} OPINION 0 Page 4 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Saturday, October 31, 1981 Wasserman Vol. XCiI, No. 45 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, Ml 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Doily's Editorial Board Watt a surprise WE of THE NEW Ri&WrT $E-1EVE IN EQUAL JUS~TICE BEFORE THE LAW Cl BUT THAT DoESN'T IMPI-Y THE RI&HT TO A FREE LAWYER low T4ERE AR's PEpLC-, OF COURsE-, WHtO CAN1NoT AFFORD' Ciiq5L The Michigan Daily THEY 5HOtV STAY OUT OF TROUBLE w, tS .. S. S! S J I f INTERIOR SECRETARY James Watt has come up with a few sur- prises lately-and, surprisingly, they've been pleasant. Watt's latest retreat from his pro-development stance occurred when he announced he would drop plans for a hydroelectric project that would have affected the flow of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The original position, Watt said in a statement issued Thursday, was "the wrong idea at the wrong place at the wrong time." In other words, it was a mistake. The original plan would have changed the water level of the Colorado River, and might have had devastating effects on the surrounding vegitation, fish, and wildlife habitats. The development could have also had irreparably altered the river bed. Watt's decision Thursday was one in a series of surprising pro- environmental actions. Earlier this year, for instance, Watt opposed the Dickey-Lincoln dam in northern Maine. The dam would have filled much of the St. Johns River valley to provide additional electric power for New England. He also supported legislation prohibiting federal floor in- surance for development of currently undeveloped barrier islands. This move may help discourage construc- tion on the offshore islands. Perhaps Watt has begun to alter his former hard-line stance on the virtues of development over preservation. But it seems doubtful. Watt's past ex- perience as president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a fiercely pro-development legal organization in Colorado, and many of his anti-en- vironmental moves as interior secretary, have indicated the man's disregard for the country's natural resources. A more logical explanation is that some of the pressure environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and National Audobon Society have placed on the Reagan administration to remove Watt has gotten through to the interior secretary. Whatever the case, James Watt is coming up with a few surprises-and they're good ones. 1 Ready with revolver in 1890 Inter-class rivalries are practically non- existent in 1981; but in 1890 rivalries bet- ween upper and lower classmen were By Will McLean Greeley acute-and occasionally dangerous. The following article appeared in the October 10, 1890 Daily, and illustrates the impor- tance of dress and tradition between members of the junior and senior classes. A JUNIOR LAW PROTECTS HIMSELF 'WITH A REVOLVER; CULMINATION OF THE TROUBLE THAT HAS BEEN GATHERING FOR SEVERAL DAYS Two or three junior laws (law students) have been assuming airs too aristocratic, so it seems to the learned seniors, by wearing "tiles" (hats). Thursday last one of these guileless "tiles" was conducting a junior downstairs from the Law lecture room, it was struck by rude senior hands and forced down the head of the now unhappy junior. To his further discom- fiture the junior was hustled and pounded over the dusty floor, losing a part of his clothing in the melee. Yesterday, when the juniors were ready oto come down, it was rumored that the seniors would repeat the dose of etiquette to another junior. But they didn't. Listen why. A large number of juniors went down 'and formed near the stairs. Then the obnoxious hat came down followed by about one hundred of the largest juniors with blood and determination stamped on every feature. This afternoon the matter assumed a more serious phase. The plucky junior came from the lecture at 3 o'clock, still wearing the ob- noxious tile. He was followed out into the street by a crowd of threatening seniors. Hemmed in on all sides at the corner of State and Williams streets he drew a revolver and kept his antagonists off with a heavy cane. The latter seeing that the junior was in dead earnest, decided that discretion was the bet- ter part of valor, and permitted the man to pass on his way. *9 NEXT WEEK: PARKING TICKETS,. POLICE, AND U STUDENT, 1959 Our pals, the Saudis U.S. AMERICA WAS treated to a fascinating lesson in friendship this week. On Thursday, hours after the U.S. Senate bowed to pressure from President Reagan and voted to ap- prove the largest arms sale in history to Saudi Arabia, a Saudi Arabian of- ficial conveyed his deepest gratitude to America for the arms deal. "The Saudi people," said Saudi Defense Minister Abdel-Aziz, "will never forget this stand by their friends." Also on Thursday, our Saudi friends announced that they would be doing us, the inestimable service of bringing the OPEC cartel back together. OPEC, it was announced, will set a common base price of a barrel for the crude oil. its members produce.- Later in the day, the Reagan ad- ministration busied itself discounting the OPEC decision, claiming the action would lower the price that all but one of the OPEC suppliers charge for oil. Unfortunately, the one country that is raising the price is America's largest oil supplier: Saudi Arabia.- The price increase in Saudi crude will probably mean that the average' price per barrel of OPEC oil will in- crease by $1 to $2 per barrel. It also means that the price of gasoline sold in retail outlets in the United States can be expected to increase between 2 and 3 cents per gallon. But heck, what's a few cents between friends? It is indeed a curious friendship the administration is cultivating with the Saudis. The administration gets to commit a substantial amount of political capital-and political machismo-to a bloody, open fight on the Senate floor; the Saudis get to rein- force the strength of a commodity car- tel aimed directly at the West. The American government agrees to sell billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry to an absolute but poten- tially unstable monarchy; the Saudis get the ability to attack one of America's staunchest allies. It seems, at best, an uncertain frien- dship. But somehow it seems to fit well with an administration where less is more, where the way to increase tax receipts is to cut tax rates, and where the way to feed the poor is to carve up the food stamp budget. underground not new S By Frank Browning NEW YORK-Ruth and I were tucked away in a corner of a neighborhood bar just off the Bowery. It was late in the after-, noon, the Yankees were blaring away on TV and a gang of fans were slamming their fists on the bar to the steady march of the game. Ruth neither saw nor heard anything of the ball game. Like perhaps half my friends in New York last week she was con- sumed by the unfolding drama of the Brink's armored truck rob- bery that had left two cops and one guard dead on the highway. t"ANGRY?" SHE spat out, her eyes on fire. "You've got no idea how angry I am. How could anyone be so stupid as to pull that kind of stunt in the middle of Rockland County, where half the cops in New York live, and then to drive onto a freeway where you can't escape? And to leap out with shotguns blazing, loaded with hollow point slugs? It's one colossal screw-up." Ruth had once been close to the Weather Underground. She had been invited to join, to take a leadership role (in the parliance of today) and thereby to organize the revolutionary army of the new working class. Those were the times when the committed were distinguished from the un- committed by their sure belief that there would be "a revolution in our lifetime." Ruth had in fact lived "un- derground" for several years, although she had not chosen to ally herself directly with the Weatherpeople. "I REMEMBER very well when it all started," she said. "They truly believed that thousands of angry workers would be joining the revolutionary army. There would be clarion calls from the factory gates. And I remember, too, saying, 'But what if they don't join us by the thousands? What if it's just knocking out banks and police stations in the middle of the night? What will that mean?' " Ruth's question of a dozen New York detectives escort Eve Rosahn after she was charged in connection with the robbery of a Brinks truck in Rockland County, New York, last week. The robbery was allegedly perpetrated by members of the Weather Underground. Bill Ayers, Kathy Wilkerson and others. But what of those who chose to stay below, whom the FBI now identifies as terrorists on a par with the PLO, the Red Brigade, and the German Red Army fac- tion? Is thererany conceivable justification for a political un- derground in American today? ANOTHER RADICAL, a lawyer who has devoted his life to the defense of political dissidents and the disenfranchised, framed the question a different way: "Is there any way this can be con- sidered a genuine political cause?" he asked. On both coasts, and across the belly of this country, two sets of people have been preoccupied with just that question during the last week. When is a bank rob- bery just another bank robbery, and when is it invested with a political resonance that tran- sforms it into an act of courage and secret heroism? For the FBI, and indeed for most commentators in the press, the answer is simple: Bank rob- bers, people who organize jail breaks, people who blow up police stations in the dead of the night, are all violent criminals preying on the legitimate. The very fact that they work "un- derground" in a democratic society is ample evidence that they are its enemies, and that they are incapable of winning genuine support from honorable citizens. IT IS A NEAT formula, but it bank robberies was unsurpassed and included a gory handful of in- cidental killings. Yet a few weeks before he was shot, Dillinger was able to spend an entire week walking the streets of his hometown, Mooresville,snd., untouched. Even a Mooresville banker ad- mitted that he personally had seen Dillinger "visiting around with his old friends." Asked later if someone there didn't feel like turning the outlaw in, the banker answered flatly, "Nobody ever did." BY NO STRETCH of the imagination did John Dillinger regard himself as a political radical. Yet so great was popular rancor toward the banks that were daily foreclosing on Mid- western farmers, that he was able to easily move across the countryside without exposure. John Dillinger's underground was the unorganized un- derground of popular resen- tment. But there have been other undergrounds in the American past,_ often carefully organized and frequently based on rank brutality. The slave rebellions on the an- te-bellum South, many of them aided by the white terrorist ex- tremists of their day, the radical abolitionists, were nearly all very bloody affairs. One of the most brutal and most morally questionable was John Brown's famous 1865 assault on a farm run by pro-slavery sympathizers in Pottawatomie, Kan., in which Standard histories describe John Brown as an extremist, but not as a terrorist out to destroy the American system-which in fact he was. For the American, system was predicated and operated on a racism that was as viciously oppressive as any con- temporary underground, in-: cluding the underground railroad that for several decades smuggled saves to freedom, that enabled blacks both to rebel and. to find refuge. It was for that reason that white radicals like John Brown, working in tandem with black militants, foun4' political resonance in America. N "But what of 1981, 118 yearsaf- ter the Emancipation Proclamation, when a black, judge sits on the Supreme Court?" my friend the lawyer asked. "Let's suppose the police are right, that the handfulaof Weatherpeople still underground are working with the Black Liberation Army, that they may have had a hand breaking Assata6 Shakur (BLA member Joanna,. Chesimard) out of jail, and that these recent bank robberies area all aimed at the support of an un-.,i derground'of black and Puerto Rican radicals. Who even .in. black America, except maybe a;a. few people on the fringe, supports the notion of a radical un- derground of black militants?". I ASKED THAT question of another friend, an instructor of political science at the City University of New York. "Two; years ago," he said, "when; Assata Shakur broke out of jail, I asked my freshman class how, many people even knew who she was. About a third raised their hands. Not one white student knew. Every black student did. When I asked the black kids what they felt about her escape, no one said a word. They just smiled." Mae Jackson, a black social worker; playwright and mother in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, did talk, and heatedly. "There have always been underground movements in this country, whenever and, wherever we've had oppressed people," she said. "If you create conditions of oppression, you're w...- .. e.4 -- - - --... e Lw4. ..na i4, .7j, * .