Rage 5
December 22
HARCSH HOIPS OK
CLEVISTON, FLA.-As one rent
strike was ending in St Louis,
an other was beginning in Harlem,
Florida, the Black of white Clevr-
iston. On November 9> a group
of Harlem’s tenants banded to¬
gether to use their combined
force to gain bargaining rights
from their slum landlords. The
Clewiston Housing Authority which
operates and manages the 179, old
wooden shacks to over 200 families,
had demanded that rent be raised
to as high as &60 per month. The
tenants reacted by organizing a
Harlem Tenants Association (HTA),
and pushed the housing authority
to accept their organization as
the only barganing agent during
the rent strike. When the housing
authority refused to recognize
HTA as the voice of the tenants,
HTA intensified its efforts by
obtaining legal services from Steve
Johnson, an attorney with Florida
Rural Legal Services. The tenants
led by Jesse Robinson and Ivy \
7/at son returned to the Authority
with a list of demands which called
for the purchase of the buildings
by the tenants, or management of the
units by HTA. Presently, there has
been no move taward accomodation.
The buildings in dispute are without
indoor toilet or shower facilities.
The Harlem Tenants Association
was handed a boost recently when in
a mass tenant meeting it won the sup¬
port of Marvin Davies, NAACF State
Field Director and James Campbell,
Housing and Planning Specialist of
the Southern Regional Council, At¬
lanta, Georgia.
Reacting as whites under pres¬
sure, the Clewiston Housing Authority
served eviction notices on 26 fami¬
lies—-whether they pay back rent or
not. The families, some with small
children, were ordered to leave the
shacks .four days before Christmas.
The families have been told to rest
in peace. The tenant organization
has been able tocfevelop total com¬
munity participation and community
people now make all decisions as to
housing. The residents now have
complete control over the 279 wooden
shacks. Rents are now paid to the
Harlem Tenants Association for de¬
posit to its escrow account in a
Black bank in Atlanta. The tenants
want to demolish the oresent shacks
and build a model community of clus¬
tered single family homes, coopera¬
tive and condominium apartments.
The Tenants have learned to fight
back instead of paying high rent
for nothing, or packing up and leav¬
ing. They have also learned that
power is in togetherness and that a
tenants organization is safe, legal,
and can achieve desired results.
If St. Louis, Washington, D.C.,
Detroit and New Orleans can give
tenants an equal voice on their
housing authorities why can’t
St. Petersburg?
THE BURNING SPEAR
TW6 WWf TWT WORKS RS
scoop spur
by ABE PECK
CHICAGO (LNS)--This is the house
that blood built. It is called 2337
Jest Monroe Street. It is in Chicago,
in what Elvis calls Hthe ghet-to.”
A pool of blood stains the carpet
behind the front door to this house.
The blood was part of Mark Clark until
the morning of Dec.U. Mark Clark was
a Black Panther from Peroria, Ill.
Color nim dead.
Overturned furniture fills the
front room and hallways of this house.
The 'walls jnd furniture are air-con¬
ditioned police style—ventilated by
shotgun, pistol, automatic rifle, and
magnum shells.
Color them violated.
There is a third bedroom at the end
of the hallway, and the mattress in
this room is half brown and half red.
The brown part is frayed from use,
the red part is fresh and slippery
with agony and pain.
This redness was a part of Fred
Hampton. Fred Hampton was Chairman
of the Illinois Black Panther Party.
Color him dead, too.
Fred Hampton was 21 years old.
Mark Clark was 22.
A block away, the Information
Minister and the Defense Minister and
several other speakers speak of Chair¬
man Fred and Mark Clark and armed
struggle. They speak of why they are
tired of writing and lecturing and
organizing in the shadow of i|00 years
of Bablonian Captivity.
.Fords. I
At the house that Hood built,
words are no longer necessary. The
shotgun patterns show where Ron
Satchel, Blair Anderson, Verlin Brewer,
and Brenda Harris were put un against
the wall. Shocked eyes play ”follow
the dots’1 and relay the truth: each
was shot only in the lower body, each
was shot to cripple him or her for a
long time.
Soon we will nay yet another visit.
Jews call it ’’sitting shivah.” Irish¬
men call it a ’’wake”. The Vikings
launched ships when the time came.
Soon we shall go to a place unlike
’’the ghet-to,” a place where the air
is clean and there is space for people
to strech out. tie shall go lc this
place of good-byes, and we shall say
out farewells to the 27th and 28th
Black Panthers to perish. We shall
stand over the graves and hear eulogies
to those who fought ’well and not in
vain.
More words.
We, the long-haired sons and daugh¬
ters of the middlw-class, v/ent to the
house that blood built and saw the
truth that words and rhetoric cannot
say. )Ye saw the redness of black men
and women and knew it for the redness
of the yellow Vietnamese and the
white activist whose blood will flow
before the beast is slain. We
stepped in the redness, and felt rage
that the State's attorney could dare
to congratulate his gunmen for killing
people in their beds. The redness
seeped into our minds as we thought
of our own communal homes and our
still-living loved ones.
When we left the house that blood
built, we knew that vie had descended
from the mountain to {join with those
who dwell in the valley. And, when
we lo ked into each other’s eyes we
knew that the back had been
sealed by the avalanche of what we
had seen.
Bring the ghetto home.
ctience
cvrtteRtK
tco*te
On December 20, 1969, at 5:30 a.m.
employees of Swanholm Nursing home,
located at 6200 Central Avenue decided
they have had enough unjust treatment
and employed for slave wages. Accord¬
ing to Mrs. Elvila Hayward, union
organizer for Bay Area Local 1010, the
home owed a bill of 553,000 and to
repay this bill they were working the
workers eight hours and only paying
them for 7 1/2 hours. Mrs. Hayward
further expressed that the present
salary is well below the poverty stand¬
ards as established by the government
anti-poverty scale and is not at all
in accordance with the minimum wages
as estadished by congress.
According to the workers, on Nov¬
ember 1969, a new administrator, Laurel
J* Chadwick, took over the nursing
home. The administrator’s first act,
according to workers was to be(£Ln
paying 7 1/2 hour wage for eight hours
of work* ”We have children, and are
not going to work for nothing,” said
one worker* ’’She claims she doesn’t
have funds to give us more money, so
she fired four good workers only to
hire another five who are sympathetic
and loyal to her* And although she
claims they don’t have the money to
pay us more, they have already hired
several policemen to guard the build¬
ing while we are peacefully picketing.”
"A deliberate attempt is being made
by Swanholm administrative staff to
scare us into thinking they are going
out of business, before they will give
us justice,” said Mrs. Hayward. ’’That
is the same song sung in Charleston,
South Carolina, during the summer*
Workers there were under paid and got
what they wanted by organizing and
sticking together*.We’re going to
8tick together too, and if Swanholm
would rather go our of business before
paying workers a decent salary, then
maybe it should do just that!” she
said* ”It is the 20th century and
people are not going to work for horse
and buggy wages. That’s the purpose
of our union, tc seek good working
conditions for people and to obtain
decent salaries. Bay Area Local 1010
is determined to do away with the idea
that Black people can live off nothing
for doing all the work and whites can
do nothing and get rich*”
Mrs* Hayward said that although only
Black Swanholm workers are in the pic¬
ket line, there are white workers who
have joined the union and who have
paid memberships and union cards*
The workers have received the sup¬
port of the Junta Of Militant Organ¬
izations and the Community Liberation
Movement, who joined them in the pic¬
ket lines*
Mrs* Hayward says anyone who wants
further information on the Swaibhola
strike should contact her at 2163
First Avenue, South or call Bay Area
Local 1010 at 829-2231*