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WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 22,
Environment
The ASUN Environmental
Task Force, slowed by a
change in chairmanship, will
attempt to define its goals and
identify problem areas in the
next two weeks.
The Task Force Steering
Committee decided Tuesday to
select two student and two
faculty-administration
members to work with the
chairman on a statement of
committee philosophy.
The committee was
instructed to pay sepecial
attention to the areas of
AUF
Students may vote on
All University Fund
priorities for this year in
Voter league aids
18-20 registration
A voter registration drive
will be held November 1-5, in
conjunction with similar drives
on college campuses across the
state, League of Young Voters
Temporary Co-chairman
Michael (O.J.) Nelson, said
Tuesday.
The League is a non-partisan
organization formed over the
summer to help
newly-enfranchised 18- to
21-year-olds register to vote.
Co-sponsored by ASUN and
the Nebraska Student
Government Assn., the drive
will give students the option to
registering in Lincoln or in
their home towns, Nelson said.
"But we hope to register
most people here," he
continued, "and we're
presently negotiating with
1971
LiNCOLN, NEBRASKA VOL 95, NO. 12
group begins
environmental regulations,
services and education.
Gary Gabelhouse is acting as
temporary chairman until
ASUN appoints a chairman to
replace Diane Beecher, who is
no longer a student at UNL.
The Task Force campus
beautification subcommittee
has begun a campaign to keep
the Nebraska Union clean of
litter. But, Gabelhouse said
litter campaigns should be
secondary and he is more
concerned with environmental
education.
"The best way we can get
the Nebraska Union from
1 1 a.m. to 3 p.m. today.
Secretary ot State Allen
Beerman and County fleet oral
Commissioner Dean Petersen."
Nelson said the drive
sponsors hope to establish
registration booths on campus,
but if that is impossible,
transportation will be provided
for students to the
County-City building.
For students who have
decided to register in their
home towns, "information and
aid"-probably in the form of
registration forms to be filled
out and sent home-will be
provided, Nelson said.
There will be an
organizational meeting open to
all students who want to help,
Nelson added, at 7 p.m.
Sunday, in the Nebraska
Union.
Prison officials face
by Nicholas Horrock
Newsweek Feature Service
"In any prison, the
prisoners can take control at
any time. They can never
escape because they can't take
the towers or the weapons. But
it is virtually impossible to keep
a determined group of
prisoners from seizing control
of a given area."
The speaker is Louis S.
Nelson, warden of San Quentin
prison, and he has lived with
this knowledge for most of his
career. So have the wardens of
most U.S. prisons. The only
wonder is that it has taken
their charges so long to become
aware of the potential of
prisoner power and to act upon
it.
Now, the revolutionary
actions are speaking louder
than the revolutionary words.
The recent bloodbath at New
York's Attica Correctional
Facility was only another
milestone in a progression of
smaller rebellions in prisons all
across the country.
WORK STOPPAGES,
hunger strikes, assaults on
guards have become almost
tasks slowly
anything environmentally is by
education,'' he said.
Gabelhouse suggested that the
committee work with
education programs for the
Lincoln schools and a
workshop in environment for
the city's elementary teachers.
At a previous meeting,
priorities for the Task Force
were established which include
air and water pollution, solid
waste, campus beautification
and public relations.
These problem areas were
assigned to subcommittees
charged with researching and
identifying the extent of the
problem, said committee
menber Ronald D. Gierhan,
assistant in the Student Affairs
office.
The next step is to publicize
the results and encourage
student participation in solving
the problems, he said.
A suggestion was submitted
to the Task Force that they
consider the long-term aspects
of transportation, parking and
campus beautification. Walter
T. Bagley, associate professor
of horticulture and forestry,
said these problems are all tied
together and affect air
pollution.
Bagley suggested that the
committee work with the city
to create a good bus system
and to encourage people to
ride buses instead of driving
cars.
Homecoming queen
interviews
Lincoln girls interested
in a Homecoming Queen
interview should fill out an
application and sign for an
interview in the
Inter-Fraternity-Council
office today before 4 p.m.
Interviews will be held in
the Nebraska Union
tommorrow nieht.
common occurrences. So, too,
has the reaction. In Raiford,
Fla., Pendelton, Ind., and
Soledad, Calif., police or prison
guards have fired into crowds
of essentially unarmed men. In
Raiford, for example, a
15-minute volley of birdshot
and ricocheting machinegun
bullets wounded 63 inmates.
So far, the violence of the
counter-measures has
succeeded only in stopping the
outbreak at hand. The
determination of the prisoners
seems to be growing, and so is
their unity. Indeed, two
opposite and powerful forces
have come smack against one
another: the Black Revolution,
with its accent on
freedom-and the most rigid,
insolated and archaic of all
institutions, the prison.
By all odds, the most
important development in
prison life in recent years has
been the radicalization of the
black inmate. Blacks form a
majority in many prisons and
in some they constitute as
much as 95 per cent of the
population.
THE NEW BLACK prisoner
is a changed man. "When I
came into this system in
1949," says Kenneth Hardy,
Washington, D. C.'s Director
of Corrections, "the status
symbol for a black inmate was
a pair of $40 civilian shoes.
Now, the status symbol is a
dashiki, an Afro and a Federal
City College jacket."
The new leader is
self-educated (in prison),
articulate, probably a Panther
or a Muslim and unfailingly
revolutionary in outlook. And
he is a man capable of giving
the inmates a new and
immensely more dignified
image of themselves-as
American blacks who, as they
see it, are members of a
,"xolonized " race, are
"political prisoners" and have
been arrested less for criminal
acts than for "trying to survive
in a racist society."
Yet with all the accent on
black pride, the racial bars
between black and white
prisoners are coming down in
some prisons. Increasingly, the
revolutionary inmate sees
himself as part of a depressed
class, which includes prisoners
of all colors and backgrounds.
THE REAL RACIAL clash
in prisons these days is
between the prisoners and
preponderantly white guards.
It amounts at times to the
deepest possible clash of
cultures.
Most prisons are in rural
communities, and the guards
and correction officers are
taken mostly from local
communities. They are
conservative (by contemporary
standards), blue-collar,
small-town people, and they
are poles apart in outlook,
background and experience
from the minority prisoners
who are overwhelmingly
ghetto-bred and urban-oriented.
The average guard is, thus,
totally unprepared t o
understand or to sympathize
with the new prisoner. A
Maryland prison official
describes the situation
pungently:
"IN THE OLD DAYS, if a
correction officer wanted to
talk to a black prisoner, he'd
yell, 'Hey, boy, you come on
over here,' and the prisoner
would trot right over. If he did
that today, most of the guys
in here would say, 'Who you
calling boy,' and then call him
the woist name they can think
of.
'The Correction officer
can't handle that. His life isn't
so all-fired good, anyway. He
has, or believes he has, a
bo ttdm-of-t he-social-ladder
revolution
jbb-hell, there are guards here
who won't tell their kids where
they work-he doesn't have
much money and now he has
to take all this guff from what
he probably considers a bunch
of niggers. He simply can't
handle it."
The old methods no longer
work. Once the most securely
isolated of U.S. institutions,
prisons are now opening up to
public view; similarly, the
inmates are now far more
aware of what is going on
outside the walls.
COURT DECISIONS have
paved the way. Officials can no
longer ban "inflammatory"
books, magazines and
newspapers. A few years ago,
Eldridge Cleaver was not even
allowed to see a copy of his
own book. Now, inmates can
read nearly everything,
including the news of the latest
ghetto riot.
Prisoner leaders, like nearly
everyone else who is
newsworthy, have learned to
use the media. Articulate
inmates can be seen on
television, presenting their
views and staging
demonstrations for the
prime-time audience. Nor is it
so difficult for them to see
reporters as it once was. And a
new breed of criminal lawyer is
increasingly able to have access
to inmates and to bring their
grievances before the public.
These lawyers are at
opposite poles from the
stereotype of the shifty,
mob-oriented criminal lawyers
who were once virtually the
only members of their
profession who took any
interest in prisoners. The new
breed is young, revolutionary
and exceedingly aggressive.
EVEN RELIGION has
helped to end the
isolation-not the old-time
religion, of course, but radical
Catholic priests and Protestant
ministers and, above all, the
Black Muslim faith. Court
actions have given prisoners in
some institutions the right to
read Muslim publications-and
to get a new dose of black
pride and militance.
At the same time, many
nationalistic organizations-the
Black Panthers and a dozen or
so smaller organizations-have
been formed inside prison
walls. All have publications and
what amounts to a party line
based on pride and militance.
Yet in the face of the
bombast, the threatening tones
and even the taking of
hostages, prisoner demands
have in most cases been quite
mild. They almost always
include better food, better
sanitation, less crowded
conditions and more pay (in
some institutions, the men
work for as little as 3 cents an
hour). Prisoners also ask to be
allowed to send more letters,
to see lawyers more easily and
to be allowed to present their
views to reporters.-
ONE OF THE ironic
tragedies of the present
situation is that more real
reforms have been made in the
prison system in the past three
years than at any time in the
preceding 50 years. But the
reforms have come late and
grudgingly, and their impact
has been nothing like what it
would have been if they had
been made a decade ago.
The Federal government
pumped $180 million into
local and state correction
programs last year and expect
to spend $250 million this
year.
There have even been
inroads on the chronic
overcrowding of the system.
These have come about
through increased use of
Turn to page 7.