,. - w The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, Dec Protest moves inside as A 2courts controversy t O N OCTOBER 3, 1974, Ann Ar- bor entered the "70s." That was the day Briarwood, the huge shopping mall in the fields around I-94, officially opened. But the opening was almost an anti- climax compared to the fights over whether it should ever have been built at/all. It would lead to urban sprawl by pulling the city to its outskirts, ex- claimed environmentalists and no- growth advocates. And downtown mer- chants worried that the slick, climate- controlled center would draw away their customers. Briarwood stands as a tangible monument to the conflicts and arguments that characterized the decade in city government. In a town where nearly everyone gets involved in something, citizens and politicians fought over everything from the dope law to how the mayor should be elected. THE 60S have come to be known as the decade of protest in the streets. The frequently violent upheavals of that following year, by a 6-5 vote, the Democratic-Human Rights Party (HRP) Council majority passed the now-famous $5 pot law. The law made possession and, in some cases, sale of marijuana a misdemeanor, subjecting offenders to a parking-ticket type surmons and a $5 fine - only one dollar of which would go to the city. The law was short-lived, however. The next year, following the election of a firm Republican majority on Council as well as a GOP mayor, the $5 fine was repealed. Undaunted, HRP members got the issue put on the April 1974 general election ballot. Thanks to a heavy student turnout, the dope fine became part of the city's charter by a margin of fewer than 1,000 votes. - The HRP, however, had become something of a nuisance to the city's Democratic party, since it siphoned off valuable votes in a town nearly equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats planned to overcome this handicap with a new preferential voting system. But it a court order to put Wheeler in office. A circuit court judge finally rule that PV was constitutional, but not unt almost seven months after the election In the following April's off-year elec tions, PV was unceremoniously can celled by the city's voters. And th rapid demise of the city's only viabl third party, by now renamed th Socialist Human Rights Party (SHRP) made PV a moot issue. Thus, Mayor Wheeler looked forwar to election night 1977 in hopes o knowing once and for all if the voters o Ann Arbor wanted him to be mayor But the events of the evening were har dly typical election night fare, and i was to be another election where th "real" winner would never be deter mined. The turnout was low - only slightly more than 21,000 - and the tallies wer completed fairly early. They showe SHRP candidate Diane Slaughter wit 356 votes, Wheeler with 10,560, an Republican challenger and Mayor Pro tem Louis Belcher with 10,559. Kicking off his presidency as an "outsider," Jimmy Carter elected to walk the entire parade route folowing his inauguration at the Capitol on Jan. 20, 1977. in the aftermath of the nation's worst nuclear catastrophe, Joanne Noel and her daughter Danielle, age four, tend their garden as the reactors at Three Mile island stand ominously in the background. The Noels were one of several families evacuated from their Middletown, Pennsylvania home during the Three Mile Island accident. BLA CKS, WOMENMA KING PERSONAL STRIDES. Nation loses vigor for reform Township 20 d!' to rev eal flw oral (k ShoPP7 iJ eeje toA "alienated young people"-grown slightly cynical. No one is quite certain of the origin of the "crisis in confidence" syndrome. Many social scientists and political pundits conclude the mishandling of the Vietnam War ignited a pessimistic and cynical attitude among Americans. Vietnam was this country's first losing effort on the battlefield. Instead of hurrying home to welcoming parades,. returning soldiers searched for solitude and salvation. The 70s was also dominated by America 's growing disillusionment with the federal government. Unlike the 60s when Kennedy with his Frontier and Johnson with his Great Society assured Americans that government could solve national crises, the 70s alienated citizens firom their leaders. THE WATERGATE scandal shat- tered the previously invincible myth of the presidency. Since the birth of the nation, Americans came to revere the president, trusting him with enormous power and resources. Richard Nixon erased that idolatry, perhaps forever. As America lest faith in its gover- nment, it lost its vigor for effective reform. People cultivated change in themselves instead of outwardly. The "cynical 70s" was also called the "me decade:" Fad diets, jogging, raquet- ball, liquid protein, hair transplants, perms-all were touted in endless commercials and splashy ads that promised to make the old younger and keep the young, young. The struggle to change a nation turned into the struggle- to find a job and achieve individual suc- cess in a land whose success and power suddenly was not so readily acknowledged. Finding jobs, however, became d il n. I- I- e e e d f If r. t e r- y e d h ,d a- I: easier for at least one major segment of the population--women. But even as women were making strides in the male-dominated job market, a simple statement of women's equality has con- sistently met adversity. The Equal Rights Amendment has been stymied by opponents such as the Mormon Church and. the efficacious Phyllis Schafly, Through marches, rallies, and lobbying; feminists convinced Congress . to approve a time extension for ratific- 9 tion. The ERA, however, still needs the approval of three state legislatures to meet the 1982 deadline. FOR BLACKS TOO, the concrete moves toward equality, have progressed slowly in this decade. In the 60s something called "black power" was born-it was personified in a group known as the Black Panthers. In February 1970 a California lawman declared, "the Panthers are dead." But in response to the growing prediction that the Panthers were involved in a war they couldn't win, former Panther Virtual Murrel said: "The next generation may not be Black Panther in. name. But they will be Black Panther in mind." In the course of the decade the Black Panther philosophy has, for the most part, withered away. Like the rest of the nation, blacks have found it more practical to concentrate on individual success instead of broad social change. -Michael Arkush Amy Saltzman ",ave I_ I/ v BarwrO ovoter case y And that _b.' stitutional contempt, detained. The Sta ruled that would hav the case s Supreme C 1978, the M firmed the and the 20 N KELLE' finally dec election to year counc elected, Republica, decade. The Rep their form( behind c ratifying t tively shuts out of the thanks to Democrats to fight bc Open Meet suit, char caucuses The state c of this year going to r bers, they public, s majority c form polico Ann Arb cases surf when U.S. Joiner four to be an in lea rning plaintiffs, Greene 1H because th being trea Joiner saic pair learn language, sidered b stressed th singled out not be mis, emotional The Schc peal the ca ther-reachi ts. A boa teachers a cepted by J But eve, decade dra are still pe former Cit in the wa fiasco, and city's inves is little dot will not me p 1 s America's global role: loss of powerinfluence United States has stood by like a pitiful, helpless giant watching long-time allies in Nicaragua and Iran eroded by inter- nal discontent, allowing Soviet and. Cuban adventurism to go unchecked in Angola and Ethiopia, and seeing the once almighty dollar being routed on foreign exchange circuits. The United States has, in a sense, come full circle,'°since 1970 and the height of American interventionism, to 1980, and a new trend of isolationism and retreat to our own shores. From a time when the U.S. resorted to full mili- tary engagement in Southeast Asia and political subversion in Chile to protect American interests, we have come around to accept, as President Jimmy Carter said, that this country "can no longer control events on foreign shores." THE SHIFT IINthe cold war balance of power was first signalled in the jungles of Vietnam. The "most power- ful nation on earth" could not win a guerrilla war in an undeveloped coun- try, and suddenly some basic precepts about America's world role were thrust into doubt. What is power, if it could no longer be defined in terms of a nuclear weapons stockpile? And how could the United States ever make good on its global commitments if we had proven either unable or unwilling in Vietnam to risk a nuclear war with Russia by bringing our own nuclear deterrent out of mothballs? Almost at once, America's western allies began questioning our resolve while taking steps to assure their own defense. West Germany began reap- proachments to the East under the. Social Democrats'.Gstopolitik; Japan began her own rapproachments with l.tebrace tem. and decade seemed, for many, the only means of promoting quick change. There was no less protest during the 70s - at least not in Ann Arbor - but most of it took place within the more traditional forums of City Council chambers, or, increasingly, local, state, and even federal courts.' The first major court case of the 70a was initially filed in 1968 by eight University students against then City Clerk John Bently. The students were angry because the city had special residency requirements for students who wanted to vote, making it more dif- ficult for them to register than non- students. In the summer of 1971, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the special voting requirements violated both the state and U.S. con- stitutions. The law was struck down, clearing the way for University studen- ts to have a real impact on city politics. THAT IMPACT was quickly felt. The proved to be the subject of the city's next major cout case inf197 5.AMAZINGLY, the one-vote win held PV, as it was called, allowed a voter up through two recounts, and Wheeler to indicate a second choice onhis or her was once again sworn into office. But ballot in a race with more than two Belcher filed suit, alleging candidates. If no candidate emerged irregularities including several con- with a majority, and if the voter's first tested absentee ballots and one possibly choice was the obvious loser, his or her malfunctioning voting machine. vote would be thrown out and his or her Business as usual continued with the second choice would receive credit for suit pending until July, when a student the vote. intern accidentally discovered that WHEN ON election night it became some 150 people who actually lived out- clear that Carol Ernst, the HRP can- side the city's limits were accidentally didate, had lost miserably, her second registered to vote because some choice votes were divided between registrars used faulty street guides. Democratic challenger Albert Wheeler More than 20 of them cast ballots in the and Republican incumbent James "one-vote election." Stephenson. Not surprisingly, Wheeler By the following fall, Belcher's received some 85 per cent of the lawyer had located 20 of the voters and redistributed votes, which gave him the brought them to court in an effort to majority necessary for election. The discover how they voted. Visiting Cir- Washtenaw County Board of Can- cuit Court Judge James Kelley ap- vassers,. however, refused to issue a proved of the line of questioning. When certificate of election. It took several University junior Susan VanHattum law suits and counter-suits, and final . ud to reveal her vote on con- a % ra tto puritY .9g a-p Supreme Coui N MAY, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced to a television audience that U.S. troops had just invaded the neutral country of Cambodia, to prove to the world that the United. States was not "a pitiful helpless giant." In 1979, almost a decade later, the . _ , :..