Amnesty issue remains
for U.S. draft resisters

The Toronto American Exiles
Association steering committee
and the editorial board of AMEX-
Canada magazine issued an Open
Letter to the American people
following the recent victories in
Southeast Asia. We reprint ex-
cerpts below:

* * *

The Vietnamese and Cambodian
peoples have defeated the United
States and its client’ governments
in Saigon and Phnom Penh. They
are now able for the first time in
modern history to shape their own
destinies without foreign interfer-
ence. This is not only a momentous
victory for Indochina, but also an
important ‘turning point for the

® future of the U.S.

Refused the right to collective representation in efforts to settle scores -

of grievances, tenants at Parkwood Apartments in New Westminster

Ricketed the offices of the management Monday to press their case.

(See story).

Faced with the collapse of 30
years of U.S. policy in Indochina,
President Ford and Secretary of
State Kissinger have suddenly
switched to the Bicentennial
rhetoric of national unity. Both
have declared that the last chapter
has been read in the Indochina
book. They say, let’s forget about
the 56,000 GIs killed, the more than

Tenant pickets outline
demand for recognition

Tenants at Parkwood Terrace

Apartments, fed up with conditions
ike the New York slums,’’
Surrounded the offices of the
apartment management last
Onday with information pickets
©Manding recognition of their
‘Nant association and a meeting to
Cuss a long list of grievances.
About °0 tenants from the
partment complex on 10th Avenue
N New Westminster marched in
the demonstration. British
Columbia Tenants Organization
President Bruce Yorke and
- S€cretary Margaret DeWees
Dicketed with the tenants on Mc-
Bride Avenue in front of the offices
Of Lehndorf Properties Ltd.,
Management of the Parkwood
errace,

Unhealthy living conditions,
illegal rent increases and-not less
than 400 needed repairs prompted
© Parkwood tenants to organize
ast April with the aid of the BCTO.
ince that time, management has
Tefused to meet with the tenant
association and has been backed
up in its refusal by the Ren-

Isman’s office.

Barb Heffernan, vice-president

the Parkwood Tenant
Association, told the Tribune that

e demonstration was in response
ne letter circularized to residents
tae ‘the Rentalsman’s office that
cused the teriant association of

Ing opposed to meeting with

nagement.
ie nN calling the demonstration the

Nant association branded the
' ntalsman’s letter “essentially
Meorrect” and ‘‘deliberately

a itten to give a distorted im-
€ssion.”” The letter, they said,
sewed deputy Rentalsman Peter
1 th’s “strong bias in favor of the
€ndlord.”’
eve are picketing to prove we
. ach that meeting,” Heffernan
Plained. “We have tried to talk
th Management through visits to
€ir office, on the telephone,
rough personal letters, business
€rs — but nothing has worked.

i Rentalsman’s letter just blew
© cork.”’

As it turns out, the Rentalsman
was correct in saying that the
committee refused a meeting, but
the meeting they refused was
tantamount to the denial of the
right of the tenants to organize.
The Rentalsman offered to set up a
meeting which would include
management and three individual
tenants who would not represent
the tenant association. The Park-
wood tenants’ elected spokesman
Bruce Yorke was to be denied
admission to the proposed
meeting.

The Rentalsman’s proposal is in

- keeping with their arbitrary policy

to refuse enforcement of Section 68
of the Landlord and Tenant Act, a
section which allows for ‘‘collec-
tive action” on the part of tenants
in securing their rights under the
act. The tenant action at Parkwood

Terrace has developed into a direct

challenge to the pro-landlord in-
sistence of the Rentalsman that
violations of the law be dealt with
on the basis of individual tenan-
cies.

A noticeably different response
has come from the Rent Review
Commission. That agency’s in-
vestigation into the 14 illegal rent
increases which first prompted
tenants to organize has already
resulted in refunds to some
residents. In some cases the
Commission has taken court action

against management on behalf of-

tenants.

One such case is Barb Heffernan
herself. She claims that. the
management threatened eviction if
she failed to sign three consecutive
leases. The leases overlapped the
duration of agreement but carried
with them illegal rent increases.

With the formation of the tenant

association living conditions and ©

repairs emerged as major
grievances at Parkwood. All of the
suites at Parkwood are infested
with bugs. In addition to silverfish,
ants and flies, mice and rats have
found homes in the apartment
buildings. In some suites doors will

not lock and in others stoves and
refrigerators are non-functional.

Management’s near cynical
response to the complaints added
bitterness to the dispute. Ex-
pecting a fumigation expert to de-
infest the buildings, an amateur
sprayer appeared instead who
sprayed a light solution through
only one of the six buildings. Bugs
remain in that building. An offer to
clean up the parking lot area
resulted in the towing away of
eight cars owned by tenants.

But what particularly raised the
ire of tenants was a letter from
Lehndorf to each tenant stating
that ‘‘Parkwood lives like the New
York slums.” After admitting the
deplorable conditions that exist,
management refused action to
amend the situation. And more, the
letter implied the tenants were at
fault for maintaining poor living
standards.

Monday’s demonstration
marked the first public action of
the Parkwood Tenants
Association. It will not be the last if
some progress is not achieved in
recognizing the right of tenants to
organize and bargain collectively
for their lawful rights.

It is a case for tenants_

everywhere to keep a watchful eye.

upon.

Free legal advice

Senior citizens. on the Lower

Mainland can receive free legal
advice during the summer months:
as the result of a project initiated
by four UBC law students. Clinics
have been set up in community
centres in Vancouver and shut-ins
can arrange home visits by
phoning 684-8171.

wills, family law, landlord and
tenant issues, consumer problems
and old age pensions and Mincome.
For location of the clinics phone
the above number. A permanent
office and clinic is located at 411
Dunsmuir St., Vancouver.

‘My — Lai’s,

Advice will be given on simple .

300,000 wounded, and the more
than $150-billion squandered in aid.
Let’s forget about the millions of
Indochinese killed, maimed, or
made. homeless by U.S. bombs,
napalm, anti-personnel weapons,
chemical defoliants and poisons,
ete. Let’s call a
moratorium on recriminations
with respect to the war, so they
say. Let’s look to the future and
greatness of America. Let’s bind
up the domestic wounds caused by
the war. ...

Last September, after his total
pardon of Richard Nixon, Ford
made a gesture of reconciliation
toward war resisters. He called it
clemency. In reality it was punish-
ment, requiring years of forced
labor and loyalty oaths to be signed
in order to ‘‘earn our way back.

Our boycott was so successful
that at the program’s end Ford was
forced to extend it twice. When the
extensions expired at the end of
March, Ford’s clemency had been
rejected by 84% of those eligible,
and the program was not even open
to the majority of vets with less-
than-honorable discharges
resulting from oppossition to the
war — hundreds of thousands of
people.

Now the postwar Administration
policy is to talk about phony
reconciliation in order to keep
Americans from thinking further
about the war. As exiled war
resisters, the war is not over for us
until we win universal and un-
conditional amnesty, and in the
process help others to understand
what-we were forced to learn about
the war... .

This war was not the result of
good intentions gone sour or an
aberration of policy. It was a war
to protect the interests of the
American empire. It was a battle
to. maintain free access to the

critical raw materials of Indochina
and its Southeast Asian neighbors
— oil, tin, tungsten, rubber, etc. It
was a war to end all wars of
national liberation in the Third
World '— wars waged to regain
control. of natural resources and
national destinies. It was a war to
keep Southeast Asia free for
capitalist exploitation by the U.S.
and other countries. It was a war to
secure potential markets for in-
dustrial exports and to obtain
“cheap’”’ Asian labor resources.

Such a war was clearly not in the
interest of ordinary Americans,
but in the interest of that small
minority that controls our
economy: and formulates govern-
ment policies. Just as clearly, it
was not in the interest of the people
of Southeast Asia. Millions came to
understand this and fought to end
U.S. involvement.

Instead of calling for an end to
the Indochina War discussion, we
call for a continued examination of
this sordid chapter in American
history. One of the best ways to do
this is to escalate the fight for
universal and unconditional am-
nesty. By this we meana no-strings
amnesty for all draft resisters,
deserters, civilians with anti-war
records, and all the more than
600,000 vets with bad discharges,
and the replacement of the current.
discharge system with a Single
Type Discharge for GIs. The fight
for total amnesty should not
merely concern itself with winning
back our rights, but ‘also must be
an instrument with which to drive
home a fuller understanding of
America’s Thirty Years’ War. In a
wider sense, it is the struggle to
win the right to resist unjust,
imperial wars in solidarity with
liberation fighters in the Third
World. ...

ND Pp Government |

— HONOR

Face the truth,
Respec] OUR Rights
co Squamish People|

“

Ou R | tent

—Sean Griffin photo.

‘The placard says it all for this young demonstrator, one of some 60
‘members of the Squamish band who picketed the entrance to cut off
lands underneath the Lions Gate bridge in North Vancouver last week.
Native Indian leaders have a meeting scheduled with the provincial
government June 25 to discuss the land claim issue.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 13, 1975—Page 3