The Statehouse Follies By BILL HEENAN LANSING - Describe marathon, a legislative stand, and a lwst-minu race, the State Legisl final, frantic 22 hours l members exhausted and trated. The last to leave the Chambers after the con 4 of its 1974 session was State d as a Senator Daniel Cooper (D-Oak last- Park). Slumped over his desk te rat in the midst of a coffee cup and ature's legal paraphernalia sea, he efts its groaned, I frus- "Everyone was so exhausted, and I'm pretty out of it my- Senate self." clusion "It was so hectic toward the end that you couldn't even dig into the bills," he continued, ex- pressing dismay at the lack of discussion on the School Aid Bill (HB 6100). According to him. the law - making body spewed out at least ten budget appropriations in the f i n a l hours. Cooper soon abandoned the chamber. Relatively refreshed after ery ye their weekend ordeal - a ses- when t sion which lasted from 10:00 by M; a m. Friday to 8:00 a.m. Satur- floorc day - two local legislators re- the "s flected: - the oth "It was the most pork-barrel- mainei ling I've ever seen;" declared ically Senator Gilbert Bursley (R-Ann to uni !Y Arbor). "We've retrogressed ev- THE REV. HOSEA WILLIAMS Perry Bullard ear from five years ago the budget was completed ay." According to him, decisions were made by ame, old people," while her half of the Senate re- d in the dark: "It's phys- impossible for everyone derstand every bill and See FINAL, Page 10 THE Michigan Daily Edited and managed by Students at the University of Michigan Tuesday, July 16, 1974 News Phone: 764-0552 Pro and Congress THERE IS AN OLD joke, often heard in high school civics classes, that goes: Pro is the opposite. of con. So what is the opposite of progress? The joke is not particularly witty, but then neither has been the con- duct of Congress in recent weeks. It is difficult to think of one good thing that Con- gress has done lately. Take as an example campaign reform. It is needed, it is popular, and it is timely. It has also gone nowhere in Congress. The 1974 election will be run under the same rules as the 1972 one, which will be of no small benefit to those congressmen up for elec- tion this year. A more important example is the impeachment investigation. It is the constitutional duty of Congress to spearhead an impeachment inquiry when the presi- dent is caught in crime. And Congress has shown suitable fire and enthusiasm, particularly after such blatant epi- sodes as the Saturday Night Massacre and the release of the transcripts. But it has been a month now since the last Nixon outrage, and congressional outrage has quieted accord- ingly. No longer is duty to Constitution and Country being considered. Now, senators and representatives are considering how many votes support of impeachment will garner them in their home districts. THEN THERE IS the House Judiciary Committee. Their conduct so far has been, to put it mildly, sorry. It would have been wiser for the Committee to go along with the suggestion of its Republican members and make its hearings public. Failing that, some effort should have been made to insure confidentiality. But with congressmen involved, confidentiality was impossible. Both the far left and the far right wings of the Committee have been leaking like sieves, prompting blasts from the White House's publicity flaks about the "partisan lynch mob" on Capital Hill. Throughout his career, Richard Nixon has been for- tunate in his choice of opponents, and his luck appears to be holding up. The House Judiciary Committee has made such a botch of things that Nixon's crimes have managed to sink out of view beneath Committee bungles. With increasing success, Nixon and his defenders have been able to exploit a line of reasoning that fol- lows: Who would you rather have running the affairs of America? Richard Nixon, the man of peace, or Peter Rodino, who can't even control his own committee? IT IS IMPERATIVE for the future of American democ- racy that Congress put its house in order. If they don't, the American people may decide that they don't need the only organization in the country that can make Richard Nixon look good. -JOHN KAHLER Atlanta's libertarian rogue By DAVID STOLL Special to The Daily ATLANTA, Ga. - The Rev. Hosea Williams, leader of the street marches in this city which have led to the arrests of more than fifty persons in recent weeks, is planning more. "We've built the greatest movement in Atlanta since Sherman burned it down," he proclaimed a few weeks ago before a meeting at his Peo- ple's Church of Love, "but if we're not willing to slave and sweat then we b e tIt e r call it quits." The marches have been called to protest slay- ings of young black men by a police decoy squad, similar to the now disbanded STRESS unit in Detroit. Marchers are also demanding the ouster of Atlanta Police Chief John Inman, who has gone to court to prevent the new black mayor of the city. Maynard Jackson, from firing him. Williams told funny stories to his congregation, exhorting his young followers not, to abandon him just because he's old and believes in Jesus Christ instead of Marx and Lenin, and made prepara- tions for the next march which was to take place July 13. "YOU KNOW, you all say yeah and that means work," he warned as the gathering of some fifty young black people voted overwhelmingly to renew street action. The marches, the largest of which has drawn 2,000, were discontiaued after a melee with police June 26 in which a number of people were hurt and fifteen, including Williams, arrested. Three days before that incident Williams and thirty-five others were arrested after police inter- vened in a protest against the death of 17 year-old Brandon Gibson, shot to death while struggling with two policemen. "Is there going to be *a parade permit this time?" asked a young man. "If there is I don't know about it," replied Williams. His marches have lacked permits as a rule. This march was to begin where the last was forcibly ended, on the edge of the downtown business district just up the street from the Ebeneezer Baptist Church where Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr. was slain a few weeks ago. At forty-eight, Williams sports bushy mutton chon sideburns and is an accomplished agitator. A former lieutenant of Martin Luther King, Jr., he is now president of the- Atlanta chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He puts himself in the thick of every labor clash and protest against police brutality in the city. He has also developed a strong personal follow- ing in the black community, as well as a dismal reputation among most whites and many black leaders, who regard him as a loudmouth and a spoiler. IN LAST fall's municipal election, Williams bucked the city's black vote-brokers by running against a white businessman they were support- ing in exchange for backing for Jackson's mayor- al campaign. Williams drew off most of the vote in the race for city council president, threaten- ing the fragile alliance between Jackson and the city's commercial interests. Williams himself lost in a subsequent run-off. Now he is being condemned for the marches by both black and white political figures, who fear he will disrupt the stil tentative relationship between Mayor Jackson and the commercial in- terests. Williams cares little for such considerations. "I'm looking for the day when we can fill up that jail with so many niggers there isn't any more room," he said Tuesday night. "The Cham- ber of Commerce will have to spend millions of dollars to wrong the right we done." "MAYNARD DOESN'T understand," he said of the mayor whom he still supports. "because he's never known a poor day in his life. What's an administrative heading to him is death for black men and boys. He says its gonna take thirty more days (to get rid of. Inman), but we gotta keep pressure on him." There is so much upset over William's actions, in fact, that sources in the mayor's office have spread the word that he is in the pay of re- actionary Lester Maddox to tear the city apart. Williams denies the charge, although he has stuck up occasionally for Maddox, calling him "the only manwho knows the poor whites like I know the poor blacks." Much of the Altanta political 'tad business establishment is also distressed at the Williams' theory that Marcus Chenault, the assassin of Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr., was in the pay of the FBI. le cites as evidence Chenault's list of targets, which reportedly included the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Aretha.Franklin, and Williams himself. "IF THEY blow my brains out now," he said Tuesday night, "it'll be the best thing that ever happened to me. Because if they let me keep on like this, I may get rogueish, I may get dis- honest, I may sell you out. But if I get killed now I'll go straight to heaven and be remembered in your hearts forever, just like Martin Luther King." Mrs. Idelia Gibson, mother of the young man whose death precipitated the end-of-June march- es, also spoke at the meeting. She is a large woman in her late thirties, apparently unused to talking at meetings. "Maybe God did this to Brandon for all of us," she said, "so the polices don't get other boys. I don't know. But Brandon had a child by a girl, and she's got another one coming. I can't take care of her, and the Welfare', givin' her trouble already. I came to Hosea for help, I came of my own accord. I want a lawyer so's we can sue the polices and the city of Atlanta for what they done to Brandon, so we can get some help." "THAT'S WISDOM, Mrs. Gibson," said Hosea, 'that's wisdom."