Volume 29 - Issue 1

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Dana Goodyear Caroline Adams • jay Dixit • E/iulmh Embry• Laurm Goldy • Sara Harltavy • David Hoffinan Christina Lung

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'"lkeNe~-x ;r(LUJ)laj_voL-UME-29, .ll~ ,VVJ!.__ SEPTEMBERN-UMB-ER 6, 1996 I~ F E A T U R E S _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ __

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Gang buster Police Lieutenant Billy White and his task force are cleaning the streets of New Haven. Last September they orchestrated the biggest drug bust in Connecticut history.

BY }AY DIXIT

p. 10

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For Jobs, for Justice, and for Jesse A report on the attempt by Locals 34 and 35, and just about everyone else, to rally support at Commencement.

BY ALEc BEMIS AND GABRIEL SNYDER

22 24

Photo Essay: The People's Commencement

BY ALEc BEMIS AND MA!usA GALVEZ

Consensus Takes Root In the Montana wilderness, loggers and environmentalists have learned to work together to settle their differences, raising hopes ofa new approach to managing the nation's forests.

BY BRYAN FosTER

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T AN D A R D

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About this Issue

5

Letters to the Editor

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Points of Departwe

p.24 Cover pbo[Oby Alec Bemis. Cover design by Ka[e Merkel-H ess.

THE Ntw jOuRNAL is published five times during o:he academic year by The New Journal at Yale. Inc.. P.O. Box 3431 Yale Station, New Haven, cr o6sto. Offia add,....: tSt Park Street. Phone: <10y 4l1-19S7¡ AU contents copyright '99S by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. AU Rights Racrved. Rq>roduction eio:her in whole or in pan wio:hout written permission of o:he publisher and editor in chief is prohibited. While o:his magarine is pubLished by Yale CoUegc srudents, Yale Univeruty is not responsible for its contents. Ten o:h~d ~ies of each issue are distributed free: to members of o:he Yale and Nrw Haven community.

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New York City's chapter of the Yale Club sits directly opposite an entrance to Grand Central Station in midtown Manhattan. Walking past the entrance of the station this summer, I saw people of all sizes, shapes, and colors spinning in and out of the revolving doors like tops. When I first entered the Club, I expected to see a diversity of people similar to that which I had just witnessed scurrying about the Grand Central terminal. I expected to see and feel what makes Yale, YaLe. But when the elevator stopped at the 22nd floor and the doors slid apart, I wondered where the many different types of Yalies were hiding. Under the erudite platter? Behind the nacho stand? Amongst the scattered bartenders?

As I stepped meekly from the elevator's protective wood-paneled walls and burgundy carpeting, the room I entered might as well have been a foreign country.

This was not the Yale I have come to know and love, the Yale that defies the tight grasp of Old Blue with its staggering variery of opinions. Looking around this room I saw only one Yale "type" represented. Sure, there were faces I recognized and people I hugged closely after several months away from New Haven. But I could not help wondering what conclusions might be drawn by someone who does not know Yale the way I do.

I was reminded of this thought as I watched the Class of 2000 drift onto Old Campus in uneven clumps last week. Some of the spanking-new Yalies wore expressions reminiscent of a blank slate untouched by the knowledge of what Yale has to offer. Others appeared certain that they had figured everything out long ago, and now they were only waiting for the scenario of a college life to begin. The Yale Club was nowhere in sight on this sticky August day, yet I found myself thinking about what these new students might have thought of Yale had they experienced it first through the Yale Club rather than through the mass mingling of freshpersons that occurs on Old Campus.

Fortunately, the Class of 2000's members have four years ahead of them to find the different sides of Yale and experience the ones that are meaningful to them. Stepping onto Old Campus and stepping into the Yale Club's Thursday night happy hour have only one commonaliry, but it is a significant one: in each case, there is much more to be found than meets the eye.

This issue ofThe New journal exposes some of the different sides to Yale, from Jesse Jackson's much-publicized Commencement march to a forestry project developed far from the confines of the Yale campus. The issue even uncovers some parts of the Yale community that might usually go unnoticed, such as the world of the New Haven Police Department's Drug Gang Task Force and the vision of a Yalie summering in New Haven. Each of these pieces will shake the perceptions of Yalies both new and old regarding their adopted home. Students and faculty members can stand to take a look at what lurks just beneath the surface of the stereotypical Yale.

-H]M

Representative: John Fulton

24 Water Street, Palmer, MA 01069 1-800-82INKIT • 1-800-824-6548 4

Tm NEW JouRNAL

To the editor: I have been a volunteer escort for women seeking medical assistance at the Summit Women's Center in Bridgeport, CT for the past six months. From this work I have observed Stanley Scott's behavior quite well. And the description written by Eva Bonime (TN], April 19, 1996, "Stanley") gave him more credit than he is due.

"A rapport borderin g on affection develops berween Stanley and the escorts."

To me this is an outrageous observation.

D uring the last six months, I have seen Stanley use the sign that he always carries to shove escorts who were helping women avoid his verbal and physical harassment.

Male esco r ts and the men who have accompanied women into the clinic have been no more immune to his wrath than the women. I am a 24-year-old male at six feet, one inch, weighing 200 pounds, and Stanley has shoved me on numerous ocassions. Recently, I was shoved rwice by Stanley while I was helping a woman get out of her car. Stanley's strategy is to run up to cars that pull into the parking lot and block one of the doors of their car.

H e then yells a repertoire of obscene language, demanding to know if they are "here to murder your baby!" And while doing this he plasters his sign across their window. On a different occasion he tried to trip me by putting his feet between mine while I was escorting a woman to the entrance of the clinic.

Stanley and othe r anti-choice protesters have continually threatened the other escorts and me with threats of violence, speaking for God, who they say will arrive to torture and kill us in many different ways, depending on the imagination and mood they might be in that particular day. On the Saturday of May 4, one of the escorts was told she would burn in hell while worms consumed her body.

I have never heard Stanley "compliment the escorts for being dedicated, even if their morals are wrong."

SEPTEMBER

6, 1996

But I have heard him say to one of the older female escorts of our group, at the end of a morning after all of the patients were helped getting into the clinic, that she had one foot in the grave and the other sure to follow.

On the Saturday of May 4, one member of the staff of the Summ i t Women's Center was driven to the e~trance of the clinic to be dropped off by her husband who was driving the car.

The woman's child, no older than four years of age, was also in the car riding in the back seat as the staff member got out of her vehicle to enter her place of work.

Stanley approached the car, placed his sign on the window, and yelled at the child of the worker, "Do you know that your mother is a murderer?"

There is no "buffer zone," as Ms. Bonime has written, berween Stanley and the escorts or the clinic building. Antichoice protesters, including Stanley, shove escorts and stand directly in front of the clinic entrance every week to intimidate the patients and the escorts. At the time of this article's appearance in your journal, Stanley was arrested on a Saturday at the clinic by the Bridgeport police on charges of third-degree assault.

He eventually posted $1,000 for bail and was released. On the following Tuesday, the next time the clinic was open after Saturday, he was back, loud and forceful as ever. I do not know the exact number of times he has been arrested for assault or on other charges related to the clinic, but this arrest was definitely not his first.

Stanley and the other people with whom I have contact at the Bridgeport clinic need no help in their cause to dictate what is correct and the "Truth" they say is missing from our lives. Two bumper stickers that Ms. Bonime did not mention in her article grace Stanley's van and the vehicle of one other member of their gang: "Pat Buchanan for President" and "U.N. out of U.S." "Where are the people on the life side?" Stanley says in the article. I think

the people he is looking for are actively engaged in many circles at the city, state, and federal level.

-Joseph C. Krummel

Norwalk, CT To the editor: I was upset by "Stanley" (TN], April 19, 1996). Surely, with dozens of articulate, sensible pro-life activists in the Yale community to choose from, Eva Bonime could have foun d a b et t er representacive. I have found that the great majority of the pro-lifers at Yale focus their efforts on helping women, not harassing them, yet she portrays someone at the opposite extreme. At best this is sensationalism, but in all probability it's stereotyping. We've all seen these stereotypes before (pro-life me n are vioh!nt and incoherent, pro-life women are submissive and overly religious), but I'm disappointed that a magazine as scholarly as The New journal would further their use.

It is understandable why a viewpoint which disdains religion and ignores science would resort to personal attacks to promote its case. It is easier to make fun of a 72-year-old man and ind irectly insult him for being a virgin than it is to face the facts. It is not understandable why a society which recogn izes t hat parasites and bacteria are alive, which does not discriminate due to s ize or intelligence, and which realizes that the immense changes which take place during conception take place at no other time, does not value human life before birth.

-David Anderson UE ' 99)

The New Journal encourages and welcomes

m.,

letters to the editor. however, reserve the right to edit for length. Please send all correspondence to Letters to the Editor, The New journal P.O. Box 203432, New Haven, CT, 06520. Email can be addressed to tnj@pantheon.cis.yale.edu.

5

Naples Hops on the Wagon

people's dismay, a valid ID card is now Coalition is chiefly a Southern Baptist institution, and Southern Baptists are required.

This drastic measure is in direct relatively scarce in this city. Moreover, New A dark room, 1980s music on the Haven is home to our fair school, which jukebox, strange faces, and a plastic pitcher response to a $2,500 fine imposed by the religious conservatives have damned for of beer perpetually on the table: this image Connecticut State Liquor Control after decades as a bastion of liberalism and Naples was busted last November for of my first few nights at Yale resembles atheism. underage drinking. that of many undergraduates.

None of which dissuades Brian Green On Friday and Saturday nights, Sasha For upperclassmen and alumni alike, a (PC '80), founder of the Coalition's latest cold pitcher of watered-down beer at Mandl (MUS '96) now stands in the wellchapter. An evangelical Pentecostal, he Naples embodies the very essence of their lit entrance stamping a big black "21" on freshman-year experience. Traditionally, the hands of customers who intend to contends that devout Christians in New Thursday nights at Naples, which has consume alcohol only after they have , Haven are underrepresented by community organizations, and that their called itself "the 13th residential college," proven they are of age. After several years churches have abandoned Christian are flooded with the younger members of studying at Yale, Mandl knows what goes principles by adopting liberal ways. New Yale's beer-guzzling, pizza-loving crowd on in New Haven. "No one gets by me," who want to hang out and drink. Indeed, Haven also holds a particular place in the he declares with confidence. '~d no one Coalition's history: it is the place where sharing a pitcher at Naples with new buys me, either." founder Pat Robertson (LAW '55) once classmates has cemented many a budding Many students have heard rumors studied. about the social upheaval. One junior tried friendship and created many a blurry memory.

In spite of Green's enthusiasm, I was his luck on a Thursday night with a fake altogether skeptical of the new chapter's But no longer, says Tony Prifitera, the . ID. The waitress called his bluff and confiscated the fake. In the end, the chances for success. When I ~ntered its restaurant's manager. "Things have to first meeting-a "pro-life night"-ten change-we just don't have a choice." The manager returned the bogus ID, but only pitcher, which formerly allowed one minutes late as the last member of an after the underage drinker had signed a slip person to buy and others to drink, is now audience that numbered only six people, I of paper ackno~ledging his responsibility.

His signature would have protected Naples gone. Instead of these communal thought my suspicions were confirmed.

Soon after I arrived, Green, a very tall, containers acquired at the counter, 16had the police conducted a raid that night. thin man, stood up in the front of the ounce glasses are served by one of five Disgruntled upperclassmen who have room and led the audience in a forgettable recently-hired waitresses, in accordance not yet turned 21 bemoan the loss of their prayer. He introduced himself and spoke pitcher-filled youth, while bewildered with Connecticut state law. And, to many briefly about the mission of the New ., freshmen seem unsure what to 2 make of the news. The Naples Haven Christian Coalition chapter: "Our ~ staff is confident, however, that job is to drag this society slowly but surely ~,~~!.IJ~tll!~~~~liiiiiiiiiii;; students will continue to flock back toward the foundation of Christian principles that this nation was built on. It's ~ .. into the restaurant once more in g' accordance with Connecticut state a hard job, but somebody has to do it."

3 ie: laws and in keeping with an only Green then introduced Jane Salce, the ~ slightly altered tradition of 30 leader of the Christian Coalition in Connecticut. A short, middle-aged woman ~ years. ~ with tan skin and hair tied back in a bun, -Caroline Adams ~ <: Salce delivered a not-entirely-coherent :3 series of words about the Christian l!!. Can the Coalition Coalition's political agenda. In keeping Coalesce? with the Republican message of the New Haven does not seem like moment-the meeting was held on the last night of the conven tion in San fertile ground for the Christian Coalition. The Coalition's Diego-Salce attempted to downplay the significance of abortion by mentioning membership is overwhelmingly other issues. "We have a problem with Republican, while New Haven is taxes, we have a problem with education, overwhelmingly Democratic. The

j

THE NEW JouRNAL

:!i we have a problem with-with no saywe ... are ... the employers. They are the employees. They're telling us what to do.

It's not supposed to work that way."

I was able to overlook the dubious truth-value of her contention that evangelical Christians provide the majority of jobs in the state. But it gave me pause to hear a leader of a populist movement use a rallying cry for class warfare that incites the wealthy and powerful to act against the less fortunate. Is this what the Coalition uses in Alabama?

Bert Hilberger, former President of the Connecticut Tax Law Association and the man in charge of the night's presentation on abortion, followed Salce. Bert was alone that night; he usually co-presents with a nurse and an obstetrician. Together, the three refer to themselves as the "Truth Squad," and they tour around the state giving a presentation they call "Abortion: Scourge of the Twentieth Century."

Hilberger's presentation consisted of a monologue accompanied by slides and a videotape. The question-and-answer session that followed began with an uncomfortable silence. It was broken when one woman told Green that the videotape Hilberger showed was too gruesome to be seen by children. I smiled to myself. These people are clearly a lot less cynical, a lot less desensitized, a lot more easily fazed than the youth they want to protect.

An audience member suggested the Coalition strive to involve members of non-Christian faiths in its effort to eliminate abortion. Green used her comment to launch into his vision of the Christian Coalition's big tent: "Our enemies are not people of different faiths.

Our enemies are people who have no faith." Then he looked directly at me for a moment, and I ·wondered if that was my cue to get up and leave. The look on my face must have betrayed my family's proud and centuries-old tradition of fervent atheism.

Every momenr of the night had been spent preaching to the converted. Though SEPTEMBER 6,

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Green's rhetoric about the Coalition's mission was unequivocal, I left the meeting unconvinced that anyone has a strong sense of what the Coalition is trying to accomplish in New Haven. If Green really believes that his enemies are New Haveners who have no faith, he is going to have a city's worth of enemies.

-john Bullock

Summer on the Streets of New Haven Summer in New Haven is about seeing the city differently. After all, the hordes of students who daily consume any Yalie's line of vision during the academic yea.r are, simply, gone. The day after Commencement, a new map of New Haven is drawn as the graduating class drives out of the city. It's not that familiar streets suddenly move to new and unexpected places or that restaurants and stores relocate. What I sensed was a geography of vision different

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than what I face during the academic year.

This new geography contours the movements of a group that I think goes sadly unnoticed during the school year: the people who live and work in New Haven on a more permanent basis than most Yalies. What highlighted these daily movements for me was the way I became, at least temporarily, part of them. Every morning from Monday to Friday, I got up at 7:30a.m. and walked to my job at Yale University Press. For the first time, I felt 1'ike I really saw th e commuters and residents who were, and still are, walking and driving and biking to their respective jobs-a people's movement veiled by the masses of Yalies who take over from late August to late May. I didn't really live far from campus, subletting an apartment in the Oxford with what seemed like most of my class in Saybrook College. The subtle change in vision effected by my stay h·ere this summer suggests how porous the walls are that segregate New Haven from Yale. The university and the city are not totally disconnected. Yet while they occupy the same urban center, they remain unwed as an urban community. It would be a lie for me to say that this contradiction was one I had never seen before. When I drive around New Haven during the school year, I have an urge, which I believe is common to many New Haven drivers, to run a few Yalies down. We, and I am as guilty as the next Yalie, assume that cars are made of ether in New Haven. Or maybe they're simply invisible to us because we allow them to go unseen.

This summer's shift in vision was no burst of light and truth: in fact, light and truth may have been eclipsed by my summer in New Haven.

-joel Burges

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THE NEW JouRNAL

I don't want to work for The New Journal! I have better things to do with my time than work for a magazine that has received every major

writing prize at Yale as well as numerous awards from the

Columbia Scholastic Press Association.

Besides, The New Journal is just a training ground for media types like TNJ founder and

Pulitzer Prize winner, Daniel Yergin, or past TNJ staffer and

editor of the Chicago Tribune, Jack Fuller. And you ~~r,... think just because The ' ..., New Journal is the

oldest magazine at Yale and also has the largest circulation, I'm supposed to be impressed? Give me some credit. So, I beg of you, go ask someone who cares.

Well, while we won't be seeing him at any TNJ meetings, we would love to see you! The New Journal is looking for innovative writers, DTP demigods, cutting-edge designers, dynamic photographers, artistes extraordinaires, business tycoons, and interested, interesting Yalies in general. If one of the above

applies to you, look out for posters for our organizational meetings or call The New Journal office at 432-1957.

9

By Jay Dixit Pollee Lieutenant Billy White and his task force are cleaning ap the streets of New Iavan. Last September they orchestrated lila biggest drag bust in Conaectlcat history.

Billy Willie was wearlag llalletproof Kewlar, a jacket willa tile ward "POLICE " prlated oa tile back, aad jeaaa. Bla piece was a Glock, a alae· •llll•eter r.••tal-•e• Bawea Pol ce Depart· •eat ataadard laaae.

Around him, in the cavernous room, hundreds of other men sported similar attire: bulletproof vests, jackets marked FBI, DEA, or ATF. and police-issued weapons. Some were patrolmen, wearing police uniforms, while others were u ndercover. Around him, White recognized state troopers, special agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), deputies from the U.S. Marshal's office, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents, and other police detectives. There were anti-narcotics case agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and intelligence officers from the West Haven, East Haven, Hamden, and New Haven police departments. White looked around. These were his people, the ones who would be by his side on the front lines. ftiS waa llle •e• HaweD Drag IMg

7aak Farce, aad Lleateaaat Billy Wblte ••• Ia cllarge of lt.

It was 3 a.m. on September 28, 1995, and most of the men had been up since the morning before. None of them would sleep that

10

night either. They had a big day ahead of them.

Hours earlier, White had been in his office, writing out paperwork and preparing warrants. Meanwhile, TweedNew Haven Airport had quietly filled with fede ral agents, flying in from New York and Washington, D C. They had then rendezvoused at the southwestern corner of the city to talk strategy. The team's field headquarters that night would be Coxe Cage, a warehouse of a building conveniently tucked away in Yale's athletic fields on the very edge of town.

The 300-man coalition of feds, state police, and local police had gathered to discuss the next step in the war on drugs. White listened as his friend Kevin Kline, an FBI special agent and one of the original members of the task force, delivered a r~~ng seeech to the law enforcement army that had assembled. ODe laid oat tbe battle plaD for Ole ........... nat: the agents were to organize themselves into tactical squads, forming arrest teams and back-up crews. The teams assigned to carry out raids received arrest packets containing the names, addresses, and photographs of each suspect, as well as search warrants authorized in federal court. At 5:30 a.m., the teams were to split up, each reporting to their designated arrest sites in New Haven, East Haven, West Haven, North Haven, and Branford to prepare for the

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final phase of the operation: making the arrests. As he listened, White asked himself whether this team could pull off a successful operation.

Born and raised in New Haven, White still remembered a time when New Haven was considered a peaceful town. "This used to be a great city," says White. In 1960, only six murders, four rapes, and 16 robberies were reported. Ia 1110,

tllare ware II audara, 118 rapa, ud 1,714 rebllerlea. Gangs sprayed bullets at

schoolbuses; they also killed a six-year-old girl, mistaking her parents' car for that of a rival gang. In 1991, half of the homicides reported in the city were the result of gang violence. In the early 1990s, White was a patrol sergeant. "Back then it was hell," he recalls. "I thought, 'What are we doing?'"

fte alhlatlea ••-•d llepeleaa fer . . . lavu, ud It did aet appear tllal llelp waa ea tile way. In Washington, DC, the White House was losing its own war on drugs.

Despite the Republican administration's intensifying counterattacks, the government's efforts fai led to make a dent in the supply on the streets. Law enforcement agencies tried everything: they deployed military forces equipped with superior hardware, increased federal drug seizures tenfold, and began to exert diplomatic pressure on drug-supplying counrries to curtail drug production. Border controls were tightened. But none of this seemed to have an effect on the tide of drugs flowing in. The supply of drugs kept mushrooming, and drug seizures that had always been measured in grams and pounds were now measured in tons. By the early 1990s, the physical proliferation of street drugs was so heavy that random laboratory tests showed that almost every U.S. bill in circulation bore trace amounts of cocaine.

In New Haven, residents feared for their lives. laa1a were tarrarbla1 tile city, but at the time, the police chief would not acknowledge that gangs even existed in New Haven. Says White, "Maybe he didn't know we had a gang problem. I knew we had a gang problem." The transactional crime-fighting techniques used by the local police were not working. Sting operations where police bought drugs or guns on the street and then arrested members low in the gang hierarchy had little impact because smalltime dealers did not have much control over the market. Street level dealerships were easy to replace, requiring little money, influence, and firepower, so arresting street runners merely created vacancies for eager new dealers to move in. "They were in, they were out, they were back on the streets," recalls White. "We were banging our heads against the wall."

The New Haven Police Department (NHPD) did the only thing it could do: it asked for help. Past attempts to coordinate federal and local authorities had failed as inter-agency cooperation degenerated into clashing egos and competition over who was in charge; but now, the federal agencies responded. A meeting was

SEPTE.MBEll

6, 1996

called berween federal law enforcement agencies and the NHPD. The New Haven Drug Gang Task Force was born.

Task force members soon realized that involving federal agencies in the anti-gang offensive had distinct advantages. fte

led• were •acb baUer eqalpped to ftaaace 1ar1• scale aperatl••• and invest the necessary time and expertise

to achieve the "takedown" of the drug gangs.

Members of the task force knew that to shut down the gang leadership, federal prosecutors needed powerful laws, since many gang bosses seemed above the law. Some had never acrually pulled the trigger or sold drugs on the srreets themselves, choosing instead to control their operations by sending orders down and waiting for money to flow up. The task force began to target drug gangs systematically, beginning in 1992 with a narcotics street gang known as the Jungle Boys, which had been identified as the most violent gang in the area.

To dismantle the leadership of the Jungle Boys and other criminal networks, federal investigators in New Haven rapidly became experts at going after racketeering indictments using a set of federal statutes known as the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Originally enacted in 1970 to

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fight the Mafia, RICO empowered New Haven law enforcement agents to prosecute the Jungle Boys as part of a "continuing criminal enterprise." For example, if prosecutors can show that a Jungle Boys kingpin gave the order for a murder, the leader can be charged even though he may never have left his living room. "We take down the hierarchy as part of the general conspiracy," explains Robert Grispino, a supervisory special agent with the FBI in New Haven. "John Gotti ordered the hit.

He didn't pull the trigger, but the guy's still dead. John Gotti now has a murder count as part of his conspiracy."

Under the RICO statutes, law enforcement agents gained an arsenal of powerful tools against organized crime. In the anti-gang initiative, detectives had access to inv¡estigative grand jury subpoenas, obtaining court-authorized wiretaps-or Title Ills-to build evidence without alerting the suspects. With permission to use government surveillance to eavesdrop on a suspect's phone line, criminals were damned by their own words, says Merrill Parks, the special agent in charge of the FBI Post of Duty in New Haven. "It's amazing how some of these people can come to court and talk like complete altar boys," says Parks. "But on the street they're saying, 'Kill the motherfucker!'" Besides wiretaps, evidence was gathered through informants (witnesses who give tips but choose not to testify in court) and cooperating witnesses (civilians who go undercover and use marked government money to buy drugs, then later appear in court with an audio tape of the transaction).

To keep career criminals behind bars, federal sentences are much more severe than those in state courts. Once

prosecutors demonstrated that violent crimes were committed in aid of racketeering, convictions that might have meant a suspended sentence in state courts often carri ed decades-long terms. The Jungle Boys, and later, the Island Brothers, the Wild Wild West, the 'Ville, the Latin Kings, and Los Solidos all faced RICO charges. Federal prisons have enough space to guarantee that most of the life sentences are served in full. When the Jungle Boys were arrested, "they thought it was the same old stuff again," recalls White. "They were saying, 1\h, we'll be out in an hour, call the bondsman.'" T hen the marshal arrived and explained t heir situation.

"They realized they weren't going to state court, they were going to federal court," says White. "That took a little wind out of their sails." The Jungle Boys pleaded guilty and are now serving life sentences.

Federal statutes provide powerful methods both for convicting violent criminals and for making sure that they are permanently removed from society. But federal agents could not perform their duty without the intelligence and contacts provided by local police. Local authorities carry out the bulk of field investigationswalking the beats, patrolling neighborhoods in police cruisers, maintaining contact with informants on the street, and gathering intelligence. Typically, New Haven cops were the ones who identified gang members to be targeted by the task force, and White was one of the best cops in the city.

A 29-year veteran of the police force, White had participated in hundreds of drug busts. He was the kind of cop that other police officers looked to for leadership. He looks like someone a drug dealer would avoid at all costs. With classic THE NEW JouRNAL

tough-guy elegance, his hair combed back into a pony tail, sporting jeans and a wry smile, he talks in a slangy, streetwise way about "goin' after the bad guys." On the force, White had a reputation for being one of the most dedicated police detectives the town had ever seen, the kind of cop who was "out there" all the time, tracking suspects, orchestrating photographed buys, often putting in 24-hour days. ased on his experience, White knew that in an operation as complex as a drug raid, timing is everything. That means knowing exactly when to stop gathering evidence and start making arrests. If authorities strike too soon, U.S. attorneys may n~t have enough evidence to convict, and years of undercover work will go to waste. If they wait too long, the chances increase that their cover will be blown.

Once a date for a raid has been set, timing becomes even more critical. Agents have to stay out of sight. If they reveal themselves too soon, suspects have the

B

chance to bide in their homes, to flee, or worse, to arm themselves. The participating agencies try to choreograph their efforts so that every suspect gets a knock on the door at the same time. Delays between arrests allow suspects time to tip each other off by phone, and that means arresting agents arrive at empry houses.

Even a perfectly synchronized raid can end in disaster. Drug gangs in New Haven have been known to carry Mac-lOs, M-16s, and AK-47 automatic assault rifles. As a result, the most common incident is the plain, old-fashioned shoot-out. To date, no New Haven officers have been killed in raids, but in 1994 an officer was badly wounded. The task force was carrying out a drug raid on an after-hours club when someone inside opened fire, hitting Officer Reginald Sutton in the chest. He owes his life to his bulletproof vest.

As Sutton could testify, New Haven's criminals were well-armed. And while the legal arsenal provided by federal racketeering laws made it easier to bold defendants in jail without bail once they

had been arrested, many of them were stili on the street. Merrill Parks, of the New Haven FBI, believes that members of violent narcotics gangs are past the point of no return. Gang members today, he says, grow up with a system of values that rewards violence. Parks recalls a gang member in Washington, DC, who had killed 19 people by the time he was 20 years old. One of his victims was an elderly woman who had bumped into him crossing the street. He shot her in the head with a nine-millimeter pistol. Says Parks, "These people are growing up with the cultural values of a predator." This point was driven home for White one day in 1994.

Billy White's oldest son, Tyler, was 22.

He had graduated from Wilbur Cross University, where he played football, and was working as an orderly at a hospital. On the night of May 13, 1994, he met up with a young man named Arosmo "Ra Ra" Diaz, and the two went to a bar in New Haven.

They left the bar some time later to go to a party in Bridgeport. Early the next morning, Tyler's body was found in his car 0 I

13

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with two gunshot wounds to the head.

Near the car was the bullet-ridden body of Diaz.

Police believe that the Latin Kings suspected Diaz of being a police informant-a snitch. A godfather of the gang had ordered his death. Arosmo was the intended target, and Tyler was kilJed because he was in the car with him.

Presumably, the murderers didn't want to leave a living witness.

Three members of the Latin Kings were charged with racketeering and murder.

White attended their trial in Bridgeport and listened as recordings were played of a conversation between two of the defendants, obtained from government surveillance. One particularly incriminating conversation probably clinched the guilty verdict when it was played in court: "Yo, we fucked up."

"Why?" "Yo, now I know the man was a snitch."

"How do you know?"

"You know the one that was with them?

He was a cop's son."

AlJ three defendants were convicted and are now serving life sentences in federal prison without the possibility of parole.

They will be in prison until the day they

die.

A

fter the death of his son, White continued to head the Drug Gang Task Force. The task force took the criminal enterprise strategy one step further. Just as the RICO statute allowed police to dismantle the chain of command within the hierarchy of a drug gang, the task force now sought to take down the next level in the drug gang pyramid. The Latin Kings and the Jungle Boys were low-

level distributors, that is, street dealers.

The street dealers were getting their drugs from somewhere, and when police intelJigence suggested that the source was local, the NHPD decided that cutting off the lifeblood of the New Haven gangs might prevent them from coming back.

The thinking behind this move was the same as the strategy for waging the war on drugs everywhere, from inner-city street gangs to international cartels. Drugs don't go directly from the farms in South America into a drug user's vein: they make stops along the way. At each of these stops, the drugs change hands, going through smaller and smaller suppliers until they reach street dis'tribution networks in U.S. cities. This is what police mean when they talk about different "levels" of dealership. The higher a dealer is on the drug distribution ladder, the more valuable the arrest is to the police. This principle holds true all the way up to the Colombian drug lords, such as the multibillionaire kingpins of the notorious Cali cocaine cartel, whose drug empire supplies 85 percent of drugs in America, and grosses about $7 billion per ye:u in U.S. profits alone.

In 1993, NHPD already knew about a local crack dealer named Sal Bova. Rather than arresting Bova right away, police waited to see who his supplier was. They watched him sell drugs to a cocainerunner from Queens, then arrested them both. The supplier, it turned out, was Diego Alexander Holguin-a Colombian national. When the police searched him, they turned up three items of interest: eight ounces of cocaine, $12,000 in cash, and a scrap of paper. The scrap of paper had a telephone number scribbled on it.

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netting a goldmine of incriminating material: an address book of dealers and suppliers. Police stepped up surveillance, using court-authorized wiretaps to tap the phone lines of suspected suppliers. Things proceeded without too many surprises until police t raced calls to Cali, Colombia's cocaine capital. FBI Special Agent Robert Grispino explains, "As the New Haven case developed, they identified Colombians-actual real live guys from Colombia, part of the cartel, who were distributing cocaine to the different areas."

According to DEA head Thomas Constantine, the Cali cartel is "bigger than the Mafia in the U.S. ever was." In his words, the Cali cartel is "the biggest organized-crime syndicate there has ever been. " Realizing that they had stumbled onto one of history's largest crime syndicates right in their own town, the task force turned· up the heat, sending officers in to pose as drug buyers. Using marked government money, undercover agents bought cocain e and heroin. It became clear the Fair Haven ring was a big supplier, probably supplying to many local gangs.

Over the summer, the task force had secretly indicted 32 people, and now it was finally time to act on the warrants. At exactly 6 a.m., the task force executed a coordinated sweep, simultaneously arresting 29 out of the 32 people indicted.

The arrests in the New Haven area all proceeded without incident. Afterwards, FBI special agent Robert Grispino was struck by the intensity of the emotion displayed. "It was quite a sight," he told reporters. "With some of the New Haven cops, there were tears in their eyes." Billy White, of course, was among them. "We

got some big fish, too, guys that handled multi, multi, multi kilos," says White.

"That was the biggest one we've ever done."

Of the 29 arrested, about 13 were Colombian nationals. The task force had successfully apprehended many of the importers and distributors that had connections with source companies. "The core organization that they arrested here in New Haven had direct connections with Miami, San Juan, and Cali," says Grispino. "And that's proven."

Meanwhile, the entire Cali cartel leadership has been apprehended by an elite Colombian police squad. In the past year, eight of the top nine Cali drug lords have given themselves up to Colombian authorities or been killed in gunfights with police.

T he task force's operations have proven to be so successful that they have attracted national attention. DEA Director Thomas Constantine touts New Haven as an example of the good that the war on drugs is doing on a community level by helping to "clean up the streets."

In a recent White House news conference, Attorney General Janet Reno talked about the success of the war on drugs, citing the pilot program in New Haven , and pledging to "repeat New Haven's success across the nation."

As for Billy White and his team, rhey continue to do what they have always done. "I think eventually we can win the war on drugs," says White. "I'll probably be gone by then. But I think someday, we'll work our way out of a job, and there won't be any more gangs left in this city." lmJ

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6, 1996

15

small army of teenage boys has labored on Old Campus for the past several days, setting thousands of plastic folding chairs along a pattern that would make a civil engineer proud. On this Saturday evening, two days before Commencement, couples contemplating their last days in New Haven and families proud of their graduates-to-be stroll through the perfect rows. Like the groups of newly-acquainted freshmen that arrive each fall, dumps of graduating seniors linger on Old Campus until well past midnight.

Watching over the scene from a chair on the stage is a security guard, silhouetted against the bright lights in the Lanman-Wright courtyard. For the first time in as long as the guard can remember, Yale has kept a vigilant watch over the preparations for Commencement.

"I'm not supposed to let kids up here," says the guard working the 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. shift. "They just wanna sit up here and look out, so sometimes I let them-but not now because my boss could be coming soon." The guard used to watch the stage from the inside of his car parked at the High Street gate, but his boss wants him on the stage now.

The 24-hour guards are just one of several noticeable differences this spring. Wrapped in camouflaging green fabric, six setS of speakers on 12-foot platforms ring Old Campus. Over the past two days, the sound system has been piping in Bob Dylan and other rock classics.

Locals 34 and 35 have their own sound system. The previous day, Bob Proto, president of Local 35, and three union members unloaded two huge, yellow speaker lifts into the parking lot of the Center ChurGh on the Green. "They're gonna rise up 30 feet high," Proto says proudly.

"We wanna make sure aiL of our people can hear us," he adds, grinning and raisin_g a knowing eyebrow.

A ..

--

16

J

ust before dark on Saturday, Deborah Guber (GRD '96) slowly walks her parents down an aisle between the chairs.. All three are dressed as if they are going to church. Deborah will receive her Ph.D. in political science on Monday. Her parents have come from Pennsylvania to be with her.

More than most Yale parents, Francis Guber and his wife, Dolores Linfield, would seem to be the natural allies of Locals 34 and 35.

Francis is a maintenance man and belongs to a union, while Dolores works in a school cafeteria where her union has been fighting an attempt to subcontract union jobs. "They want to bring in outside companies," she says. Dolores is opposed to subcontracting, which is also the largest issue the Yale unions are fighting. "We can do a better job than them. We care about the students more than some strangers," she says. Dolores and Francis, however, don't know much about the contract negotiations between Yale and the unions. "All we know is what Deborah tells us and what we read in the newspaper."

Yet, these parents are dead set against Locals 34 and 35's plan to disrupt their daughter's graduation. "It's not so much that we disagree with their ideas and ideals, as much as we do with their methods," Francis says. "It's wrong. They're just using the students. I've been on strike for 13 weeks without benefits or pay, and Jesse Jackson didn't come out for us. If it wasn't at Yale and the national media wasn't going tO be here, he wouldn't come," he says. "It'd be one thing if they wanted to make their view known, but this is not the way," Dolores adds.

Deborah Guber and her parents aren't alone in their anxiety about Commencement. For weeks the unions have widely spread their plans to make a ruckus. AFL-CIO organizer Vinny O'Brien suggested cancelling Commencement entirely if Yale was worried about too much noise. Jesse Jackson told a Boston Glo~ reporter he planned to march TH.E NEW JouRNAL

"seven times around Yale campus ... and bring the walls of Jericho tumbling down." Yale, anxious to paint the unions as screaming radicals, hasn't done much to downplay the hysteria. The Office of Public Affairs even reprinted some of O'Brien's most incendiary words in full-page newspaper ads. In prominent stories on Commencement in the Boston Glob~, the N~ York Tim~s, and the Los Angeles Tim~s, student opinion uniformly opposes the unions' Commencement rally.

But some graduating seniors say the rally might make the otherwise boring Commencement exercises a little more memorable.

Behind the rhetoric, however, Yale administrators are worried about being embarrassed in front of the national media, the unions are worried that no one will show up at their rally, and students and parents are worried Commencement will be ruined. On the Saturday before Commencement, everyone is asking, "What's actually going to happen?"

No one knows the answer because any single group's control over the situation has long since evaporated. Yale lost control of its own Commencement as soon as Locals 34 and 35 decided to have a rally across the street. Locals 34 and 35 lost control of their rally when the AFL-CIO decided to make it a national priority. The AFL-CIO lost control when Jesse Jackson decided to use the rally to promote his Rainbow Coalition. New forces supplanted older forces, creating a camivalesque tangle of the unexpected. As staffers in the unions' Chapel Street office have been saying, "It took on a life of its own."

grandmother, father, mother, and graduating senior, all of them dressed up for the occasion, walk across Elm Street. The grandfather screws his face into disapproval and yells from the middle of the street, "Stop saying that!"

"Mr. Levin, I know you want us to act a little nice the next few days," the man with the megaphone continues. "Everything's fine on the plantation!"

A young man in a blue oxford shirt walks by. "That's right, can't wait to hop on 95," he mutters to his friends. "I can't wait to go back home."

"Watch the swimming pools in the backyardr-HAH!-50 miles away from the city!" the man screams. "They wouldn't let this happen in their communities!"

The man with the megaphone is about as close as the Yale families will come to confronting the unions on Class Day. On Old Campus the only noises are synthesized Latin beats coming from the speakers and idle chatter about seating and parking.

When the Class of '96 enters through the Elm Street gate, parents abandon their hard-won seats to get an up-close shot of the graduates.

Some students smoke cigars, others drink champagne. A few wear yellow and blue "Yale Settle" stickers. One wears a Local 34, Local 35, and GESO pin with a heavy black line crossed through it. Henry Winkler (ORA '70) appears to a cheering crowd, and after dishing out a speech full of Democratic platitudes, he tells the Yale graduates, "The world is yours! Go and take it!"

B

y 1 p.m. on Class Day, parents of the Class of 1996 have claimed their seats on Old Campus to hear Henry Winkler's address. At the head of Rose Walk on Elm and High Streets, amid swarms of Yale families, a man

wearing a blue utility jacket and a black eye patch stands, jji!liii~~;11lll~~~~~~ screaming through a megaphone. "This is where wt live at, 42 percent of the city they own," he screams, "and not a dime in property taXes!" This statistic is one of his favorites; he's been ydling it repeatedly for about 20 minutes.

Most of the passers-by ignore the man in the utility IIIII!~==~ jacket, averting their eyes and temporarily stopping their conversations. There is no sense in letting a maniac with a ....~~;! megaphone ruin this day. The two Yale cops standing on ~¡~~~iilj~~~ either side of Rose Walk look unconcerned as the man continues his tirade. As a Yale garbage truck passes by, the ...:.~~~-driver honks the hom in approval The man with the megaphone bellows on, " Thry live far &om here! And thry are glad that they do!" A grandfather, ......:.,;;;,._:__,.,;;;;; . . - â&#x20AC;˘ I I

SEPTEMBER

6, 1996

17

L

ater that evening in Bridgeport, outside the Prayer Tabernacle Church of Love, parishioners dressed in flashy clothing mill around the sidewalk. Yale's Commencement is far from anyone's mind, but the Prayer Tabernacle Church is hosting a "Community Rally for Justice and Equality" with guests, Reverends Jesse Jackson and AI Sharpton. Bridgeport is the first stop on the Jackson publicity train. Next stop: New Haven and the "People's Commencement."

Jackson and Sharpton are over an hour late; inside the church, the choir is already singing. When they finally roll up in a new Chevy Crown Victoria, Jackson rides shotgun, and Sharpton rides in the back behind the driver. Children and church representatives crowd around the special guests.

The pews inside the Bridgeport church are crowded. Ushers wearing white dresses and gold badges set up folding chairs at the ends of the aisles for late-comers. The choir is literally rocking. Once inside, it's hard to keep still-this music makes you believe. As the choir closes its song, the rough, low voice of Bishop Ivory Holden asks, "Can you say

18

'Praise the Lord'?" and is answered by a forceful, "Praise the Lord!" As the organ starts up again, Holden booms, "Sometimes it makes your hands go up! Sometim~ it makes your feet get light!"

Moments after a young man on the crowded stage bursts into tears, Jackson enters, followed by Sharpton.

The band kicks in again, the parishioners rise to their feet, and Jackson embraces everyone that comes clo.se to his open arms. Holden still has the microphone. "That's Jesse Jackson-give him some love! Give him some love!" The church crackles with holy electricity as the twO guests take their seats in high-backed wooden chairs on the stage. After speeches and songs by a number of local, honored guests, Sharpton stands up to introduce Jackson. "It's one thing to have a rally. It's another to have a meeting in a church," he says. "Many are leading but few are dealing with the spiritual decay. Unless we change the values, our children will think right is wrong and wrong is right. That's why we are going to Yale University, because they are practicing greed." The Rainbow Coalition, Sharpton says, is like the angel of death coming to check for blood above the doors of the Israelites. "Are you on the side of affirmative action?! Are you on the side of Medicare?!" And then he introduces Jackson: "My leader, our teacher, our friend, Jesse Lewis Jackson!"

Jesse Jackson rides to the stage on a wave of cheers and applause. "I AM!" he says. "I AM!" the crowd responds. "SOMEBODY1" he says. "SOMEBODY1" they repeat. "STOP THE VIOLENCE!" he says. "STOP THE

VIOLENCE!" they respond. "SAVE THE CHILDREN!" he says. "SAVE THE CHILDREN!" they respond. This call-andresponse routine cycles through again and again until the voices of the packed-in parishioners reach a near-impossible volume.

"We got to go to Yale tomorrow. We got to act intelligent, so I thought I'd cut up tonight," Jackson says.

"We're having a great demonstration in New Haven tomorrow. An institution with a $4 billion endowment can't afford to pay its workers. We're gonna walk around the walls of Yale until those exploitative leaders come tumbling down!"

Jackson is a reverend, and tonight it shows. After every other sentence, people in the pews yell out phrases like, "Say it sir!"

"That's true!" "Amen!" and "That's right!"

The line between biblical and political is thin.

Jackson brings the unregistered voters to the front of the church and lectures them on the virtues of voting. He wraps his politics in Bible stories. "We have upon us the building of an ark. We put a lot of focus on who can swim, but when God spoke to Noah, he said even good swimmers could not swim for 40 days and 40 nights. Those who could swim outside the ark drowned. Those who could not swim inside the ark survived. As we fight these forces we must choose between arkbuilding and individual stroking."

After Jackson finishes his speech, he makes a personal appeal for donations: "If you are willing to give $100 or more, please stand." No one stands up. Jackson repeats his plea two more times. Fmally, Bishop Kenneth MoaJes, the host pastor, stands, but he is the only one. Jackson then says, "Bishop Holden, stand up. Sorry to call your name, but we need the money."

Jackson continues, " If you will give at least $50, please srand." A few people sWid.

THE NEW JouRNAL

Pre-printed Rainbow Coalition envelopes are distributed around the church. Along with becoming a member for $35, tonight's church-goers can also sign up for the Rainbow Coalition's own long distance phone service.

Bishop Moales and the rest of the church leaders on the stage begin filling the envelopes out. After dramatically sealing and folding his envelope, Moales says, "Can we have a few baskets here? Just pass your envelopes down to the end. We'll give y'all a few minutes to finish filling those out.

You still have time to fill those envelopes out." t is drizzling on the morning of Commencement. According to the schedule, Jackson and Sharpton wilJ lead a march of community members at 8:30 a.m. from the Q-House down Dixwell Avenue and Elm S.treet to the New Haven Green. For days, the unions have been advertising the rally by broadcasting Jackson's voice on the radio and driving cars through neighborhoods with loudspeakers. Behind the scenes, Mayor John DeStefano has arranged for the unions and Yale to meet together and seek a settlement before Commencement. Yale's main negotiator, Brian Tunney, has met with the unions' main negotiator, Michael Boyle (PC '79), several times in DeStefano's City Hall office. The two sides both say that a settlement is very near.

Boyle says he wouldn't expect a settlement immediately after the rally-it would appear that Yale was caving in to strong-arm union tactics. But he adds, "I can't see any logical reason why it wouldn't be settled by September."

At 8:25 a.m., the sidewalks in front of the

Q-House are almost empty. The twenty-odd people present are almost equally split between Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC) members wearing yellow "Yale Settle" signs and journalists. The people look a little bewildered, waiting for something to happen.

That's when the socialists roll in, barreling onto the scene in small, fuel-efficient imports.

Jason Coughlin is with the Socialist Workers' Campaign from New York City. "We knew

I

about this fight for some months," he says.

"Someone from Boston faxed us a leaflet."

Armed with banners and literature, the socialists are prepared to march.

Suddenly an 18-wheeler truck, with a redhot funk band playing on its flat-bed, shimmies and jives through the street. A handful of people excitedly crowd around its base. Behind the truck is the Crown Victoria that Jackson and Sharpton used in Bridgeport.

As Jackson emerges, people seem to materialize around him. Graduating members of SLAC, in caps and gowns, shake Jackson's hand as they pose for press photographers.

Jackson thanks the crowd for being there and asks them to march behind him in rows of five. The hundred people who have now gathered slowly begin to walk down Dixwell, folJowing Jackson, who is arm-in-arm with the Yale graduates. Sharpton foUows nnder a large black umbrella.

While several "Yale Settle" signs dot the crowd, an equal number of banners and signs support other causes ranging from the overthrow of capitalism ro nuclear disarmament. There is a noticeable lack of community members.

During the march, Martha Havdendez, of the Socialist Campaign, aggressively tries to selJ the party's newspaper, The Militant, to anyone within earshot. Nearby walks the Socialist Campaign's own presidential candidate, James Harris, a meat-packer from Atlanta.

At York Street another hundred people chanting union slogans join the march. The crowd parades down Elm Street towards the Green and past Cross Campus where the graduating students are just beginning to line up for their own procession to Old Campus.

By 9:15 a.m. the spittle of rain has stopped and the sun is out. Along the walk from Elm Street to Beinecke Plaza, there are signs for every residential college and graduate and professional school. Each class will line up and march onto Old Campus. Small, round "Yale Settle" stickers mix with the traditional additions to the mortarboards: flowers and leaves for the Forestry School, Beur de lys for Ezra Stiles, clocks showing the 13th hour for the Drama School.

Deborah Elkin (GRD '96), who is receiving her Ph.D., is trying to convince another Ph.D. recipient to smuggle one of the t'

SEPTEMBER

6, 1996

19

large cardboard "Yale Settle" signs into the Commencement ceremony to stage a silent protest. When this woman declines, Elkin pushes her to wear a sticker instead.

After the graduates fall into their marching formation, the band steps through Noah Porter Gate. Realizing the march is about to begin, relatives and friends of the graduates rush out of the gate. The drummers begin a drum roll and the band moves forward. Two motorcycle cops ride up to escort the parade the block and a half to Phelps Gate. The unions and Yale have met with the New Haven police to orchestrate an intricate schedule that prevents union supponers and Yale f.unilies from coming into contact with each other.

The procession moves slowly onto Elm Street. Just before the corner at College Street, the rest of the band starts up with a sudden burst of noise. Parents crowd onto both sides of College Street, looking for their son or daughter. As the graduates pass, about 20 union supporters begin to chant from the corner of the Green, "Hey! Ho! Unionbusting has got to go!" Others, behind the fence on College Street, simply cheer on the graduates. Kathy Cassidy (ES '96), a SLAC member, joins in on the union chant. The

20

chanting and cheering blend into one noise.

After some of the graduates have already entered Old Campus, the procession stalls, and a few graduates step up to the rail to hug union members. Reponers grill the graduates as they walk past. A reporter pulls Alana Conner (SM '96) aside to ask her what siie thinks of the union rally. She comments, "It lends a carnival atmosphere--seriously, that's good for somber occasions." A graduating senior in Timothy Dwight says, "The protest is pretty ridiculous. I think it's quite funny that it's not as big as they thought. I guess it shows that people have more decency than the unions thought."

As the last of the graduates pass through Phelps Gate, friends and relatives crowd in behind them. The people press in further; tempers flare. "Excuse me!" yells a man in the back of the crowd wearing a suit and thick, square sunglasses. He cups his hand around his mouth. "Can we get into this gate? Does anyone know? Do you see anybody moving?"

His wife, embarrassed by his outburst, pulls his arm down, but the man's suspicions are correct. No one is being let in through Phelps Gate. More upset by this development than by the chanting unions, the crowd moves down College Street towards Chapel Street, where the gates in front of Vanderbilt Hall stand wide open.

Yale put up posters the week before, offering students still on campus $7.80 per hour to issue tickets for Commencement. Each ticket is supposed to have the guest's name written on it, but as people walk through the gates, no one is checking for them.

The speakers pipe in classical muzak today, and the events beyond the thick stone walls are very far away. After the graduates

have found their seats, Yale Chaplain Frederick Streets walks to the podium to begin the program. "Welcome to Yale's finest hour!" he exclaims. There is a small rumble from the union rally, but that is the only noise during the program. Dean Richard Brodhead (BR '68, GRD '72) requests the undergraduate degrees. President Richard Levin (GRD '74) agrees to give them.

Graduates in the seats cheer. Commencement proceeds as normal. The most conspicuous sign of the union protest is a plane circling above Old Campus pulling a sign that reads: "Save New Haven. Yale Settle."

When Levin begins his speech at the end of the ceremony, about eight graduates march to the front of the stage and¡ hold up their contraband "Yale Settle" signs. Many people do not notice them-the stage level is just above the protestors' heads. They calmly and quietly leave as soon as Levin is finished.

O

n the New Haven Green, a band plays a rockabilly tune, "Trailer Park Baby," as several large puppets and props are set up behind a stage. Fifteen-foot cutouts of brooms, keyboards, mops, wrenches, and pencils are followed by equally large puppets of the Yale bulldog. Handsome Dan, in top hat and tails, and workers of all colors, ages, and genders. On the makeshift stage, the band sings lyrics that foreshadow the arrival of the oncoming throng: "Gonna get more/Gonna get more/Gonna get more than most would."

About a half-hour after the parents and graduates withdraw into the safety of the ceremony behind the gates, the buses begin to roll in and the cavalcade of locals slowly emerges to fill the lawn. Each union group wears shirts bearing a unique supportive slogan and local union numbers from 6 to 1707. After a host of speakers, Local 34

THE NEW JouRNAL

president Laura Smith quiecly takes the stage and makes the opening pronouncement: "Welcome. Thank you and let the party

begin."

"Are we in the parade? Are we in the parade?" a young girl huddled against her father's chest wonders, trying to understand her role in the proceedings.

"Honey, we are the parade," her father answers.

The multitudes enthusiastically cheer on the next few speakers, a collection of orators including graduating senior Jelani Lawson (MC '96), Loca135 president Bob Proto, and New Haven NAACP president Roger Vann.

A troupe of puppeteers from Boston enacts a quick play, the climax of which entails the Handsome Dan puppet being beaten under a deluge of blows from the oversized tools. The cheers from the crowd, however, seem to be more in anticipation of}ackson's speech.

But after last night's sermon, Jackson's show on the Green is a disappointing sequel.

At times repeating himself word for word, Jackson follows the exact framework of the Bridgeport address--only softening the tenor of the speech and bringing the intensity and unhinged narure of his speaking voice down a few notches. He falls back on his familiar tropes: "We will keep hope alive. Let us march with dignity and discipline and non-violence."

Leading the march off from the corner of

SEPTEMBER 6,

1996

Elm and College, a pack of more than 50 journalists and photographers forges a comet's head around Jackson while hundreds of workers form a blazing tail.

For the half-hour it takes the protestors to circle O ld Campus, including a detour which bypasses High Street in favor of York, everyone present seems to have a sense of purpose: to awaken New Haven to the evils of the "dde administration.

Like a fiery comet disintegrating in the atmosphere, the different members of the united group break up when they rerurn to the New Haven Green.

Individual interests and activities prevail as the group scatters. Dressed in matching hotpink lounge suits and brown shades, Dave Thomas, Tom Banks, and Arthur SteWartall members of Local 35-are the International Three, a rhythm and blues singing group which performed at the rally earlier today. "Yeah. We're trying to get a CD out," says Thomas. Unflustered by playing to such a large crowd, be minimizes the relative size of today's audience, saying, "Now, we've played for thousands of people before," then quickly acknowledging, "This is a big crowd, though."

Reverend Scott Marks, the head of the New Growth Church and another performer on today's musical cavalcade of R&B, folk, funk, and soul, tries to sell a reporter on doing a story about his upstart ministry while cooling off in the backstage area. "We're different. We're not just a drop-in-here church, we're a community church. Come on down. Come on down."

The Green bas also become a socialist newsstand of sorts. No one would claim that they're in competition for the crowd's spare change, but it's fairly certain that the Proletarian &volution, the Socialist WOrkt7, Abolitionist NYC, Industrial Worker, The

Militant, WOrkm Vanguard, People's World Weekly, and Labor at the Turning Point all share the same target demographic group.

"Our politics are just working class politics, "says Rayan Dlamime, with the International Socialist Worker Associations.

"In a place like this it's easy to sell. You know there's a big market and you know, whatever, none of that red-baiting stuff."

Perhaps the person having the most fun at this event, however, is Devin, a boy about nine-years old. He has joined in with a small mob of children that have been chasing after the Handsome Dan puppet. Modeling themselves after the puppeteers who swing giant screwdrivers and pens at the papier mache dog, the kids are occasio!lally able to get in a good shot, almost disabling the puppet entirely. After a puppeteer finally drags the Handsome Dan puppet off to safery, Devin answers a few questions for a reporter following the scene.

"Did you have fun hitting the dog and chasing around all the people in costumes?" the reporter asks.

"Uhh-huh. Neat!" Devin replies.

"What made you come down here?" the reporter asks.

"I came with my dad. He's a photographer."'

Even though Devin probably doesn't understand the intricacies of socialism, the union struggle, the Rainbow Coalition, or even the ins-and-outs of getting a record deal, Commencement sure is fun. Everyone, in fact, was able to have their fun because nobody wanted to ruin the day for anyone else.

1111 Alec Bemis, a junior in Bt7keky Coikge, is designer ofTNJ. Gabriel Snyder, also a junior in Berkeley College, is managing editor ojTNJ.

21

The People's Commencement : Alec Bemis and Marisa Galvez

..

THE NEW }OUitNAL

SEPTEMBEJl

6, 1996

Consensus ,Takes Root Bryan Foster

tauu--aumu~l one-quarter the residents earn their living from timber harvesting and processing. Local environmental groups have held up hundreds of timber sales with administrative and judicial appeals. These appeals have decreased the volume of timber now sold from federal land (which makes up 75 percent of the forest base cut in the region), to one-tenth of what it ~ eight years ago. Tension between environmentalists and loggers is tight here, like a fist gripped behind every conversation.

"The old ways of confrontation and polarization just don't work," said John Gordon, professor and former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. "With the spotted owl fight a couple years ago, no one really won. Sure, donations to environmental organizations went up, but with concessions under the recent salvage rider law, these groups are no more certain of saving the owl. Wood prices for industry also went up, but the companies laid off hundreds of employees, broke families."

This past February, Gordon was the co-chairperson of the Seventh American Forest Congress in Washington, DC, a meeting that brought together loggers, environmentalists, and forestry experts from across the country to develop a shared vision for managing the nation's forest land.

This congress, part of a series of meetings that have influenced national forest policy since 1882, is the first of its kind since 1975.

This year it drew 1,300 people from across the country to develop broad goals for the nation's public and private forests. "Forest managers can't continue to operate without knowing what people in this country want from their forests," Gordon said. "And we can't come any closer to resolving major environmental problems until we find out where we all agree."

The Flathead Forestry Project (FFP), an organization that started in Kalispell, Montana in 1994, has been called a model for local citizen efforts around the country. FFP aims to substitute honest discussion for faceless rhetoric and replace airless meetings with hands-on demonstrations. FFP is also one of the country's most ambitious groups; seeking to change logging laws on all federal land. he Fl~thead roundtable, held in Kalispell last January, was one of over 90 meetings across the country that led up to the Seventh American Forest Congress. Here, citizens developed "vision" statements to describe ideal forests, "principles" to further those visions, and concrete "next steps." All these comments were sent to the congress office in New Haven where words and phrases were added or extracted so each submission could carry the flavor of dozens. The refined visions and principles were voted on at the Forest Congress in Washington, DC, last February.

Almost 50 people attended the Flathead roundtable, many of them members of FFP. Sitting at my table was Gideon Fauth from F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Co., a medium-sized timber company in the area. He was big and ruddy-faced and wore an old sweatshirt and jeans. "Our forests are in dis-gust-ing condition," he said, paunching his lips at each syllable. "They're bein' destroyed by fire or ice storms or dwarf mistletoe comin' in like cancer and instead 'a

T

THE NEW jOURNAL

In the Montana wilderness, loggers and environmentalists have learned to work together to settle their differences, raising hopes of a new approach to managing the nation's forests.

cuttin' it for our families here in the U. S. of A., we're bringin' in wood from goddamn Siberia and Chile. Make me sick." He spat out these last words.

Sitting next to me was Bob Love, an independent logger from Columbia Falls and a member of FFP. He looked average-medium height and build, medium brown hair with some gray, Levi's and a plain t-shirt-but his eyes and voice seemed particularly calm. "When it comes right down to it," he said, "our forests have survived pretty well without us." He shrugged while Fauth's face turned red and quivery.

"Let's move on," said the moderator at our table, walking nervously toward the flip-chart, his hands, legs, and eyeglasses going in all different directions.

A

month later, the Forest Congress office had consolidated and refined the comments from the roundtable into vision statements and sent them to the ballroom floor of the Sheraton Hotel in Washington, DC. The 1,300 congress participants spent four days modifying and voting on these statements of intent.

The process was part bargain and part bully, part reason and part reflex. One table had just taken up principle 33. which states that roadless areas of at least 5,000 contiguous acres, including old growth forest, should be retained for biological refuge and scientific controls.

The table was quiet for several minutes, each person considering what the others might be thinking. Hidden sounds became loud: people adjusting their bodies, licking their lips. Elizabeth Estill, a forester for the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado and chair of the table for the day, spoke first. "I basically agree with this," she said.

"Roadless areas are necessary."

"Yes," replied Herb Winer, a forest consultant and adjunct professor at the Yale Forestry School, "but I don't like the idea of a broad prescription where decisions need to be made for a specific area."

"We're hounded all the time about protecting old growth," said Jerry Duffy. the manager of two biomass-powered electrical plants in Georgia, "but most of it's not even natural. Most of it's from fue suppression."

"I think this principle is too specific where it needs to be more

vague," pressed Winer.

"Does this apply to all private and public land?'' asked Billy Jo Christy, a mill worker for Stone Consolidated Paper Company in Washington.

"I don't know, but I think it puts too many constraints on managers," Duffy said. "I'm not going to give away my keys and checkbook with this one."

There was another silence. "I guess we just don't agree on this," said Estill. "But we're running out of time, so let's take a vote."

Three voted red (against), one green (for). Other tables voted similarly. with only 15 percent of the congress supporting the principle.

Voting finished two days later. The participants voted for 12 of the 13 vision statements and nearly 17 of the 2 1 main principles, emphasizing sustainable management and the diverse uses of forests.

Duffy and Christy firmed their friendship with a handshake; Wmer and Estill traded business cards. Part!cipants at neighboring tables sighed in exhaustion; some tossed their hats into the air. A few hugged and cried. Everyone applauded.

T

his million dollar conference was just vaporous talk, some environmentalists complained. Most of the vision statements spoke of "sustainability" and "stewardship," but the one statement that was not accepted advocated more recycling and the efficient use of forest products. The Forest Congress also promoted the use of open legislative procedures, but did not speak out against the emergency salvage rider, which was rolled onto section 2001(a) of a spending recessions bill last fall and has protected qualified timber sales from citizen appeals. Steve Kelly, an environmentalist with Friends of the Wild Swan, said the thousand-odd citizens should have marched to the Capitol and demanded legislative reform, including the repeal of the salvage rider. "Consensus," said Kelly, "seems like just another word for status quo."

The Forest Congress was not meant to address specific legislation or solve knotty resource problems, Gordon said, but simply to develop a vision for the nation's forests. The congress humanized local disputes, enabling new coalitions to develop. People who would never have been seen together at home shared stories about hobbies and

., SEPTEMBER

6, 1996

25

The Flathead Forestry Project's tkmonstration project before (left) and after (right) harvesting. families over drinks in the hotel bar. "Specific changes in forest management will come locally from groups that develop out of the congress," Gordon said. Gordon points to FFP as a model for the local groups he hopes will form.

FP formed in the winter of 1994 when Keith Olson of the Montana Logging Association got some friends together over coffee. He invited Brent Mitchell of the Audubon Society, who said he wanted to open dialogue with timber workers; two loggers, Floyd Quirum and Jack Jay, who told Olson they wanted to get more "diesel smoke blowin' and wood chips flyin"' on federal land; a community college professor active in consensus processes; and a forestry professor from the University of Montana.

"We wanted to sit down and have a talk," Olson said, "maybe work some things out."

The meetings started with democratic rules: each participant would speak as an individual, not as an organizational repn..sentative; each would speak honestly and politely; the group would work together on actions upon which everyone agreed.

Conversation at the early meetings, Mitchell recalled, was charged with the feeling chat something important was happening. After six months, the meetings opened up.

As many as two dozen community members now attend the bimonthly

F

meetings and about 80 receive the meeting minutes. Still, some environmentalists denounce the meetings as "foot rubbing sessions with the timber industry," and some loggers say they won't put their livelihood on the table for "flower-lovin' environmentalists."

Last year, three members of FFP-Carol Daly, a mediator with the Flathead Economic Policy Center, Steve Thompson of the Montana Wilderness Association, and Olson of the Montana Logging Association-wrote the Forest Stewardship Demonstration Bill to encourage more small-scale logging on federal land. The bill has been introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. Pat Williams (D-MT) and in the Senate by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT): Currently, the Forest Service sells trees directly to mills, which usually hire the lowest-bjdding logger to harvest the wood. A stewardship contract authorized by the bill would allow the Forest Service to choose loggers directly, as private land owners do, so the agency could select loggers on the basis of experience and past performance as well as price.

Once selected, the loggers could make their own harvesting decisions, following certain guidelines, rather than mechanically cutting marked trees. "Giving a skilled logger marked trees," Love says, "is like giving an artist a paine-by-numbers set."

Stewardship conttacts would be smallthe volume would be limited to 300,000 board feet (300 MBF), about one-quarter the size of an average sale today, and would favor small loggers since bidding would be restricted to contractors with 25 employees or less. There are over a dozen contractors of this size in the Flathead region, compared to about five mills. Lastly, a citizens' stewardship council, drawn from volunteers, would meet in open-door sessions with the Forest Service to help plan the contracts and choose the loggers. "This would be an optional program," stresses Daly. "Just another tool in the toolbox."

One afternoon during the Forest Congress, Daly, Thompson, Love and I met with Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) to try to solicit his support for the stewardship bill.

After we waited half an hour, the senator finally greeted us with a big country grin.

Burns was a radio announcer for crop and cattle prices before running for the Senate.

After six years in office, he still has a voice deep enough and gut large enough to make him look like a Montanan. We sat down on a leather couch with Burns in an oak chair across from us. Daly and Thompson talked about the rationale of the bill and Love discussed some of its practical implications.

Burns said he was wary of supporting a bill sponsored by his Democratic cohorts.

We walked out of the room tired.

Someone asked, "So, do you think he'll support it?" I don't remember who asked because we were all thinking the same question. Each of us was afraid to answer it out loud. I looked at Love and he just shrugged. Months later, Burns called a Senate committee hearing on the stewardship bill, but he still did not commit his full support.

THE NEW JouRNAL

If he's not fully confident he should take a tree, Love leaves it standing, iust as a hunter might let his prey run, even if he had it in his sights. ast summer, months after the Flathead roundtable and the forest congress, I raveled back to the Flathead region.

Before going to an FFP demonstration harvest, which used the stewardship council promoted in the legislation, I spent the morning with Love. More than anyone, Love epitomizes FFP's mix of corporeal workers and activists. During the day, he'll install new valves on the engine of his bulldozer, then over warm dessert with his family at home, he'll tell stories oflndian spirits and chokras.

He and I went out to one of his logging jobs and spent the morning chipping tree limbs. He chips the cut limbs after harvesting, which allows him to cover machinery trails and keep nutrients on-site, while also meeting state standards for fire control. Most loggers pile "slash" and burn-it, leaving fire scars and exposed sites for weed infestation. I stuffed tree limbs into the 400pound blade of the .drum chipper. It pulled the wood in fast and thrust out the chips with a sound almost as loud as an airplane engine. I wore ear plugs, but took them off occasionally for the thrill of the noise.

Meanwhile, Love cleaned up an area near the log house. He drop-started his saw to cut large pieces of slash into manageable sections and directed the 28-inch-long blade unconsciously, as if it were a part of his hand.

Around the big logs he quickly tightened choker cables, as if the wood were greased, and pulled them to the landing with his bulldo:rer.

Over lunch he told me stories: his having to hike two miles back to his truck after a rotten spruce settled back and broke his ankle; a fellow sawyer slicing his trigger finger down to the bone; another sawyer cutting a lodgepole pine which snapped down another and another in a quick circle until one knocked him dead as he was running off.

L

SEPTEMBER

6, 1996

Love has the grit of working almost 20 years as a logger.

Love believes that the best he can do for the forest is to leave as much as possible of what's already there. He rejects the moral relativism that all forestry treatments are acceptable as long as they meet the manager's objectives. He speaks out against Plum Creek limber Company's dearcutting in the local newspaper.

Love practices what he calls "wild forestry." He thinks of trees as a hunter thinks of its prey: eliminate cripples in a herd and leave strong bucks to reproduce. "Wise hunters," he said, "know when to stop hunting so the populations stay strong the next year." If he's not fully confident he should take a tree, Love leaves it standing, just as a hunter might let his prey run, even if he had it in his sights.

Service officials and forestry professors from the University of Montana, and monitoring the logging practices to ¡make sure they mer contract specifications.

About 25 percent of the stand's original volume was removed in the harvest. The tough western larch and ponderosa pine that remained had dominated the stand before 6re suppression this centUry. All harvesting was done on frozen ground to reduce ground tear; some thick patches of fir and lodgepole were left where deer and elk bedded; and dead standing trees were retained for bird nesting.

Prescribed understory fires will now be introduced to the stand: one section will be burned every three to five years, another every 20, and another not at all, as a CQntrol. One forester called it a "light-footed, selective harvest," another said it "looks like it's been done in night slippers."

er that afternoon, I went to the FFP emonstration project on the Flathead ational Forest. Before it was cut, the 30-acre stand had dense patches of douglas 6r and lodgepole pine, tighdy pressed against ponderosa pine. Cutting thinned out the fir and lodgepole and revealed ponderosa, which are so tall and ancient that my pace necessarily slowed out of respect when walking under them. These ponderosanamed after the Latin pond"osus meaning "heavy, weighty, significant"-are about 200 years old, with stout trunks and branches thick as muscular arms. In the wind, their limbs stand 6rm, while the boughs of douglas fir jangle as if ornamented.

After FFP called for volunteers for the stewardship council over one year ago, a group of about 20 area residents came forward. The group directed the harvest from the start-choosing the site, selecting the harvest treatment after consulting with Forest

Bob Love, an indepnuknt loggn- from Columbia Falls, Montana.

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"We had good luck with this group," said Swan Lake District Ranger Charles Harris. "I had final authority, of course, but we all basically agreed on things or talked them out, so I didn't have to override anyone." The process took months longer than a conventional sale, where the Forest Service decides which stands to harvest and which treatments to use, and then seeks public comment. But Harris hopes that public involvement early on will preclude lengthy judicial and administrative appeals.

He wants to use the stewardship council again next year, he said.

Love was glad to see citizens working with the Forest Service in Condon, but was disappointed that much of the small yet usable timber was discarded into large brush . piles for burning. Stewardship contracting is needed to get the right person for the job.

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he next day I joined a meeting on stewardship contracting sponsored by FFP and the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, a Washington, DC, forest policy organization, in a windowless conference room in Kalispell. Some Forest Service officials at the meeting argued that the current timber bidding system can be patched into a stewardship-like package.

"The solution Lies more in the creative use of the current system than in the creation of more processes and Laws," said Jeff Sirmon, formerly with the Forest Service and now working for the Pinchot Institute.

"We need this bill to change the paradigm from getting the logs out to caring for the forest," countered Thompson of the Montana Wtlderness Association.

"Look," said Mitchell of the Audubon

THE NEW JouRNAL

One forester called the FFP demonstration proiect a "light-footed, selective harvest," another said it "looks like it's been done in night slippers."

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Spores had feathered silvery hair and wore a green polo shirt, tan slacks and a silver watch. I pictured him with his wife and family, barbecuing burgers in a trim suburban yard. Love wishes there were fewer Forest Service employees like him and more who were familiar with the land, who appreciated a simple meal and shady place to rest more than backyard barbecues and

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VCRs. "The Forest Service generally doesn't support legislation. We just respond to it," Spores said to Mitchell. "The Code of Federal Regulations is our bible and doing things in the best interest of the public is our golden rule."

"Come on," Mitchell tightened up, "our community wants these stewardship sales and we will give you all the support and manpower you need. Just tell us who's in charge so we can get this through."

"It's hard to say," said Spores. "These things move up a variety of levels.

Oftentimes substantial policy viewpoints are not shared. But we're trying to be responsive, at least at the locallevd."

I thought of Love, who, earlier in the summer, took a group of Forest Service officials to a lodgepole pine stand on public land that had been attacked by mountain pine beetles. The trees were all brambled up, the branches of one tree twisted into those of another, and the needles were aU brown and red, as in an overexposed photo. Here were 30 acres, with a decent volume of fully dead timber needing to be removed so shadeintolerant seedlings could grow. This was one of many small stands Love had seen near

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I saw the irritated and frustrated feelings of most FFP members in Mitchell's face: pinched-up and angry, then wan and drawn down. n the drive home from the stewardship conference, I stopped by to see Love and his wife Inez once again. Love and I stayed up late that night, talking through a full moon in his tallwindowed dining room. I' remember smelling dirt and diesel on his clothes and hearing him say he liked to keep his eyes adjusted to the natural light of the sun and moon.

He saw me off early the next morning.

The grass was thick with dew in the woods near his house, so each breath I took felt like a drink. Wet air soaked into my mouth, ran down my throat. A gray jay scolded us from nearby.

I asked him about FFP. "Will it last?"

"I don't know," he said simply. "We've done our part, so it depends on the Forest Service now. None of us can afford ro spend another two years on 60 acres of demonstration harvests."

"What are you going co do?" I asked.

"I'll just keep logging, keep writing editorials," he said. "Heck, I'm just starting."

When I took a few seeps back, the tall lodgepole seemed to be surrounding him like 1111 guardians.

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