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Library, Peoples Lobby

Critical Mass Conference

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Critical Mass and the National Initiative.

Nearly 2,000 activists from across the country descended on Washington D.C. in November 1974. Most came at their own ex­pense. Some came as representatives of powerful utilities and had. to pay $100. to attend  Ralph Nader’s dream child, The Critical Mass Conference, seemed to be a success.

What was the purpose of the conference? To Nader it was to a

  1. Focus media attention on the swelling mass movement

against nuclear power.

  1. Expand the education process on nuclear power’s

dangers.

  1. Exchange ideas on alternative sources of power —

solar, wind, etc.

For two of Nader’s friends and fellow political crusaders of increasing stature, however, the conference became a forum for more.

Ed Koupal, Executive Director of People’s Lobby, and his wife Joyce, formerly of People’s Lobby and now director of Stamp Out Smog, were invited by Nader to speak to the confer­ence on the initiative process. People’s Lobby, having been the prime mover behind California’s successful Proposition 9, the Political Reform Initiative that still has organized labor, big business, politicians and lobbyists in a twitter, can claim more experience with the initiative process than any group in the nation.

Little did the Koupals realize that their experience was to make a national impact at the conference and, finally, with Ralph Nader.

That impact began during Nader’s thirty minute keynote speech in which 2 of the 3 people he paid tribute to were named Koupal. The Koupals were instant celebrities. Their workshops on the initiative process were jammed. And their initiative ideas seemed to offer the first positive tools to activists loaded with facts and dangers but few successes.

An example: A noted academic, speaking to his workshop on the dangers of radiation, continued raising his voice and thus interfering with Koupal’s neighboring workshop session. Koupal, with lungs like a bull, was not to be outdone. Finally, the academic appeared and asked Koupal to keep his voice down, “It interferes with my important teaching session,” said the professor.

“Important,” retorted Koupal. “All you are doing is talking about the dangers of atomic power plants. Stuff we all know. We’re learning how to get a 100,000 signatures and stop those plants from being built. That makes these people 100,000 times as important as you.”

A cheer went up from Koupal’s class. Then everyone in the professor’s class came to hear Koupal.

The importance of the initiative process is just dawning on some of those people. It has finally fully dawned on Ralph Nader, and he is ready to put it on many more people.

Those who have worked with Nader know he is barraged daily with exciting ideas, and that he attests belief in many of them. He does not, however, help carry many of those ideas, since he already has so many that are pressing and necessary.

The People’s Lobby goal of a national campaign for a con­stitutional amendment to institute the national initiative, to coincide with the 76 presidential elections and a nuclear moratorium, has hit Nader’s elusive ‘push button.’ Nader has tabulated the costs and benefits and decided to add the national initiative to his list of crusades.

After their times together on the Mike Douglas Show, in Washington D.C., and in California, the Koupals have finally elicited a pledge of financial aid from Nader to help make the 27th .Amendment — A National Initiative and Recall  —  a reality. Nader has made sure, however, that the Koupals raise their share. He has informed his booking agent to get the Koupals honorariums and out on the campaign trail.

Harper’s Weekly Staff

Submission 12-8-74 From Dwayne Hunn

 

Library

Diamond v Bland 1974

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On October 30, 1969 the sheriff of San Bernardino County ordered volunteer signature gatherer William Duxler to leave Inland Shopping Center.  People’s Lobby Attorney Roger Jon Diamond filed suit 11/5/69 and the case was appealed to the California Supreme Court where it was heard on 11/3/70.  On  12/6/70 the State Supreme Ct reversed lower court by ruling “PL did have  right to go on to shopping centers to collect signatures. The Diamond v Bland I, 1970 landmark ruling said

In Diamond v Bland II (April 25, 1974) the 1970 Diamond I (shopping center petitioners right to gather signatures ) was dissolved based on an opposite US Supreme Court 1972 Lloyd v Tanner decision.  California Supreme Court overturned Diamond v Bland 1970 (I) based on U.S. Supreme Court Lloyd decision which held that  petition gatherers couldn’t go onto shopping center grounds if their petitioning action is unrelated to the shopping center’s use.

US Supreme Court in Lloyd Corp v Tanner (6-22-72) found that owners of shopping center in Oregon had the right to prohibit distribution of handbills unrelated to the operation of the shopping center.  We (the California Supreme Court) conclude that Lloyd is indistinguishable from the instant case and, accordingly , reappraise out Diamond decision in the light of principles established in Lloyd.

Lloyd’s argument was that there were “alternative, effective channels of communication, for the customers and employees of the  center may be solicited on any public sidewalk, parks and streets adjacent to the Center and in the communities in which such persons reside.” 11CAl 3d p 335

Roger Diamond on Peoples Lobby video (available for sale) explaining Diamond v. Bland.

“Basically, the issue was do shopping center as private property owners have the right to exclude anybody they want to from their privately owned shopping centers.  The Supreme Court ruled that the shopping center,  even though private property was the functional equivalent of the old town square; and therefore they could not exclude people.  We got  on the shopping center and got our initiative qualified for the 1972 ballot, which was the Clean Environment Act 2, after losing  Clean Environment Act 1 in 1970, which was the initiative that started the law suit.  By the time it got to the Supreme Court we were into the second initiative…

“This was a private property v freedom of speech issue… We won on the ground that the first amendment gives us right of access.  Now it gets real complicated after that  and we have a 30 minute show (video) here.  The bottom line is the way the  law now is California allows access  to shopping centers but the US Supreme Court said in other cases that the first amendment doesn’t do that.  States are free to interpret their own constitutions more liberally than the way the federal Supreme Court interprets the Federal Constitnution.  So people do have the right of access to shopping centers if they are in states such as California which allows it which was our victory.”

Roger Diamond speaking on Peoples Lobby video 1994.

Click here to read  a summary of the Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner 1972 :

Click here to read  the full Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner 1972 case:

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Library

Prop 15 A-Plant safety

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An Initiative for A-Plant Safety

San Francisco Chronicle 3-12-74
 A coalition of environmental and consumer or­ganizations launched a petition campaign yesterday to qualify a nuclear power plant safety initiative for California’s November ballot.

The group, banded together as Californians for safe Nuclear Energy, said  it’s goal is to make certain that nuclear p1ants operating now and in the future in Cal­ifornia, meet “reasonable safety standards.”

Plans to gather 500,000 sig­nature for the ballot measures were announced. at the coalition’s newly opened of­fice here at 2 Rowland street in North ‘Beach and in Los Angeles.

Alvin Duskin. San Francisco businessman an d chairman of the coalition, told a news conference at the local headquarters that the atomic Energy Commis­sion “has botched its job of regulating the nuclear pow­er industry.

“There are serious disagreements at the highest level of the scientific com­munity on safety. Until these conflicts are resolved, we should slow down nucle­ar operations.”

Attorney William M. Brinton, another spokesman for the citizens’ group, said enactment of the initiative would not mean a morato­rium on the building of nuclear plants in California. “New facilities would still be allowed, but they would have to meet standards set by the state legislatures” he said.

The measure would re­quire full compensation — instead of only partial pay­ment as is now required, un­der federal law — for all personal injuries, property damage and economic losses resulting from a nuclear accident.

Among organizations in­volved in the effort to qualify the measure for the ballot are the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, California Citizen Action Group, Zero Pop­ulation Growth and several shoreline preservation groups.

Courts have ruled that nuclear safety itself is an ex­clusive federal responsibili­ty, so the coalition has based its campaign on seeking a law establishing the princi­ple that California land can be used for atomic power plants only if “reasonable standards of safety” are maintained in their con­struction and operation.

 

 

Library

Edison Speakers Taught Defend Company Views

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 Los Angeles Times November 8, 1973

 Edison Speakers Taught to Defend Company Views

Faced with the energy crisis and challenges from environmentalists— a major utility company has in­creased its verbal voltage in a coun­terattack.

In a program believed to be unique in the United States, the – Southern California Edison Co. is training speakers at. its Rosemead regional headquarters for verbal combat, with environmentalists.

“A few years ago said Ronald C. Gossling, head of the company’s speakers’ bureau. “We found it easy to send speakers to college campuses, service and women’s clubs but then a change took place when the environmental ethic took hold.

“Students, environmentalists and others wanted to hear our side and we just. weren’t used to it.”

But the great ernbarrassment that triggered the idea of verbal combat came a little over two years ago, Gossling said. A student organiza­tion on a California- campus had in­vited Edison to send a representa­tive to a panel discussion with Ed­ward Koupal, president of the People’s  Lobby.

“We knew Koupal was very effective,” said Gossling, “so we sent out the best man we had. He was highly qualified and gave beautiful technical answers to non technical ques­tions. Among a group of liberal arts students it just didn’t work. Koupal clobbered him.”

In that instant, Gossling recalls, “the Edison Co. was embarrassed and the real issues never saw the light of day.”

As head of the speakers’ bureau, Gossling said he. went home from the panel discussion discouraged. But out of the experience, he said, he got the idea of developing a different kind of company speaker who could meet environmen­talists on their own ground.

When he broached the idea to management, Gossling said, executives were skeptical but decided to take a chance on a pilot program provided the costs were kept down.

Gossling said the – pro­gram was started with 15 volunteers from the com­pany instead of recruiting from outside which would have meant higher costs.

“The first speakers were trained at lunch time and. at night or during periods when they could be ex­cused by their bosses when work was slack,” Gossling said.

The only outside help was from paid professional speech coaches who were brought in several times a year.

Results of the program have been beyond expectations, Gossling said. Com­pany speakers have gone from campus to campus, around the service clubs, appeared at seminars and on television and radio talk shows “and they have proved more than a match for their opposition.”

The program is unique in that most companies tradition­ally have taken a “no comment” approach when con­tacted on controversial issues.

“Alternatively,” says  Gossling, “they will greet inquiries with silence or speakers who are to­tally unprepared for the verbal barrages they can be subjected to today.

“It used to be that we would spend money only in speaking to our allies,” Gossling said, “but this program is meant to pre­pare our speakers for dia­logue with people opposed to us. We want the energy prob1e~ms and the pollution issues clearly understood.”

Seminars within the company are. simulations. of real encounters. Trainee speakers alternate from being proponents of an issue to devil’s advocates.

“We throw them the toughest questions we can think of,” Gossling said.

The original 15-member team is engaged in train­ing other speakers with the company’s blessing, Gossling said.

Gossling, who said he re­ceived a fantastic response when he gave a talk on his company’s program at a national convention, as a result is joining a New York consulting firm which will  offer his ser­vices to other major utility companies interested in setting up similar pro­grams.

“The reason such programs are necessary to­day,” Gossling asserts, “is that the public has become a part of the decision-making process in a way that it never had before.”

The success of proposi­tions such as the Coastal Initiative (Proposition 20) to preserve the coastline in California Gossling cited as evidence of the sweep­ing changes that compa­nies, particularly in the utility field, are being confronted with.

Library

Koupa & PL: PGE’s strongest nuke opponent

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San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune

  September 12, 1973

Ed Koupal and the People’s Lobby

Who’s the strongest opponent of nuclear power in California?

“The Sierra Club” was the unanimous response of a score of construction workers from the Diablo Canyon project, bellied up to a beer bar in Avila Beach on a weekday afternoon.

“Nonsense,” said the PG&E public relations man in San Francisco. “The Sierra Club—at least the Santa Lucia chapter in San Luis Obispo—may have hurt us a little on siting the transmission lines from Diablo. But the real enemy of nuclear power in California is an ex­-used car salesman named Ed Koupal. He’s massive. He runs the People’s Lobby down in L.A.”

Ed Koupal is lying, shirtless, on the bed in a motel room In Morro Bay. It is a Sunday afternoon in late August. His wife Joyce is seated in one of the two chairs. Sprawled all over the floor of the small room and out onto a second floor balcony are a dozen young people, the People’s Lobby shock troops the Koupals call “the elephants and the mules” of  their  20,000-member organization.

“We’re not against nuclear power,” says Koupal.  “We’re against unsafe power.”

People’s Lobby was founded in 1970. It cut its political teeth on Prop. 9 (the Clean En­vironment Act), which it says went down to a 3.6 million to 2.1 million defeat statewide because a five-year moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants was Included as an after thought—”like the caboose on a freight train.”

The Koupals and their young cohorts, mostly college students from Los Angeles, San Jose and Sacramento, are in Morro Bay to talk about the strategy of their next initiative campaigns and about the economic realities of running a statewide political organization full time.

They hope to qualify three measures for the November 1974 ballot; one on cleaning up the environment, one on cleaning up the state govern­ment, and a third called “The Energy Act.”

The last is all about nuclear power, but it deliberately steers clear of the moratorium angle, the Koupals explain.

“Nuclear power is con­troversial,” says Joyce Koupal, ‘‘and you can’t qualify initiatives with controversy.”

(Qualification  will mean gathering about 500,000 petition signatures in order to come up with 325,000 valid ones.) This is where the elephants (who never forget what they’ve been told) and the mules (who do all the work) come in. The petition drive is under way.

They’ve already been busy. In the room are 20-vear-olds who have been active in the tight against a PG&E-proposed nuclear power plant at Davenport, near Santa Cruz; others who’ve been keeping an eye on the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District’s Nuclear plant under construction near Rio Seco; still others who have crowded into bearing rooms to urge the state Public Utilities Commission to halt the projected tripling of the size of the 430,000-kilowatt nuclear plant at San Onofre, operated since 1968 by Southern California Edison and San Diego Light and Power Co.

–      “1 think nuclear power is a dead industry, at least in California,” says Ed Koupal. “When a former used car salesman (10 years peddling Chrysler products) like me can go up against a nuclear physicist and stop him cold with nothing but the plain truth, I’m scared for the future of that industry.

“The only physics I ever had was Ex-Lax”

People’s Lobby, the Koupals say, is supported by the sale of memberships ($10 for non~ students, $5 for students an­nually), the “Bike for Life” marathons and, most recently, by two “instant” job printing shops in Los Angeles and San Jose and a bike shop in Los Angeles.

(The Morro Bay meeting has a communal air: the printers and the bike people are there to talk about profits. There’s a general feeling of getting together to slay dragons. The fiery breath of PG&E’s Morro Bay steam plant comes in for comment. Says Koupal: “They release so much from those stacks it made it rain here last night.”)

“PG&E and Edison are ab­solutely paranoid about Ed,” says Joyce Koupal proudly, talking of his appearances on talk shows like Mike Douglas’s and a segment of the recent three-hour National Broad­casting Company special on the energy crisis. “They tape him every time he’s on.”

Koupal, fussing with papers in a briefcase, wants to get back to what he sees as the fundamental issue.

“We’re not against nuclear power,” he repeals. “We’re pro-safety. If the Atomic Energy Commission and PG&E and the rest of them can prove to us that it’s safe, we’ll take out newspaper ads in whatever papers they select to let the world know that we’re buying their deal.

“We just want them to prove that there’s no risk in the emergency core cooling systems of the reactors, that atomic garbage won’t poison the un­derground water for our children and their children’s children and that the industry is able to insure itself.

“Is that so much to ask?”

Library

Lloyd v Tanner 1972

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Reading the Diamond v Bland cases gives a summary understanding and adds perspective to the Lloyd case.

U.S. Supreme Court

LLOYD CORP. v. TANNER, 407 U.S. 551 (1972)

407 U.S. 551

LLOYD CORP., LTD. v. TANNER ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

No. 71-492.

Argued April 18, 1972
Decided June 22, 1972

Respondents sought to distribute handbills in the interior mall area of petitioner’s large privately owned shopping center. Petitioner had a strict no-handbilling rule. Petitioner’s security guards requested respondents under threat of arrest to stop the handbilling, suggesting that they could resume their activities on the public streets and sidewalks adjacent to but outside the center, which respondents did. Respondents, claiming that petitioner’s action violated their First Amendment rights, thereafter brought this action for injunctive and declaratory relief. The District Court, stressing that the center is “open to the general public” and “the functional equivalent of a public business district,” and relying on Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 , and Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308 , held that petitioner’s policy of prohibiting handbilling within the mall violated respondents’ First Amendment rights. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: There has been no dedication of petitioner’s privately owned and operated shopping center to public use so as to entitle respondents to exercise First Amendment rights therein that are unrelated to the center’s operations; and petitioner’s property did not lose its private character and its right to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment merely because the public is generally invited to use it for the purpose of doing business with petitioner’s tenants. The facts in this case are significantly different from those in Marsh, supra, which involved a company town with “all the attributes” of a municipality, and Logan Valley, supra, which involved labor picketing designed to convey a message to patrons of a particular store, so located in the center of a large private enclave as to preclude other reasonable access to store patrons. Under the circumstances present in this case, where the handbilling was unrelated to any activity within the center and where respondents had adequate alternative means of communication, the courts below erred in holding those decisions controlling. Pp. 556-570.

Majority opinion:

The argument reaches too far. The Constitution by no means requires such an attenuated doctrine of dedication of private property to public use. The closest decision in theory, Marsh v. Alabama, supra, involved the assumption by a private enterprise of all of the attributes of a state-created municipality and the exercise by that enterprise of semi-official municipal functions as a delegate of the State. 13 In effect, the owner of the company town was performing the full spectrum of municipal powers and stood in the shoes of the State. In the instant case there is no comparable assumption or exercise of municipal functions or power.

Nor does property lose its private character merely because the public is generally invited to use it for designated purposes. Few would argue that a free-standing store, with abutting parking space for customers, assumes significant public attributes merely because the public is invited to shop there. Nor is size alone the controlling factor. The essentially private character of a store and its privately owned abutting property does not change by virtue of being large or clustered with other stores in a modern shopping center. This is not to say that no differences may exist with respect to government regulation [407 U.S. 551, 570]   or rights of citizens arising by virtue of the size and diversity of activities carried on within a privately owned facility serving the public. There will be, for example, problems with respect to public health and safety which vary in degree and in the appropriate government response, depending upon the size and character of a shopping center, an office building, a sports arena, or other large facility serving the public for commercial purposes. We do say that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of private property owners, as well as the First Amendment rights of all citizens, must be respected and protected. The Framers of the Constitution certainly did not think these fundamental rights of a free society are incompatible with each other. There may be situations where accommodations between them, and the drawing of lines to assure due protection of both, are not easy. But on the facts presented in this case, the answer is clear.

We hold that there has been no such dedication of Lloyd’s privately owned and operated shopping center to public use as to entitle respondents to exercise therein the asserted First Amendment rights. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment and remand the case to the Court of Appeals with directions to vacate the injunction.

It is so ordered.

  1. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, and MR. JUSTICE STEWART join, dissenting.

The District Court observed that Lloyd Center invites schools to hold football rallies, presidential candidates to give speeches, and service organizations to hold Veterans Day ceremonies on its premises. The court also observed that the Center permits the Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, and the American Legion to solicit funds in the Mall. Thus, the court concluded that the Center was already open to First Amendment activities, and that respondents could not constitutionally be excluded from distributing leaflets solely because Lloyd Center was not enamored of the form or substance of their speech. The Court of Appeals affirmed, taking the position that it was not extending either Logan Valley or Marsh. In other words, the District Court found that Lloyd Center had deliberately chosen to open its private property to a broad range of expression and that having done so it could not constitutionally exclude respondents, and the Court of Appeals affirmed this finding.

Petitioner apparently concedes that if the lower courts are correct, respondents should prevail. Brief for Petitioner 19. This concession is, in fact, mandated by our decision in Logan Valley, in which we specifically held that members of the public may exercise their First Amendment rights on the premises of a shopping center that is the functional equivalent of a business district if their activity is “generally consonant with the use to which the property is actually put.” 391 U.S., at 320 . If the property of Lloyd Center is generally open to First Amendment activity, respondents cannot be excluded. [407 U.S. 551, 579]

In his dissenting opinion in Logan Valley, 391 U.S., at 339 , Mr. JUSTICE WHITE said that the rationale of that case would require affirmance of a case like the instant one. Mr. JUSTICE WHITE, at that time, was convinced that our decision in Logan Valley, incorrect though he thought it to be, required that all peaceful and non-disruptive speech be permitted on private property that was the functional equivalent of a public business district.

 

Common Sense Opeds, Peace Corps

Peace Corps: Planting the Seed of Hope

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Glendora Press January 14, 1970

Peace Corps: Planting the Seed of Hope

(Editor’s Note: Following is the last in a series of series by Glendora High School teacher Dwayne Hunn relating his experiences as a member of the Peace Corps in India.)

By DWAYNE HUNN 

These months were not like the first. These flew. Socially I was beginning to aculturize myself. I had my third and forth date. I swam more often at the British swimming pools. I and fellow volunteers met an American engineer, who dined us into better health and partied us into better spirits while arguing us back into remembering how the mainstream of Americans thought and life was filled more with doing projects than with searching for projects to do.

The garden, library, and milk program continued to func­tion well. The orphanage still held my heart and two days a week in my schedule. But the brunt of my work centered around the school. My philosophy regarding increased involvement by these well-to-do students in their nation’s needs became more sophisticated.

In other words, fewer words were spoken this semester but more action was achieved. A few pictures, like the beg­gar at the foot of the building, plus some talk in key circles got the program into motion.

The year before a half dozen students made a trip with two of the British teachers to help build wells in Bihar. No wells were actually built. Instead, the group got involved in food distribution and, more importantly, they lived with the hungry, ate as they did, and tried to work under those conditions.

This year I wanted to get more kids involved and get them to actually accomplish something. Through a rugby contact I found what I needed.

Sister Teresa and her three assisting nuns were amazing people. The home was a tragic and wonderful place. In Build­ing Three one couldn’t miss the deaf and dumb, groveling paraplegic as he squirmed and groaned across the floor. He made the other pathetic humans there pale in comparison,

The men in Building Two all had their senses, but were without the use of such things as their leg, or arms, or couldn’t control their urinary cycle. Building One had every­thing the other buildings had, only there the ancient people continued what was called life.

The Cheshire Home, and its patients unnerved me. But the four Spanish Catholic nuns prayed, worked and sang through their young lives as if they were cast far the Sound of Music.

I was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which I got 30 volunteers for the 10-day work camp. The British chairman on the board for the Cheshire Home was delighted with my idea of supplying labor while the board supplied money for most of the needed projects, the smaller other part of the money I was able to obtain from the Peace Corps.

After 10 days at the home we had built a new chicken house, painted and fixed much of the furniture, cleared and seeded some very tough terrain into a large garden, started and failed at establishing a handicraft class for the patients, painted and repaired the servants quarters and water pump, and helped cook meals for everyone.

For all but two or three of the group this was the first extended manual labor they had done in their 16 or so years of life. It was also the first time that any had worked for the lowest castes of Indians, rather than the reverse which they were accustomed to. It was the first time they had roughed it.

We slept under the stars near the newly developed gar­den and ate mostly rice, tasteless chowpatis, platins and gallons of tea. It was a hard diet for them to adjust to but, I think, it showed them something. They had engaged in a so­cially responsible act and had made it succeed. If the thought of the deed would linger, if the thought would plant a seed, if the seed would sprout into a habit, then this capable class of Indians could start adding richness to a great mass of humanity.

It was not all labor among the miserable. During the hot afternoons they found light, pleasant conversations taking place with the sisters adding a beauty to them. Afternoons also sometimes found fooling with their friends, the two Bri­tish teachers, or for those who thought they had energy to burn, jumping their two PCV’s and dousing — excuse me, trying to douse them in the nearby pond. It was hard work, but fun, and they were heroes when they returned to school after their summer vacation.

After the work camp I took my last break. I had been reading about the famine conditions in Bihar, though the lo­cal cinema houses had shown only one documentary on the drought and famine conditions — what was shown all the oth­er times made one feel that India was sprinting into the 20th century amid religious festivities, steel mills and agricultural wonders; now I wanted to see some of those conditions. So I again threw some stuff in my green bag and climbed aboard a third class train out of Bombay.

If the monsoon doesn’t come before the middle of June, most of India’s farmers suffer dearly. This was one of the states in worse shape than Bihar, only the government did not want to reveal these plights. Well, I never tried digging in the fields outside of the train’s windows but its parched, brown, barren condition drove the small farmers plight home.

After some days, I reached Benares, India’s holy city. Since it was early morning and I was feeling better, I quickly hailed a bicycle-walla and toured the city. The temples, the pagodas, the university, and the Ganges, with its dirty brown, but believed drinkable, holy water, were sights; but by the time the heat of the afternoon arrived they had lost their appeal to me, I left the bike man for the benefits of a small but air conditioned room. I had dinner, took two quarts of beer to my room, wrote in my diary, and slept. The next day I decided on the hill air over that of India’s hot stuff.

I trained to Patna, and seeing wells, and green patches along the tracks of Bihar state, I figured that her notoriety was at least making something happen here about the drought. Not much was happening along those miles of tracks through the other three states.

From Patna I flew to Katmandu, Nepal where I spent about five days, and then on to the Pokhara valley at the foothills of Annapurna for three days of trekking. I stopped in Delhi where I again met Ambassador Bowle’s wife, who with her husband had visited my chawl work site; and then I returned to Bombay to finish up a few months of work.

I wrote a few radio scripts comparing American and Indi­an histories of development, continued checking on the chawl programs, played and coached basketball, went to the orphanage, and taught and coached at Cathedral School. The remaining months flew by and when the end approached I debated about extending. A fellowship at grad school, thoughts of preparing more for a career, and the draft pulled me back and cut my travels home to a month.

I still wonder if rushing home was the right path. I know it was a most intense period of my life, I was flooded with new physical, mental, and emotional experiences. I was forcing myself to work on my own, to contemplate, to read, to write and to wonder just what a world of perceived misery, new friends, new acquaintances and new thoughts were doing to me, the person. Still don’t really know what all those vibrations did. Do know, I wouldn’t trade those experiences.

Why build these cities beautiful

If man unbuilded goes

In vain we build the world

Unless the builder also grows

Edwin Markham

You know, when the Peace Corps left town the heart of the heart of the rugby team left with it. But some native heart blossomed at about the same time. The Indian Police team, coached some by John Fuller Sessions and prompted on by the PCVs played the Berahi Shabs of the Rugby Club when we were leaving.

For the first time, the Police beat them handily. It looked like it might be a pattern. Competition would be keener from then on. Respect would soon became two-sided, and sweet. Somebody had made those losers believe they could become winners.

To me, that’s what building’s about. To me, that’s what the Peace Corps was about. I like to believe that many peo­ple from our group planted some seeds, started some projects, laid some foundations that will help those men build their own world, and grow too.

 

 

 

 

Common Sense Opeds, Peace Corps

India Elite Has Chance To Aid Own

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Glendora Press January 11, 1970

India Elite Has Chance To Aid Own

By DWAYNE HUNN

It was during the first monsoon that I would take on an­other extra-curricular activity which would introduce me to another life style in India.

Dave, one of  our UCD23 basketball players, who was in the unsuccessful UCD land development attempt, was a founding manager and captain of Fordham’s revived Rugby program of l964-65. Thus he had become interested in playing the sport and accepted when he was asked by some British chaps to play for the Bombay Gymkhana Club.

Lynus, another PCV, but one who did very little work and devoted most of his time to partying, drinking, and girls, also played. Dave introduced me to a few of the Rugby play­ers and they invited me to play, as I did. Rugby, a combina­tion of the skills of football and basketball without the pads, was fun. But a major part of the game was the drinking and partying after the game. On a PCVs’salary, we could not go that route often, but the hospitality of the British helped us to do so.

Their parties were a welcome diversion, for they had good food and sometimes some pretty girls. The young Bri­tish chaps were obviously interested in the latter attraction of those parties. We were too. However, the pretty girls ran a poor second to the attraction the food they put on the table held over us. The British, at first, were amazed at how repeatedly we’d return to the serving table and how long into the party we’d eat.

Educationally, rugby was a good window into British thought concerning the Indians. Many of them were embarrassed for us because of the conditions we lived under and felt we were foolish to try to teach the Indians by working from their level.

John Fuller Sessions, a British teacher at Cathedral School and rugby captain, saw this ruler-shah philosophy among both whites and Indians at the club, social, and edu­cational level. I realized it by working and living with the lower echelon, being part of the rugby club, and through at­tending rich Indians’ parties.  Not wanting to believe this was a natural trait of the upper classes, I decided, following John’s suggestion, to do some teaching at Cathedral School.

I was interested in entering teaching as a profession aft­er returning to the states and thought this might he a unique teaching experience. But that was not my main motive for teaching at Cathedral School (CS). CS did not seem to need good teachers as much as good workers were needed in social action programs.

I realized this. I also realized my language deficiency and that I would not be here forever. I felt, though not without a retort from my Christian-bred conscience, that it was not my, or America’s, prime responsibility to rectify inequities in a nation that was not mine by birth or citizenship.

I felt, with support from my conscience, that if I could, in some way, make Indians who possess the native and economic tools to see and feel and work against the inequities, then I would have done my, and America’s, part.

 Cathedral School was one of the three best schools in Bombay. It had the likes of the son of the Chief Minister of Bombay and the niece of the Prime Minister Gandhi. It also had the sons and daughters of those struggling middle class-families who knew the value of a good school’s name in get­ting their kid a little further ahead.

I started teaching part way through their first semester. I taught, and in some cases first had to learn, subjects such as British and Indian history, Indian geography, moral sci­ence, physical education, journalism, world history, and an honors course.  In all of them I found a setting to express my philosophy that they, the well-to-do, must get involved with their nation’s problems, which they so easily ignore or over­look.

How hundreds of well-dressed and well-fed kids could he chauffeured daily past the beggars, pass them walking to lunch at the local restaurants, and when asked in class to de­scribe what they noticed on the back street — say nothing about the baby who lived on the sidewalk, or the others, was beyond me.

I continued to take my bike into the main street, grab onto a speeding truck, and whiz to the orphanage from Cathe­dral School. Worli was also still on my visit list. But with se­mester break I also found the other work situations condu­cive to a month break for personal travel. I threw a leather bag over my shoulder and with some money from home and what I had been able to save, I was soon flying to Thailand to visit a PCV buddy from the Pakistan group we had both trained in before switching to our present country programs.

Thailand was hosting the Asian games, Dave was hosting me and his Thai friends felt they must host us. What a con­trast Thailand offered. The people were healthy, strong, and proud. Bangkok, in parts, looked like street corner shopping centers back home. Stores had window displays, streets were clean and officers directed traffic, nights were clear, quiet and romantic.

Dave mixed very little with Americans other than PCVs. He was down on the military and the influence they had in Thailand and found his Thai friends much more entertaining.

Even the trains were a joy to ride and the rich, verdant scenery was part of the eason. The green land and healthy brown people were helping me unwind from the grimness of India.

I took a ferry to Penang Island, found a cheap, little room, and walked in the drizzling rain to attend Mass on Christmas Eve in Malaysia. It was a lonely, pensive, and happy, though not merry, Christmas. I thought the typical thoughts — home, family, old girl, the past year’s rich and different experiences.

Later I laid in bed trying to assess just what all those influences were doing to form me, the man I would be.

The next day I found the PCVs who had been in Bangkok the week before and accepted their then extended hospitality. They lived in a pleasant little suburban house, exemplifying the fact which the PCV no longer hides, that not all PCVs ­are living in gutters. I stayed for three or our days, and dug their food too. I also dug the island and its deserted beaches, rolling hills, and neat secluded huts, all of which I saw first hand during my one-day, 52 mile bike trip around the island.

In Ipoh I visited with the family of a Malaysian whom I played rugby with in Bombay. They treated me like an honored guest. Yet, it took me a day to realize just how far their hospitality was extending.

My arrival at the Deen’s home coincided with Ramadan, which meant that all Muslims were fasting and praying Koran from dawn ‘til dusk. The Deen family, being especially religious, was eating at 4 p.m. (sunset) only, while they were feeding me gigantic and scrumptuous portions three times a day.

It was comfortable being in a family setting again and nice being treated as an honored guest. It was more than nice to know that this was happening to a stranger from a land 7,000 miles away.

I left the Deen family knowing a bit more about one devoted Muslim’s interpretation of his religion. Watching Mr. Deen spend hours in front of his TV listening to the chants of the Koran reader, talking with him about his beliefs and mine, and reading a Muslim book he gave to me made me feel how insignificant any comparative  religious learning I had been exposed to was. I left the Deen home with gratitude, love, and another little inkling of what brotherhood was about. I left for the road, and I stuck out my thumb. A few days later, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and their people were just pleasant memories. I was back in Bombay to work for nine months.

 

 

 

 

 

Common Sense Opeds, Peace Corps

Forever, You Were Victim Of the System

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Glendora Press January 1970

Forever, You Were Victim Of the System

By DWAYNE HUNN

Kiki and Melody soon left the area, and I survived on a rice and dahl lunch that my cook left at the nurse’s chawl, where the girls had lived, and by eating out for dinner. The girls, plus Marilyn, Dave, and Jerry tried to nurture a UCD project from scratch.

For months they battled the red tape until they had purchased a piece of land in a slum area. They then rounded up plans, got a contractor, and found a shell-like material that would be cheap, easy and quick for construction.

Finally after about five months of having reached many peaks of frustration, disgust, and disappointment, they were ready to implement their plan.

They started clearing the land they were to build the peoples recreation-education-PCV living-center on and on the very first day the Indians, who were starting to understand the meaning of their project, pitched in. After two or three days, the group re­turned to the PCV hostel with faces that read exhaustion, disgust and frustration. It was not physical exertion that beat them, but the system.

The landlord from whom the land was purchased was not the rightful owner. The technicality which killed the program centered around something about the rightful owner refusing to sell the land unless it could be counted as his required 10 percent public deed. Hazy politics killed a good project and embittered the volunteers involved.

Jerry and Dave were part of our PC b-ball team which started playing about a month and a half after our arrival. We had played a series of games in training at Columbia and looked pretty good.

Our first night of Indian b-ball didn’t reflect the same. Nagpadda Neighbor House, considered one of the four or five best in the state, was our opener. They were all little guys and they, some in bare beet, ran us off their dirt floor with a score around 100-60.

It was pretty embarrassing    for us big, bad Americans to walk home through the crowd hat night. I could make plen­ty of excuses, but our Indian rivals would just demand equal time or a rematch—nei­ther of which I, or probably my wind, could supply, so I’ll just give a few excuses.

Al-34, Bill-30, Kevin-40, Jerry-27, Dave-33, Dwayne-24; yes, in time we all had numbers, but those were not on our uniforms. Those were the number of pounds which were not on our frames anymore.

Under such redesigning, the old two-footed chassis did not feel much like running, in any gear. Running their light, lit­tle frames was all those brown guys knew. What they were telling us was we’ll teach you the game our way, in our climate, on our dirt floors, with our greasy foods to fuel on.

When Bill and Kevin moved into the YMCA they were nat­ural attractions because they were Americans. After a few months they were attractions because they were also the best coaches around and the neatest white guys that neigh­borhood ever knew. Girls and guys from 12-20 knew Bill and Kevin for all the teams they coached, and what they did through coaching was more than just teach b-ball.

The Indians knew some of the fundamentals of b-ball, like run and shoot. It took someone with a different out­look to stress the importance of teamwork and steady hard practices. Lingering caste ideas were quickly drilled out in Bill and Kevin’s system of play.

B-ball was a tremendous public relations asset for the corps. The Peace Corps may be well known here and in some educated circles throughout the world, hut in cosmopolitan Bombay it was little known.

Well, there are many Indi­ans who can’t afford the luxu­ry of picking up hitch-hikers and who know nothing about Kennedy other than his face and that they liked him. How­ever, many of those know that the Peace Corps is a good basketball team filled with Americans.

It’s the team with a couple “DARa Singhs,” in other words big, tough guys named after India’s best wrestler; it’s the team with Zubair, the only four-foot, pre-teen, seventh man in India’s big leagues, and our leader.

Ball was fun, and as sports usually do it made us a pretty tight unit on or off the court. But it sure made you tired, especially when it was a night game far from home and one had the bus, train, and the walk to cope with before one reached the rack.

Those were the nights, with a post-game celebration of or­ange soda, a bus, a train, and a walk that I heaped especially large praises on the luxury of sleep as I had known it.

Passing bodies sleeping on the streets, in open spaces between buildings, on maidans, on curbs, on train benches; used to make me super-sleepy. I even thought, on oc­casion, like I’d just like to lie down with the masses. I never did though, and the thought made me appreciate my bed, even with the ticks, mosqui­toes, and occasional passing mouse that visited.

Since I had not mastered Marathi over the monsoon I spent more time at the orphanage, looked far social education programs that I could just plug into the chawls, and found a new work sire. Before I left the center, though, I’d learn more about getting things to grow.

Because I was white and could play the role of some­one fairly important, or was too tired to show how unimportant I was, I had swung, without knowing how great a quantity it was, six liters of milk for the girls and myself, during our third month in In­dia. There was, for the aver­age Indian, a waiting period of over a year to receive even one liter of milk.

It was too much and, though I continued to drink much of it, we gave some of our allotment to our cook and to another friend. If it was that easy, I figured it could be done on a grander scale. So by running through the red tape maze as an American in a hurry, and it still took a long time, I set up a milk feeding program for about 60 pre-nursery school children.

To ensure that the milk powder, contributed by Uncle Sam through Catholic Relief, was not pilfered to the black market or others, the kids had to be fed while in school or brought to the school by an older person with a cup and drink the milk on issuance. It was a good program and once it was set up I only checked infrequently since the women handled it beautifully.

An old mali, Hindi for gardener, was the real driving force behind one of my last projects in the chawls. I had suggested to Dr. Sabnis that, even in the city, people could, since most were recently immigrated farers, start kitchen gardens with hardly any capital needed. I even suggested that I might be able to supply some seeds. He was skeptical. I was too.

From what I had seen of the sand of the maidan and the debri sewn ground be­tween the chawls, I didn’t think much could grow. The mali, when I approached him on the possibility of starting a garden on the ground between the center and the nursery, only said, “seeds are not available, shah.” That was  all, aside from a not too well hid­den fear of having to do all the ground work, he listed as a drawback.

A week before the monsoon hit he and I were raking, dig­ging, and clearing, and I got more lessons in the “clean hands mania” of caste riddled India. My two young friends and Marathai tutors, Radashom and Dilip, when I explained the principle and strength behind such an undertaking, agreed.

But when I called on them to pitch in with the work, they  did so for only a few minutes before they feigned a reason to leave. During hours of la­bors stretching over a few days the mali and I had no more than ten minutes of help, though we had many who would stop, observe, pass on, laugh, or move to play games on the maidan in front of us.

We finished two days before the rains came. I was still skeptical that anything would issue forth from the sterile land. The mali merely said, “Barsat girta hai, seeds laga hai,” which meant “rains fall, seeds will come up.” Two days after those rains kept tumbling, those green shoots kept coming.

It was a joy to have green things grow outside the win­dow when all around was the sand color, the gray masonite color, the sprinkles of gar­bage color.

We had to make an addition to the garden right after our first crop. Due to unanticipat­ed crop depletion (by the hungy and poor), we added a barbed wire fence. The produce went to the nursery school kids, and, I hope, that old mali got his share.

 

 

Common Sense Opeds, Peace Corps

Kids Like Attention In India, Too

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December 31, 1969, Glendora Press

Kids Like Attention In India, Too

(Editor’s Note: the following is another in a series of articles by Glendora High School teacher Dwayne Hunn relating his experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in India.)

By Dwayne Hunn

On a chance search through a social service center in the city, I made the acquaintance of a Dr. Pai.  Dr. Pai was one of those rare Indians.

He was well-educated abroad, had been to a dozen or so American universities on Fulbright and Rockefeller grants, and was dedicated to bettering his country.

At that time he was teaching college medical courses and requiring that his students get involved in a program of family planning clinics that he was taking to the slums and factories.  I mentioned that I had a large hall that theoretically could be said to reach about 40,000 near-by chawl dwellers.

*

In a few weeks the center had a family planning exhibit that lasted 10 days.  The purpose of the clinic, aside from involving his students in a crucial area, was to educate the poor in just what family planning and birth control meant.

After the educational program, Doctor Pai told whichever parent was present that the male could have a harmless and technically reversible vasectomy performed and receive a rupee reward in return.

Being raised a Catholic, I had ideas against this kind of birth control, but India had given many of those ideas food for thought.

I was a little disappointed in the numbers that turned out for the educational program and not very impressed with the three or four vasectomies Dr. Pai performed. Dr. Pai, however, did not seem disheartened.

His drives and optimism seems to be paying off for about five months ago (this is 1969)  I heard from Dr. Pai.  It was not a very personal communique, but it made me feel rather important, like I had been around for the start of something big.  It happened after a late dinner while I was watching 60 Minutes at Rubel’s Castle in Glendora, California.

*

To my TV screen came Dr. Pai talking of the successes of his scheme.  He had started taking it to rail road stations and textile mills, with PCVs helping advertise his educational program, while I was still in India.  Now it had caught on so well that it was about to be spread to other large cities.

Monetary incentives were still being given to males as inducements to this activity as well as to contact who brought in the “vasectomee.”

June, if all goes climatically well for the Indians, is the start of the monsoon.  For me, it was also the time to decide the course of my future work pursuits.  If I wanted to make it as a strict UCDer I would have to spend hundreds of hours during the next months mastering Marathi.  My work habits had, in a sense, decided this for me.  I could not sit and study 8 to 10 hours a day, even if it was raining out.  I kept plugging away at what I felt were good experiences and jobs and let the future shift out a work pattern for me.

*

In mid-June I overheard a few volunteers mention that an orphanage was interested in having a PCV.  I’d like the idea of working with an orphanage and thought that this might be a new fulltime work site.  Since my Marathi was weak, and since the PCV girls across the street were about to move out, which would return my feeding habits to the street restaurants, I was thinking of new work sites.

Father Nelson, the main work horse of the orphanage, responded favorably to the idea of my coming out twice a week to direct the physical education program, to teach a little, and just to mingle with the kids.  He did not see that it would be possible for me to live at Our Ladies Home for another 6 to 10 months, since the school was being enlarged and would not be ready till then.

The orphanage holds a special niche in my heart.  It was filled with much.  It had the old priest, who technically was Father Nelson’s superior, but who did not work, seemed irritated by the kids, and was seen only at tea time by me.

*

It had Father Nelson, whose seemed to put in 20 hours a day with the kids, always seemed bedraggled, and desired to be the learned philosopher but who, burdened with work, had no time to read, think, or contemplate.

It had teachers who did not qualify for the good paying, which was still terribly low paying, jobs of the municipal schools; nice young men and women trying to do a good job on the younger minds without the experiences, training, and texts that help make them dynamic.

Most of all, it had the kids.

I can remember the first day I got close to those kids.  I can remember how their white teeth stood out on their brown faces, how their eyes sparkled with a special glint, and yet, how skinny their bodies were.

It was because so few people noticed how white and shiny their teeth were and special their eyes were that they were so hard to control.  They went wild when I showed them a new game or exercise.  They went wild when I put one of them on my lap, wrestled with one, or just fooled with one.

*

“Sir, sir, do that with me!  Show me!” you can use this same vein from the kids in the states, but there it meant something different, something more, something less.

Physical education in India is not very demanding.  Most Indian exercises seemed to depend on arm movements from a standing position, knee bends, and standing at attention.  My kids got to believe that pushups, isometrics, jumping jacks, squats, and all those other football exercises built muscles.

After a few months, most of the kids had to pull “Sir” aside to show many pushups they could do, to show their muscles, to show how they could touch their toes without bending their knees, or how hard they could push on an isometric drill.

They were such good kids, and I wished others could give them more.  For a while an English mother of three and her friend came to the orphanage to work with them.  When a buddy from Australia came to visit me, he spent five days, living, playing, and loving them.

*

But when, through publication in the Indian Express (a major newspaper), I tried to establish a weekend visit program to homes and families, it came to naught.  After the publishing of my letter, the only response I knew of was an invitation for me to come to dinner with a good family, because the breadwinner wanted to show me how beautiful Indian family life was.  As I said, it came to naught.

They needed but had little contact with the outside world.  The five days I lived with them was a time for daily trips to the museum, the harbor, and the downtown.  With few exceptions from the different ten kids I took each day, these experiences were all firsts that for them.

For most, riding the train into town was a first.  Taking them on a boat ride, I’d see their awe at being in a sailboat.  Walking around the harbor, I’d watch their excitement at seeing the Gateway of India, and feel my spirits rise and sag.

*

Leading them through the open air parlor area of the Taj Mahal Hotel, one of the India’s plushest, and having a manager rush up to usher my not so well dressed brown kids out, made my blood pressure rise and caused a heated scene.