-income public housing and 800 units of middle-income housing. The pro-segregationist forces, which had been organizing for years, mobilized; council meetings were drowned out by shouting and anti-segregationists and interests of working people. This should include:

• Break from the Democratic and Republican parties, the parties of the ruling rich. Form a labor party based on the unions to fight for all workers, the unemployed, and the oppressed.

• Fight for a 30-hour week with 40hours' pay to make more jobs available.

• Institute a massive public-works program to provide full employment at union scale.

• Guarantee full cost-of-living escalator clauses for all workers to offset the erosion of income through inflation.

• Defend and extend affirmative-action programs to overcome the systematic discrimination against Blacks, Latinos, other oppressed minorities, and women.

Socialist Action stands on this program.

The best way to express your support for this program in these elections is to cast a vote for the candidates of the Socialist Workers Party: James Warren for President and Kathy Mickells for Vice President. We urge you to vote for them. Behind the IF THE ELECTION WAS HELD TODAY, WOULD YOU VOTE FOR DUKAKIS OR BUSH?

.. BUSH OR DUKAKIS? council members received death threats.

By June 1, the council had halted all action on housing. On Aug. 1, the council defied the court by rejecting part of the housing plan.

The segregationists charged that Yonkers already had a higher share of publicly assisted housing than any other community in suburban Westchester. They also pointed out that the more affluent neighboring communities of Bronxville, Scarsdale, and Hastings had no public housing or discrimination suits filed against them.

The demagogy mounted as segregationist leaders appealed to white working people to mobilize against Blacks and liberals. Councilman Longo stated, "It is a typical case of the hypocrisy of the rich and elitist looking down on those who must work for everything they have." Councilman Fagan joined in, "The revolution has started and working people have to rise up!"

Government winks at racism There is a resurgence of overt racism in the white petty-bourgeoisie and working class as a means to vent their rage over their economic insecurity. This has provided the bosses with a ready battering ram to attack the democratic rights of the oppressed while undermining the working-class movement.

This is complemented by the government's approving winks to antisegregation forces. Blacks remain angry WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

WHO? working people's lives reveals a picture which is far from the rosy one painted by Mr. Bush. The $23,618 median family income of 1985 is a significant drop from the all-time high of $25,447 recorded in 1973.

Using another measure, average weekly earnings per worker (this time measured in constant 1977 dollars), workers made $187 per week in 1970 and only $170 in 1985. Another and perhaps more relevant figure is that the 1985 family income of $23,618 was achieved with 54.6 percent of wives working, while the 1973 median of $25,447 was the result of only 44.6 percent of wives working.

The government does not keep figures for "family workweek." However, using figures on marital status, occupation, and the approximately 70 percent of men's earnings which women suffer under, we can approximate a family workweek of 72 hours in 1985 and 67.5 in 1973.

In short, even with more family members working, and hence a longer family workweek, the standard of living has fallen absolutely in comparison with 1975. that most leading Democrats, including Governor Mario Cuomo, sought to avoid the issue.

Judge Sand called on Governor Cuomo to remove the recalcitrant city-council members from office. Instead, Cuomo indicated that he was sympathetic with those who opposed housing desegregation. He said he believed that their opposition was undoubtedly for economic, not racial, reasons. Thus he acted to legitimize the arguments that serve as a cover for the practice of racial oppression.

All of this occurs in the context of a deepening housing crisis in the New York metropolitan area. Even in this last period of the "Reagan recovery," poverty is increasing for the more oppressed layers of working people, providing a breeding ground for crime and drugs.

The struggle in Yonkers is not finished yet. Some city-council members are still opting for changes in the housing plan. What is necessary to win the fight is a broad movement for more and better housing and schools and decent jobs for all at union wages.

A united-front-type coalition is needed— which would include the NAACP, the unions, and all those who support democratic rights-to mobilize in the streets against the segregationists and to help direct the cries of Yonkers' Black people for empowerment into forms of independent political action.

...DUKAKIS WHO OR BUSH?

A farmer in the Midwest recently bought a television set. He complainer to the salesman: "I have a big probien with this TV set. No matter what cha nel I turn on, I get only Dukakis or Bush."

"No problem," said the salesman.

"We'll send out a technician."

After an hour, the technician came back to the farmer's house and reported:

"I have found the problem. The aeria was attached to the windmill, and the television was grounded to a manure spreader."

Another question to ask is: Who is getting the benefit from the 70 months of economic growth? Using Department of Commerce figures for March 1986, the bottom 60 percent of families (that's you and me) earned 32.4 percent of the national personal income while the top 20 percent alone earned 43.5 percent.

For a number of reasons, including a lack of leadership, workers have been picked off factory by factory, shop by shop, and office by office to accept a lower standard of living.

----- pull-quotes -----

CARES NEWS 254, AND DUKAKIS ARE EVEN RACE TOO CLOSE TO CALL Country wisdom