Page 4-Friday, August 4, 1978-The Michigan Daily I michigan DAILY LETTERS TO THE DAILY: McCollough Act undemocratic Eighty-eight Years of Editorial Freedom 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Ml. 48109 Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 58-S News Phone: 764-0552 Friday, August 4, 1978 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan S. Africa i*s issue URING AN INTERVIEW two days ago, President Fleming, just back from a two week visit to South Africa, said "Time will tell how big an issue it is" that the University invests millions of dollars in corporations which have operations in the white minority ruled country. Fleming defended his stand in favor of such holdings and went on to question the support pro- divestiture interests have on campus. The University leader said he found several black leaders in South Africa opposed to with- drawal "because it wouldn't really accomplish what its proponents think it would ... and it- would visit great economic hardship on par- ticularly the black community." Why does Fleming feel this way after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Africans and African experts on this campus, a majority of the students voting in a campus election, two out of four Democrats running for the governor's seat who have addressed the issue and all but one of the six Democrats running for U.S. Senate, and, by his own admission, some of the people Fleming went to see on his visit, have all spoken out against University support for cor- porate participation in a racist system? To The Daily: In 1976 the Michigan Legislature passed a law that was little noticed at the time, but which in the 1978 elections has made it virtually impossible for any minor party tp get on he ballot in the state of Michigan. The McCollough Act (Public Act 94), was passed in the middle of the 1976 election campaign. It requires that in addition to obtaining a minimum of 17,500 signatures of registered voters on petitions, minor parties now must enter the August primary in the Party Qualification section and obtain some 5,000 votes for their party before they are even allowed to have the name of their candidates placed on the November ballot! In a post-primary decision, a three judge panel ruled that the law was invalid for the November 1976 elections, as it had been passed after the elec- tion campaign began. However, in 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the McCollough Act (PA 94). The 1978 elections mark the first time this law has been in effect. THE CLEAR and stated intent of the McCollough Act was to keep minor parties off the ballot. In the August 1976 primary, the combined vote of all 5 minor parties was not enough to place even one of these parties on the ballot in November! All five of these parties had gathered the requisite number of signatures on petitions-the Communist Labor Par- ty alone gathered over 32,000 signatures on petitions. While nine parties carried out petition drives in 1976, the deliberate discouragement of the McCollough Act (PA 94) reduced this number to Sin 1978, with only 3 parties making it through to the August primary: The Communist Labor Party, which obtained 28,500 signatures, the Socialist Workers Party and the U.S. Labor Party. The requirement of 5,000 votes in the Party Qualification section of the primary (the precise figure is 3/10 of 1 per cent of the total vote in the primary) is absolute - no matter how few can- didates a minor party might want to run. In 1976, for example, the Communist Labor Party ran only one candidate in one district - General Baker for the state House of Representatives in the 9th District. The McCollough Act (PA 94) is a blatant in- fringement on the right of choice in the electoral Young)-a revolutionary anarchist named Lorenzo "Komboa" Ervin. A black worker, Ervin joined the U.S. Army at age 18 in 1965 and, shipped to West Germany, came in conflict with the race and class oppression which flourishes in America's enclaves within the Fourth Reich. "Kombo" was persecuted for antiwar ac- tivities and went AWOL when ordered to Vietnam. He was arested, brutally beaten, imprisoned for six months and then dishonorably discharged. BACK IN his native Chattanooga, Komboa began working with SNCC, then the only serious antiwar group and the one whose libertarian and communist tendencies were most pronounced. Ervin was or- dered arested for contempt of court for refusing to appear before a federal grand jury investigating the "black power movement" in Chattanooga. At this point, Komboa made history with a spectacular nonviolent example of propaganda by deed - he hijacked a plane from Atlanta to Cuba as an antiwar protest, a gesture worth a hundred peace marches. Then began several years of exile among less- than-hospitable state-socialist regimes in Eastern Europe which ended when CIA agents kidnapped Komboa in East Germany, beat him up and drugged him, and finally forced him back to Georgia where a rednecked judge and jury senten- ced him to two life terms after a trial during which Komboa was too drugged to defend himself. Kom- boa now rots in the notorious maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois, whose special tor- ture/behavior "mod" facilities have already produced ten Baader-Meinhof-style "suicides" (sic). But Komboa lives! Although, now aged 30, his life is in constant danger from racist guards and the racial strife formented among prisoners by the authorities to divide-and-rule. The official, licensed "left" ignores Kombo's' case because he rejects their authoritarianism (he's lived it, after all) in favor of revolutionary anarchism. Komboa is seeking a new trial, but only publicity and pressure can get it for him and save his life. IN AMERICA, we don't hold show trials for our dissidents (The Chicago 7 trial backfired) - instead we convict them quietly and then kill them in prison, just like our neo-Nazi allies in West Ger- many. For information about this bizarre case (we've only skimmed the surface), or to donate to Komboa's fund, write to: Free Lorenzo Komboa Ervin Committee News & Letters 343 S. Dearborn, Room 1618 Chicago, Illinois 60604 This is the Last International's swan song (for grand juries and brutish Ann Arbor cops have silen- ced us, too), but we're not bowing out before aler- ting the potential complete individuals in this vicinity to this much more serious matter. For all practical purposes, Ervin has been sentenced to death. For each of us the choice is simple: Capital punishment-or the punishment of capital? You decide. -The Last International SUMMER EDITORIAL STAFF BARBARA ZAHIS Editor-in-Chief BRIAN BLANCHARD KENPARSIGIAN Editorial Diretors KEN PARSIGIAN Magazine Editor, OWEN GLEIBERMAN ArtsEditor STEVE 5L5 Boos Editor ANDYFREEBERG JOHN KNX Ptotographers In the same hour interview Fleming said "onezicn n itLt oei n ai 1U « aea1herght to vote is the basis of U.S. r ea a'tmexouse"thedeleiongysaid thee democracy. Yet to vote for any minor party in really cant excuse" the detention system there, Michigan, voters must forego voting for the can- that the South African government "really didates of the major parties for any office in the doesn't make any bones" about the inequality of state. In other words, to vote in the Party their system, that the assignment of homelands Qualification section of the ballot for a minor party has out tribal blacks in "a terrible, terrible automatically excludes you from voting in the ,, Democratic or Republican party sections of the dilemma, and said at one point that blacks ballot. Never before in the history of this country "told us over and over-whether they believed it have the people been forced to vote for a party, and divestiture or not-Americans are the key to this not for the candidates. The McCollough Act is anti- whole thing. We look to America to help us solve democratic. It is expressly aimed at suppressing this problem." alternative viewpoints and solutions in the electoral thisFpblem. sarena that differ from those of the Democratic and Fleming points to the reported opposition to Republican parties. President Carter has sounded economic protest by Zulu leader Gatsha the call again and again for the extension of Human Buthelezi, a black leader who has lost the respect Rights-yet the McCollough Act in Michigan is of many of his countrymen for acceptance of narrowing these rights. "homelands" and refusal to take stronger stands And because the law is inherently unfair to minor "hoe s a ,parties, as they are forced to compete against can- against Prime Minister Vorster's regime. didates, the public interest can only be served if the After a two week trip funded by an representatives from these minor parties are organization which also has provided aid for allowed to present the facts about their party. Mr. exiled journalist Donak Woods, Fleming has Juan Torres of Saginaw, who will be the candidate decided that he knows more about South Africa of the Communist Labor Party in November for the state House of Representatives from the 85th than the white critic of the apartheid system who District if the requisite votes are ontained in the has come out strangly against the American primary, is acting as a spokesman for the party on business concerns in the country. the McCollough Act (PA 94) and information on out Fleming and the Regents contend that party so that voters will be able to make an infor- American companies can effect change in the med choice in the primary. He can be contacted Amercan ompniescanthrough our party office (313) 341-0346. The office is segregated society. A congressional report by open from 12 to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Senator Dick Clark and recent statements by -Ronald D. Glotta the NAACP have sought to educate business State Chairman leaders and the oublic at large that this has not Communist Labor Party been-and probably will not be-the case. The Daily is convinced that our investments constitute an even bigger issue since, in Mr. Komboa lives Fleming's words, "tension will growl" in South To The Daily: Africa and Americans are starting to realize the -we write on behalf of one of America's "hund- extent of our moral and politicalaccountability. reds -aif nothousands of political :prisoners" (A i s r r r t t t I