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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 8, 1977)
I Portland Observer Thursday. September 8. 1977 Page 8 From behind the w all We, the staff of the “Behind the Walls” column for the Portland Observer, would like to thank Bob Collins, Editor In- Chief, Folsom Observer newspaper, Cali forma State Prison at Represa, Califor nia, for granting us the priviledge to reprint an article, submitted to the Folsom Observer from a prisoner’s wife. We believe it can be spoken just as loudly by many of the prisoners' wives here in the state of Oregon. From an Inmate's Wife Many stories have been written about the inmates' side...Department of Correc tions' side...now how about giving the wife a chance to tell her side? I hope you will take the time to read our story and try to fully understand, we too, are prisoners in our way. The wives of the prisoners go through hell trying to hold our heads up in our ‘Free World’. The following are only a few of the heartaches we encounter in our every day life. Our families cannot understand why we wait for the day our man will walk to freedom. They don’t understand why we wait just outside the gate for that special day. Why? Because we love and care for them. Employers (knowing that the man is in prison) who sit behind their desks, look down On us, who are probably more qualified then others that are employed in the same company. Oh yes. these employers are free...but only because they haven’t been caught yet. They feel we are beneath them because we happen to care. Some have committed worse crimes than what our men are behind the walls for. Most wives find it easier to put ‘Divorced’ on a work application, to insure employment. We are treated as outcasts by our neighbors; but they never fail to play “Twenty Questions’ with our children, to find out all the dirty details. We are not allowed to join social functions because we are inmates' wives. Most of us have learned to shut out the outside world and live for the day the gates open for our man. We spend many lonely hours reading, watching T.V., going to the movies or skating with our children...or most important, writing to our men, so they will know we love them and care for them and share the dreams they have. We have to let them know that we are on the other side of the Big Wall, waiting. If time was taken, society would find that very few of the men with wives and a family who care, rarely return to prison, because we show them we care. In closing, I’d like to say to those who have loved inside those Cold Grey Walls: "Don't turn your back on them and walk away. Let them know you are out there waiting with open arms. Caring doesn’t cost a cent and it isn’t painful. Don’t put the wives down because we care and love our men. That’s what it’s all about. (The above letter was signed: “An Inmate’s Wife“] Note from O.S.P. Correspondent: If any wives of prisoners wish to contribute to the "Behind the Walls,” column any letters, poems, or short stories please feel free to do so. Your name and address will be withheld if you wish and only be known to the Editor of the Portland Observer. We, also encourage Mothers, Fathers, children, brothers, sisters, as well as sweethearts and friends to do the same. Nothing is more beautiful than to see a smile on an inmates face after reading something a loved one has written on a cold and lonely night in a bare prison cell. by Clayton L. Reene #38441 I am so sick of reading almost daily where police officers are committing law violations and “rapes” are called contri buting charges for them but rape, for the expendable common head, minorities and welfare recipients, per se. Vale, Oregon Police Chief and one patrolman, positive identify proven, committed a sex offense with a 17 year old girl. For them, a slap on the wrist. No felony charges? A Hillsboro police officer, trying to elude police officers, chased at speeds of 90 miles per hour, involved in head-on collision, two people hurt, fifteen in volved. Because his lawyer "didn’t want him to lose his job,” he received a slap on the wrist. What happened to the felony committed here? Now turn the page. Oh yes, here we have a 24-yearold man and a 21-year-old man who picked up a 15-year-old and a 17 year-old girl, had sex with them - a first degree rape, and an attempted rape. Next page, what have we here? Let ters to the Editor. Someone makes a joke about Kathy Oliver’s Rape Advocate Program? I do not condone rape, these programs are very necessary and needed. Rape is not pleasant for a woman or a man. I had a 16-yearold girl pull my legs from under the steering wheel, pull my clothes down, and handle me. My charge, first degree rape, ten years here. The message I get from all these incidents is, first, don’t commit a crime unless in a police uniform. Second, there are three functions for courts, the white washing protection agency kind, the kangaroo court kind, and the reputable honest courts who unfortunately have to bear the stigma and embarassment caused by the two less dedicated courts. My point is this, the major contributing factor here to these crimes are non productive, head in the sand Legislators, power abuses by district attorneys and miscarriage of justice by courts. Until mandatory laws against hitchhiking are made, guidelines and mandatory laws for district attorneys to follow (not just their prerogative in charge classification) and mandatory uniform sentence procedures for courts to follow - no special treatment for golf partners, lodge brothers or financially beneficial friends or profes sional associates - then maybe the courts will receive the creditability and honor that the justice robe is intended for. So yes ma'm, Kathy J. Oliver and all other Rape Advocate program workers, you are all to be commended, as are Governor Straub and his Crime Preven tion Programs. Remove the highway hookers from the highway by laws pertaining to hitchhiking thus reducing rape, kidnapping, dope, etc. Remove the non-productive, run and hide Legislators, whose best contribution to the general public is to adjourn. Remove the doubts and distrust of courts by mandatory laws that make Judges treat all equal, be he a judge, lawyer, policeman or an ordinary man on the street, Black or white. Give the general public reason to be proud of our government and agencies at all levels. For crime rate levels to drop, for programs to be ineffective, the neces sary changes have to be made in legisla tion. What is the Legislator and Congress man of our district doing about these problems? Ask him; write to him; complain to him; and if he is doing nothing, then replace him. Don’t wait until you may be called to some lonely field or cold morgue to identify a young girl that has been raped and murdered. She may have been your daughter. Act now. So they can act when they convene. Ray Marshall strikes again! WASHINGTON - Anastasi Brothers Corporation, a Philadelphia-based con struction company and one of the largest masonry contractors in the United States, has been debarred from doing business with the federal government. Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall an nounced that the company, which partici pated from 1974 through 1976 in the federally assisted construction of an addition to a New Haven, Conneticut hospital, was found in violation of Execu tive Order 11246, as amended. The 1965 order prohibits federal con tractors and subcontractors from employ ment discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. It is administered by the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCPI in the Employment Standards Administration. Anastasi Brothers is the second com pany debarred for violating Executive Order 11246 under the Carter Admini stration, Assistant Secretary for Employ- ment Standards Donald Elisburg pointed* out. Earlier this month, OFCCP de barred the Ingersoll Milling Machine Company of Rockford, Illinois. “Debarment of Anastasi Brothers is yet another indication of my determina tion to guarantee equal employment opportunity on federal and federally- assisted contract work,” Marshall said. "Employment discrimination is illegal and intolerable; we will continue to use the contract compliance enforcement pro gram as a major weapon against it,” he added. Racial discrimination by Anastasi Bro thers was discovered by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), one of the sixteen federal agen cies with compliance responsibility under the executive order. In particular, HEW found that the company refused to abide by the bid conditions for minority employment goals which were incorporated in its federally - assisted construction contract. These goals were developed in conjunction with the New Haven hometown plan, which establishes an equal employment oppor tunity program for the construction in dustry in that area. The New Haven plan is one of 41 voluntary plans for construc tion contract compliances which have been approved by OFCCP. Anastasi Brothers, which held a sub contract of $650,000 for the masonry work on the St. Raphael’s Hospital addition, was required to meet minority employment goals for bricklayers rang ing from 26.3 percent to 36.3 percent during the two-year period. However, HEW found that the company's average employment of minority bricklayers was less than sixteen percent during the time. Moreover, Anastasi Brothers refused to make sufficient efforts to increase their employment of minority workers to attain those goals. The company also laid off minority employees before others and refused to take part in recruitment and training programs designed to increase minority employment. “Despite efforts by HEW to reach a conciliation agreement, Anastasi Broth ers would not comply with their contrac tual obligations under Executive Order 11246,” OFCCP Director Weldon J. Rou- geau said. “We had no choice but to debar them from government contract work.” The debarment, the fifteenth by OFCCP, affects the company’s Philadel phia office as well as its branches in Pompano Beach, Florida, and Marshfield, Massachusettes. Anastasi Brothers will be permitted to complete two contracts it now holds with the Department of Housing and Urban Development for work in the Boston area, but it cannot receive any extensions or modifications of the contracts and is prohibited from bidding on any future federal contract work unless it satisfies the director of OFCCP that it is in compliance with the executive order. Vitamin C.* New cure for heroin addicts? SANTA ANA, [PNS] - For the past decade, vitamin C -- or ascorbic acid - has been touted for the cure and prevention of everything from the common cold to cancer. Now, a group of California researchers - including Nobel laureate Linus Pauling - have stirred a public debate with their contention that massive doses of vitamin C, taken with minerals and protein, can cure even the most severe cases of drug addiction. “Nothing has been done for the addict in the 117 years since morphine was first introduced in the United States, except to substitute one addicting drug (like methadone) for another (like he roin),” says Dr. Alfred F. Libby. Libby, a chiropractor, says he has used vitamin therapy on 75 addicts at his Santa Ana clinic since 1974, and claims he has had no failures. According to Libby, the basic treat ment is simple, inexpensive and non toxic. In the initial phase, the patient is given oral doses of 26-85 grams of sodium ascorbate a day, along with high doses of multivitamins, minerals and protein. This process lasts from four to ten days, depending on the patient's age, size and drug habit. Libby says it is administered in a "calculated and very controlled manner." Unconscious overdosed addicts are gi ven sodium ascorbate intravenously, but Dr. Libby prefers the oral method, to discourage the needle and-syringe habit. The dose is gradually reduced to 10 30 grams per day, and - after about a week - to a “holding dose" level of 10 grams daily. Libby’s most startling claim is that the addict not only loses the craving for narcotics, but is actually unable to get “high” after receiving a massive dose of vitamin C. “Should a fix be taken." he says, “it is immediately detoxified and no high is produced. It is like injecting plain water." According to Libby's colleague, San Joee biochemist Irwin Stone, "There is a great improvement in well being and menta alertness. In a few days appetite retur.is and they eat well; they have restful sleep and the methadone-consti pation* is relieved.” Addicts reportedly suffer few of the discomforts of withdrawal. “I'd be perhaps a little more cautious in saying that large quantities of sodium ascorbate can detoxify heroin immediate ly." says Linus Pauling. “But I think there’s no doubt that very large doses of vitamin C will relieve addiction.” Dr. Pauling, 76, winner of two Nobel Prizes for chemistry (1954) and peace (1962) - has received international ac claim for his research on proteins, DNA and sickle-cell anemia. But his recent theories linking vitamin deficiency to the common cold, flu and even cancer have made him a controversial figure in the scientific community for a decade. A heroin addict treated at the Santa Ana clinic this summer has no doubts as to the treatment's effectiveness. “I was dazed when I went in," says this addict, a 22 year-old white, male upper class resident of Sacramento whose four- year habit had grown to $50 a day. “I had tried other programs but none of them made you feel like quiting.” At the beginning of the Santa Ana program, he says, “they give you so much C, it gives you the runs, cleansing your system. Then they reduce the doses. 1 began feeling really good for the first time in a long while. Usually you've got that craving in your stomach, but that disappeared. It’s really amazing, it makes you feel so good.” He says he paid $500 for a one week stay at the clinic, living in a house with five other patients and three full time counselors. “Now I'd like to go back and work as a counselor there,” he says. He still takes 10 grams of vitamin C a day. Dr. Libby admits that the medical profession may scoff at this work in the Santa Ana clinic. “It’s a little difficult to accept the notion that vitamin C can cure heroin addiction. I don’t have any addicts who come here who aren’t skeptical - and why shouldn't they be? “But it would have taken a chiropractor to come up with this,” Libby adds. "We’re trained differently than medical doctors. We’re very deep into body chemicals, and, because of the restric tions of my license, I had to look at something besides drugs.” Libby and Stone have pioneered the theory of orthomolecular medicine, which is the use of vitamins and other natural substances instead of drugs to treat and prevent certain diseases. Stone's theory is that all human beings suffer from a generally undetectable form of scurvy what he calls “hypoascorbe- mia” - a vitamin C deficiency - but that drug addicts and cancer patients have it to a much more severe degree. “Humans carry a defective gene that prevents us from making ascorbate like other mammals,” Stone believes. “We actually need thousands of milligrams of vitamin C a day, instead of only 45 Responding to Goldstein's charges, milligrams as the nutritionists say. Ad Libby says, He s up there in his ivory dicts are suffering from severe lack of tower and I’m down here seeing it work.” vitamin C, as well as protein deficiency He added that his pilot study with Stone due to lack of proper diet. We have to will be published in full by the Canadian correct this with massive doses." Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry in Stone, Libby and Pauling contend that December. every adult should take about 10,000 Libby is quick to point out that this milligrams (or 10 grams) of vitamin C method is not a cure-all. He says when daily to prevent cancer and other di patients return to a drug-oriented culture seases. they sometimes begin shooting heroin How It Works again. Although he believes the ortho How might vitamin C work in prevent molecular treatment eliminates their ing addiction? physical desire for drugs, it is partially up Scientists believe that morphine to the individual to resist social tempta creates a “high" by combining with and tion and pressure. activating "opiate receptors" that lie on “fv e treated all kinds of men and the surface of certain nerve cells in the women up to the age of 47,” Libby says. brain. According to Libby and Stone, the “Some are referred by clinics, others by sodium found in sodium ascorbate can friends. I used to treat mainly poor remove morphine molecules from the people for free, but now wealthy clients brain’s opiate receptors and replace them are flying here in private planes or with vitamin C molecules. They claim driving Cadillacs... this eliminates the desire for and euphor “The best feeling you could possibly ic effect from drugs such us heroin, codein have, he adds enthusiastically, "is when and valium. people call you up and say, Thank God, Libby and Stone presented a pilot you’ve given me my child back.’ ” study, involving 30 addicts over a seven- (Mark Shwartz, for several years was a month period, at a seminar of the Bay Area radio and television reporter on International Academy of Preventive California criminal justice. This is the Medicine in San Francisco in July. third of an occasional series by Mr. After hearing about the project, the Shwarts on drug use and control in Board of Supervisors of San Diego county America.) voted 5-0 on July 19 to investigate the Financial aid available The Financial Aids Office at Portland State University is continuing to accept student applications for funds for the 1977-78 academic year. Though the competition for aid is stiff, Richard Rankin, director of financial aids and placement, says money is still avail able, particularly under two federal pro grams -- Basic Educational Opportunity Grants (BEOG) and the College Work- Study Program (CWSP). BEOG, a comparatively new program which has become the cornerstone of federal financial aid, is open to any undergraduate student. Rankin says BEOG applications should be made di rectly to the federal government, though information, application materials and assistance is available through the Finan cial Aids Office at PSU (Neuberger Hall, 724 S.W. Harrison, 229-4950» So far, Rankin adds that his office has processed more than 1,000 applications for assistance under the BEOG orogram. The CWSP program works differently than BEOG. Students apply for assis tance directly through PSU, which has been granted more than $1.8 million under the program for 1977 78. N o w A v a ila b le dining with eg g * and cheese Albertsons ) 1 dining with ________I eggs and cheese Pick up your copy today of this new idea tree booklet containing interesting and delicious recipes usina eaas a n d rh p p w Albertsons STORE HOURS M on thru Sat. IO a.m. te I Claaed Sunday* Walnut Park largata Center UNION AVENUE AT KILLINGSWORTH. 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