Page 4-Thursday, April 3, 1980-The Michigan Daily
t1jigegl rYears 'o f Editorial F'reedloml
Magic of the Haight is gone
i*
Vol. XC, No. 145
News Phone: 764-0552
1,
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
I
Taiwan 1a)
T HE EYESof the world's human
rights activists have been on the
country of Taiwan for the last few
weeks, as dozens of political opponents
of the island's government have been
brought to trial.
To Americans the wording of some of
the Taiwanese laws might seem
almost absurdly vague; others are so
broad they would probably be ruled
unconstitutional in this country.
One law prohibits "directing crowds
to make violent threats against
military personnel." Another makes it
a crime to ','prevent public
functionaries from carrying out their
duty."
Comparatively few Americans area
aware that a bill is being endorsed in'
the U.S. Senate that, if passed, would.
create many of the same sorts of
restrictions that are being used to-
persecute the dissidents in Taiwan.
Senate bill 1722, which made its first
in U.S.
appearance as Senate bill 1 in the early
'70s, is a comprehensive criminal
justice code. Its #provisions outlaw a
vast range of acts, and some are every
bit as absurd as those of Taiwan.
Under the bill, the distributor of a
leaflet critical of the military could be
imprisoned if the leaflet reached the
hands of an enlisted man or woman.
One section proscribes hampering the
work of any government employee,
whether he or she is a soldier or not.
Senate bill 1 failed, perhaps because
it was introduced by the Nixon
administration and its oppressiveness
was therefore suspect even before it
reached subcommittee.
Senate bill 1722 poses a greater
danger: Its best-knwon sponsor, the
generally liberal chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, will to
some extent mask the fact that the bill
is very similar to its forebear. The
senator's name: Edward Kennedy.
SAN FRANCISCO-Fifteen years ago, a
street sign marked the crossroads of young
America.
Orphaned by the death of a beloved
president, cast into the army by what they felt
was an unjust war, given material wealth
without moral guideliens for using it, a new
generation fell apart and came together at the
corner of Haight and Ashbury.
Fifteen years ago. It was a time of flower
children, the Jefferson Airplane, and the
Grateful Dead. Of marijuana and LSD. Of
communal living, long hair, and outrageous
clothing that once and for all, divorced the
young from the old.
IT WAS, PAUL KANTNER recalls, a time
of innocence-"a never never land."
"It was an experimental time," says Kan-
tner, who helped found the Jefferson Airplane
back then and is the only original member of
the band, now called the Jefferson Starship.
"We trusted the drugs we took, almost of-
fered ourselves as guinea pigs for a whole
new way ofdealing with each other."
Joan Didion was less kind. In "Slouching
Towards Bethlehem," she called what was
going on here in the mid '60s "social
hemorrhaging."
"San Francisco was where the missing
children were gathering andacalling them-
selves 'hippies'," she wrote, and she meant
the Haight-Ashbury.
BUT NOW THE magic is gone, along with
the posters that once converted the walls of
Haight Street into a miniature Peking, an-
nouncing free concerts in nearby Golden Gate
Park and promoting the slogans of the left
calling for one world, one people.
Today, Haight-Ashbury is like many neigh-
borhoods in the city, sporting a variety of
shops and restaurants, noble Victorians being
renovated, and a sizable gay community
bringing in new business.
Few signs remain of the time when the anti-
war movement flourished and Grateful Dead
leader Jerry Garcia poured forth the first
psychedelic chords from his black and gold
Gibson.s
"In the begninning, it was a very pleasant
thing," says Alex Holcombe, whose jewelry
store has operated on the corner of Haight
and Ashbury since 1932.
"BUT IT DEGENERATED into a very
heavy drug culture. I never went out of
business, but we did lose 19 stores on this
street."
Dr. David Smith, founder and medical
director of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic,
has seen it all.
"You saw the beginnings of the counter-
culture and psychedelic scene as early as
1964," he says. "In '65 and '66 it accelerated,
and in '67 it peaked, the primary things being
the rock groups and the expanded use of
LSD."
The clinic opened in 1967, operating 24 hours
a day, says Smith, and treating as many as
200 patients a day, mostly for bad LSD trips
and short term outpatient care.
TODAY, THE CLINIC has evolved and ex-
panded to include five sections, including
detoxification for heroin addicts and a
women's center, as well as a volunteer
training branch and a research department.
By 1970, the Haight-Ashbury was in the
throes of a major heroin epidemic. The in-
nocence that had heralded the new age had
given way to crime and violence. The rock
stars had long since packed up and moved to
more pleasant surroundings in the suburbs.
"It turned into a jungle," remembers Kan-
tner, who blames that on the police. "They
allowed it to happen almost gleefully. Sort of
to let the flower children face the tough
By David Einstein
was a big influx of different populations, in-
cluding the gay community," says Smith.
"They came in and bought a lot of th
houses and renovated them, and they open0
a lot of shops and worked to improve th,
area."
Renovation brought new problems,
however. Real estate prices skyrocketed;
with some rents jumping as much as 300 per
cent when apartment houses were sold,
Neighborhood organizations fear that
redevelopment will result in a street
decorated with tourist shops, driving land
prices up further.
THERE STILL ARE people on the stree!
who look like character actors out of the
original play, although Kantner says he
doesn't feel a lot of life in the Haight. But
Hope for break in hostage,
crisis should be tempered,
THESE VIETNAM PROTESTORS were one part of the culture that called Haight-Ashbury its
home in the late 1960s.
LTHOUGH THERE seems to. e
some new hope that the
merican hostages in Tehran may be
transferred from the custody of the
militant "students" to the custody of
the Iranian government, it's hard to
get too excited. We have been
disappointed too many times in the 152
days since the U.S. Embassy was
seized to have much confidence that
the militants will listen to the
government, or that the government
has any power,
There is still less reason to hope for
an endto the crisis when one reads the
Ayatollah Khomeini's latest
blatherings. On Tuesday, the raving
Imam issued a speech that indicates he
is either insane or sincerely
determined to fight a holy war against
theU.S.
Consider Khomeini's statement that
President Carter, by expressions of
"moderation and flattery," is "trying
to pull the wool over our eyes
and . . . play a trick on our nation.''
Does Khomeini mean that
moderation will get us nowhere?
The Ayatollah continued: "Carter
must realize that his support of the
deposed shah.. . does not leave room
for a so-called honorable solution to the
issue.
Does this mean that Khomeini
intends to leave the U.S. no ways out of
the crisis short of acceding to the
impossible demand totreturn the shah?
Finally, Khomeini said: "It is up to
all the oppr ssed... to come to their
senses and defend what is right and
true and to rid their countries of the
filthy presence" of individuals like the
"satanic" Carter.
Could this statement be extended to
refer to the hostages?
Khomeini opened his pronouncement
with "In the name of God, the
compassionate, the merciful." We
Amerioans can only invoke the Lord's
name in another context: "God help
us."
world."
The Haight looked, according to Smith,
"like a bombed out ghetto."
"There was so much crime and violence
that only the most hardy of'businessmen
could hang in there."
BUT HANG IN they did, and the neigh-
borhood made a comeback.
"I would say that 1971 and '72 was when
there. were some major community
organization successes and the neighborhood
started getting together," says Smith. "The
community started taking control and
believing that they could handle it through
rehabilitation rather than the urban
redevelopment plans that were advocated by
city hall.
"As soon as things started improving, there
Smith and others who work and live there ar
happy with the way things are turning out.
"The old idealism still survives, but it's
tempered with reality," said Smith, adding
that as far as he is concerned, the neigh-
borhood has gone from being one of the most
dangerous in the city to one of the safest. -
Perhaps most clear-cut proof of change in
the Haight, however, is supplied by Kantner.
He still goes back every so often, but when he
does it's not to play free concerts or take
drugs. He goes to the MacDonald's on the end
of Haight Street and buys his daughter 4
cheeseburger.
David Einstein is a writer for the AssoL
ciated Press.
M SA sells its own .fee haike
Higgins
AND NOWA LOOK AT THE WEATHER,.,
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The Michigan Student Assem-
bly (MSA) has found yet another
application of its often contorted
logic.
MSA has included a question on
its April 8 and 9 ballot to deter-
mine whether students support a
proposed student government fee
hike from the current $2.92
assessed each student every term
to $4.25 per term. Yet in its
meeting last week, the Assembly
also decided to use up to $400 of
student funds to promote passage
of the fee hike. The two decisions
are in blatant contradiction.
PRESUMABLY, the purpose of
the ballot question is to deter-
mine student opinion on the
proposed increase. To
simultaneously use student
money to try to influence the out-*
come of the ballot is to shape the
results into what MSA wanted to
see in the first place.
Since MSA is determined to
bring student opinion into align-
ment with its own, there would
seem to be little need to even ask
the question or spend the $400.
But if MSA is to win approval
from the University Regents,
who make the final decision on
What do the Michigan Student
Assembly (MSA), the University
of Michigan, all Michigan state
universities, all federal agencies
(such as the Defense Depar-
tment, HEW, and VISTA), and all
the local school boards have in
common? All have the common
practice of analyzing their
budget needs, drafting budget
proposals, lobbying for their
budget needs with legislators and
the public-whomever their fun-
ding sources might be-and
requesting a vote by members of
their funding source on the
budget they propose.
Our University maintains an
office of "state relations" with
full-time, University-paid lob-
byists to promote its budget
needs. All state universities
similarly lobby with paid person-
any fee assessment increase, a
successful ballot proposal is
essential. The Regents will
almost definitely deny MSA the
increase if the proposal does not
receive strong student approval
in a referendum. Thus, MSA is
determined to win favorable
results in the referendum vote,
and is even willing to spend sub-
stantial amounts of student
money to achieve that end.
CERTAINLY, it is accep-
table-and even desirable-for
competing interest groups to at-
tempt to influence student
opinion prior to the ballot.
Such competition serves to
Should stude
funds be spent
sway opinions
By Dave Meyer
provide student
balanced informa
sides of the issue.I
bying-is the foundat
groups, not our elec
tatives.
If MSA members
enough about the in
may very well bej
should work th
political parties-
Action Coalition (
Student Alliance
Representation (SA
dependently, spend
money to convince
merits of the propo
It is clearly a conf
for members of the
promote the questio
It'is clearly not t
MSA, an organization
n t presumably committed to
representing student opinion, to,
actively endorse the fee increase
prio tote vt. uthe mori
is 'blatantly unfair, if not
unethical, for MSA to finance
promotion of its members'
opinions with student funds. Why
" 9 * one small interest group is en-
titled to use student funds to
campaign for its position whil
voters with all opposing interests are forced
tion on both to struggle with their own fund-
But such lob- raising has not been explained.
ion of interest This would obviously result in a
fled represen- distinctly unbalanced presen-
tation 'of information for student
sfeel strongly voters. Even if this is a fairly
crease, which common practice, as some MSA
justified, they members contend, precedent
jrough their does not necessarily justify its
-the Peoples' continuance.
PAC) or the If our MSA representatives ar4
for Better aspiring to represent student
BRE )-or in- opinion, as is their function, then
ling their own they should respond to the ballot
students of the results-not attempt to form
osed increase. them.
lict of interest
e Assembly to Dave Meyer covers student
rn's passage. governmentsfor the Daily
.he function ofg
MSA needs the requested money
for its programs. Over a three
year period, MSA is requesting a
total increase of only $1.23 per
student per term.
led
Over 90 per cent of the funding
increase being requested will be
going to Student Legal Services,
" which provides free legal help for
all students. This student
program has not had a budget in-
crease in two years. During that
our hundred two years, its case load has more
tiny sum out of than doubled and continued to
climb. During that time, there
has been 27 per cent inflation,
Daily reporter reducing by more than one-fourth
MSA couldn't the real purchasing power of its
idget with let- budget. The lawyers in the
r with articles program, who provide excellent
page, which services, are seriously underpaid
ent funds. But for persons of their professional
0-1
* . . Oristh
expense justifee
By Greg Hesterberg
..\s\
' ,
. ,: ' 2" J
suggesting a budget figure, and it
has the right and obligation to
explain and support the budget
figures it suggests.
Who besides people within the
MSA and its programs can ex-
plain its budget needs? Who
knows the prices of telephone
calls for their offices, of pencils
and paper, of law books, and of
budget needs. F
dollars is indeed a t
a total of $77,000.
A MICHIGAN I
has asked why
just explain its bu
ters to the editor o
for the editorial
would not use stud