4 OPINION Page 4 Friday, April 14, 1989 The Michigan Daily I 'I Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan 420 Maynard St. Vol. IC, No. 134 AnnArborMI 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. I I Czars are everywhere By Noah Finkel Our political leaders have come up with a variety of ways to quell a "crisis" when one pops up. Liberals see a crisis and throw money at the problem. Conservatives see a crisis and blame the victim. And of course, the remedy favored by politicians of every ideological stripe is to set up a blue-ribbon committee and com- mission a study when faced with a crisis. But the fashionable method of handling a crisis these days is to identify the prob- lem and name a "czar" to oversee the han- dling of it. We're at the point now that there are few crises without their own czar. The trend could be traced back to Sen. Paul Simon's (D-Ill.) bid for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. Iden- tifying the trade deficit as one of the great ills of the country, Simon said "we need a trade czar" to solve our trade woes. Simon's presidential bid failed, but the bow-tied Senator did leave a lasting im- pact. Noah Finkel is a Daily news staffer. This year, President Bush appointed William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education, drug czar to solve the "drug crisis." In fact, Czar William "the Terri- ble" was one of Bush's first presidential appointments. Bush then appointed an ethics czar due to a perceived crisis in the ethics of those in government. Michigan Governor Jim Blanchard, not to be outdone, last month appointed his own state drug czar. Last week, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young named 36th District Court Judge Adam Shakoor as his crime czar. Even Vice President Dan Quayle got into the act. This week he joked with re- porters that he was Bush's "funeral czar." And just Tuesday, neighboring Augusta Township named an anti-landfill czar (yes, that is the real title) to coordinate efforts to stop the Augusta Development Corp. from operating a hazardous waste landfill and incinerator in the township. Why are czars so popular now? One would think that czars, the autocratic rulers of Russia from 1533 until the 1917 February revolution, would be feared, not desired. These czars were absolute monarchs who had no regard for civil liberties and civil rights. They enslaved the peasants of the Russian empire and unleashed pogroms on the empire's Jewish popula- tions. A good case can be made that Stalin's totalitarianism was simply a modernized version of czarist policies. Even Peter "the Great" was known as such partly because his army was adept at killing Swedes, and Catherine II was known as "the Great" because she sliced up Poland and added it to the Russian em- pire. Imagine what Ivan "the Terrible" was like (for the record, Ivan was given that moniker because of his use of terror. He also happened to kill off the heir to his throne). Perhaps our new-found love of czars is because we think our problems can only be solved by someone with unlimited power. But that goes against the grain of American political thought. We distrust large concentrations of power. We tradi- tionally think of that as dangerous to individual liberties. This infatuation with czardom is peculiar. Modemn-day Romanovs are proliferating at federal, state, and local levels of gov- ernment. I say send 'em to Siberia. 4 I Homeless Action Committee members proposed new parking structure. House people, ANN ARBOR has a housing crisis due which h to a lack of affordable low and middle- since it: income housing. Shelters have pro- Downto vided assistance to some of Ann Ar- occupan bor's approximately 1500 homeless, which ir but these efforts are not long-term Lou Be solutions. and con During the Reagan/Bush administra- 1983. tions the federal budget for low-cost After housing has been cut from $32 billion one Rej to $8 billion. The Ann Arbor city pressed government has failed dismally to affordal respond to these cuts with increased of "thes municipal funding. commer ;Ann Arbor's Downtown Develop- titude th ment Authority (DDA) is chiefly re- ment po sionsible for this atrocity. Created by and ignc City Council in 1982 to preserve and incomec restore the downtown district, the DDA Thoui cl'aims to be committed to "preserving have cat t*e balance between commercial, office ness con a4d residential uses that has generally cies are been lost in central city areas." How- from se eyer, since its creation in 1982, the Area co DDA has spent nothing on housing reported while it has allocated $13 million for to Ann parking structures. learned Now, the DDA plans to grant a $3 houses nillion dollar subsidy for the ployees cinstruction of another parking struc- The C ture at the sight of Kline's department structur store's parking lot. priorities An Affordable Housing Task Force The H conducted a survey of community planned housing needs in 1985, and reported to parking dity Council that Ann Arbor was in set up need of 1,000 units of low-cost hous- "housin inig. No affordable housing has been ernmen btilt since that report. The insufficient Help se housing that did exist has been must pr squeezed out by commercial construc- the hom tion, despite the 20-30 percent vacancy tional 1 rite of commercial spaces downtown. member A boarding house was destroyed to a.m. Sa nrake room for the Belcher Building, Ashley 1 not cars has remained largely vacant s construction in 1986. The wn Club provided single room icy for 68 people, before a firm ncluded then Ann Arbor mayor ;lcher purchased the building verted it into office space in the task force's report in 1985, publican council member ex- concern that construction of ble housing would attract more se people" into the city. This nt is indicative of the classist at- hat creates downtown develop- licies which favor the wealthy ore the needs of low and middle citizens. gh City Council and the DDA tered to the whims of the busi- mmunity, their misguided poli- actually keeping businesses ttling in Ann Arbor. A Detroit mpany employing 800 people Ily stopped considering moving Arbor when the company that only approximately 20 were available that their em- could afford. City desperately needs to re- e its inhumane and misguided 5I. [omeless Action Committee has an occupation of the Kline's lot. Cardboard boxes will be to symbolize the type of ig" to which the city gov- t has forced people to resort. -nd the message that the City rovide affordable housing for eless before it constructs addi- housing for cars: join HAC rs in a demonstration at 7:30 turday. Kline's is located on between Liberty and William. 0 Letters to the editor A u Take back the night Faculty vote not a conclusion To the Daily: Thanks to Peter Steiner's ar- bitrariness, I was not allowed to introduce a motion which was on the agenda at the April meeting of the LSA faculty. Instead, we were allowed to re- fer the question of how to deal with racism and other forms of cultural discrimination back to committee for another year. My motion would have directed the faculty of the College to consider in a serious way all of our curricular offerings, to de- termine how best we could ad- dress this serious question, and to bring our findings before the whole faculty for further dis- cussion and appropriate action. The motion which referred this question back to commit- tee was made in good faith but I am distressed by what it must mean for the College: we are committed, once again, to do- ing nothing. We have no excuse for inac- tion. I voted against the mo- tion to institute a required course on racism, not just be- cause I distrusted the idea of a required course as a solution to the very real problem of racism in our community, but also because I object to the faculty's making the student body our scapegoats. The problem of cultural discrimination is a community problem, not a student problem, and must be addressed as such. One of my colleagues has suggested that the most appro- priate way of dealing with the problem of racism and other forms of cultural discrimina- tion which face us might be the recreation of teach-ins. We used them to learn about the war in Vietnam. We could well use that same kind of fo- rum to learn about racism and other kinds of cultural prejudice in our community now. Perhaps we could institu- tionalize the teach-in this time, and propose to ourselves that every September we begin the school year with a teach-in on cultural prejudices. That might be a better way to begin the year than with a football game, or a Computer Kick-Off! The result would not be transcript certification of our student body as decent, though it might help us to become a better community. As Professor Williams said, we could well be on the verge all belong. If we can't solve the problem within the University, then we aren't a university. And if we aren't a university, then we can't have a College, and we don't need a Dean. -Bert Hornback April 9 Turkish students respond To the Daily: We are writing on behalf of the University of Michigan Turkish Students Association in response to two letters to the editor entitled "Remember Armenian Tragedy" (Daily, 3/24/89) and "Join Armenians" (4/6/89). We are distressed to see the encouragement of racism against the Turkish people, and the promotion of the "terrible Turk" image by Armenian Students Cultural Association Club, with their allegation of genocide leveled against Turks. No one has ever denied the overall tragedy that 74 years ago brought death and suffering to all the peoples of the Ot- toman Empire's eastern Anatolia region, including a significant number of Armeni- ans who perished as part of this tragedy. What we reject, how- ever, is the selective focus on the suffering of one ethnic group, while ignoring the suf- fering of millions of Turkish and non-Christian peoples. It has been well established that the Armenians of eastern Anatolia joined the invading Czarist Russian armies in re- bellion against the Ottoman Empire. Their subsequent relo- cation, in addition to inter- communal warfare, disease, and famine, took a heavy toll. However, tragic loss of life was not confined to the Arme- nian community. The non-Ar- menian death total, which was largely the result of Armenian revolutionaries, was over 2 million. These events cannot possibly be termed "genocide" on the part of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman responsibil- ity, if any, must lie in the em- pire's inability to protect its civilian populations (both Muslim and Christian) from wide-scale civil war, famine, and disease. 69 prominent American scholars, who have signed a statement published in the Washington Post and New panel discussion featuring both Turkish and Armenian partici- pants will follow. We do not wish to minimize the scope of Armenian suffer- ing; but we are cognizant that it cannot be viewed as separate from the suffering experienced by other inhabitants of the re- gion. Throughout the years in question, the region was the scene of continuous warfare, not unlike the tragedy which has gone on in Lebanon for the past decade. Continued allegations of genocide serve to spread the seeds of animosity, bigotry, and hatred between Turks and Armenians. We ask that Turks and Armenians alike acknowl- edge the human tragedy which has befallen all the peoples of eastern Anatolia during World War I, and strive to promote understanding and friendship instead of hatred. - Bahadir Inozu Kenan Akfirat April6 Whites unfairly accused To the Daily: In response to the letter by Mark Wilson (Daily, 4/5/89), I must say that I resent the big- oted, socially slanted intona- tions. Mr. Wilson implied that white, middle class students of this school have no social conscience, while the students of the predominantly Black Howard University had a ri- otous spirit that was "always motivated by some pressing social issue." It was clear to anyone who attended the celebration/riot that the revellers, although predominantly white, also in- cluded people from many dif- ferent races. Calling this crowd of approximately 10,000 people "irresponsible" based on the actions of one to two hun- dred people (that's about 1-2%o) is like calling the U of M all Black because 5% of the students are Black. No one would say something that idi- otic, yet Mr. Wilson made the same mistake in his letter. He even states that he had doubted the political sincerity of the students before coming here and he also said that the Ann Arbor Police would have treated the crowd much worse had it been a race other than white. Although some say po- lice actions in the past have been questionable, to state as fact that they would abuse nonno hoorl n r~r- tional person, but is the symptom of an angry individ- ual taking his frustrations out on an entire race. Although I agree that the ac- tions of some revellers were shameful, shame on Mark Wilson for judging our politi- cal and social values based on the actions of these few people. -Joe Wickenheiser April 5 Racist fliers response to letter To the Daily: FOR MANY women, night and dark- ness are frightening times, times to avoid being out alone, because of the danger of sexual assault. Although date and acquaintance rape are the most prevalent forms of rape, the danger of p ysical and verbal assault by strangers is a daily occurrence in Ann Arbor. :This Saturday, April 15th, the 10th atnual Take Back the Night Rally will take place at 7:30 pm at the Federal Building on the corner of Liberty and 5th. Two rallies will be held, one for vwomen, and one for men, after which tile women will continue the protest With a march. Men are encouraged to attend the rally to show solidarity with women who are demanding their rights to safety and freedom during the night. The march and rally will draw atten- tion to the need for rape awareness and ,1evention, and address crucial issues 4 4 4 111 On April 5, a racist flyer was slipped under the doors of the Baker-Mandela Center, the Lesbian and Gay Rights Orga- nizing Committee (LaGROC), and the Latin American Soli- darity Committee (LASC). The flyer said, "Faggots, niggers, and spic lovers- BEWARE! You have gone beyond accept- able criticism. NEVER AGAIN will you go unpun- ished." The day before this flyer ap- peared, an open letter to Presi- dent Duderstadt was published in the Daily, calling on him not to appear at a fund-raising dinner for the Jewish National Fund, on the basis of its dis- criminatory practices. (He ul- timately decided not to go, and denied that he had agreed to be listed on the program as an honorary chair). The open letter to Duderstadt was signed by a number of organizations, in- cluding LAGROC, UCAR (the United Coalition Against Racism, which works closely with the Baker-Mandela Cen- ter), and LASC. It seems clear that the racist 4 flyer was a response to the open letter to Duderstadt of the previous day. The racist/anti- gay slurs apparently refer to the above three organizations who signed the letter, and the state- ment "You have gone beyond acceptable criticism" is equally clear in this context. The burning of the Pales- tinian shanty, the acts of van- dalism at the Daily, including the break-in and spray-painting of threatening anti-Palestinian grafitti, and now this flyer, seem to part of an ominous pattern. A new form of violent, openly racist activity has emerged on campus and is at- tempting to physically intimi- date those who criticize Israel. I can only hone that this women face today including sexism, the triple oppression of women of color, and domestic violence. Students and community members should attend the rally and help empower women and themselves. Ct A1NfT TAX R.A. ESTATE~ *OZF Wilt. LEVE THE~ WE~ CAN@T TA CAP IThi. GAINS Njo e o i SLA~TE \ th /7 / I zzic - J