Page 4-ThursdayNovember 8, 1979-The Michigan Daily
DENNIS KUCINICH
be Mitt4Cbgan B a401
Ninety Years of Editorial Freedom
Vol. LXXXX, No. 55 News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
How populist mayor
took on corporate world-
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The Klan's
m HEREHAS BEEN a frightening
.resurgence in recent months of
the one dreaded organization that has
most come to symbolize a hatred,.
blatant, unmasked racism, and the
basest instincts of American society.
The Ku Klux Klan has been staging
with alarming regularity more open
public displays of their own articular
brand of racism, with public marches,
rallies, and an accompanyung upsurge
in violence against those who choose to
oppose what the Klan represents.
It would be nice if the Klan perfor-
imed the vanishing act that President
Carter once wished upon the
P.L.O.-that they just go away. But
unfortunately, the Klan is here to stay,
and the organization of fear is showing
that it will no longer be content with a
low-profile.
But once again, as was the case with
Nazis in Skokie, the Klan resurgence
confronts civil libertarians with a pain-
ful dilemma of freedom of expression
weighed against a tolerance pf those
disdainful . elements in society all
reasonable people would like to
eliminate. The Klan has a con-
stitutional right to hold their marches,
their rallies of hatred, as much as the
Nazis had a right to march in Skokie.
But as Mayor Coleman Young
suggested when confronted with the
threat of a KKK march in Detroit, the
most recent Klan activity-like in
Greensboro, North Carolina-has been
accomplished by the kind of violence
that makes Klan marches as much a
real physical threat as they are
morally obnoxious.
Unfortunately, the constitution
protects Nazis and Klansmen in-
discriminately. Tolerance of their vile
viewpoints must be legally tolerated
fbr no other reason than that the alter-
Other voices
comeback
native is a kind of censorship even
more potentially harmful than the
hatred these groups espouse. Detroit
may have been saved from making the
choice, since apparently the planned
march is someone else's idea of a prac-
tical joke. But the larger question is
one that will not so easily be resolved,
and will hopefully be settled on
rational, constitutional--not
emotional and moral-grounds.
Perhaps~ the saddest aspect of the
KKK's comeback-if indeed it ever
was gone-is that it is being met not
with the kind of vehement opposition
afforded such an organization, but with
a general apathy, unconcern, and
negation 'of the very real threat.
Yesterday's anti-Klan rally on the
diag, for instance, drew only a few
scattered supporters, when everyone
on campus who believes in common
decency should feel incensed by the
resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.
Make nomistake-the Klan is
dangerous. They not only advocate
racism, but would manifest their ugly
creed in murder, death and destruc-
tion. The Klan is perhaps more
dangerous now than they were in their
heyday, the 1950s and '60s, because
now they are less feared, more
tolerated, and for some stange reason
perceived as less of a threat.
Met by a tolerant, apathetic public,
the Klan can stage its comeback
unabated, and the time will not be
long before this country returns to the
reign of terror that the Klan used to
symbolize to American blacks in the
south. But if confronted head on by an
indignant and unreceptive public, the
Klan's comeback can be checked now,
before it gets out of hand, and with'out
the need for laws and regulations that
threaten constitutional freedoms.
.0 ..
Clockwise, left to right, pictures of Kucinich.
This editorial appeared November 2 in the Daily Northwestern, Evansville, Ill.
'NU students should o ji
tenants' march Monday
T HERE ARE A few issues that hit
closer to home than housing
problems.
And for Northwestern students, the
housing question has always been a
major concern. Housing is not guaran-
teed for upperclassmen; a campus
housing crunch has always been a
problem. \ ,
But the problem has always been
made worse by the fact that in Evan-
ston, the housing situation has neven
been much better.
And it's only getting worse.
Making matters worse has been the
trend toward making condominium
conversions. In a housing market
where the apartment vacancy rate is
less than one per cent, the number of
apartments "going condo" is a serious
concern.
Before the adoption of a 1978 tem-
porary moratorium, almost 1,800 apar-
tments had been converted to con-
dominiums in the past five years. And
since this moratorium was lifted
earlier this year, more than 300 more
apartments have been converted.
The numbers are alarming. Also
alarming is the council's overall lack
of concern for the city's tenants.
*The council's concern for its tenants
can be best described as slim to none.
But the council has been able' to
maintain this lack of concern because,
among other reasons, there hasn't
been a great deal of tenant opposition
to the council's treatment.
ThAM T 7rnf ~4c OArC~~i i~ 7 *ueui 'of F ..
future of the city's housing market
should join the march Monday night.
TPE has three major goals :
" an immediate moratorium to halt
condominium conversions in Evan-
tston;
* an immediate freeze on rents;
" a requirement that landlords must
show cause if they refuse to renew a
tenant's lease.
It is unclear what exactly the alder-
men will do when a group of tenants
come to the council meeting, deman-
ding some action. In the past, the
council hasn't been especially sym-
pathetic with tenant's concerns.
The aldermen will surely not act
unless they see that there's a great
demand for some change.
Everyone interested-and that
should be almost all NU students;
a n d Evanston tenants-should join
TOE members and march on city
council. It can only help.
EDITORIAL STAFF
Sue Warner.........................EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Richard Berke. Julie Rovern.........MANAGING EDITORS
Michael Arkush, Keith Richburg.....EDITORIAL DIRECTORS
Brian Blanchard..................UNIVERSITY EIlTOR
Judy Rakowsky. ..................... .......CITY EDITOR
Shelley Wolson..................PERSONNEL DIRECTOR
Amy Saltzman.....................FEATURES EDITOR
Leonard Bernstein.................... SPECIAL PROJECTS
R.J. SmithEric Zorn..........................ART.SEDITORS
Owen Gleiberman. Elizabeth Slowik..... MAGAZINE EDITORS
STAFF WRITERS-sara Anspach, Julie Brown, Richard Blan-
chard. Mitch Cantor, Sefany Cooperman, Amy Diamond. Mari-
anne Egri, Julie Engebrecht Mary Faranski. Joyce Frieden,
Greg Gallopulos; John Goyer. Patricia Hlagen, Marion Flalberg,
Public Square is Cleveland's
open space downtown where
obligatory monuments pay
tribute to Civil War Dead, and the
city's founder Moses Cleaveland;
and old men in thin grey suits
feed pigeons.
But just a jaunt across any of
the four streets bordering the
square are the grand department
stores, the banks, and the cor-
porate offices that established
Cleveland as a major commer-
cial and industrial center.
IN THE EARLY years of this
century Cleveland had it all. It
had the jobs offered by com-
panies like John Rockefeller's,
and it had the wealth which led to
the establishment of the
prestigious cultural attractions
such as the Cleveland Museum of
Art, the Cleveland Orchestra and
several fine colleges and univer-
sities. At the same time,
however, the city thrived on a
populist spirit of municipal
democracy best captured in the
person of progressive-era
mayor Tom Johnson.
But like all the big, old
declining cities of the northeast
and midwest, Cleveland has
fallen on dark days, if not the
darkest of all the cities in its
fiscally decrepit league. With
massive service cutbacks, two
defaults, and a river thattactually
caught on fire, the troubles
plaguing Cleveland are so bad
outsiders can only laugh. And
Cleveland, the mistake-on-the-
lake, has become just that,
a-national joke.
When things were good in
Cleveland, when there was
money to build things like the or-
nate downtown auditorium,
Public Hall, the people who lived
on the city's sprawling residen-
tial neighborhoods worked 12-
hour days in steel mills and
refineries that still ring the city in
an ugly polluted wasteland.
They went to work, church, and
in the summer met for Italian,
riots ripped through Cleveland's
east side in the late 60s and the
city's tax base fled to suburbs
like Beachwood, Lyndhurst and
Pepper Pike; that happy
coexistence between business en-
trepreneurship and municipal
democracy has disintegrated in-
to the angry side-choosing of the
City's recent mayoral election.
Dennis Kucinich-for whom
politicians and journalists have
devised a tiresome stable of key
adjectives such as feisty,
-beleaguered, and maverick-is
perhaps most responsible for the
polarization of the city's fac-
tionalized community.
The city's worst, and most
crippling split is along racial
lines which Kucinich has tacitly
approved at least up until the last
gasps of the campaign when he
pulled in former Cleveland
mayor Carl Stokes in from his
New York television job for a
string of last-minute commercial
endorsements. But in his two
years as mayor Kucinich did lit-
tle to conquer the racist attitudes
that thrive on the city's west side
where he grew up. The city
literally is split in two by the fiery
Cuyahoga River : Whites to the
west and blacks to the east and
each side is equally uncom-
promising.
Other Kucinich decisions
resulting in increased fac-
tionalism include his continued
opposition to community
organizing-which many urban
theorists view as the last hope for
city neighborhoods-calling
organizers "outside agitators."
Kucinich's political appointmen-
ts of young relatively inexperien-
ced officials loyal only to him
have also brought fire from all
sides.
NO ONE CAN blame Kucinich
for the defaults which even the
Senate Banking Committee pin-
ne onfnrmnr mav~nrs uwho ilged
By Sue Warner
so many issues.
Despite his inability to solve
Cleveland's problems, and a
major problem that is, Kucinich
has raised legitimate questions
about corporate control in urban
policy making. While the mayors
of Detroit and New York win
praise for their ability to revive
corporate interest in urban
problems, Kucinich questioned
how much control they ought to
have.
In both those cities mayors
have successfully been able to
wheedle revitalization projects
out of the corporate community
which are said to benefit both the
company and the community.
The problem is that no one asked
the people or the government
structure which is supposedly in
charge of administering such
policy and planning decisions.
IN NEW YORK AND in
Detroit's New Center area, the
complaints are common now that
the development which will no
doubt return revenue to the city
coffers will at the same time,
leave poor inner city dwellers
homelew if the advantages of the
corporate development outweigh
the displacement of a few in-
dividuals then it oughtto be done.
But those decisions must be made
through the channels already
devised, with the benefit of
citizen input, not by benevolent
mayors and corporate boards.
For whatever reason, a
genuine belief in his authority as
the people's elected represen-
tative, or some personal ego trip,
Kucinich stood behind his
position as an elected official and
refused to allow the city's
developmental decisions to be
made in corporate rooms.
But genuine compromise on
issues such as these are needed if
the nation's dismal urban areas
are ever to be revivied.
Kucinich was unable to make
the corporate community invest
in the city through ways that may
well have been best for the people
living there. But at the same
time, he did not permit the cor-
porate community and gover.
nment to swing deals which may
have led to increased corporate
benefits and been perhaps har
mful to the city.
Now that his tenure is ended
Kucinich, at the age of 33, as
probably far from finished in.
politics. The prevailing rumor _i
that he aspires to become gover-
nor of Ohio, which would
probably result in the- same
disasterous personal style whic.
left Cleveland in a stalemate
during Kucinich's term a.
mayor. He is not the type of
politician who ought to bie
placed in sole charge of a par
ticular constituency such as a,
city or a state.
Kucinich recently has been
seen lunching with Tom Hayden.
in Washington and it seems' there
is a place for him in a nation~l
role either through interest-
groups or perhaps another stint
in Congress, both of which might
be the best place for Kucinich
who has the right ideas, and the
ability to voice them, but lacks
the political savvy to get them
accomplished.
Sue Warner, Daily editor-
in-chief, lived in Cleveland last
summer.
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