4 Opinion Page e Wedpesday, June 17, 1981 The Michigan Daily The Michigan Daily Vol. XCI, No. 30-S Ninety Years of Editorial Freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Public victory IRDLED AS WE ARE by the age of the Moral Majority, it's heartening to see folks on the other.side willing to stand up and be counted. Monday night's Ann Arbor City Council meeting produced an outpouring of citizen op- position to a genuine case of Big Government in- trusion into people's lives--a proposed ordinan- ce requiring prisoners living in local halfway houses and parolees living elsewhere in Ann Arbor to register with the city. Public sen- timent against the proposal has been so intense that Mayor Lou Belcher announced Monday night the ordinance has been tabled in- definitely. The Mayor's announcement is welcome news for all concerned. As written, the proposed statute served little law-enforcement pur- pose-moreover, it would have raised serious Constitutional questions as to the violation of a parolee's right to privacy, due process and equal protection under the law. A statute of this type would surely stigmatize the ex-con, single him out as a social un- desirable to be watched and feared by the community-no matter how committed that person might now be to building a decent life. Is it the American tradition to kick someone when he's down? Monday night at City Hall person after person rose to voice these and similar sentiments. The City Council's retreat lends renewed credence to the notion that public opinion can make a difference, that political activism in 1981 need not be confined to the denizens of the political Right. Who knows-one of these days the real moral majority may prevail. 'More t By John Vandermeer The sign in my office window reading "U.S. Out of El Salvador" has been the source of much campus controversy, as Lou Fintor reported in his Michigan Daily article of June 10. While the particulars of the sign situation are somewhat humorous, the fact that a professor and the University administration are at odds with each other is certainly not news. The important facts are those to which the sign in my office at- tempts to draw attention. That. University personnel entered my office without my knowledge and removed my property is not nearly so important as the fact that the people of Central America are suffering and dying as a consequence of U.S. inter- vention. My own perspective comes from having lived and worked periodically in Central America for the last ten years. As a field biologist my work frequently bringstme into contractwith peasants and rural poor, and for- ces me to view first-hand the degradation and poverty that come from so inany-years of economic and military domination. FROM SUCH CONTACT I can- not shake ,certain images: children each day picking through garbage for foodein Guatemala City; elderly beggars, crippled with disease, in San Salvador; infants dying from malnutrition in rural Honduras; children taking a break from shining shoes Ato ask for the lef- tovers on my plate in San Jose, Costa Rica. Such images concern me far more than the legalistic question of a few pieces of paper on my window. These images are real life for the people of Central America. While I may have nightmares because of them, the people there must live those nightmares. And it is such inequties that are causing them to rebel, causing them to stand up and say "enough!" They have rebelled many times before, and in many ways. In 1954 the people of Guatemala elected a president who promised to take some of Guatemala's land back from the United Fruit Company and other foreign companies and return it to the Guatemalan people (these companies owned 72 percent of Guatemala's arable land). And where did that get them? The CIA engineered a coup, replaced the duly elected government with a military blessing that survives to this day - with full U.S. blessing. IN 1926, LIBERAL factions of the Nicaraguan people revolted against General Emiliano Chamorro, representative of the oligarchy. And where did that get han just a sign them? The U.S. government in-, the initials of the right-wing tervened militarily and installed death squad carved in their Adolfo Diaz-the same man it. chests, and all had their thumbs had installed as president after, tied behind their backs - a its first intervention in 1912. common practice of the junta. In 1959 El Salvadoran dictator And while the U.S. press Jose Mara Lemus, trained in the remains effectively, blacked out, U.S., unleashed a reign of terror fighting rages on in the rural on El Salvador that was too much areas of El Salvador, in part even for the rich of that country. firected by U.S. military person- The Salvadorans tossed him out nel, At this time the newly of office and set up a moderate created Aclajatl Brigade, a 2000- six-man junta, promising free man force specially trained by elections by 1962. U.S. Green Berets, is preparing And where did that get them? for a major offensive against The U.S. refused to recognize the guerrilla strongholds; thousands new regime, citing its.pro-Castro of people have been driven from stance (Fidel Castro, in fact, also their homes through search-and- refused to recognize the regime). destroy missions. All of the ac- The result was a new junta of tions of the junta are supported D EPARTPAET l d IAT Hnnmam night right-wing colonels whose first by over 35 million dollars in U.S. act was to order the police to fire military aid (this year alone), in- on protesting students. The U.S. cluding the famous remote sen- immediately recognized the new sing devices developed here at junta. the University of Michigan (that These examples are historical. politically neutral university). Do they have anything to do with . While the war continues with what is happening today? On a massive U.S. assistance in El recent visit to Nicaragua I asked Salvador, the U.S. is preparing a governmental official is he ex- for further intervention in pected further military interven- Guatemala, is backingdthe tion. His response: "We would be military regime in Honduras fools not to, if history is any in- (whose forces are reportedly dication."' He went on to indicate preparing for an invasion of that economic sanctions already Nicaragua), and is waging underway against Nicaragua are devastating economic warfare more effective than'military in- against Nicaragua. tervention. His sentiment was THESE ARE the images, per- that it was up to the people of all sonal experiences, historical fac- of Central America to defend ts, and ominous portents of the themselves against U.S. future that keep me awake at aggression, but it was up to the night. I hope all of us lose sleep people of the U.S. to stop their over what the United States is government from such doing in Central America! aggression in the first place. If, on the way, a couple of NOWHERE IS such professors become disturbed belligerance currently more ob- over someone's notion of the vious than in El Salvador. Earlier propriety of a sign in a this year a friend of mine and oc- professor's window, or a Univer- casional Ann Arbor visitor, sity lawyer worries about the Enrique Barrera Escobar, was legal ramifications of the Univer- kidnapped and tortured to death sity's tax status, I apologize for by the junta. His crime? He was any inconvenience I have caused. a member of the FDR, the um- B brella organization political small price to pay if just one per- groua opsend torin te jna son is influenced by the sign or A friend returning from San the discussions it provokes. Salvador last month told me he personally saw seven bodies on the side of the road on his drive John Vandermeer is an from San Salvador to the airport. associate professor of biology. Two were decapitated,two had at theUniversty of Michigqan. 4 4 4 4 4 0 a a e . ni r 4 4