Page 8 Portland Observer May 7,1981
Budget cuts hurt poor families
S’ " "
The Reagan A d m in is tra tio n ’ s
proposed budget would compel
more than half o f the nation’ s low
income fam ilies to reduce their
livin g standards, according to a
study by the Congressional Budget
Office.
A bout 51 percent o f all low-
income households, or about 20 to
25 m illion people, w ill have less to
live on as a result o f cuts in ten
m ajor assistance and employment
programs.
This estimate does not include
cuts that w ill be accomplished by
consolidating federal programs into
block grants to the states. While the
to ta l am ount available w ill be
reduced, the impact cannot be
measured without knowing how the
states w ill allocate the money they
receive.
Am ong the programs cuts that
were not measured by CBO were
low -incom e energy and housing
assistance, medical, unemployment
insurance,
trade
adjustm ent
assistance, and social security
changes. Also excluded were the ef
fects of reductions in education and
health, which affect families finan
cial resources.
Abraham Reed, honored POIC graduate, meets
Reverend Dr. Leon H. Sullivan, founder and
national director of QIC.
Ireland and the politics of starvation
By Frank Viviano
(Editor’ s Note: Unlike the violent
self-sacrificial acts o f many other
political dissidents, the example o f
Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands
has commanded the w o rld ’ s ad
m ira tio n , demonstrating that the
militant non-violence of Gandhi and
Martin Luther King still holds great
power. M oreover, writes Pacific
News Service Editor Frank Vivano,
it places Sands in an Irish history
fu ll o f such conscience-driven in
d ividual challenges to state op
pression.)
In a w orld preoccupied w ith
super-state violence and terrorism,
it often seems that the individua l
conscience counts for nothing.
Although profound self-sacrifice
is a central element in the Sands’
tale, it is by no means the whole
story. The world has seen many ex
amples o f lethal self-sacrifice by
p o litical dissenters w ithout being
dem onstrably moved. But unlike
countless others who have raced to
certain death in a hail o f gunfire --
members o f the Palestine Liberation
Organization and the Japanese Red
Army comes to mind - Sands opted
for a non-violent, tortuously slow
walk to the end.
And the extent to which his choice
has captured global adm iration
speaks
volumes
about
the
galvanizing force o f conscience and
militant passive resistence. In a little
more than two months, Bobby San
ds may have done more fo r the
cause o f Ulster’ s Catholic m inority
than six decades o f k illin g and
sabatoge by the Irish Republican
Army.
In the longer sweep o f Irish ex
perience, neither Sands’ tactic nor
its possible effects are new,
however. At critical junctures in the
bloody history of Ireland’ s relation
ship with England, in fact, star
vation has played a peculiarly
significant moral and political role,
w ith repercussions reaching far
beyond the United Kingdom.
Bobby Sands’ most obvious an
cestor was Terence MacSwiney,
Lord Mayor o f Cork, who starved
himself to death in London’ s Brix-
ton prison in 1920. MacSwiney had
been arrested 73 days earlier at an
illegal meeting in C ork, and im
mediately commenced a prison
hunger strike to protest British rule.
It was not the first hunger strike
faced by the British government in
those years. In 1918, Mohandas
Gandhi had made some use o f the
tactic in an unsuccessful labor
protest at Ahmedabad, India,
although th he then regarded it
largely as a religious exercise. There
were also hunger strikes by other
I.R .A . prisoners in 1919 and 1920,
which were ended by government
Castillo heads political group
Gale C astillo, a m arketing ac
count executive for Pacific N orth
west Bell, was elected president o f
the Hispanic P olitical A ction
Com m iltee,
a
statewide
organization formed to represent
Hispanic political interests.
Portland attorney Raul Soto-
Seelig was elected treasurer. Elected
secretary was Luz Bazan Gutierrez,
Salem, an active community mem
ber working with the Oregon Com
mission o f Hispanic A ffa irs ,
assisting in lobbying efforts.
The new president has served as
an o ffic e r fo r Image, a national
organization concerned w ith em
ployment for Hispanics and with the
Committee o f Spanish-Speaking
People o f Oregon.
Defendent found not guilty
(Continued from page I col. 6)
the incident, and said he was
carrying the gas can because he had
been trying to start his girlfriend’ s
car, and came back into the bar to
get the keys to her (girlfriend) car.
Morrison and his girlfriend were the
only witnesses to testify they saw
Harm on kick at M orrison. Other
witnesses, all acquaintences o f
Morrison’s, said they did not clearly
see the incident, which some said
was preceed by racial slurs.
Michael Brown, o f the M arion
County district attorney’ s office,
said he was “ surprised and deeply
disappointed” at the verdict, and
believes it w ill heighten the mistrust
o f the ju d ic ia l system felt by the
Black community.
Maurice Harmon summed up his
feelings: “ W hite people might as
well put signs up saying ’ For white
only.’ ”
BROADWAY MALL
FISH MARKET & DELI
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concessions to the strikers.
But no concessions were offered
to MacSwiney, and over ten long
weeks much o f the world watched as
a solitary Irishman confronted the
vast power o f the British crown with
the example o f his voluntary suf
fering. On October 24, 1920, Mac
Swiney died.
The effect on public o p inion
especially in Britian, was enormous.
Huge, absolutely silent crowds
lined the London streets down
which MacSwiney’ s c o ffin passed
for shipment to Cork. They marked
the measure o f a nation’ s shame and
the a b ility o f one in d ivid u a l to
become the symbol o f opposition to
many economic, social and political
abuses. Fourteen months later, the
Irish Free State was a reality.
Some 25 years after that, India
joined the ranks o f liberated British
possessions, largely on the strength
o f a persistent campaign o f passive
resistence in which G andhi ex
panded the concept o f the political
hunger strike to a fu ll-fle d g e d
ideology o f rebellion. Like M ac
Swiney, Gandhi understood that the
very power o f an oppressive state
could be its own undoing so long as
world opinion nd moral sanctions
meant anything -- as they would not
in the case of Nazi Germany.
In a sense, o f course, starvation
on a massive scale had set the stage
fo r Terence MacSwiney. Between
1845 and 1850 more than one
m illion Irishmen died in a terrible
fam ine which resulted fro m a
parasitic blight on the potato crop,
Ireland’ s staple food. An additional
three million people left the Island,
most o f them for the United States.
Am ong the repercussions were
three developments which w ould
profoundly affect the British em
pire. A t home, remorse at the role
o f England’ s Corn Laws, which
forbade the im port or export o f
grain and added to the death to ll,
led to their repeal and the rise of he
Liberal Party. A broad, Irish im
migrants acted as Irish patriots; they
helped spread critical views o f the
British role in their homeland and
contributed large sums o f money
to the cause o f independence. And
in Ireland itself, the famine brought
great new influence to Daniel
O'Connell’ s Catholic Emancipation
Movement, and precipitated the
establishment o f the I.R.A.
As in the case o f MacSwiney
three-quarters o f a century later, the
famine raised d is tin c tly m oral
questions for the British and for the
world, whose opinion mattered to
them. It also produced p o litic a l
results which would significantly af
fect B rita in ’ s behavior as an im
perial power, even if the end o f the
empire — and independence for
Ireland — remained in the distant
future.
RESTAURANT & DELI
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Today Bobby Sands, a single man
p ittin g his se lf-control against a
state, recalls e x p lic itly the long
legacy o f politics and starvation in
Ireland.
It would be a mistake to interpret
his example as the embodiment o f a
new I.R .A . ideology in the Gan-
dhian sense. Passive resistence in
Ireland has for too long been tried
to a policy o f uncom prom ising
violence outside the prison walls.
Nevertheless, Sands’ fast has
served to focus new attention on the
moral issues at stake in this troubled
and divided country. And in the
process it has also served as a
reminder fo r the rest o f the world
that the individual conscience still
does count - and that the lessons of
Terence MacSwiney, Mohandas
Gandhi and Martin Luther King still
have meaning.
C O P Y R IG H T
■ TURKEY
m
TIP
ROAST
Link Sausage
(Photo: Richard Brown)
fectcd.
Reagan’ s budget manager, David
Stockm an, said the CBO study is
evidence that the President’ s
“ safety net” works since most low-
income fam ilies would not suffer
what he called " a serious reduction
in their spendable income.”
W ith about tw o -th ird s o f the
funding cuts excluded from the
computation, the CBO said most in
come losses for the poor will be less
than 5 percent, but 649,00 families
w ill suffer an average income
decrease o f 19 percent.
Fam ilies headed by non w hite
women w ill be most likely to be af-
1981
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