Leveling From APand UP DETROIT-Police ripped a door off a Roman Catholic church yesterday and evicted a dozen squat- ters who tried for a month to stop a General Motors Corp. construction project from leveling the aging Poletown neighborhood. The eviction of the six men and six women ap- parently ended the year-long saga of the Immaculate Conception Church in the heart of the east side Poletown neighborhood. CHRISTINE KUJAWSKI, spokeswoman for the Ralph Nader-backed Poletown Support Group, said police backed two trucks up to the church door, pulled the door off with a large hook and removed the six men and six women inside. Demolition crews erected a 12-foot barricade around the church to keep protesters and others out of the church. Weeping parishioners watched from behind police lines as workers tore five-foot-high stone crosses from walls, removed bells from a tower, and disman- tled pews from the Immaculate Conception Church in The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, July 15, 1981-Page 3 bins i Pletown the remains of the neighborhood named for its many 1,300 houses being torn down to clear a 465-acre site residents of Polish descent, for the plant. GM says the $500 million plant will em- "WE'RE GOING TO pray for your souls because ploy between 3,000 and 4,000 workers assembling you're going to need it," one older woman told Cadillacs. workers as they carried out pieces of the church The occupiers had to be evicted yesterday because organ. "Anybody who would desecrate a holy san- the city must turn the cleared site over to GM by Sep- ctuary needs prayer. What a horrible, horrible thing. tember, said Joyce Garrett, a spokesman for Mayor There goes our beautiful church." Coleman Young. , The city of Detroit, the United Auto Workers union, GM and the hierarchy of the Catholic Archdiocese of ALL BUT A handful of Poletown residents have Detroit say the Cadillac assembly plant to be built in moved away. Those remaining live in a virtual ghost the neighborhood will keep thousands of auto in- town and are terrorized by many arson fires that dustry jobs in economically depressed Detroit. have torched the vacant homes where neighbors once The squatters were the core of a group that had lived. moved into the basement on June 16, shortly after the After their release, the 12 went back to the church archdiocese te he building over to the city. site and stood vigil nearby, awaiting its demolition. Water and light had been shut off weeks previously. Tom Olechowski, chairman of the Poletown Neigh- POLICE CHOSE the early hour to evict the demon- borhood Council, said the city and GM can destroy strators "because there would be less confusion and the church but not the spirit of Poletown. less chance of people being around," police Sgt. "GENERAL MOTORS, as it watches over the Dwain Wadkins said. destruction of our church, surely looks at a mirror Immaculate Conception is among the 16 churches, image of its own future," Olechowski said. "Poletown one hospital, two schools, 114 small businesses and indeed lives and will continue to live." Daily Photo by KIM HILL THREE SUSPECTS HAVE been arrested and charged with breaking and entering the University Museum of Art last May. They allegedly gained access to the Museum through steam tunnels, but police are still unsure of where they originally entered the tunnel system that runs throughout the campus. AR T MUSEUM ENTERED T HROUGH STEAM TUNNELS: Suspeet held in'Iea-m Wildlife group asks for Watt's dismissal WASHINGTON (AP)-The nation's largest conservation organization broke its longstanding silence on In- terior Secretary James Watt with a flourish yesterday. It asked President Reagan to fire him. Jay Hair, executive vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, said the stand was taken after a member- ship survey demonstrated over- whelming opposition to Watt's policies after his six months in office. "SAD TO SAY, we have.reached the point where removal is the only option that we see open to the president," Hair declared. "He places a much higher priority on development and exploitation than on conservation ... he pays lip service to environmental protectionr. . he is working to undermine or circumvent many of our basic environmental protection laws," he said. Hair said the federation's survey showed Watt was "out of step not only with the views of conservation leaders . . . but with the mainstream of American thought on conservation issues. "HE HAS QUITE frankly lost the confidence of Americans who are con- cerned about our environment," he said. Hair made the announcement at a news conference, saying he had just come from a meeting with White House officials at which he presented a letter to Reagan asking for Watt's removal as secretary. There was no immediate response from the White House or from Watt's office. THE WILDLIFE Federation has 800,000 national members and it classifies another 3.7 million people as members of state affiliates and other subsidiaries, or as contributors. The move by the federation-regar- ded as the most conservative of national conservation groups-puts it in line with most such organizations, some of which criticized Watt from the time of his nosmination- eenmbr By PAM FICKINGER Daily staff writer Ann Arbor police announced yesterday that they have ap- prehended a third suspect in the May break-in of the Univer- sity's Museum of Art. Police had arrested another suspect in the case last week and the first suspect was taken into custody earlier. Police said they believe the three were the only persons involved in the break-in. Police Sgt. Harold Tinsey said at least one of the suspects in custody is a University student. According to police, the three entered the museum through the network of un- derground steam tunnels that criss-crosses the campus. Nothing was taken in the break-in, police said, because a museum security guard interrupted the three before they got "to the point of picking anything up." POLICE SAID THE arrests of the three suspects were made by examining the physical evidence left in the steam tunnels at the scene. The evidence police found included gas masks, gas dispensers, bolt cutters, and a C.B. radio. Sam Ferraro, head of security at the art museum, said that the museum's security will likely be reevaluated and that the underground steam tunnels are a perrenial source of security problems for the entire campus. He added that the May break-in scheme "seemed to be fairly complicated." POLICE SAID the three suspects, after gaining entry to the museum, jumped a security guard, spraying him with mace, before fleeing. The security guard, Robert Ickes, said he was patroling the museum's machine room when the three men attacked him and fled. Ferraro also said there was some concern about the access people have to the museum, but that because the museum is a public place, it is difficult to control the problem and that it is one that is constantly being reevaluated. HE ADDED THAT the last attempted theft at the museum was in August, 1973. During that summer, things were taken but were recovered very quickly, he said, adding that those thefts occurred during the day-not during the night, as with the recent break-in. The director of University security, Walter Stevens, said it is unknown where the suspects entered the steam tunnel net- work. He said police are trying to persuade the suspects to identify the point of entry.