Volume 27 - Issue 5

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THE NEw JouRNAL

TheNewJournal Volume 27, Number 5

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The magazine about Yale and New Haven

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The Selling of The Duke by Dan Murphy. New Haven's Winchester rifle factory looks to the future by invoking the legends of the Old West.

The Connecticut justice System on Trial by Rosemary Hutzler. A recent graduate's film aims to get a woman out of prison.

The Struggle for Democracy in Modem Times by Ben Lumpkin.

A newspaper prepared New Haven radicals in the art of self-defense.

Making a Deal to Dream by Daniel Seiler. A class of fourthgraders joins forces with New Haven citizens to further their education.

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In Pursuit of an Americanist Dream by joel Burges. Yale literary scholars contend with well-worn traditions in order to define a discipline .

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About this Issue

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Points of Departure

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Between the Vines:They're Praying for You by Jay Dixit.

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Cover design by Ted Gesing. Cover photo by Virginia BlaisdelVModem Tunes T HE NEw jOURNAL is published five <i~a during <he academic yur by The Nrw journal a< Yale. Inc., P.O. Sox 3431 Yale S<a<ion, N<W Haven, CT o6j>O. Office address: 2j1 Parks.,...,, Phone: <1031 431-19S7· : All con<cms copyrigh< •99S by The New journal a< Yale, Inc. All Righu Racrved. Reproduction ci<hcr in whole or in pan wi<hou< wrir<cn permission of me publisher and edi<or in chief is prohibited. While • this magatinc is published by Yale College nudcnu, Yale Univcrtiry is not r<>ponsiblc for its contents. Ten 1housand copies of each issue arc distributed fr.. to members of the Yale and New Haven communiry.

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T H I S

I S S U E

"Now is the winter of our discontent," declares Shakespeare's Richard III, utterly unaware that these lines would ring so true in contemporary New Haven. The line plays on its double meaning; read straight on, it sounds as if winter marks a rime of di'sconrenc.

But upon closer scrutiny, the line promises the end of discontent. Now in April, we embrace the end of winter's bitter cold-our discontent. New Haven's climatic unpredictability notwithstanding, we've shed our scarves and wool gloves for the most part. But just as Shakespeare's line hovers in ambivalence, so do we, as we hold rhe jacket in a moment of indecision, tentatively fearing the cold that's wont ro bite back in a resurgence of winter. Anxious for a break, we gaze longingly at ou!"'shorts and t-shirrs, envious of those courageous few who have already donned them. Stir-crazy from months indoprs? Perhaps. But maybe our discontent stems from something more than the temperature. In spite of Yale's reputation for apathy and New Haven's for despair, rhe past few months and weeks have wirnessed a stirring of polirical senriment-and agirarionover what many liberals would call ruin and conservatives would call renewal. In spire of a hostile political climate, acrivists have overcome despair, fueled by discontent ro prorest and enact change. The Contract with America, California's Proposirion 187, and GESO's call for unionizarion have sparked fervenr debare, rife wirh a potenr mix of jargon and pure sentiment. Srudents and residents have galvanized ro protect what rhey call "jusrice," "rights," "opporrunity." Coming our of a winter ofharsh polirical forecasts, rhese acrivisrs brave the caprice of the New Haven spring and march across Cross Campus lawn, rally around City Hall. From a harsh and cold winter springs forth dialogue but not a lirrle diatribe.

This issue's cover story harkens back to the 1970s when a group of New Haveners dedicated to raising political consciousness, founded a newspaper called the Modern Times.

Written by Ben Lumpkin, rhe piece chronicles the lives of the paper and its people-those who ran it and those profiled in it. The Modern Times commitred itself ro letting voices be heard that would not otherwise be heard, voices speaking about urban redevelopment, environmental reform, social injustice. Although the paper was published 20 years ago, it addresses many of the same issues confronri ng New Haven roday. Rosemary Hutzler writes about Bonnie Jean Foreshaw, convicted of murder and sentenced ro 45 years in prisonthe longest sentence delivered to a woman in Connecticut. The srory relates whar happened when Bonnie met Yalie Ondi Timoner (SY '94). Together rhe rwo women have worked to serve justice rhrough film, after the court sysrem failed rhem. While the Consriturion makes promises, the courrs offer no such guaramees. By the same roken, rhe rift between academic ideals and their implementation can be vast. Joel Burges' piece on Americanist literary scholars reveals the fissure in academia between intellectual ideals of diversity and the troubled task of realizing these goals.

Action takes myriad forms. Dan Seiler writes about the I Have a Dream program which selected a group of East Rock Community School fourth-graders to pay for their college or vocational school tuitions, looking for promise in the future. The prayer group led by New Haven resident Jere Garceau puts its hopes into the Yalies of roday. They pray for each freshperson class, targeting Yale because this is the place where furure leaders are born. Sound far-fetched? Maybe.

The content of these anicles as well as a few changes in our design attempr to open up the lines of dialogue and articulate more than what is on the surface.

-SAK

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Uncle Vanyo's Peeker If you missed the recent issue of Rolling Stone featu ring the Drama School's buff and beautiful crop of soon-to-graduate third-year acting students, try to find a copy. T he Calvin Kle in-clad actors 'epitom ize the Drama School's glossy mystique. We're unique, they seem to say.

A breed apart.

But Rolling Stone missed the real story, the inside scoop on the newest member of the Drama School scene. There's a new star on stage at the University Theater, one who steals t he show every time he makes an entrance during the Yale Rep's production of Chekov's Uncle Vanya. As he waits in the wings for his cue, the other actors must feel a moment of terror. It may be his physical presence: short, flighcy, even slightly gamey.

But when he struts onstage, the feeling must be pure chartreuse envy. In this sanctuary for rare birds, none can compare with h im-and he always has the most striking costume.

O nly if you have seen Uncle Vanya can you fully appreciate the effect produced by the onstage appearance of a white peacock.

Of cou rse most peacocks don't come in wh ite: t he very mentio n of the word summons an image of iridescent greens and blues, shades of gaudy pride. But Uncle \tanyas peacock-who answers ro the name Peeker-is a sort of minimalist mutant, perfectly in tune with maverick director Len Jenkin's vision for the show. Jenkin reportedly felt that a run-of-the-mill peacock would just not do the trick, a nd who can argue? The stage lights accentuate the stately curve of Peeker's body and illuminate t he showy expanse of his snow-wh ite tail.

The immaculate bird is the incarnation of the theatrical subli me in a show replete with nuance, charm, and style.

Su b l ime, that is, if Peeker doesn't decide to fl ap his

wings. The bird is, through no fault of his own, quite a prima donna. First of all, white peacocks cost about $300, six times as much as your average multicolo red peacock. Peeker also requires special living accommodations: he spends his downtime in a cage at the Yale Animal Control center, with the Med School's sundry doomed rodents. As the kinder and gentler Drama School has a policy of not destroying hasbeen actors, Peeker will not meet the fate of his neighbors. He must be sold or given away after the show closes on April 15.

This means that Peeker's wings could not be clipped. Leashed at the ankle, Peeker is not exactly a free bird when he crosses the stage to open and close each performance of Uncle Vtmya, but his presence injects a delicious unpredictability befitting Jenkin's slightly loopy production.

Though they maintain a professional resolve about the situation, the human actors know that working next to Peeker means flouting a long-standing maxim.

"The actors don't like being on stage with it-surprise, surprise," says a Technical Design and Production student fami liar with the production. "Definite 'dogs and children' potential. They're afraid of being upstaged." ¡

Or perhaps just being pecked ro death.

This seems unlikely, however, as Kiki Short (ORA '95) stands ready ro dash onstage to save her classmates in the unlikely event that Peeker runs amok. As the show's official Peacock Wrangler, Short has so far had no such challenges. Her main job is to give Peeker his cues, basically a matter of pushing his plumed ass onstage and then snatching him up in the dark of the scene change. Peeker's big moment comes in the last scene, when he jumps up onto a table.

It's not as if he has to jump through flaming hoops, but audiences love it all the same.

At curtain call, though, the familiar pecking order reasserts itself and the humans get all the applause. The talented Uncle Vanya troupe takes a bow, sans Peeker. It looks like he needs a better agent-one who doesn't mind getting paid chicken feed.

-jay Porter

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Satchel Sage Speaks Once upon a time, discri min at ing between graduate students and undergrads was a simple matter. I grant you that the guidelines were never clear-cut, but as this division was never more than a diversion, it didn't much matter. What mattered was that if you wanted to assign labels, wanted to make a point about thc!t:lientele of a certain restaurant or the inhabitants of a certain carrel, you could do so with relative ease, if not absolute impunity. For back in those days, graduate students carried satchels, and undergraduates carried backpacks.

Without passing judgement o n either group's abiliry to accessorize, let us consider this division. We may go so far as to. say that, in the state of nature, most graduates . wear satchels, while most undergraduates wear backpacks. There is probably a n entirely practical explanation for this splitsomething to do with the nature of classes taken, or perhaps a GESO edict suggesting that graduate students support the United Federation of Satchel Workers-but we are not concerned with such details. We are, rather, concerned with image: satchels suggest purpose, sryle, and a certain aura of

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mystery. (What, after all, does the average undergrad know about his TA? That she lives somewhere within rhe New Haven area code, and chat she occasionally has office hours, though he's nor sure just when or where). Satchels also go very well with black.

Backpacks, on the other hand, are more casual, utilitarian, and not unsuited to flannel shirts. They don't suggest much more than youth and perhaps sportiness; certainly they say nothing in particular about the nature of one's studies.

Unfortunately, the once-dear distinction berween students has been blurring, and it is not because graduate students have heard rhe gospel of Jansport. Rather, increasing numbers of undergraduates are leaving their Eddie Bauer standbys_at home with their unreturned high school textbooks and their old Esprit bookbags. It is now possible ro wander through Willoughby's and find satchel-sporting students waving their hands over their double-tall, non-fat lattes as they discuss the horrors of English 129 papersmeaning the writing rather than the grading.

I have no serious complaints to lodge with chose undergraduates who have adopted satchels as their own. It's a certain sartorial statement, after all, and as I am unlikely co mistake a random sophomore for my philosophy TA based simply upon her book-carrying apparatus, it's even a fairly harmless one. Nevertheless, it's difficult not ro notice char certain undergraduates are more fond of such statements-not to mention more willing to throw rheir shoulders out of alignment-chan are others.

Undergraduate satchel carriers choose their bags co make a statemenr, to assert their independence from the knapsack mafia, and to express their own deeply-held sense of purpose. Many are headed to grad school in the Iiberal arts, and thus are declaring either the seriousness of their purpose or their solidarity with their TA's.

Some may have returned from a year abroad (usually in Europe), while others simply see themselves as somehow differenr: trendier, more suave, and utterly unafraid to walk wirh a distinct rightward lise. Satchels do look conveniently like briefcases, when seen

APRIL 14, 1995

from a distance, and may, for this reason, attract the preprofessional crowd.

However, ir is theater, comp lit, and foreign language majors who . seem most partial to // satchels; I'll leave it co you ro decide just why this should be so.

And indeed, should you decide to become a satchelspotter yourself, an array of other trends and subcategories will no doubt suggest themselves-the critical divide between leather and nylon satchels, rhe ambiguous case of the backpack worn on one shoulder-bur those issues bear more serious scrutiny than this brief introduction can provide. So good luck, and happy theorizing.

-Brooke Conti (Brooke, by the way, has never carried anything that could be described as even remotely satchei-like-unlen you count the abovementioned Esprit bags, of which she owned three.)

Revising the 'F' Word Perhaps there is no sex at Yale, but no one can accuse Yalies of lacking in conversation. After four hours of chatting in Kate's common room, my thighs are beginning to leave a permanent imprint in the brown vinyl of her Salvation Army sofa.

Tonight's conversation has run the usual gamut of topics, from classes and professors to significant (or insignificanr) ochers.

Topics nor unusual for two people who balance precariously on the line between acquaintances and friends, who chat when rhey cross paths on Old Campus and always say they will call bur rarely take the time to dial.

So I am mildly surprised when our conversation about women's groups on campus leads to a more heated topic: feminism. Warning signs flash in my head like an air-raid siren, but I push them away effortlessly. After having this conversation countless rimes, my friend's comments will

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undoubtedly be no more than the annoying buzz of a fly trapped berween the screen and the windowpane. I have become an expert at swatting feminist flies.

I look into Kate's eyes, all innocence framed by mousy eyeglasses and a blunt strip of schoolgirl's bangs. Definitely not the weathered face of someone who has passed long afternoons discussing feminist theory. So at the mention of feminism, I decide to get right down co business. Why extend a conversation when I could knock Kate down and be our of here before we hit round three? ''I'm for women's rights, bur I don't call myself a feminist," I say. "I consider myself an equalise." My voice rakes on a slightly self-righteous tone. Surely Kate has never been exposed co this position on the issue.

Kate smiles in a way I int~rpret as timid. "You don't want to discuss chis with me." She waves her hand shyly. " I have very strong feelings about the matter."

Did I say she waved her hand shyly?

Her gesture now seems more akin to the shooing away of a bothersome mosquito.

But I refuse to metamorphose from prizefighter to annoying insect this quickly.

I calmly explain to her in very measured tones that rhe term feminist no longer has the same meaning that it did during the feminist movement 30 years ago, but my heart begins its own Kentucky Derby at the thought that I might actually

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have to defend my position. I am positive that only moments ago Kate's eyes were reflecting the lenses of her bookish glasses.

So why are there flashes shooting in my direction like Fourth of July sparklers?

"Actually, the definition of feminist is exactly the same as it always has beenpro-women's rights," Kate says, challenging me to a duel to the death.

I shake my head, accepting the challenge, though I anffeeling less like a lion and more like a tabby cat clawing my way out of a back alley dumpster.

Summoning up my reserves, I say, "Nowadays, when people hear the word feminist, they immediately think 'feminazi.' That is not something I want to associate myself with." Lying back on the couch, I let my arms soak up the coolness of the fake leather covering. I could make a Hving. producing convincing arguments.

Maybe politics is for me after all. .

"Well, if you aren't willing to stand up and be counted as a feminist, then it's no wonder so many people today are misconstn.iing the term."

Touche.

I sit up again, realizing I am going to have to bring forth my full arsenal to have a chance at victory. Too many 'feminists' today don't just want equality, they want superiority, I lame.nt. "I am not willing to ask for women's rights at the expense of men's rights or people's rights. I am not interested in male-bashing."

I have said my piece and I look to Kate's eyes for confirmation. Instead I see disgust and disappointment, emotions I never knew existed in her seemingly pristine world. Well, Toto, I guess we're not in Kansas anymore.

How can I take on a label whose connotation no longer applies to my beliefs? How can I associate myself with the stereotype of a feminist in the 90s? As I continue in a vain attempt to explain myself, I realize that perhaps Kate is not the one from whom I am defending my views.

"If people like us don't bear the label, then who will prove that it still stands for equal rights?" she asks in a voice that is

THE NEW jOURNAL

quiet, but far from timid.

Kate's question lingers in the air, burrowing as deep into my psyche as my thighs have into her 70s-style sofa.

-Hillary Margolis

Patagucci I am one of the guilty ones. In my closet hang seven Patagonia jackets. An eighth, a synchilla vest, size S, blueberry, is on its way via UPS. I don Gore-Tex at the most innocuous drizzle, and two of me could fit inside my strap-laden backpack.

My all-leather Vasque hiking boots, scuffed and softened, give me about as much support as a bedroom slipper, though I've only really hiked in them five times. You know how treacherous New Haven sidewalks can be.

For the most part, Yalies who dress in fleece and puffy vests have some kind of American West hangup, myself included. Somewhere behind every earflap hat wearer there's a summer in Jackson Hole or a ski vacation in Telluride; a friend who did what one wished one could have and went to college at Boulder; or a brother who makes his living white water rafting in Utah. Remember that course you took whose syllabus included Black Elk and Frederick Jackson Turner? It's no accident that Guide Shells were strewn across the backs of 90 percent of the chairs in the lecture hall. Forget about noble savages, covered wagons, cowboys, and silver mining. At Yale, we've coopted mountaineering clothing as our own particular piece of the frontier myth.

Trailblazer, on Elm Street, caters to our fancy- "fancy" meaning just that... It's no big surprise when a flannel clad salesman explains to me that it's "fashion before functionality" when it comes to the Patagonia line. North Face, on the other hand, puts rock climbing before window shopping, powder skirts before detachable hoods. "North Face is hot," he says. "This time next year, it'll be the hot thing. It's

APRIL 14, 1995

street wear." Street wear? I nod politely and busy myself with the Capilene collection. A street wear classification, industry code for knit caps, Raiders jackets, and all around gangsta chic, does not bode well for venerable mountaineering gear-maker North Face. It's a niche from which recovery is unlikely, the trek back to the trout streams and the Tetons an arduous one. Patagonia, the J. Press of backcountry outfitters, will not make the same mistake.

The coolest Patagonia on campus is a fuzzy cream-colored zip-up (for all you

techies: I'm talking Pile Glissade) which makes the wearer look rather like a sheep.

Backpack honors go to Golden, Colorado's Mountainsmith line, whose smallest size (Grand Tour) seems to be designed for those nights you need to lug sixty or more books home from Sterling. But don't rush out to Trailblazer with your $150 in hand just yet-now that Mountainsmith is available for purchase up the block from Yale Station, it'll lose a little of its insider

cachet.

What kind of a frontier is this? With the requisite uniform subject to coolerthan-thou and 1-was-there-first scrutiny (e.g., "Dude, your raingear is from when the Patagonia logo still had the pointy letters?"), it might appear that Yale's eye is focused more on Seventh Avenue than on Crested Butte. But like any uniform, this one serves as an identifier: a signal that though one may be serving out four years in this dreary town, one's allegiance lies elsewhere, amidst the fresh powder and the red rocks.

Quite often, unlike the subgroups of people w ho wear concert t-shirts without ever having heard the band or subscribe to Th( New Yorker because it looks so smart when visitors thumb through the magazines on the common room table, Trail blazer types really do strike out for the Territory. The trip West is fast replacing the European Grand Tour as the post-grad rite of passage. The next time you take a walk up Elm Street, stop in Trailblazer and you'll probably see someone you know trying on a synchilla or getting fitted for new hiking boots. Ask them what they're doing this summer: the answer probably involves a state west of the Mississippi. Thousands of miles away from East Rock or on that hike up Pikes Peak, whether or not your polypropelene will really wick away moisture actually matters.

-Susan Burton

Thanks! from The New Journal Atlcmtic Moothly, ~ul Bass, Abby Benson, Virgilm Blaisdell, Joel Burges. Susan Burton, Jay Dixit, Alex Funk, Roman Groysman. Michael Jo, San ~Lm. Lisa Kavanaugh, Caroline A. Kim, Hillary Margolis, Mike Morand, Sharon Palmer, Julie Pederson, Dusha.n Petrovich, R.lzwa.n Rahim, Alma Roblado, Daniel Seiler, Olarles Wachter, Yale Dramat, CC+l7.

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The ·Selling ol the Duke New Hoven's Winchester rifle factory looks to the future by invoking the legends of the Old West.

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he edge of New Haven on Winchester Avenue lies a turistic arms factory. Built in 1994 by Giat dustries, the new factory of the U.S. Repeating Arms mpany, Inc. makes Winchester rifles and shotguns for hunting and sport-shooting. Here a declining war-munitions factory tries to reverse its downward trend and set forth a new image of modern production. At the front of this effort to bring Winchester into the twenty-first century is spokesman John Wayne.

When the Duke was gunning down cinematic bandits and hustlers in the 1940s, Winchester was at its peak, with a workforce 40 times larger than its current group of 475 employees. Only two of the factory buildings from that era remain. The older of the two is completely vacated and decaying; through its glassless windows one can still see the large outdated machines left behind when the building closed. The other building, recently declared a New Haven landmark, currently houses larger machinery and Winchester's management offices. The company is slowly phasing out the building, relocating its departments to ~ the new factory. A larger than life § bronze statue of John Wayne stands at the en trance to the building~ Winchester's ambassador to the world.

1! With his cowboy hat pulled down and ~ his ammo belt hanging loose from his %side, the Duke has his trusty ~ Winchester in hand. ~ The 1994 opening of the state-of}; the-art facility across the street seemed ~ inconceivable just a few years ago . ~ Winchester struggled through 1990, sometimes failing to pay its workers and eventually shutting down for three months. Cutting corners on the assembly line had led to a decline in the quality of the rifles produced. It seemed possible that the Winchester Rifle would be no more. That's when

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Ready for the twenty-first century, Winchester's new multi-million dollar factory, lies five blocks from Yale.

Giat, a private company owned by the French government, stepped in. In 1991 it bought Winchester and initiated plans to build the new factory.

On paper Giat's decision made no sense. At the time, Winchester desperately needed new machinery and facilities, and this wasn't the first time that the company was on the fiscal ropes. Throughout its convoluted financial history, Winchester has often teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1981, the top management purchased Winchester and re-formed it as the U.S. Repeating Arms Company.

In 1985 the company received a $6 million federal loan guarantee, but nevertheless filed for Chapter 11 protection in 1986.

Throughout this period, Winchester somehow managed to continue producing.

Winchester's history has always been characterized by cycles of boom and bust, having supplied militaries from its founding in the late nineteenth century through the 1950s. Mexican troops fighting for independence from France used Winchesters. The Union even used a few of rhe Henry model rifles near the end of the American Civil War. When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, Winchester had 3,000 employees and was operating 24 hours a day.

And in World War I, Winchester's 17,000 workers supplied firearms nor only to the Americans but also to the British.

Despite the 500,000 rifles produced for the Allies in WWI, Winchester soon faced low prices and escalating costs. The plant doubled irs size and drastically increased employment levels for wartime production. After the war was over, to make use of the extra machinery and workers, Winchester began manufacturing new products. The Winchester line grew to include everything from paint to baseball mitts, fishing rods ro roller skates. It distributed irs products nationwide through Winchester catalogs and company

APRIL 14, 1995

stores, much like Sears and Roebuck. Their 300-page catalog from 1927 boasted, "Winchester is a line of which you can weU be proud."

These side productions were dropped during the Depression when Olin Industries, another arms manufacturer, saved Winchester from irs first bankruptcy. Olin returned to producing strictly firearms, just in time to benefit from the increased demand caused by World War II. The Winchester of WWII employed 20,000 people and reached unprecedented levels of production, bur that number again tapered off dramatically after the war. Winchester depended on government contracts until the end of rhe Korean War. Since that rime, the company repeatedly reduced its workforce.

When it bought Winchester in 1991, Giat did not foresee a war in America's future. Nor did its management plan to produce military weapons or any other type of offensive arms. There was only one logical reason to invest in Winchester: John Wayne.

In the films of the 40s and 50s, slinging his Winchester through the American West, John Wayne gave the company something money. couldn't buy: reputation. The Winchester rifle became a part of American history and lore. It was "the gun that won the West" in the hands of the cowboys that the Duke portrayed. It was also the gun that won WWII in the hands of the men of John Wayne's generation. A Winchester rifle was one of quality. But the Winchester also had a special character. As a symbol of aU that was American, it was something of which a nation at war could be proud.

Giat bought into the Winchester myth. The mystique behind the gun was somehow greater than the sum of the barrel and stocks, springs and levers. And the image of the urban factory worker who placed each piece into the gun only added to the mystique.

And just as he had popularized the Winchester in the 1940s,

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voice [now] than before Giat took over," said Morbidelli.

The language used by the workers to describe the atmosphere in the plant and the future of the company resembles the rhetotic in Winchester's promotional materials. Leaving work for the day, Bob Forte, also from the shotgun department, explained, "The problems that had existed inside the factory have been solved." He added, "There's a new anitude in the factory. There's definitely a sense that we're on the way up."

Winchester seems to have succeeded in creating a family-like working environment.

The atmosphere they have sought to create recalls that which arose naturally at Wmchester during WWII, when the factory was almost a city within a city.

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Wayne became the spokesman for a new generation ofWinchester products.

When Giat took over, it combined the image of the Old West with that of a family of urban workers. In its workplace, Giat has tried to return to the attitude of the 40s and 50s, when Winchester was one very proud faâ&#x20AC;˘ -:ly. The Wmchester myth comes across cl . ¡I; in the product catalog. It touts the "Weapons of Legend" as a return to quality.

Viewing the scenes depicted, one might imagine that the land west of the Mississippi remains an untamed wilderness. The logo portrays a saddled cowboy, harkening back to the time when Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill were carrying Winchesters.

Winchester's own promotional video also highlights the "new anitude and enthusiasm" among workers since Giat took over. It features Mike Sanchez, a shotgun machine operator, saying, "The way we all communicate is like one family. Everybody treats others like family." It's obviously to Winchester's advantage to portray its workforce as content and cooperative, but this depiction of the situation may turn out to be more than just an image for the sake of public relations-Giat's management may have succeeded at inspiring a real enthusiasm in the factory.

Several policies have been particularly

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in raising employee morale. For the past seven years, Winchester has used the "team cell" production method rather than the standard assembly line. A small group of workers in a particular part of the factory add a specific part to a gun before it moves on to the next stage. T he move to the new factory, entirely contained on one floor, simplifies employee tasks by placing complementary "team cells" close to each other. "Team cells" have encouraged cooperation among a tightly knit group.

When the workers were spread out across the four cavernous Aoors of the old factory, working at Winchester meant anonymity.

Winchester set up "re-think teams" in each department. Composed of all the management and workers in the department, these groups provide a forum for ideas on ways to improve the production method or general factory conditions. "In our department, we've improved everything from the machines to the toilet paper in the bathrooms," said Darrell Morbidelli, a worker in the shotgun department. Re-think teams epitomize a new cooperation between management and the union workers. Before Giat, Winchester's recent history was marked by constant conflict between the International Machinists Union and management. "We definitely have more of a

rom 1942 through the 1950s, employees published Winchestn Lifo, a monthly mag22ine whose title reAects the degree to which workers identified themselves with their workplace. The pages of the magazine recorded the social lives and family lives of the workers. Fo r many employees these revolved around the factory.

The Winchester Club, for example, was an employee facility next to the factory that included a full gymnasium and workout equipment. Employees staged musicals and variety shows throughout this period.

Wmchester boasted an extensive recreational sport league, with both men and women employees playing for thei r own department. Issues of Winch~sur Lifo also

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included messages of congratulations for those who had been employed at the factory for 50 years or more.

These factory-sponsored activities all took place at a time when the nation was fully mobilized for war, and many of those working in the factory received exemptions from service because they had special skills in a vital war industry. Factory workers developed the kind of loyalty towards Winchester that servicemen held for their branch of the military. A fraternal camaraderie arose that made Winchester a strong firm with a reputation for a qualiry product.

The family atmosphere and undying employee loyalty proved invaluable when the company tried to push its production capacity in WWII. For today's Winchester, these intangibles ace elusive goals, but goals towards which it has made great strides as it modernizes its facilities.

Winchester breaks its plans for future progress into phases. Planning for Phase Two includes a complete relocation from the old factory into the new plant. The physical move reveals an optimism on the pare of Winchester. It foresees continuing success in the sporting-arms market. Thus far, results have been very encouraging. Production increased by 20,000 rifles from 1992 to 1993, and this year, production will exceed 270,000 rifles. The management aims to turn out nearly twice as many by the year 2000.

But the West was won long ago.

Winchester wiJI never again play a major role in global affairs the way it did in the World Wacs. It must prevent the layoffs and union disputes and maintain the qualiry of its product. Still, the new factory gleams beside its decaying predecessors. Inside, the eight-foot tall statue of John Wayne is more than a memorial. It has grown slightly tarnished over the years, but, for now, the legend lives on.

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Jhe Connecticut Justice System on Trial ate on the evening of March 26, 1986, Bonnie Jean Foreshaw dropped off a friend in a rough section of Hartford. On her way home to Bloomfield she stopped at rhe Jamaica Progressive League, a social club on Albany Avenue. Several months earlier she had separated from her abusive husband, who co-ntinued to stalk her and her children. Fearing an attack from him, she had recently starred carrying a handgun for the first time in her life.

Inside the club a man Bonnie did not know offered to buy her a drink. She declined, saying she did not accept drinks from strangers.

The man, Hector Freeman, grew angry and began to shout that he would "fuck her up." She left, and he followed her out to the street, accompanied by a woman named Joyce Amos, whom Bonnie had never met bur who seemed to know Freeman. Amos tried to stop him from harassing Bonnie, bur without success. As Freeman came toward her, Bonnie pulled our her gun and fired without aiming, hoping to scare him away. But he pulled Amos in front of him, and the bullet hit her, ricocheting fatally off her shoulder blade into her heart.

Doctors discovered that Amos was six months pregnant; the fetus was delivered stillborn.

Bonnie Foreshaw is now serving a 45-year sentence for murder in the first degree, the longest sentence currently imposed on any woman in the state of Connecticut.

When Ondi Timoner (SY '94) mer Bonnie, Ondi was four months away from graduation. Bonnie faced another 38 years at Niantic Correctional Facility for Women in East Lyme. Ondi was filming her senior project, a documentary called voices From Inside 1ime, based on interviews with women at the Niantic prison school.

On the last day of filming she sought out Bonnie at the urging of several other inmates, who called Bonnie a role model and an inspiration.

While the guards were changing shift, Ondi managed to sneak her camera into Bonnie's cell for an hour-long, unmonitored interview.

Ondi had long been interesred in the subject of authority and the influence of gender, class, and race .RJ on its administration, particularly in cases involving bartered women. She had conceived of voices as a

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sympathetic portrait of one group of what she caJls "transgressive • women." Bur nothing had prepared her for the contents of that hour. ~ Bonnie contended that her rights had been violated from the ... moment she was taken into custody. After the shooting, a number of ·..; political factors having liule to do with her had shaped her case: a vocal anti-abortion lobby seeking a double murder charge for the • deaths of Amos and her fetus; a politically sensitive state's attorney ~= and state legislature in an election year; and a public defender of • prodigious incompetence. H aving lost her her first appeal and served = eight years in prison, Bonnie was preparing a habeas corpus action . ; a against the state. Still awaiting scheduling, that suit will auempt to -'{ prove that Bonnie's imprisonment is illegal, on the grounds that her -':: original trial violated her Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel. ~ "': Ondi was deeply affected by what she calls the "miscarriage of -; justice" that had allowed Bonnie to be railroaded by the legal system.

She resolved to use aU the resources at her disposal to help Bonnie set • the record straight. Her determination resulted in a feature-length _ documentary devoted to Bonnie's life and case, called The Naturr of :: the B£ast. The film is a testament to the commitment of two women ·; on opposite sides of the camera and opposite extremes of privilege, united in pursuit of justice.

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en she screened voices From Inside 1ime at Niantic-co ·: ave reviews-Ondi approached Bonnie about making a •: econd film. Ondi had rwo aims in mind: to get Bonnie • .: our of prison and ro expose the disparity between the theory and the ~~ practice of constitutional guarantees, especially with respect to ••: · ... battered women.

"I was leery ar first," Bonnie cold me in a phone interview from ~ ~ Niantic. "There had been so many distortions in the papers. I didn't : ;,j trust anybody. Also, I knew ir would be painful, exposing my personal · ~ life to the world. But I was impressed by Ondi's first project, and I • ~ sensed her concern about injustice, and about me as a human being. • :: So I did some serious thinlcing, and I decided co make the movie to · :; educate others about abuse and to expose the unfairness of my trial. I · :: wanted to say, 'If ir could happen to me, it could happen to you."' : :: I first heard of Bonnie and the nascent movie project when I ran ~: into David Tunoner (PC '96), Ondi's brother and co-producer, just ~ after graduation. When I asked about his summer plans, he poured : -: out a jumble of information about Bonnie's case. It was more than I .:·: could assimilate, bur it sounded like a hopeless case, a contemporary horror story. David was electrified by the cause. But even he didn't • • know how the project would dominate his life in the coming months.

David and Ondi were already preparing to drive to Miami, : ~· Bonnie's hometown as well as their own, where they planned to ~= interview members of Bonnie's family. Bonnie had left Miami 20 : ~ years earlier, hoping to escape a lifetime of domestic violence and make a new start in Hartford, but her mother still lived there in the · f crime-ridden Liberty City area with the stepfather :: Bonnie claims molested her when she was 11.

• "We were amateurs then," says David, ten . ~ months and miles of experience later. Equipped with ; .

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only an 8mm hand-held camcorder and the according to David. essential facts of Bonnie's case, they had to Everyone held day jobs to pay the rent in learn as ·they went, both about the intricacies New Haven, rushing home to work on the of the case and about the art of film-making. film until four each morning. Ondi's Bonnie's brother, a Miami police officer, obsession with the film caused her to lose an provided them with many leads on the legal office job in New Haven and give up an internship with PBS in New York; she had details of the case. And the interviews with better luck as a nude model and a 2-WALK her parents offered suggestive glimpses of her childhood home. Through skillful editing guard. Short on time and shorter on these fuzzy, backlit takes were later funding, she criss-crossed the state with a incorporated into one of the film's grimly borrowed camera to interview everyone she ironic moments: could find from the case. Her subjects "No," laughs her mother, "he never -. · included police officers, lawyers for the touched her. He'd run away before he'd beat defense and the prosecution, a representative any of them." of the Connecticut Right to Life "When she confronted him about it," Corporation, plus a number of expert says Bonnie in her cell, "he adamantly witnesses on domestic violence and denied it and started beating me and her." constitutional law. A research team of about Cut to the stepfather: "I didn't put my ten people met weekly in Ondi's and Graham's living room to share their findings. ... hands on her, on account of she wasn't my 0 The researchers found ample evidence of co "' the political uproar over the death of Amos' -s"' fetus. Bonnie was the first person to have 0 ~ killed a pregnant woman in the state of::.

Connecticut, and state chapters of the Right ~ to Life Corporation, the Pro-Life Council, "' ~ and the Catholic Conference seized on the E ,g case as an opportunity to establish. the legal status of a fetus as a human being. They dubbed the fetus "Baby Boy Amos," and the local media followed suit. Superior Court Judge Herbert Barall ruled that Connecticut general statutes defining murder did not Bonnie jean Foreshaw remembering her apply to viable fetuses-a decision which Bill abusive step-father.

O'Brien, Connecticut Right to Life director, daughter, you understand? You can't put refers to in the film as a declaration of "open your hands on nobody else's children." season on the unborn."

The pro-life lobby and state Republican ack in New Haven, Ondi began to see leadership pushed successfully for a hearing on "feticide legislation." In the end the that it would take the whole summer and a mountain of investigative work legislature decided not to recognize a fetus as to do the film right. She and David a human being, acting instead on the advice marshaled the forces of several friends to help of John J. Kelley, chief state's attorney, who recommended circumventing the abortion with research and production. One of the principals was Peter Conolly-Smith (GRD issue by simply "enhancing penalties" for violent crimes against pregnant women. The '95), an American studies graduate student whose zealous involvement with the maximum sentence for manslaughter in production put him months behind on his Connecticut is 20 years, though prisoners with good behavior usually serve less than dissertation. Another central figure was Graham Brownstein (PC '96), research half of the term. Women convicted of coordinator, who doubled as Ondi's murder (a felony, and therefore not subject boyfriend-"the hardest job of all," to parole) .frequently receive sentences of

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fewer than 20 years. The legislative changes Kelley recommended prompted the prosecutor's decision to raise the charge against Bonnie from manslaughter to murder and the judge's unheard-of sentence of 45 years.

"Bonnie suffered so much from negative publicity around her trial," Ondi told me. "I wanted the film to give her as much honest publicity as possible before her appeal is heard." While not seekilfg to exonerate her, the film argues persuasively that Bonnie's crime was not murder but manslaughter, for which she has already served more than enough time. The film grants Bonnie a retrial in which she is allowed to argue her own defense, and the legal system is called to the stand for some hard questioning.

Bonnie's on-camera testimony constitutes the backbone of the film's oarra.tion. Her interview segments are interspersed with statements from the various experts, character witnesses, and officials involved in the case. Ondi compares ·the film's structure to a prism: "I wanted to depict the case through a multitude of perspectives without any single, overriding voice so that the viewer would feel like a member of the jury."

Against a background of prison cinderblock, Bonnie describes the interrogation immediately following her arrest. Police pressured her for seven to eight hours ro make a statement, she says, and denied her requests to call an attorney until minutes before her arraignment. In the next sequence Yale political science professor Rogers Smith, surrounded by books, explains that the law requires that all questioning cease once a suspect requests an attorney.

The film cuts to Steve Kumnick, the police detective who interrogated Bonnie: "It's an adversarial relationship. She's the suspect, and I'm interrogating her. I'm not going to make her a five-course breakfast."

Before and throughout her trial, Bonnie tells us, she was administered a drug she later learned was Thorazine, an ami-depressant used for treating psychotics. In the next shot, Donald Grayson, a psychiatrist involved in the case, says he can't imagine why Bonnie was given Thorazine, since she has no history

TH£ NEW JouRNAL

john WiLliams, Foreshaw's current attorney. of psychosis. But upon reflection, he mentions that many of the prisoners he sees as patients seem to be under the influence of heavy mood-altering drugs. Whatever it was, adds Bonnie's daughter Sylvia Green, "it made her like a zombie," jeopardizing her credibility in the eyes of the jury.

Throughout the five-day trial, Bonnie continues, anti-abortion demonstrators picketed the courthouse. The film incorporates clips from heavily slanted local news coverage of the "Baby Boy Amos" story.

Bonnie's request to move the trial was denied. According to Bonnie, her courtappointed public defender Dennis O'Toole seemed uninterested, even hostile, and asked her very few questions. She remembers saying to him, "'It's obvious you're not interested in defending me. Why don't you give up my case?' And from then on he never even pretended."

The court denied Bonnie's request for a new defender, a decision Rogers Smith confirms violated her right to counsel as guaranteed by the Constitution.

O'Toole refused to be interviewed for the film, but trial records and the filmed recollections of other lawyers bear out

Bonnie's claims. The defense attorney failed to subpoena any character witnesses to testify to Bonnie's ten years of work at the Wiremold Company, her service as a union shop steward for Local 1040, or her singlehanded support of two children and the home she owned in Bloomfield. Ondi compensates for O'Toole's negligence by interviewing Bonnie's two adult children, her neighbors, and a co-worker, among others.

But. by far the strongest defense of her character is Bonnie's own gentle intelligence, guiding viewers through the film.

The only witness called by the defense was a psychiatrist named Anne Price, who had concluded after a single 15-minute session that Bonnie suffered from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a syndrome afflicting many victims of domestic abuse as weU as combat veterans.

One of the symptoms of PTSD, the harriedlooking Price told Ondi, is hyper-vigilance, or a tendency to respond in disproportionate ways to perceived threats. But when she attempted to hand literature about PTSD to the judge, she recalls, he dismissed it as irrelevant. Connecticut statutes softening penalties for battered women did not apply to Bonnie, since neither her victim nor her assailant was her barterer. ohn Williams, Bonnie's present lawyer, criticizes O'Toole's failure to present an orchestrated argument about PTSD, a tively unfamiliar term at the time. Crossexamination quickly revealed that Price had not been prepared as an expert witness. The defense offered no medical or police records as proof of Bonnie's history of abuse, nor did O'Toole call Bonnie's children to the stand.

"If you want to present a Beethoven symphony," says Williams, "you don't send in some guy to whistle."

The film makes much of the issue of PTSD and the law's treatment of banered women. In addition to interviews confirming Bonnie's stories of abuse and persecution, Ondi included commentary from Evan Stark, a legal expert on domestic abuse, and government statistics on domestic violence.

This kind of information and expert testimony, Wtlliams told me, is exactly what

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ought to be brought up in the courtroom.

"Ondi is a brilliant, politically astute artist," he says. "She assembled my case for me."

Perhaps most astonishingly, the defense made no mention of the criminal record of Hector Freeman, Bonnie's assailant. He had been arrested three times for assault, once on a police officer. In fact, O'Toole did not know that Freeman had a record until he had left the stand, nor did he recall him once he was informed.

In order to establish murderous intent, the prosecution brought in witnesses who claimed to have heard Bonnie arguing with Freeman or with Amos in the bar. While the accounts conflicted, the state rested its case on the testimony of one James Pugh, who . claimed to have heard Bonnie say to Amos, "Bitch, I'm tired of your shit." In the probable cause hearing, however, Pugh had testified that he had not heard Bonnie say anything. The film drives home this inconsistency with copies of the transcripts of his two testimonies.

Based on Pugh's testimony, prosecutor Thomas asserted that Bonnie's self-defense story was a pure fabrication. The shooting, he argued, was premeditated. In the end, the jury agreed.

Thomas is one of the film's cast of black hats, whose interviews are impressively revealing. "Why did they agree to interview?" muses Ondi. 'The truth was not on their side. I think they agreed because they were afraid of looking scared. They're not bad people. They're.just doing their jobs.

That's the problem: they're just doing their jobs."

When Ondi interviewed Richard Emmanuel, Bonnie's public defender in her appeal, he cautiously declined to comment on the performance of fellow public defender O'Toole. "Let me say this," he conceded, "undeniably this was a manslaughter case, and not a murder case." ¡ nce in prison, Bonnie slipped through every conceivable crack in the legal system. She was assigned a succession of seven public defenders, none of whom managed even to ftle an appeal for . her. Bonnie began studying state laws in the

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prison library and was drafting her own appeal, when she received a visit from Mary Werblin, a private defense lawyer who had learned about the case from counselors at Niantic. Werblin brought the case to the attention of a local philanthropist who agreed to donate $10,000 toward the cost of hiring a lawyer for Bonnie.

They hired John Williams, who had cut his legal teeth defending the Black Panthers in the early 70s and today ranks among the most respected defense lawyers in the state.

His work, which normally costs¡clients $300

If it can happen to Bonnie Foreshaw, it can happen to others, and will." diting of Th( Natur( ofth( &ast lasted well into the fall 1994 semester, and negotiations with distributors continue. A screening at Yale in October was greeted by a large, receptive audience and positive reviews. It has since aired on Connecticut and Florida public television, and an excerpted version is scheduled to run on a New York City independent film channel in April. A deal is underway to

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Relativ(s mourn the less ofjoyu Amos and h" unborn child. an hour, has been largely pro bono. Filmed in front of an antique American flag, he embodies a sense of embattled constitutional ideals. His dosing remarks voice the moral message at the heart of the film: "Obviously this is not a just result. The test of the ability of our system to do justice to Bonnie Foreshaw is, I think, a test of our commitment to the concept of justice in general. Are we big enough, is our system strong enough, to admit this error, attempt to rectify it, and go on? We will find out. I hope it is, because if it isn't, that doesn't say very much that's promising for the rest of us.

distribute the film to law schools and women's studies programs around the country.

After finishing the film, Ondi was hired to work on Steven Spielberg's Holocaust oral history project, Survivors of th( Shoah. She has moved to Los Angeles, but her involvement with Bonnie and her case continue. Each woman describes the other as "a member of my family." Bonnie has signed the rights to her life story over to Ondi.

Ondi's time in Los Angeles has provided her and the film with welcome public exposure. Before Bonnie's suit is beard, Ondi

THE NEw JouRNAL

hopes to reach a wider audience through a dramatization of the story, without sacrificing artistic or factual integrity.

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, whose movie The Thin Blue Line helped get an innocent man off death row, has agreed to attach his name to the project. The Spielberg people expressed interest in making a movie about the movie, but Ondi wants to keep the focus on Bonnie. At present she and her agent are negotiating with ABC and CBS over a Movie of the Week, which wn· ~!~ reach 6 to 7 million viewers. Queen Lacifah and Oprah Winfrey reportedly have their eyes on the role of Bonnie.

Neither Ondi nor Bonnie seems very concerned about the relative benefit each of them has derived from the film. Both reason that the further Ondi goes, the better chance she'll have to help Bonnie. Bonnie predicts that Ondi will be famous. Says Ondi, "Our goals have been aligned from the start. I won't stop until she's out."

Bonnie is optimistic about the film's direct impact on her suit. "I don't know what they [state prosecutors and police officers) thought those interviews were for, but they made incriminating statements on camera.

Every word you say can and will be held against you."

In the eyes of Bonnie and her advocates, the courts have already failed every test of their fairness to a single woman without private representation or access to power.

The attention and backing she has finally received are at once a credit to her own perseverance and a grim indictment of what really makes the legal system tick. In the words of Steve Kurnnick, the Hartford police detective who first interrogated Bonnie, ''I'm not a mind-reader. If I don't have to do something, I may not do it. It's the nature of the beast."

Ondi didn't have to do anything for Bonnie, nor did anyone else. But they have.

Perhaps under their combined pressure, the courts will have to do something, too. li1J

Rosemary Hutzler, a junior in Davmport Colkge is on the !ta./fojTN].

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A newspaper prepared New Haven radicals in the art of self-defense.

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ne old brick building still stands on State Street. Next to it is a cluttered parking lot and one more abandoned structure. After that, where once there srood a row of beautiful Victorian houses, there is a long stretch of nothing. Everything was bulldozed to make way for a multi-level parking lot that never happened.

The remaining building, on the corner of State and Elm, has been more fortunate by far than its fallen comrades. Bagdon's, the of four gourmet restaurants on that spot, even attracted the dainty nose of a New York Times restaurant reviewer wlien word of its culinary delights began wafting through the suburbs. "White brick walls, unobtrusive gray carpeting, black chairs, white-napped tables (luxuriously spaced) and indirect wall lighting create a handsome atmosphere," the reviewer wrote. "The short menu offers several popular dishes of New American Cooking, adding to the restaurant's style."

Unbeknownst to the effusive author, this seemingly innocuous brick corner building once offered a much more fiery brand of "New American Cooking." From 1969 to 1972, before everything was covered over with "unobtrusive gray carpeting," it was home to the Bread and Roses Coffeehouse. A large black snake wound its way across the front window: the "Don't tread on me" symbol of the American Revolution. Beside the door, a handwritten sign with the words "No Dope Please" hung where the New York Times article, placed inside an elegant frame, hangs today.

"Hearts starve as welL as bodies, Give us bread, but give us roses!"

T

he name Bread and Roses came from a poem about the famous seamstress strike of 1912, organized by the ill-fated Industrial Workers of the World in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

In New Haven, Bread and Roses was the official coffeehouse of another radical political organization: the American Independent Movement (AIM). W ith two primary objectives-an end to the Vietnam war and a more equal distribution of wealth in the United States-AIM had been a presence in New Haven since 1966, the year it ran Yale professor Bob Cook for Congress on an anti-war platform. People affiliated with AIM would congregate at Bread and Roses for group discussions, movies, and live music, all with political undertones.

On May 1, 1970, when a new publication was

launched in the city, the patrons of Bread and Roses suddenly had a lot more to talk about. The J coffeehouse became the haunt for the writers and readers of New Haven's first and !:radical, leftist newspaper: the Modern Times.

Staffers sat around simple coffeehouse tables, discussing the declining quality of public education, the shortage of health care, or the housing crisis in New Haven. An editorial · inside the first issue declared, "In New Haven, as elsewhere, people are moving to I change the way they work and learn. Conditiom .....lrlll~.... on the job, in the schools, in neighborhoods and cities are changing as people demand a new and free society." Over the next five years, Modern Times would herald this new and free society.

I

n the years following the disastrous Tet offensive in January, 1968, people in New Haven and elsewhere grew more radical. The grisly details of the battle led many Americans to conclude that the U.S. was not, in fact, winning the war, and perhaps never would. Rick Wolff (GRD '69), who taught economics at Yale during the winrer of '68, recalls the day his students learned of the shocking American losses.

"It was as if a blizzard had blown through their minds," he said. As one of the few at Yale who had spoken out against the war, Wolff was bombarded by questions. Students wanted to know exactly what was going on.

The Modem Times came onto the scene as the voice of people from all walks of life who felt they had been betrayed by the system. In a one-parry Democratic city whose two newspapers were run by the same conservative family, the new voice was a startling one. A genuine grass-roots effort, the paper drew

by Ben Lumpkin

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volunteers from neighborhoods through~ut the city. Once recruited, volunteers were ~ent back to their respective neighborhoods with a profoundly simple message: "Here is the Modern Times. It is your vehicle."

Joelle Fishman, one of the Modern Times' fjrst editors, remembers that she rarely wrote for the paper herself, even though she was one of the few involved with any journalistic experience. Instead, Fishman spent most of her time trying to get as many people in the community as possible to tell their stories in their own words.

A strident article on the last page of the Modern Times' first issue tells the story of the .paper rather well. The article lauds karate as a method of self-defense. "Karate is unquestionably the most effective form of self-defense simply because it developed from an oppressed group of people and has remained flexible from its formation," it begins. Similarly, the Modern Times aimed to radicalize an oppressed group of people and, at the beginning, it was anything if not flexible. All the newspaper had to .do was follow the article's well-learned set of karate ground rules.

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its policemen, the Modern Times tried to incite New Haven residents against the system. Its articles challenged official propaganda touting strong schools, clean air, adequate and comfortable housing, and other miracles of New Haven's "redevelopment."

But the Modern Times was careful not to come across as too aggressive. AIM, whose members made up the core of the paper's staff, dreamed of becoming a paper for the working man, but it also wanted society at large tQ_take it seriously. It steered clear of any connection with-communism, which might have caused people to condemn it automatically. "We chose the bland name of American Independent Movement intentionally," Wolff said. A more neutral name would make for a more inclusive group.

en the first issue of the ewspaper hit the streets, disaster threatened New Haven. On May I, 1970, demonstrators flooded the New Haven Green, calling for the release of Black Panther Party chairman, Bobby Seale, then on trial in New Haven for the 1969 murder of a fellow Panther. Nervously expecting as many as 35,000 unruly demonstrators from all over the country, the establishment mobilized its police forces.

Police cordoned off the Chapel Square Mall. At the Naval Air Station in Quonset, Rhode Island, 4,000 marines equipped with riot gear fLied off military planes, ready to roll into the Elm City at a moment's notice.

And just as the establishment mobilized

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underestimate your assailant. An opening attack can be blocked, but for the inexperienced, side or back stepping to avoid the attack is most advisable.

A

t the core of the Modern Times was a group of driven political activists.

The paper aimed to create a "new awareness" in the city: to help people reclaim control of their lives from large corporations and an arrogant and aloof city government. "There is no place else," the paper declared, "where the hunger, bad housing and education, lack of health care, [and] police harassment that people live with is told by them."

The establishment in New Haven, however, was deeply entrenched. New Haven's legendary mayor, Richard Lee (Honorary MA '61), on the campaign trail in 1951, said that New Haven's inability to cope with social problems resulted from the fact that: "There was no unity of approach." He would be the man to create that unity. In 1953 he was elected to the first of an unprecedented eight terms in office. From 1955 to 1967 he won reelection with an average plurality of 15,000 votes, or roughly one-third of New Haven's voting population. And all this at a time when voter turnout in the city was nearly 70 percent.

It was, in effect, the death of the two party system in New Haven. By 1965, all 33 New Haven aldermen were Democrats.

With federal dollars streaming in at a per capita rate second only ro Philadelphia, Mayor Lee and his all-star cast of city planners won national fame for their "Model City." The Board of Aldermen itself appeared to be rather like an anachronistic remnant from a more democratic era, enacting Lee's bloated budgets with no questions asked. It was around this time, recalls former New Haven mayor Frank Logue (BK '48, LAW '5 1), that the Democratic Party chairman Arthur Barbieri (UGRD '38) began to boast that he could take people off the street and get them elected mayor. Mayor Lee, it appeared, had achieved his "unity of approach" in grand fashion.

THE NEW JouRNAL

yourst/ffrom grasp.

A

Rick Wolff tkscribts how a ring road around Yak would havt gont undtr tht ctmtttry. "Yak and tht city wtrt willing to displact thousands ofliving ptopk, but had grtat mptct for tht tkad, n ht said sardonically.

Lee gave voice to widely held sentiment when he declared in 196 5, after the completion of the Wooster Square project, "The transformation of New Haven into a modern American city is well underway, and its successful completion is certain."

The city had amassed upwards of $30 million in federal redevelopment grants by this time. How could it go wrong?

Critical voices somehow failed to ftlter through the cocktail and dinner engagements Barbieri arranged for aldermen prior to redevelopment meetings.

Yale's prophets of modernity, in league with high-powered city planners, preached the doctrine of redevelopment while New Haveners listened and watched in awe. The Democratic Party began to function, in Logue's words, as "a closed enterprise," out of touch with many of the city's communities. Thus, when riots erupted in the city's black neighborhoods in August of 1967, it is little wonder that Mayor Lee had nothing to say to a reporter other than, "I seriously thought it wouldn't happen."

After the riots, anxiety mounted in the city as to whether this kind of leadership would be enough to reverse New Haven's

APRIL 14> 1995

troubling trends. It was clearly time for a new public voice to be heard. There could be no more side-stepping the city government's misguided initiatives. Even the staunchly conservative Rt-gisttr-which according to Modnn Timts publisher Matt Borenstein had a policy of never printing pictures of striking laborers to avoid indirectly aiding their cause-ran an article in which local black leaders criticized the Lee administration. "I am not convinced that 'more of the same' is the answer," cautioned executive"director of the Urban League of Greater New Haven, Robert Boles.

Still, it wasn't until three years later, with the publication of the Motkrn Timts, that the dark side to New Haven's "Progress" began to be revealed in a systematic outpouring of unedited, unadulterated anger. And even then, for every inexperienced volunteer that the paper attracted, the Democratic machine had a slew of loyal followers on the patronage dole.

In clost quarttrs, twisting or turning tht body llS a whok unit is tht btst way to frtt

ccording to Wolff, the Modnn Timts never could have come into being :without the leadership AIM provided. Still, at the same time that AIM was lifting off the ground, other groups were forming in New Haven to voice frustration about a wide range of issues. As awareness grew about the relationship between these events, AIM members came together with members of the other groups in an agreement to provide mutual support.

It was the synergy created by this union that would give the Modtrn Timts such a powerful, well-informed voice.

The paper's range of coverage was nothing less than astonishing. Yes, there were some pedantic, structural type stories, such as the one in which Rick Wolff attempted to persuade the reader that the city's debt payment should be construed as welfare for the rich because banks and corporations were not required to pay income taxes on any interest they earned from loans to the city. But overall, the paper's headlines read like graffiti taken from walls all over the city.

When he heard of several instances where the police had picked up kids with litde or no justification, Reverend Larry Reilly wrote an article in the Modnn Timts alleging polke harassment. The piece concluded with a bitterly sarcastic, if ungrammatical, warning to the city's youth (particularly those living in Fair Haven, who he felt were victimized more than the rest for their race): "In short, watch out, kids, no matter where you live and stay home (after all there is no decent recreation in Fair Haven for you), and you will be arrested, for even talking quietly on a street corner.

An article entitled "People Create New Parks" told of a rally held by the People's Associarion of Williams Street to complain that some one hundred children in their neighborhood had no nearby playground.

In a photo stretched beside the article mothers and children were shown having a picnic in an overgrown lot near an overpass.

The lot was surrounded by a chain link

23

free clinics and breakfast programs for the kids of working mothers, opened and operated by Black Panthers in New Haven.

Emphasizing class distinctions over those of race, the newspaper praised the Panther rallying cry of "All power to the people" as a slogan for all working men.

When the city began leveling, one by one, several hotels which had served as housing for people with modest incomes, it said it was doing a good thing by removing the old to make way for the new. But the Modern Times-by sending its reporters into the dusty hallways of the hotels- . discovered another, radically different view.

Under the headline, "City Scatters Strand Community," the paper told of a unique community of elderly New Haveners who had lived happily for upwards of 10 years in the Strand Hotel .until .they were evicted by the city. A photo captured the residents lol}nging comfortably in the hotel's lobby. Many were afraid of the prospect of'moving into an apartment full of strangers. "I think the city delights in breaking up communities," said Harry Cornwall, a resident of the hotel for 15 years. "They have no feeling for the people."

fence with a sign that read: "State property.

No trespassing."

On the paper's Spanish page, included in each issue for the benefit of the city's growing Latino population, an employee of the Yale University Dining Halls told of the racism she had witnessed a manager display towards an African-American employee.

The article, entitled "Mi Experiencia del Sistema del Yale," concludes with a statement about the attitude of Yale towards the city which any reader of the Mod~rn Times would come ro hear over and over.

"These same bosses of the university treat the whole community with disdain," wrote the employee.

Regardless of your tactic you must

maintain strong footing and balance to prottct youruifproperly; b~ able to move; and to provide strength for your counterattack.

he Modem Tim~s lived up to its vow to counteract the prejudiced information disseminated by the establishment. For example, New Haven police may have nodded agreement with the alarmist assessment of FBI direcror J. Edgar Hoover that: "The Black Panther Party without question represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." But the Modern Tim~s told another story.

Countering the perception of the Black Panthers as nothing more than a belligerent, militaristic organization, the staff told of

T

Have a target in mind when you attack. If you strike aimlessly. you can hit someone many times without having any immediate effict; one carefully placed blow can stop an opponent.

T

here was one issue which the Modern Times addressed more than the rest, and that was the crucial question of whether the city's redevelopment schemes were saving the city or contributing to its decline. It was becoming apparent by 1970 that Mayor Lee's legendary redevelopment program had in fact been just that-legend.

Between 1950 and 1970, 10,000 housing units were bulldozed and 7,819 households relocated in the hopes that something more sightly and, above aJI, with pockets deep enough for the payment of property taxes, would spring up in their place. In most cases, nothing ever did.

There is some irony in the fact that the

THE NEW jOURNAL

RattJegnake ~outhwestern Grill Modern Tim~s. a socialist publication, figured so prominently in a movement against what was , at some levels, a government-planned economy in New H aven . As a former lawyer for the New H aven Redevelopment Agency James Whitney (SM '64, LAW '68, M.ARC '68) recalled, "Redevelopment was for poor cities, not for poor people." lr aimed to rebuild the city center to establish a firm tax base wh ich would be used to aid poor people. "Having a commercial core is part of wh at makes a city a city," Whitney explained, "especially in a state which is so . dependent on property taxes and which does such a bad job of distributing them."

Unfo rtu nately, the development agency's unspoken motto ran something like: demolish first, think later. A cartoon in the Modern Timn depicted two women stand i ng in front of a plaque. In the background stood a sprawling, modern building with walls like those of an Amtrak train. One woman read the plaque to the oth er. "It says Pomburg, settled in 1530, survived the Indian massacres, the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil Wa r, wiped out by shopping cen ter development in 1968."

T he Motkrn Tim~· opposition would be instrumental in stopping several unpopular plans, including one to build a ring road around Yale, cuning it off from the rest of the city. Accord ing to the Mod~rn Times, the plan, zealously backed by Yale, would h ave d isplaced 423 fami l ies and 201 businesses.

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Sidestep or harmonize your body to take advantage of th~ opponmt's w~ight and st rmgth. (This will usually require some background lmowkdge ofstlfdefonse).

n the 70s, Wolff said, "Centrifugal force began to pull things apart. The women wan ted to go their way; the blacks wanted to go their way." People involved with the Modern Times were increasingly divided along the lines of the issues rhey considered most important. To reAect this, many wanted the paper divided into nvo·

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page sections according to su bject: o ne section for feminist issues, one for environmental issues, and so fo rth. The AIM people felt that this approach would make the paper appear to be too much of a grab bag of random issues. It wanted to maintain a definite identity for the paper, revolving around their central project of identifying who had wealth and whether it was being used to benefit the community.

Finally, there was a standoff.

Members of AIM entered i n to a passionate argument with feminists and their sympathizers over whether rhe Modern Times should run a front page story about abortion (this was before Roe v. Wade). AIM partisans argued rhar such a story would risk alienating the working class, a great many of whom were Roman Catholic, and thus compromise the paper's position as a socialist publication. Virginia BlaisdeU, one of the feminists, remembers trying in vain to convince AIM men that the issue was not perhaps as threatening and divisive as they supposed. She didn't think the paper had nearly the readership among New Haven's working class that AIM liked to imagine.

Bur AIM would have none of it. In the end, it decided to create an editorial policy (before, there had been few limits to what the paper would p rint) which basically stipulated that AIM would make all editorial decisions. Blaisdell and 28 others walked out.

Henry Lowendorf, an editor of the Modern Times, was one of those who left.

He thought the "collective process" that characterized the production of the Modern Times was one of the paper's g reatesc strengths, and he became qu ickly disenchanted when AIM members began making unilateral decisions.

Wolff readily admitted that the Modern Times "paid a heavy p rice for AIM's decision." The paper began to weaken visibly in the next several years, first falling from 16 pages down to eight, and finally beginning to publish less frequently. Bur Wolff attributed the demise of rhe newspaper to larger forces as well. "When Nixon feU out of the war, the steam went out of the American left m ovem ent," he

said. "Half the people you used to be able to count on to help with the Modern Times just faded away."

Above all, use discretion to counter-attack effectively. Use the degree of punishment befitting the situation. (Avoid brutality.} n the days of the Modern Times, radicalminded people were able to avoid brutality. The sint.nion was not yet desperate. In the 70s, Wolff confessed, even the radicals themselves thought New Haven could be successfully redeveloped, if only the city's leaders became more socially aware, or socially realistic.

It is hard to feel that way in 1995. As Wolff, now an economics professor at the University of Massachussetts drives through Fair H aven , once New Haven's liveliest neighborhood, he stares at the gaping, black windows of burnt-out houses, at yard after yard strewn with unbelievable amounts of garbage. In his mind he goes over his old theories. If only the city had invested more in irs people, in educating them and giving them a healthy environment in which to live in. Then maybe they could have "redeveloped" their own city.

Wolff shakes his head. Today, he thinks, not even the Modern Times could bridge the communication gap between the rich and poor. He continues his demoralizing tour of the once great working-class neighborhoods of rhe city. In Newhallville, he drives past Science Park, the project that Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. hopes will resuscitate New Haven's economy in the 1990s. Science Park sits in the middle of the blighted neighborhood, surrounded by a high steel fence. There are guard stations at the gates where anyone wishing to enter must present identification. It is like a military outpost in enemy territory.

The once radical Rick Wolff shivers to imagine the next counter attack.

18)

I

Ben Lumpkin, a junior in Calhoun College, is an associau editor o[fNJ.

THE NEW jOURNAL

A Dream Comes to New Haven The I Have a Dream Foundation makes a pact with New Haven fourth -graders to pay for their college education .

East Rock Community School, cafeteria duty means watching over "waves," as in "Mrs. Pollard (the VicePrincipal] supervises the up-to-fourth grade wave." The mal bell clangs, and the school's fourth-graders, today some 50 strong, surge en masse into the cafeteria and spread out across the long blue tables. As if on cue, the sun begins to shine through the wall of windows at the rear of the cafeteria. The students don't seem to notice; they are too busy finding their friends, jumping on chairs, starting their homework. ¡ Joan Hinchcliffe, though, needs to shade her eyes from the sun.

Hinchcliffe works for the New Haven Public Education fund. She had volunteered to tutor at East Rock long before October, back when the students still went home as soon as the last bell sounded.

Now, East Rock's fou rth-graders eagerly attend an after-school tutoring session four times a week. "They're at an age where they're really enthusiastic," Hinchcliffe says, as she starts pouring fruit punch. It's not just their age. In October, these nine and ten-year olds were given something to be enthusiastic about, when the I Have a Dream Foundation of New Haven selected them to receive free college or vocational school tuition upon graduation from high school.

A

chose the fourth-graders of East Rock Community School over students from some 40 other elementary schools in New Haven to be the first class of Dreamers in the city. According to project coordinator Matt Lieberman (TC '89, LAW '94), East Rock impressed New Haven's I Have a Dream committee for several reasons: its administration appeared responsive, their fourth-grade class mirrored the general demographics of New Haven public schools (55 percent African-American, 25 percent Latino), and the school included grades kindergarten through eight.

Lieberman's path to I Have a Dream had its own twists and turns. After majoring in history at Yale, he cook a year off to work and then returned to New Haven to attend Yale Law School. He graduated, only co discover that he had no interest in being a lawyer.

One of his former professors at the law school, who is on I Have a Dream's board of directors, mentioned that the program was in need of a project coordinator. He jumped at the opportunity to work with

n 1981, a successful businessman named Eugene Lang returned to his old Harlem elementary school as the commencement speaker to the graduating class of 1981. Lang saw that his prepared remarks about education and success were not registering in the sixth-graders' minds, so he discarded his notes and made an extraordinary offer: free tuition for every student in that room who graduated high school. The first class of Dreamers was born.

Since 1981, the I Have a Dream Foundation has expanded into a national program, active in 55 cities. Approximately 12,000 Dreamers are in or have been through the program. Modeled after Lang's initial effort, an individual or group pledges $1 million over 13 years and adopts a public school class of third- or fourth-graders.

New Haven's I Have a Dream program began three years ago, with the signing of a charter and the establishment of a board of direccors.

The Yale Class of '56 pledged half a million dollars; I Have a Dream board members and individual New H aven citizens promised to donate the other half of the funding. In October 1994, after a year long search process, a site-selection committee

I

by Dan SeiJer

APRIL 14, 1995

27

the foundation and is now responsible for shepherding 56 fourth-graders through nine years of school. In his spare time, he studies for the bar exam-"just in case one of my friends kills someone and I need to defend him." n the East Rock cafeteria, law school seems a lifetime away. Ten minutes into today's session, the activity centers around three focal points: the cups of fruit punch; the boxes of Cheez-Its; and Lieberman, who stands at the front of the cafeteria, joking around with the students, and answering the questions of adult volunteers. "Oh my Lord," whispers a Quinnipiac College volunteer standing on my left, stunned by the volume of energy in the room. A Dreamer cartwheels across the auditorium floor. Others wander around the cafeteria in various permutations of darkgreen plaid school uniforms. A few Dreamers sit at the benches, working with tutors, talking to friends, scraping the last of the orange powder from the bottom of a box of Cheez-Its. At 3 p.m. I sit on the back wall of•East Rock's sunken auditorium, the cafeteria spread out before me. In front of me an

I

adult mentor introduces herself to a student.

"Hi. How are you? My name is Ruth. I'm going to be helping you with your homework." The Dreamer doesn't look enthused; but when I ask her if I can interview her, Astrid, age ten, flashes a shy smile and then takes a seat next to me.

Her friends Leyda and Staci, also age ten, soon join us. Leyda, accompanied by nods from the other Dreamers, tells me how her parents had reacted to the news. "Mine were really happy. They hugged me and kissed me. They said, 'We only have to pay for o'ne now'-my brother's." The other two girls' descriptions echo Leyda's. Still, Staci points out, it isn't always easy being a Dreamer. "Now they expect us to write big compositions and essays. We get harder work, we're working hard to make this man narn'ed Mr. Highsmith ·and our teacher and our parents and many other people proud of us. " Mr. Highsmith is Carlton Highsmith, a businessman from Hamden, and a member of New Haven I Have a Dream's board of directors. Highsmith acts as the sponsor figure for East Rock's Dreamers; besides his financial contribution to the project, he serves as a role model. "I know that a

program like I Have a Dream works because I was the product of [a similar] program," Highsmith tells me over the phone a few days after my visit to East Rock. Answering questions in warm, measured tones, he sounds quite satisfied with where he is now, which is a long way from where he began.

Highsmith grew up in a poor rural town in eastern North Carolina. After finishing second in his high school class, he applied to college. The University of Wisconsin denied him admission at first; a week later, Highsmith received a second letter, accepting him under the newly instituted "Special Program of Tutorial and Financial Assistance." Highsmith thrived at Wisconsin and then went to work in "corporate America." Today he owns Specialized Packaging International and is putting his own two children through college.

Highsmith wants to prove to the Dreamers that they, too, can achieve success.

In talking with the fourth-graders, though, he realizes their concepts of success vary · wildly. "A lot of them say [success is] having a lot of money. Others say it's doing something that you enjoy doing, or being respected by other people, or being famous."

He continued, "One little girl told me, 'success is when people love you."' If any doubt about his own definition of success remains, he added, "The best part is seeing how really sharp they are and how, in fact, there's so much inside of them that's bursting to come out. I'tn looking forward to seeing 56 fourth-graders grow and develop like my own children."

B

ack in the cafeteria, the Dreamers give Highsmith rave reviews. "He's nice to us," Staci responds emphatically.

Leyda, nodding her head, adds, "He's nice, and we met his wife. I think he's rich to do all this, and kind." (Later that week, Highsmith laughs when he hears this and responds, "I told them, 'I'm not rich; I work for a living'"). Astrid chimes in, "We go out for our birthdays with Mr. Highsmith. He gives us birthday cards and takes us out for lunch." She mentions a big meeting held for all the Dreamers and their families, in which a classmate, Arturo, gave a speech. I ask her

28

THE NEW jOUllNAL

to point him out to me, and obligingly she screams his name across the cafeteria. A dark-haired boy darts towards us from out of the crowd. I thank the girls for their time and watch them disappear into a swirl of chatter on my right.

Arturo, perched on the rim of the auditorium wall, only grudgingly admits, first, to being Arturo, then to being the Arturo who gave a speech at the big meeting: He tells me the speech was about kids and things they want to be. "I want to be a fisherman," Arturo tells me. Two more heads pop up. Introductions are made.

Pedro and Francisco are told they have walked into a magazine interview. Pedro is game. "Fishermen don't get paid a lot," he informs Arturo. Arturo, though, remains undaunted. "They do get paid a lot when they get fish to the flea market." Pedro, satisfied by this, turns the spotlight on himself. "I think that a lawyer and an architect get paid a lot. Right now, I want to be a lawyer, but maybe I want to be something else." Then, after a moment of contemplation, "A judge makes a lot more than a lawyer and an architect." irations aside, Pedro and his assmates do not have an easy road ead of them. The group as a whole is, according to Lieberman, "very low academically." Only four students fulfill expectations for their grade level, and none exceed them. Many started the year with their reading or math skills at only a second grade level. Barbara Guarniere, a fourthgrade teacher at East Rock, explains, "At this point, we are just trying to meet student needs on an individual basis. You have to remember," she add, "that the program began last October and that some of the tutors only started in January."

Still, Lieberman says that progress is already visible. "Looking at the attendance lists," he says, "there are fewer fourth graders absent than before the program started." I Have a Dream backs up its financial guarantee with a program designed to keep students attending, and focused on, school: the enrichment program features activities such as dance classes, crafts, and ta~ kwon

M

APIUL 14> 1995

dtJ; "inner city outings," in which students go on day hikes in the country, led by the Sierra Club; and the after-school program.

Volunteer tutors from the New H aven community work one-on-one with students on their homework. Participants in Americorps, a federally funded program that provides educational stipends in exchange for community engagements, work with groups of five to six Dreamers on basic reading and math skills.

Staci has reappeared, with a suggestion: "Talk to Shatara. She's really nice." She drags along a tall girl with a wide-cheeked smile.

Shatara proceeds to give rave reviews, in the way only a fourth-grader can, for everything from the principal and vice-principal ("very nice") to her teacher ("very nice"), to the school ("a very nice place to go").

Nearly 30 minutes have passed in the after-school session, and only a few students remain at the blue tables. The punch ran out ten minutes ago. A small girl, still in her green plaid uniform, sits serenely at the end of one of the closer tables. The girl's name is Ashley. I ask her how she spells it, and her sister, a kindergartener with the same saucer.. eyes, spells along with "her. "The program hasn't really changed my life," Ashley reveals to me, as her sister stands by loyally. "I'm still working hard, I do my homework, still have chores at home." In contrast to the other students, she appears pretty calm. "I don't get excited very much," she admits.

Then, "But I'm happy because I get to go to

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college for free." She smiles.

Later that afternoon, Matt Lieberman smiles when he talks about Ashley. ''Ashley's one of my success stories," he explains. H er mother, busy working several jobs, sometimes wasn't able to wake her daughter up for school. As a result, Ashley, who lives only a block away from the school, frequently arrived late. Lieberman stepped in. "I told her, 'you're nine years old-that's one of these things that you can make your personal responsibility. Whenever you're late, I'll let you know-and whenever you're on time, I'll notice that too.'" Ashley's tardiness has almost disappeared.

k

6:30 p.m. Matt Lieberman puts his hree years of rhetorical training to ood use, but his words do not have a jury on the edge of its seats. Instead, four or five tired-looking mothers sit on folding chairs at the front of East Rock's auditorium, listening to Lieberman describe the responsibilities of the volumeer parents' council. Earlier, he had personally greeted each woman by name and had been rewarded with responses that were warm but devoid of energy. " How are you doing tonight?" he asks a woman ro my left.

"Tired, really tired," she answers.

One of the women, Lillian Garcia, mother of fourth-grader Tanisha, relates how her daughter cried when she first heard the news. "She said, 'Mommy, is it true that I'm going to college?' She said, 'Now I get to be what I want to be. I can be somebody."'

Tanisha changes her mind about careers "every six days;" for now, though, she wants to be a teacher. Garcia continues, "I've seen a great change in her since that day. It gives us a little bit of a push. I think half of the parents here are single parents-this gives us something to focus on."

In a few minutes, the regular monthly parents' meeting will begin. Tonight, a woman from Head Start, a comprehensive federal program for underprivileged preschool-aged children, has come to talk about dealing with stress. More parents file in slowly, some alone, some with spouses, many with Dreamers in tow. A woman steps on stage to introduce the Care Bears, a group of eighth-graders who have volunteered to look after the Dreamers while their parents talk about stress. The parents nod appreciatively. It is hard to make out Care Bear from Dreamer as they sprint off towards the classrooms.

THE NEw JouRNAL

Prodded by the woman from Head Start, parents open up, complaining about not having enough time for themselves, watching bills pile up, taking care of their kids. A stack of xeroxes circulates: "A StressLevel Checklist;" "All Stressed Our? Ten Tips for De-stressing Your Life;" a poem called ''I'd Pick More Daisies," written by an 87 year-old woman from Louisville, Kentucky. The parents leave the circle of chairs and Marcia Jones, mother of fourthgrader Patrick, remarks, "I wish the program had come into action earlier, so that other families could have had this opportunity."

Perhaps Jones' wish will come true. I Have a Dream's goal is to raise enough money to sponsor a seco nd class of Dreamers. Still, Jones is right- the program lavishes such extraordinary opportunity on such: a tiny percentage of children. Shirley Hayes, Shatara's grandmother, agrees, and then adds, "You hate to sound selfish, but I'm glad that it was this class that was picked. I think every patent would feel that way."

In the schools where I Have a Dream programs are set up, ordinarily 50 percent of each entering freshman class will graduate; but an I Have a Dream class boasts an 85 to 90 percent graduation race. What about the East Rock Dreamers? "It's hard to predict that all 56 will make it," says Lieberman.

"The question is, will they have the ability to go, and will they want to go when the time comes? Not all k id s are collegebound-that's why we say college or vocational school tuition. At least they have the opportunity. If nothing else, they'll get more out of high school and elementary school." He pauses. "There is a chance that all 56 will go. I'm here to help give these opportunities and to give another stable force in their lives."

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¡1n Pursuit of an Americanisl Dream Yale literary scholars contend with well-worn tradition in order to define a disci pline.

0

n March 29, a group of Yale faculty and graduate students, mainly from the English department, American studies and African-American studies programs, gathered at the Whitney Humanities Center for the first Americanist colloquium at Yale. The question that this colloquium attempted to address was, "What's an Americanist ~nyway?" Although posed somewhat flippantly, the query is essentially a pretext for convening a gathering of scholars wh!) . study and theorize about American literature-if only they could come to a consensus that that is indeed what an Americanist is.

Scholars in many departments focus on American topics, but debate in the English department is at times especially volatile.

Although the colloquium initiat~d- dis<;1,1ssion., -f~w- of its panel participants-Richard Bio.d head (BR '68, GRD '72), Dean of Yale College and English professor; English professors Thomas ¡ Whitaker (GRD '53), Vera Kutzinski (GRD '85), Katherine Rowe; and Americ1n studies professor Michael Denning (GRD '84)would commit to a definition of an Americanist. At times, there . seemed to be outright discomfort with the idea of delineating precisely what lies behind self-identification as an Americanist.

Rowe suggested, "To be an Americanist is to read American literature, to look at American art, to talk about American film. For me, (to be] an Americanist is also to be a 'comparatist. "' She commented that to be a "comparatist" is to look across historical periods, across the Atlantic, and across northern and southern borders to Canada, Mexico, and South America.

Although Rowe gave a clear definition of an Americanist, the rest of the panel focused more on what it means to be a literary scholar than on what it means to study specifically American literature and culture. The conversation eventually led to a discussion of the differences berween interdisciplinary studies at Yale and more traditional approaches to literature. This turn was not unexpected, since Americanists-~d we will call them that for lack of a better word-have been moving towards more interdisciplinary approaches to literature.

American studies, however, has its origins in a drastically different critical location. It emerged as a post-WWII program and began as a means of exploring what was once known as "American Exceptionalism." This school of thought relied on a specific canon approached from an intertextual perspective. A critic would line up a few works of

32

litetature, see what was similar berween them, and explain their distinctive "Americanness" through these similarities. This methodology principally stayed within the novel, poem, or short story being read, quite often producing brilliant and lucid insight into the aesthetics and form of a text. A drawback to this analysis was that the historical and cultural context that may have contributed to the text's formation were often disregarded.

At the collo quium Brodhead noted that today this methodology would be viewed by many as "ill-considered rubbish" because it was ahistoricaf and ignored the social, economic, and political circumstances of the time. Today a literary critic would be expected to examine not only a canonical short story, but t he newspaper in which it was published, the other fiction published along with it, and the political climate of the nation at that particular historical moment. American studies has grown increasingly interdisciplinary since its birth nearly 50 years ago.

Kutzinski commented that this interdisciplinary perspective characterizes Arnericanist scholarship at Yale. Indeed, many of the Americanists who work in the English department an alyze literature and other forms of artistic expression under the theoretical rubric currently called "cultural studies" in the academic realm.

Not everyone has been using this framework. Describing himself as "old-fashioned," Whitaker explained his discomfort with cultural studies because he feels it represents a form of academic ideology that relies perhaps too heavily on theories of gender, race, sexuality, and class. He does not think of a novel as an object produced by its cultural context, but rather as a piece of art produced by an author. Yet some argue that cultural studies does not kill off the author. Instead, it analyzes not only what occurs within the text, but also what occurs without. Whitaker says his position is more closely related to formalism, a school of thought that examines the text independent of historical context.

In contrast, Denning emphasized the absolute !mportance of a theoretical argument that makes a book of criticism relevant to several disciplines. I n other words, be argued that t h e underpinnings of an article about late rwentieth century Cuban race relations can spark the interest of a nineteenth century literary critic.

The tension emerging berween those who study literature from an interdisciplinary viewpoint and

THE NEW JouRNAL

those with a more formal approach is probably more pervasive than some faculty and students are willing to admit. Although no one seems to think that interdisciplinary studies are under attack, Kutzinski commented, "Americanists who are in the English depa.r tment are feeling a little marginalized." Furthermore, some American studies graduate students, especially those who study literature, feel that their methodology is considered especially strang~.

Debating definitions at length is itself a strange game.

Essentially it misses the point. However this professorial assembly may choose to define Americanist-and whether they appropriate that label for themselves-what Yale students will come to know about America depends on the books put i~to the curriculum and the faculty members approved to teach them. But as the English department loses more of its American literature scholars faster than it can replace them, there are simply fewer courses being

APRIL 14, 1995

taught at both undergraduate ana graduate levels in the field of American literature. R.W.B. Lewis (Honorary MA '60), perhaps one of the most eminent scholars on Edith Wharton and her work, recently retired from the English department. Brodhead, who teaches the popular lecture course on nineteenth-century American literature, became dean of Yale College in 1993. Hazel Carby has turned her critical eye away from literature and directed it towards the growing field of cultural studies. She also recently resigned from the English department, though she still maintains her tenured positions in American and African-American studies.

Additionally, hiring more junior faculty to fill these spaces will not bridge the gap left by retirements and resignations. Junior faculty rarely teach at the graduate level, and rhus their potential to mentor graduate students is limited.

Repetition across syllabi is one reason that some Yale students perceive that there are not enough innovative courses on American

33

literature. Professors appear to be institutionalizing a new canon of texts, once widely unread, that is debunking an older, more ethnocentric list of books. For example, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God repeatedly appear, as do Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Lifo of a Slave GirL and Frederick Douglass' well-known autobiographical narrative. According to Julia Ehrhardt (GRD '97), an American s tudies graduate student, although departments tend to be pretty loose about what constitutes literature, she believes that "we need to explore other books." Yet she also emphasizes chat there is a renewed and growing excitement for American literature in the academy. She hopes that this interest will attract scholars who study late twentieth-century fiction and lesbian and gay writing to Yale.

But subjects like "gay literature" are more likely to appear in the interdisciplinary programs than in the English department. David Roman's seminars, for instance, on "The Literature of AIDS" and "Lesbian and Gay Theater and Performance" are women's studies course offerings and are not cross-listed.

Ehrhardt argues that co encourage textual diversity at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, more graduate students should be allowed co reach seminars. Emily Bernard (GRD '96), another American

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studies graduate student, taught an extremely successful course entitled "The Black Aesthetic" last semester. More courses like Bernard's would be significant, Ehrhardt says, because graduate students are always "uncovering new texts to be read." In her own dissertation, for instance, she is "trying to fulfill her own excitement about American literature" by exploring the "social, economic, and personal reasons why we don't know the names" of five women writers-Grace King, Gertrude Atherton, Zona Gale, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and Josephine Herbst-who were popular in their time, but whose works are not in print today. She hopes that the Americanist colloquium will help make all kinds of American literature a powerful presence once again for more faculty, graduate studen.ts, and eventually undergraduates. If the colloquium is here to stay, she argues, then it must also intensify interdepartmental understanding of different types of methodologies.

This interdepartmental perspective will enable previously unacquainted professors and students to meet. Except during the periods when New Criticism and Deconstruction (see TN], October 14, 1994) dominated literary theory at Yale, the English department has always been somewhat dispersed. Bryan Wolf (GRD '77), director of graduate studies for American studies and professor of English, calls this dispersion a specifically "Yale phenomenon." He describes Yale as an isolating place where scholars prefer to work in the privacy of their computer rooms, though the junior faculty has always been fairly communicative with each other.

The Americanist colloquium, however, represents one group's attempt to resist the propensity not to interchange ideas.

Wolf suggests that literary scholarship at Yale is unified in a sha red acknowledgment of the "importance of the text as an object for close reading."

Although his emphasis sounds closer to formalism, Wolf explains that he is actually an interdisciplinary scholar. Although he teaches classes in the English department, he devotes about half of his rime to history

or. art, which he turned to many years ago "by instinct" and because it was a "wide open field." He feels char "A rt meets literature in a place chat doesn't need to be specifically lirerary... [l] think of literature as a field that is simply not autonomous.

Literature is part of a larger cultural field that deals with language, and that's where art meets literature. " He concludes by commenting that "disc.s:mrse produces ways of seeing," which is the subject of his recent book about modernity and seventeenth-century Dutch art. However, his focus is usually upon nineteenthcentury art and non-mainstream contemporary art, particularly what is being produced in the Chicano community. Living up to Rowe's call for cross-period and cross-Atlantic Americanist scholarship, the attention Wolf pays to dive·rse cultures also reflects the emergence of postcolonial theory in academia today.

Wolf describes postcolonialism as a way of "breaking out of traditional national categories." Wolf, however, is another example of an interdisciplinary Americanist Yale will be losing, at least for a year. While on sabbatical for the academic year of 1995-1996, Wolf will be teaching an art history class at Stanford.

Wolf is not the only prominent Americanist Yale will miss next yea r.

Controversial hiring decisions within the past year point to some of the particular difficulties faced by black intellectuals.

After intense recruiting, Yale failed to add two prominent black feminist intellectuals to its permanent faculty-Princeton's distinguished historian Nell Painter and UCLA's literary and film scholar Valerie Smith. University of London's Paul Gilroy and former Duke graduate student Maurice Wallace, however, will join Yale's faculty next year. But considering the coverage that black intellectuals have been receiving as the new "public intellectual" in such popular magazines as The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, losing Painter and Smith can be construed as a huge blow to Yale's academic reputation.

In particular, the controversy that surrounds Smith's failure to be approved by

THE NEW JouRNAL

WALKER

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GIFTS • ANTIQUES • ARTWORK the final tenure committee reveals the political dimensions at Yale of hiring an interdisciplinary scholar who is also a black woman. Smith would have held the first senior faculty position in women's studies.

Yet, the women's studies program recommended chat she also hold a joint appointment in English. Although the joint appointment was eventually negotiated between women's studies and American studies, sources in the English department eire a somewhat derogatory conversation about Smith that was held at a senior faculty meeting last year as a large part of the reason she was not offered the job. Also in 1994, Hazel Carby, probably Yale's most eminent black feminist scholar currently working on American cultural topics, resigned from the English department. The loss of Carby and Smith reveals two huge gaps in American literary scholarship in the English department.

The quest for innovative voices to step into the spots left empty by Brodhead, Carby, and Lewis represents Yale's commitment to higher education.

However, it is necessary to remember the political dimensions of a search focusing on historically marginalized voices. Maybe the Americanist colloquium, when it transcends the obstacles of definitions, will become a forum to discuss what texts Yalies read and with whom they read them.

Essentially, these are issues of power that must be addressed.

It is important to bring a diverse range of scholars co Yale in order to hear the ideas that have emerged from their lives and their studies. As an intellectual community working to understand where we are coming from, where we are and where we are going, and their stories are invaluable.

But the question that always seems to emerge in debates about who should be teaching us the histories or literatures of the United States is: what can we learn from a gay man or a black woman? We probably have a lot to learn from them about exactly what it means to be an American.

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at Yale, I've heard my share of theories about the importan ce of Yale vis-a-vis the world.

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But I wasn't really ready for this one. New Haven resident Jere Christianity at Yale. Admittedly, it's a broad topic, but my friend Garceau-and the religious group he founded-thinks the "forces had an interesting theory. "Suppose this is truth," he said picking of darkness" may have targeted Yale in a maniacal scheme to take up the salt shaker and holding it up between us. "When I look at over the world. As Jere (pronounced "Jerry") puts it, "If you're the it, I can only see part of it. But when you and I both look at it, we enemy, this is obviously the place where you are going to come to can see almost the whole thing! This is what people think truth try to take control." is-that the more people you have telling you what they see, the Okay, evangelism is all the rage all around the country. People closer we'll be to knowing what it really is. Maybe people don't like on¡ Cross Campus hand out the booklets with eyes overflowing the idea that Jesus claimed that He Himself was the truth." with pity for the damned Yale student who brushes past them "Yale is a very different place from what it was," my friend continued. "Founded under a Christian covenant: the Yale Charter indifferently. And Jesse Jackson got downright biblical in his Barrell of 1701, it was chartered as a Chapel speech last month-but a group that worries that Yale may place to train young men to Jere Garceau thinks the "forces of be the battlefield for a global disseminate the Gospel. They clash between good and evil? studied Greek and Hebrew, and darkness" may have targeted Yale in a "''m not talking about Satan they had required prayer." maniacal scheme to take over the walking in with cloven hooves It's hard to imagine many and a forked tail," Jere clarifies.

Yalies disseminating the Gospel world. "If you're the enemy, this is "It's much more subtle than that today, difficuiÂŁ to picture because the Scripture says, he missionaries spreading out from obviously the place where you are always comes as an angel of New Haven into distant, heathen going to come to try to take control." light." lands as they once did.

Yikes! "Lux" will never sound Then my friend mentioned the same again.

Jere's group: underground If you're wondering why missionaries, as it were. Bur you've never heard of Jere and his group before-after all, this stuff instead of traveling abroad for converts, they focus on Yale itself. reeks of Rumpur-it's because, well, it's a coven operation. The It's as if the whole cycle of conversion has come full circle. I was prayer groups meet in Dwight Chapel and Marquand Chapel at the curious. The next day I met with Jere at Ingall's rink to talk to him about the group.

Yale Divinity School five days a week from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. There Jere was as nice and as decent as a man could be. We talked as he they pray for a religious revival on Yale's campus. watched his two sons play hockey. He explained that he and some of For four years now, they have been praying for a spiritual his friends had come together to form the prayer group in 1990 afrer revival at Yale in the near future-and especially praying for every an international student at Yale committed suicide. Jere was new freshman class. Chances are, if you're reading this article, concerned that the event was the worst in a series of manifestations they've been praying for you too, in the early morning hours, as of Yale's spiritual depravity. you agonize over problem sets and papers. When I first met Jere he If fewer believers means "spiritual depravity," then it is hard to said to me, "You're class of '98, right? You're one of the guys we've argue with him on this point. One need only exhume the musty been praying for!" parchment of the Yale Charter from its eternal resting I first heard about the prayer group-which doesn't place in the Beinecke Library to see that the university have a name-while having dinner with a friend. We has strayed pretty far from its founding principles. The were talking about the attitudes people have towards

by Jay Dixit

APRIL 14, 1995

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document the fervent declaration of ten orthodox pastors so frustrated with Harvard's moral backsliding that they ran off to found Yale under explicitly religious principles in the hopes that this time the institution would stick to its religious foundation.

Marena Fisher (GRD '92) even goes so far as to say, "The general temper of things at Yale is very much anti-Christian, very much anti-Gospel. Things are not friendly

God or to God's things. Instead, social issues seem to take the place of God at Yale, or they seem to monopolize the discussion."

Mel Sensineg (DIY ' 97), a member of Jere's prayer group, said, "Many people [at Yale] consider Christianity to be passe, obsolete, a historical artifact."

In light of all this, however, it is difficult to understand where Jere gets the idea that there is a spiritual awakening just around ' the corner.

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Fisher gave me some insight into this way of thinking. "God's work is like the wind," she explained. "You can't see it blowing, but you can see its effects." Jere believes that he is seeing those effects. "I think people are open," he said. "Everyone is searching for something, especially in this day and age. People think there must be some truth that we can grab hold of that won't crumble before our eyes. I believeand you may see it in the four years that you're here-that we're right on the brink." ut why do we need a spiritual awakening? I had a little trouble buying Jere's idea that the physical decline of the Yale campus was evidence of the moral and spiritual decay of the student population. And the theory that Yale, as a university founded with such rigorous religious conviction, would be a primary target for the "wreaking of havoc [by] the

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I'm not talking about Satan walking in with cloven hooves and a forked tail. It's much more subtle than that because the Scripture says, he always comes as an angel of light. forces of darkness?" That seemed a little farfetched too. What exactly are these "forces of darkness" at Yale?

In answer to this question, Jere pointed to "the liberalism, the humanism, the intellectualism that [has] engulfed this place." He cited William F. Buckley's (DC '50) God and Man at Yal~. his liberalbashing polemic which declared that Yale had been corrupted by the teaching of "relativism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism," nd demanded that any professors who directly or indirectly promoted atheism or socialism be banished from the universiry.

APRIL 14, 1995

Now his argument began to sound a little more familiar, a linle less radical. Once it had been reduced to the political, I could compare it to the rhecorical ranting of Jesse Jackson in Bartell Chapel who even concluded his speech with the same scriptural reference that had convinced Jere that praying would spark an awakening: "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. " When I called to arrange a final meeting with Jere to see his group in action, he was excited. "We'll make a Christian out of you yet," he joked. I wasn't so sure.

I felt a little different when the morning of our meeting rolled around. When I met Jere at Dwight Chapel at 6 a.m., after a grueling aiJ-nighter of metaphysical fencing with the Critiq~ ofPu" &ason, I was more than usually ready for revelationsomething that Kant had conspicuously failed to inspire. I watched Jere, that morning, as he paced in front of me-head bowed, eyes dosed, hands clasped, voice fervent and sincere. He asked for God to guide the paths of the freshperson class, of the professors, and of President Levin himself. And then he prayed for me.

"We thank you, Lord God for bringing Jay here to be with us this morning, because we know that you have brought him here for a reason. We pray that you might touch him, and open his heart, and show him the truth." The truth. I recalled my friend's parable about the salt shaker. I thought how nice it must be to walk around with the whole thing in your pocket-how nice it must be to be sure that you knew the truth.

And as eerie as it was to know that Jere was praying for my salvation for reasons I didn't even understand, I began to find it comforting. After all, maybe he knew something I didn't. t:,.

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~ jay Dixit is a fruhpuson in Ezra Stilu Co/kg~.

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