Page 4-Thursday, January 26, 1978-The Michigan Daily
Eighty-Eight Years of Editorial Freedom
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Vol. LXXXVII, No. 96 News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
D on't afsorgetuwe still
don't have a secure mayor
A real man of the world
By STU McCONNELL
T HE MICHIGAN Supreme Court
ruled Monday that 20 Ann Arbor
Township residents who voted illegally
in last April's mayoral election did not
have to reveal their votes. And so the
ordeal is over for Susan VanHattum
and Diane Lazinsky, the two women
who refused to tell how they voted.
But while VanHattum and Lazinsky
and their attorneys are celebrating
well-deserved victory, the future of the
city of Ann Arbor, which has been in.
limbo while the issue of the right to a
secret ballot, was being decided, is still
up in the air.
With the national furor over the
secret vote case, it is easy to lose sight
of the original issue: who is the mayor
of Ann Arbor? Today, nearly half-way
through his term in office, Mayor
Albert Wheeler still isn't sure he will
retain his title until the next election.
The suit from which the secret ballot
case arose was filed by Wheeler's
Republican challenger, Councilman
Louis Belcher, who lost to Wheeler by a
single vote. The suit asks Circuit Court
Judge James Kelley to do one of two
things:
" Declare the election void, in which
case the city charter stipulates that
Council will determine the mayor (sin-
ce the Republicans have a 6-5 majority
on Council it is a near certainty that
Belcher would win)
* Overturn the election and declare
Belcher the winner
So now the problem is dumped back
on the courts, and it is Judge Kelley's
turn to come under a scorching spot-.
light.
Kelley's position is not an enviable
one, and he will make thousands of ene-
my's no matter which way he decides.
But as perplexing as the case may be,
there is nonetheless a clearcut course of
action that Kelley must take. Under no
circumstances can he allow the election
to stand as is. There were at least 20
votes that were known to have been
cast illegally, and this could easily have
made the difference in a one-vote elec-
tion.
:So Kelley has but two choices:
" Devise some legal and fair method
of determining how the 20 voted as a
group, without revealing each individu-
al's vote
" Void the results and call for a new
election
B OTH THESE METHODS have their
problems. First, it is almost im-
possible to determine how the group
voted without divulging some informa-
tion about how each individual voted.
But, on the other hand, voiding the
]results presents even a more difficult
dilemma. The problem stems from the
fact that according to the city charter,
if an election is voided, Council deter-
mines the winner. While most persons
involved with the case believe that
Kelley has the power to order a new
election instead, even Kelley himself
admits that the law is not clear in this
case. And in addition, there is the time
problem. Even if Kelley could insist
upon a new election, how long would the
city be kept in limbo? How long would it
be before we had an effective mayor?
For this reason, we favor an attempt
to rectify the count of the original elec-
tion by means of a method we have
already proposed: asking each of the 20
voters to recast, secretly, his or her
votes, tally them, and then subtract the
totals from the respective candidates.
(4e ilict. . lltL
Everybody at Chicago's O'Hare
International Airport knows the
best entertainment in the place
is not on the TV screens or in the
cocktail lounges. It's at the
customs terminals.
The folks at O'Hare have con-
structed a sort of viewing gallery,
a balcony sealed off by glass,
above the customs area, where
bemused bystanders can watch
the U.S. Immigration people
systematically rifle the luggage
of incoming passengers. A
woman with ten flattened
Mexican sombreros; a man with
three suitcases full of wine; one
old man gesticulating wildly
behind the glass, arguing about
duties on salamanders.
GO DOWN TO the customs
terminals at O'Hare sometime
and you may see Don Quixote. He
is a slightly built, balding, 55-
year-old man named Garry
Davis, he syles himself
"President of the World Gover-
nment," and he has passed
through the customs circus many
times armed only with a curious
blue passport issued by "The
World Service Authority, 4002,
Basel, Switzerland."
Since the end of World War II,
Davis has been a man without a
country, in and out of im-
migration jails for thirty years,
much of his time occupied
helping other stateless persons
by issuing them "world passpor-
ts." World Citizen Number One
has given up his country for an
idea-the idea of a united world.
The son of American ban-
dleader Meyer Davis, he became
a bomber pilot in World War II.
Davis gave up his U.S. citizenship
in 1948 because, he says, "I
realized that a very dramatic
gesture had to be made." Since
then he has lived primarily in
France.
"IT'S AS A national citizen that
I was put in that bomber plane
and dropped bombs on people, so
that's part of my national
citizenry," Davis says. "I
realized that I had to somehow
disarm myself, and I realized
that that involved a commitment
to a higher level of citizenship.
4, 1953.
"There's no first step to gover-
nment," Davis says. "I mean,
you set up the government. You
don't jump a chasm in two
leaps."
World peace is a consequence
of world law, says Davis, and un-
til some organization is sovereign
over all nation/states, the leaders
of those states will continue to act
as international outlaws.
"THE NATION/state leaders
now are in a totally schizophrenic
position," Davis contends,
"because they're the represen-
tatives of law and order to their
citizens. Jimmy Carter is the
Chief Executive of the laws of the
United States of America.
"At the same time, Jimmy
Carter is the Commander in Chief
of all the forces of this one
nation/state, and uses these for-
ces in the name of the people, as a
war machine vis a vis all other
nations. Why? Because there's no
EDITORIAL STAFF
ANN MARIE LIPINSKI
Editors-in-Chief
JIM TOBIN
LOIS JOSIMOVICH ...................Managing Editor
GEORGE LOBSENZ..... ............Managing Editor
STU McCONNELL... ..............Managing Editor
JENNIFER MILLER .................Managing Editor
PATRICIA MONTEMURRI ............... Magaging Editor
KEN PARSIGIAN..... ..............Managing Editor
BOB ROSENBAUM ...................Managing Editor
MARGARET YAO....................... Managing Editor
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NIGHT EDITORS: Paul Campbell, Ernie Dunbar, Henry Engel-
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about for 2,000 years," Davis
says fervently. "All our gurus
and masters have been telling us
for 2,000 years that we're all one
family.
"WHAT IS THE political
equivalent to that? It's not
American citizenship, it's not
French citizenship, it's not
Israeli or Palestinian citizenship
... it's world citizenship."
Davis is not worried about the
mechanical details of world
government since, he points out,
it is only an extension of the
American federal system of 1787.
"Every state is an example of
how to 'make government,' so
there's no problem with that," he
says. "From the administrative
point of view-no problem."
What bothers him more are the
moral questions of government,
although he hesitates to call his
movement a religious one.
"I DON'T care what you call
it," he says. "You can call it
religious if you want, it's OK with
me. I don't happen to be
religious."
Davis was originally a Broad-
way actor, an unfderstudy of
Danny Kaye, whom he appeared
with in films before the Second
World War. He enlisted as a
bomber pilot and served in the
Eighth Air Force. The ar left a
permanent mark on Davis'
thinking.
"I was dropping the boms,
Garry Davis was dropping the
bombs," he says, gesturing
towards himself with his-hands.
"It was personal. It was intimate.
"WE (THE PILOTS) were
legal murderers. We were killing
women and children, we weren't
killing soldiers." After the war,
Davis says, he and other soldiers
trusted "The diplomatic world,
the guys who get paid for it" to
create a world order. But the
United Nations left him
disillusioned.
_ "(the U.N.) was never set up to
do the job," Davis says. "It was a
sterilerexercise in diplomacy.
deliberate on the part of the four
powers." The victors of World
War II "had no intention of givipg
over sovereign power to a world
government."
Unfortunately for Davis, ,ihey
still don't. He claims to: have
issued 25,000 "world passports,"
which does not please imn-
migration officials in most
nations. The document is
recognized in Ecuador, Upper
Volta, Zambia, Mauritania,
Kuwait, and Yemen-not exactly
a normal itinerary--but not in the
U.S. and France, where Davis
has spent most of his life.
Davis is basing his current case
with the U.S. Immigration Ser-
vice on a section of article 56 of
the U.N. Universal Declaration of
Huiman Rights which says, in
part, "everyone has the right to
leave any country, including his
own, and to return ,to his coun-
try." The Declaration was
ratified by the U.S.; thus, Davis
says, the U.S. must abide by its
provisions.
ULTIMATELY, of course,
Davis bases his case on the
strangely idealistic notion of in-
ternational brotherhood, which
many national leaders supportin
principle, but none in fact.
"They buy (the Declaration) in
principle, but they cannot act
because their mandate is
national," says Davis in a rare
moment of, if you will,
worldliness. "It's not the national
mandate that's important, it's
the global mandate."
Garry Davis' philosophy really
doesn't differ much from that of
most national leaders, and he has
a sheaf of statements on "world
peace" from many of them to
prove it. It is only his method
which is rather queer: if the
world's a mess, go out and start
another one.
"You don't need a mandate to
be just, to be kind, to be
courageous," says Davis. "You
have that in you."
"You can't argue against love
or justice or courage or kindness.
That binds us all."
'We're
politics in
everything
happened
Twentieth
We've got
bringing
line with
else that's
in the
Cen tury.
the Twen-
tieth Century im-
plosion of time and
distance which lit-
erally made
every-
body a de facto
world citizen. . . and
yet the political
framework is horse
and buggy.'
Garry Davis
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Submissions to the Daily 's Editorial page
should be typed and triple spaced. They will
be returned to the author only if a request is
made to do so. Publication is based on con-
ciseness, clarity of thought and writing and
overall appeal.
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DECISION!
.. tI YQ6
"I had to prove to people that
U.S. citizenship is not the be-all
and end-all. It is not the highest
form of political allegiance."
If you've been following inter-
national politics at all in the 30
years since our hero declared his
'world citizenship," you may
have already guessed that his life
has not been a bed of roses. In
addition to his 27 jail terms,
Davis was sentenced by a French
court to two years in prison and a
$1,000 fine last Friday for selling
his unofficial "world passport."
HE IS ALSO embroiled in a
battle with the U.S. Immigration
Service, which contends that his
"world passport" does not permit
him to reside legally in this coun-
try. Presently he is free, pending
the appeal of his U.S. case.
For all the notoriety of the
World Service Authority, Garry
Davis might as well be carrying a
passport from Venus. In more
reactionary times he would, be
called a "fuzzy thinking one-
worlder."
"We're bringing politics in line
with everything else that's hap-
pened in the Twentieth Century,"
Davis says emphatically. "We're
living under a dualistic
framework. We've got the Twen-
tieth Century implosion of time
and distance which literally
made everybody a de facto world
citizen . . . and yet the political
framework is horse and buggy.
citizen, between you and the
Russian citizen, you and the
Chinese citizen.. ."
"Every world leader," he con-
cludes firmly, "is dualistic. He
represents law and order, and at
the same time he represents
anarchy."
TALKING TO Davis is mad-
dening, but somehow pleasant.
After a long day of jaded
professors, bored administra-
tors, and students whose personal
standards of ethics are so hazily
defined that they find it easy to
snicker at almost anything, it _is
refreshing to talk to a man with
an almost total lack of cynicism.
From any "media" point of
view, Davis deserves to be lum-
ped with nudists, vegetarians,
and other amusing oddballs of
American culture. World gover-
nment, indeed. He has about as
much chance of constituting a
viable world government as I
have of building an intercontinen-
tal missile.
He is a Quixote almost as pure
as that of Cervantes; he refuses
to be brought down to earth.
Questions of nationality strike
him as irrelevant, as un-
necessary,
"NATIONALITY doesn't
exist," he says breathlessly, as
one revealing a great truth to a
blind man, "Nationality is an
illulsion."
Th.1 mnridpninothing about
laws between you and the French
I
I
Israel
To The Daily:
One has grown used to, and
learned to ignore, the incessant
half-truths and distortions that
regularly emanate out of the hal-
lowed halls of the United Nations
regarding Israel's supposed "in-
transigence" toward negotiation
and compromise. It is rather dis-
concerting and surprising,
though, to read similar such reh-
toric in the Michigan Daily.
To begin with, it is simply not
true that Israel is unwilling "to
compromise on borders or Pal-
estinian self-determination."
(Editorial, January 20, 1978) She
has indicated a readiness to
withdraw from much of the Sinai
and the Golan Heights and to
grant civil autonomy to the Arabs
living in the West Bank. The fact
that the Arab countries have not
been willing to accept these con-
cessions, particularly in light of
their past aggression, seems :to
me to be the real "intransigent"
attitude among the parties to
negotiation.
Beyond this, though, I think it4s
quite presumptuous for non-Ib-
raelis (particularly those living
within extremely secure bor
ders), to piously demand that
Israel make security concessionis
that would result in the existence
of a garrison state within a shdrt
distance of her main population
centers. Let us not be so quick.to
ask a country that has endured
four wars in the past thirty years
against insurmountable odds ito
give away at the negotiating
table what her antagonists could
not gain on the battlefield.
- Bob Wander
Letters to The Daily'
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Contact your reps
Sen. Donald Riegle (Dem.), 1205 Dirksen Bldg., Washington
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