GRINNELL COLLEGE

- SCARLE'Ea

BLACK

THE STUDENT
NEWSPAPER

 

vol. LXXVI

Grinnell. Iowa, Friday. April 25. [959

No, 23

 

Causes and Solutions to Poverty

Symposium Calls for Construoiive hadicalism

Power Politics
Only Way

SAUL ALINSKY talks with interested
students on organizing for change.

“College today ls like a stagecoach
on the highway” said Saul Alinsky. “Col-
lege should be the training ground for
nrganizers." Organized power for re-
iorm. not idealistic daydreaming, is the
only way to construct a better world.

Community Organization was the topic
of “Prnfessional radical" Saul Aliusky.
Wednesday afternoon to the student
Symposium oi Poverty.

The veteran organizer stressed the
need for organization in order to obtain
the necessary power required to affect
change. “Unless you have the power,
everything else is rhetorici Power is pos-
rible through organizing. Organizing
should be done around issues which are
specific immediate, and realizablei An
issue is what you can do something
about,"

In talking about the Black Power
movement, he stressed the need for or-
ganized power along with the gaining oi
black identity. “Black Culture is esssen-
tial," but he warned. “One does not get
identity without power," “No number of
Dashikies, naturals, sunglasses or soul
food is power."

“if you want to change the world to
what you'd like it to be you must start
irom where you are," He suggested that
those interested in change “must get
with the world as it is." “There are
three things one must know about what
is,

1. people act in sell interest.

2. right things get done for the wrong

reason.

' 3. never make value judgments on the
basis or what is right but on the
basis of alternatives"

He stressed that i: any change is to
occur, elements at the middle class
whito society must also be included as
power allies. it all minority groups were
to become united they would still he in
the minority, requiring the aid at middle
L whites. He further commented that
“basically any people can be organ-
izer ."

Iiiter the lecture Mt: Alinsky answer-
ed questions and discussed student par-
ticipation in change at an iniormai ses-
sion at Conference House, He also pals
ticipated in the attarnoon panel on “The
Role of Community Acts in Reducing
Poverty.”

Keynote ~
Rational Action

By MICHAEL BRANDON

“! think we owe it to Ourselves to lis-
ten to student pmtestors to see what
they're saying," Dr. Robert Coles, a
Harvard University research psychia-
trist, said here Tuesday nighti

“It is not enough to decry the tactics
oi some students who take it upon them—
selves to occupy buildings when protest-
ing and demonstrating," Coles said. ”We
need to use all the understanding, com<
passion, and sensitivity We can mobilize
e—mt hysteria, not labeling, not name
Calling."

Coles, who is a contributing editor for
New Republic magazine. delivered his
remarks in a keynote address during
Grinneli's Student Symposium on Pov-
erty.

Coles told an audience of some 250
persons in Herrick Chapel that his gener-
ation uses young ‘demolistrators as
"scapegoats" when it criticizes them.
“We rail against them, rather than
rail against our own weakness and
failure."

“I love this country and I consider
myseli loyal,” Coles continued, “but 1
also realize that America has serious
problems that must be tackled and not
glossed overt"

Coles criticized the United States for
spending billions or dollars on space
exploration and the Vietnam War while

A iuli investigation or Thursday
aiternoon's ilag demonstration,
protesting the Vietnam war, will
appear in next week's Scarlet and
Black.

millions of Americans “are on the edge
or severe hunger, living the kind ot life
that can only be described as desperate,
painiul. and lacking sell-respect."

He also criticxzed those who tell the
needy “to Wait a little longer” and have
patience. “We owe it to ourselves to
realize that we suiler as others Stiller
and that when others don’t have, We
lack," he said,

Speaking or the recent disruptions at
Harvard, Coles said that he thought
some of the protesters acted “rudely and
maliciously," but that the disruptive
actions forced the administration to pay
heed to various demands.

“Rudeness is a bad sin,’ he added,
“but so is the rudeness of sellesatisfac-
tion, complacency, aild the contentment
of a Brooks Brothers suit and a Harvard
degree."

He said that the dissident students
“made the Harvard Corporation realize
that restructuring (the University) is an
important goal that has to be met."

Coles said that he found some of the
protesters to be “as nasty and arrogant
as some DI the Harvard administrators.

“However, i don’t think the students
were being purely distructive,” he ex-
plained. “A large number or them were
ethically concerned young Americans.”

Labels and names such as “the genera
ation gap” or “slits.” are not important
issues, Coles Said “The real issue isl
l-low yielding will we be to the cry ior
justice, we who have so much},

PTERO. Home for Now

A U.S. District Court judge last Wed-
nesday ordered iowa Attorney General
Richard Turner to return copy and photo
graphs his agents illegally seized irorn
Pterodactyl, Grinnell's underground
paper.

Judge Roy L. Stepheson ruled that the
confiscation oi the allegedly obscene ma-
terial at a Wilton Junction printing shop
on Mar. 13 was illegal because “no War-
rant tor the seizure of the materials We!
ever sought or issued"

Stephenson, however, denied a request
by Pterndactyl staff members for $11,000
in damages from the attorney general’s
oilice and an injunction to prevent lure
ther seizure of Pterodactyl materials,

The suit was tried by Grinnell phot0<
grapher Henry Wilhelm and Grinnell
junior Lawrence Frank, who were both
present at the SR Printers shop when
the material was seized. Attorney Clark
Holmes oi the Iowa Civil Liberties Union
handled the case for Pterodactyl.

Named as derendants in the suit along
with iurner were Asst, Atty. Gen. Doug-
las Carlson, Robert C. Blair, Director
of the Bureau of Criminal investigation,
and BC] agents Daniel Mayer and Terry
C. Johnson.

Stephenson ruled that the law enforce-
ment officials were immune irom civil
damages because they were acting with
in their oiiicial jurisdiction as agents or
the attorney general’s office

Although Turner testified that the ma-
terial was obscene, Stephenson ruled
that his testimony to that etlect had no
bearing on the Case.

“It is not the purpose or the law to
permit the dissemination of obscene ma-
terials but to prevent the abridgement
ot the right in a free society to un-
obstructed circulation ot non-obscene
materials,” Stephenson said in his rul-
mg.

Wilhelm, who went to Des Moines
Thursday to recover the material, told
the 5&3 he was not pleased with the
court’s actions.

“The court order to return the material
was much too long in coming." Wilhelm
said, reierring to the lact that Ptero-
dactyl was deprived of the right to pub-
lish the material for almost six weeks

Wilhelm also said that he and Frank
will appeal their request for damages
iron. Turner and the other agents. “It
public officials cannot be held respon—
sible for their actions it gives them a
free license to harass anyone they want,”
he said.

Wilhelm said that he is “working to
find a printer" and that he expects to
publish the seized material plus tour ad-
ditlonal pages about the seizure in an
issue of Plerodactyl that would be dis-
tributed next week.

Wilhelm said that he and his lawyer
expect Turner to ﬁle obscenity charges
when Pterodactyl is published, but that
they are confident that the courts would
not find Pterodactyl obscene.

ﬁg

Klelnschmidl Elected

Professor John Kleinschmidt (French)
has been elected Chairman or the facul-
ty iii a special election. He will cnm<
plate the unexpired term of the present
chairman, Joseph Wall (history) who
will vacate his post after becoming
Dean oi the college in September. Klein-
schmidt will serve until the regular elec-
tion in September, 1970.

S udenl Harassed
Racist Arrested

Last week, Roy Walker '69, a black
student, tiled charges in Justice of the
Peace Court in Grinnell against a man
who he identified as having passed him
in a car and shouted racial slurs at him.
Vernon Schooley of Grinnell pleaded
guilty to the charge of disturbance of the
peace and was fined $25.

Schooley was in a car with three or
four others when they passed Walker
last Thursday and shouted racial slurs,
such as “nigger", at him. when the car
passed, Walker tried to get the license
number, but the car was too dirty for
him to read it. Knowing from past ev-
perience that they would probably be
back, he waited, and when they ape
peared again, he copied the license num-
her from the front of the car. He then
gave this iniormation to the Grinnell
Police Department, and Schooley was
picked up within a half hour.

Although others in the car, construe
tion workers in their early twenties,
had also shouted these slurs at him,
Walker could only positively identify
Schooley, so he only tried one complaint.
This was the first time, however, that a
complaint had been tried, although this
harassment “is not unusual at all,” ac~
cording to Walker.

Walker said that incidents like this one
occur “constantly," and there have been
cases involving visiting black dignitaries,
as well as black students Usually, how-
ever, the students are unable to get the
license number of the car.

Grinnell Police Chief Bill Peters told
the 58:}! that this is the first time any
such case has gona into court, since the
offenders have been juveniles in all the
previous cases he knew oil in these
cases, Peters said, he has brought them
and their parents to the police station,
and talked to them, “eyeball to eyeball."

ﬂ!

Political Dealing Begins

By TED GLICK

Although most of Wednesday night'l
Senate meeting was rather mundane,
one notable event did occur concerning
the choice of a new Finance Committee
chairman. The decision, now nullified
due to the reopening oi applications tor
all Committees, appeared to he the first
“political dealing” oi the new adminis-
tration.

Freshman senator Andrew Brill had
been interested in being on the com.
mittee and attended the April 15 meet.
ing of the Committee with SGA Presi-
dent, Jim Lew. At that meeting the
old administration recommended wide-
spread budget changes including a $50
cut in the AWS and Com? salaries.
Committee member Michael Saeger en-
dorsed this measure to tighten a slim
budget and because the jobs are now
less demanding

Brill and Saeger applied for the posi-
tion of Finance Committee Chairman.
Brill recommended acrosstherboard sall
ary increases for SGA, AWS and Coil-l?
presidents. A board composed of Ernest
Weston, Jane West, Jim Lew. Frank
Thomas. and Bill Thomas chose Erlll for
the chairmanship,

In explaining the board's action, Lew
said, “When I select a chairman. ll

SENATE——
(Continued Page 8, Column I)

 

