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OPINION
Page 4 Thursday, September 25, 1986 The Michigan DoIy


Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan

Wasserman

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Vol. XCVII, No. 16

420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board
All other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.

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Chavez
UNITED FARMWORKERS
(UFW) president Cesar Chevaz
will speak in the fourth floor
Amphitheater of Rackham
tonight to gain.support for a two
year-old boycott of Calif-ornia
grapes. The current boycott
demands that growers allow
free union elections and bargain
in good-faith with the UFW,
both re-quired by law, and
protect farm workers and
consumers from dead-ly
pesticides.
Most consumers remember
the 1970's grape 'boycott and
prob-ably think it ended
growers' abuses toward their
migrant workers. The previous
grape boycott was a temp-orary
success; when growers felt huge
losses in sales, they were forc-ed
to accept workers' rights legisla-
tion and unionization.
The most dangerous
practice by growers, misuse and
overuse of pesticides, affects
both the workers and
consumers. The Environ-
mental Protection Agency (EPA)
moved pesticide poisoning to the
number one spot on its urgent
problems list, above toxic waste
dumps and pollution. More
than 300,000 migrant workers
are poisoned by pesticides each
year. Use of pesticides
leaves residue on consumers'
fruit. Several chemi-cals have

speaks
leaked through the soil into
community water supplies; at
least 23 states' water supplies
have been tainted by pesticides.
The .Deukmejian
administration has perpetrated
a climate of law-lessness by
refusing to police even obvious
infractions of the law. The
California legislature passed a
bill last year requiring growers
to post signs in sprayed fields,
but the governor vetoed the bill
claiming it would cost growers
too much money. David
Stirling, general counsel of the
California Agricul-tural
Relations Board, who is supp-
osed to be neutral, uses taxpayer
money to actively lobby against
the UFW and its boycott.
Workers' demands for fair
labor practices and responsible
pesticide use should be a
concern of the government. The
growers will only respond when
their sales are threatened, as
the 1970's boycott ex-hibited.
The UFW is boycotting all
California grapes except the
three percent which are
stamped with the UFW black
eagle. The current boycott has
forced grape prices down to 39
cents a pound in some cities;
this demonstrates that the
boycott is working but needs
more strength to be truly
effective.

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LETTERS..

Freedom schools need

help.
seeing you at
meetings.

4

Interpreting Rehnquist

ON SEPTEMBER 17, the U.S.
Senate confirmed the
nomination of William
Rehnquist as the sixteenth
Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. The potential result of
the ensuing "Rehnquist years"
suggests that the Senate has
shirked its responsibility to the
people by concentrating on
academic qualifications rather
than fully inquiring about and
exposing Rehnquist's views,
views which threaten the hard
won rights of minorities,
women, and advocates of sexual
privacy and separation. of
church and state.
Rehnquist's interpretation of
human rights is particularly
unsettling in light of the agenda
setting power he will yield as
Chief Justice. In his new
position, he has first say about
which 150 cases out .of
approximately five thousand
are significant enough to be
heard. When voting in -the
majority, Rehnquist ,as
Supreme Court Justice, has the
authority to assign the writing
of the court opinion, which
explains the court's decision.
In the past, Rehnquist has
often been the court's lone
dissenter, staunchly advocating
"judicial restraint". Rehnquist
claims that broad interpretation
of the Constitution goes beyond
the intent of the founding
fathers. Judicial restraint also
means respecting precedent
that has been set. Rehnquist
believes that the broad
interpretations in the court's
recent history are not
legitimate, whereas the ideals of
the founding fathers were

Law School to comment that
Rehnquist is one "..of the finest
19th century minds in
America."
Rehnquist has dissented
from court opinions in a
number of cases which make
this point clear. For example,
he dissented from the 1973 Roe
v. Wade decision, which
declared that" a woman has a
fundamental right to make the
highly personal choice whether
or not to terminate her
pregnancy." In 1979 he
dissented from a court decision
upholding busing to remedy
school segregation and from
decisions upholding affirmative
action. He has further dissented
from a court decision banning
prayer in, schools and is a
declared proponent of the death
penalty.
In each decade, Rehnquist
has consistantly taken personal
actions against human rights.
As a law clerk for Justice
Jackson in the early 50s, he
wrote memos advocating the
separate-but-equal doctrine. As
an Arizona election challenger
in the early 60s, he harassed
minority voters. As an attorney
in the Justice Department in the
early 70s, he contributed to
Nixon's domestic surveillance
policy. In addition, he denied
knowledge of restrictive
covenants in. the deeds on his
homes until the issue was
pursued. As a lawyer, it seems
that Rehnquist would have been
aware of the covenants when he
signed the leases. If the
covenants had disturbed him,
he could have challenged them.
Rehnquist's accusations
about the broad interpretation

To the Daily:
The struggle against
apartheid must be part of a
larger struggle against
racism and other forms of
oppression everywhere. In
the final analysis, the people
opposed to apartheid in South
Africa will determine the
future of that country.
President P.W. Botha insists
that " the future of South
Africa will be decided by
South Africans, not by the rest
of the world." He is partly
correct, but fails to see that he
and his fellow white
surpremacists, both in South
Africa and in countries
propping up apartheid with
their investments, will not be
among those to decide in the
end. Meanwhile, we can
lend support, both moral and
material, in a variety of ways
to help expedite the liberation
of South Africa. This letter is
about one such effort being
initiated by the Free South
Africa Coordinating
Committee ( FSACC ).
The African National
Congress ( ANC ) has
established relief areas and
training schools for people in
exile from the apartheid
system. The Solomon
Mahlangu Freedom College (
SOMAFCO& ) is an
educational institution
established in 1979 at
Mazimbu, Tanzania. The
school was originally
designed to . serve the
educational needs of the large
number of young South~
Africans who left South
Africa in the wake of the
Soweto uprising of 1976.
Repression in South Africa
continues to force young
people to leave home, and thus
the need for an expanded
SOMAFCO and other
facilities like it continue to
grow.
SOMAFCO comprises five
educational sectors:
Secondary, Primary,
Nursing, Adult education
and an Orientation Center.
A variety of support structures
have been established to
service the educational
sector. Here academic skills
unavailable in most of South
Africa to non-whites are
offered, as is medical
treatment to those in need of
it. They need our help.

help us in this humanitarian
effort. Please send donations
to FSACC, c/o 3909 Michigan
Union. Checks should be
made out to the Material Aid
Committee. We will be
conducting bucket drives,

Drug edit is misdirected

To the Daily:
I am very disappointed with
your editorial "Drug
busting" (Daily, 9/17/86) on
Congress' anti-drug
legislation. True enough,
Congress is not taking the
proper steps to alleviate the
serious problem of drug
abuse. However, the Daily's
suggested reform's are
equally stupid (I use that word
carefully but accurately) and
misguided.
The reforms suggested by
Congress are merely high
publicity campaign tools.
Serious problems exist in the
legislation, such as using the
military to do civilian law
enforcement or expanding
the use of the death penalty.
The Daily is proper in
speaking against the
legislation.
The Daily, however, makes
grevious errors in assessing
the drug problem in our
nation. If I understood the
.editorial, you suggest that
ending hunger and
homelessness in our country
we will aleviate the drug
problem. What kind of
ridiculous rhetoric is that?
The drug epidemic pervades
every aspect of our society.
Drugs are a disease that does
not discriminate. Every sex,
race, religion , color, creed,
and ethnicity has an abuse
problem. Both rich white and
poor minority folk are in
grave danger from drug use.
Thus, even if we could end
poverty and illiteracy in this
nation (which certainly could
not happen in the very near
future) there would still be a
serious drug problem. The
economically advantaged
abuse drugs as much as (or
perhaps more than) the
disadvantaged. The call for
massive social welfare
programs should have
nothing to do with the drug
scare.

more peer counseling for
users in every social and
economic class, for all ages.
We need to make it clear to
people that drugs are not
"cool"; rather, it is "cool" to
say "No" to drugs.
Question cii
To the Daily:
Expiation from our sins of
being ,members of a First
World community has
historically taken on
extreme, self-righteous
forms. Europeans ration-
alized slavery by telling
themselves that "heathen"
could only benefit by
becoming the chattels of
Christians; the mindframe
would later be called a
"White man's burden."
Though in essence sincere
benevolence towards any
people is noble, present
members of our society
should recognize their
tunnel-vision and examine
their motives for such actions
as that approved by the Ann
Arbor City Council on 22
September 1986 to adopt
Juigalpa as a sister city in
Nicaragua. The referendum
from which the ordinance
was born called for a sister
city in Central America.
Nicaragua was chosen as the
country most deserving.
All of Central America is
poor. Many parts of Central
America show the growing
pains of developing countries,
from the Mayas of Guatemala
to the Miskitos of Nicaragua.
Regardless of anyone's'
politics, I interpret such an
action as politically opportun-
istic in that incumbents are
scoring points for the next
election in this largely
liberal student town where it
is in vogue to espouse anti-
Reagan, anti-Republican
sentiment. This seems

It seems that the Daily has
only added to the mass
hysteria of the problem with
another lame brained
solution.
-David Vogel
September i7
ty Motivation
by Ed Pierce referring to
Nicaragua as the secondl
poorest country in thk
Western Hemisphere without
mentioning his source of
information. I have read
various sources calling other
countries poorest and seconal
poorest, but I make no claims
because mine - is not an
argument of specifics.
The non-politically
ambitious members of our
citizenry may be well
intentioned overall, but whati
about the concerns held by
task force members like Jane
Potts, who seem motivated
more by political ideology
than by humanitarianism
when suggesting the need for
an orphanage for the children
of those felled by the Contras?
No one knows the truth except
for . those - living
Nicaragua, but it does nolt
seem unreasonable that there
is some truth to. :a
documentary aired on PAS
suggesting that th'e
Sandinistas are no better to
the Miskito Indians than are
the Contras to the
Sandinistas.
I propose that a sister city'e
adopted in the ancestral'
lands of the Miskito Indians
as well. It is no secret that
thousands of them have been
forcibly removed or sent into
exile in Honduras by the
Sandinistas. The truest
humanitarianism has no
strings attached-especially
political ones!
-Luis-A. Velazquez-Rivera

selling baked goods, and
organizing special fund-
raising benefits. All money
donated for material aid will
be used solely for that
purpose. We urge you to be
generous an'd look forward to

-Glen Wiliams,
Chairman,,Material Aid
Committe
September21

fu'ture