’ Paul Newman movie p

The signs on the marquees
boast the stars — Charles Bron-
son and Paul Newman. But the
signs carried by pickets in front of
the theatres roast Bronson and
Newman for appearing in Bor-
derline and Fort Apache—the
Bronx, two new movies that glor-
ify and romanticize police and
border patrol agents while depict-
ing Hispanic and Black com-
munities as populated exclusively
by criminals and degenerates.

Chicago organizations have
launched a campaign against the
Lord Grade film Borderline
which according to its producers
portrays ‘‘the plight of the illegal
alien from south of the border.”
The grade-B thriller stars Charles
Bronson as a border patrolman
who seeks revenge for the death
of a fellow officer by singlehand-
edly stopping the flow of Mexican
immigrants into the U.S.

Much the same sentiment is be-
ing expressed by community act-
ivists all the way across the conti-
nent in New York’s South Bronx
about another movie: Fort
Apache—the Bronx. The film is
set in the 41st precinct, the South
Bronx, in a landscape of gutted
abandoned buildings that has al-,
ready served as the backdrop for
a parade of politicians promising
urban revival.

ke The major motion picture,

produced by Time-Life Inc. and
distributed by Twentieth Century
Fox began its first run this month.
It brings together three media
stars who have in the past culti-
vated liberal images through their
roles in film and TV — actors
Paul Newman and Ed Asner, and
producer David Susskind.

In the South Bronx, an area
devastated by cutbacks in services
and high unemployment, a film
which portrays the people of the
community as ‘‘punks”’ and “‘de-
generates” is seen as simply an-
other attack.

The Committee Against Fort
Apache (CAFA) is attempting to
build a boycott of the movie,
claiming that ‘‘every dollar spent
at the box office is encourage-
ment for those who want to profit
by inciting racist hatred.”

CAFA’s opposition to the film
is based on its analysis of the
screenplay by Heywood Gould,
loosely based on a novel by ex-
Bronx policeman Tom Walker.
In the film one cop explains what
is behind the title that recalls an
old John Wayne film. “This is
not a police station, Captain,” he
says of the 41st precinct station
house, “‘it’s a fort in a hostile ter-
ritory.””

According to the Time-Life ad
in Variety, Fort Apache is a
40-block area with the highest
crime rate in New York, inhabit-

‘

~ CAFA DEMONSTRATION . .
in New York.

ed by ‘“‘Youth gangs, winos,
junkies, pimps, hookers, maniacs
and cop killers.’’ The screenplay
stereotypes all Blacks and Puerto
Ricans as degenerates andthe wo-
men as prostitutes and junkies in
particular.

In the film, after much deliber-
ation the character played by Paul
Newman turns in two cops who
brutally and needlessly murderd a
Puerto Rican youth. But New-

. protesting Paul

rotested as

Ese adh. A ete a
Newman film

man does not suffer the fate de-
picted in Serpico, a movie about a
real cop who testified about cor-
ruption in the NYPD and was
nearly killed by his fellow for his
efforts. Instead, the hero of Fort
Apache is welcomed back by the
other cops and returns to the job
with renewed strength and com-
mitment.

‘‘The message,’? CAFA-
spokesperson Richard Perez re-

‘racist’
marked, ‘“‘is that the police can
clean up their own mess without
interference.

“The reality of the situation in
the South Bronx and every Op-
pressed community is very differ-
ent, and this reality is written in
blood,”’ according to the Com-
mittee Against Fort Apache. A
CAFA leaflet cites the recent p0-
lice murders in the Bronx of Peter | |
Funche, Louis Rodriguez, Abdul
Hadi, and 17-year-old Arturo
Reyes. \

“This $10 million fairy tale, by
romanticizing the police and ex-"
cusing their brutality and pre
tending they can police them-
selves — leads people to closé
their eyes and ears to the rise of
police terrorism in our communi
ties, and our legitimate struggle
against this.”

Rev. Herbert Daughtry,
Chairman of the Black United
Front, a member group of
CAFA, commented that, “There
are many ways to kill a people
. . . through education, through

_ the closing of hospitals. You can
kill a people with racist police
men, but you can also kill a peo-
ple by killing their culture, by tak-
ing their history. Once the movies
and magazines and the radio
begin to portray a people as a no-
body, it sets them up for physical

destruction.”
—LNS

News Guild to launch pioneering study

The Vancouver-New
Westminster Newspaper Guild an-
nounced Feb. 5 that it will be one of
the target locals in an extensive
study of the health effects of video
display terminals, (VDTs), the first
such major study on the North
American continent.

The study, which will be con-
ducted by the prestigious Mount
Sinai School of Medicine in New
York in cooperation with the
union’s international office, was
initiated by the Vancouver local as

a result of a number of health con-
cerns about the VDTs in use in
newsrooms at the Vancouver Sun
and Province.

The Guild represents editorial,
circulation and advertising
employees at Pacific Press which
produces the Sun and the Province,
as well as several Lower Mainland
papers including the Tribune.

Many Guild members work with
the VDTs, which look like a televi-
sion screen atop a typewriter
keyboard. Words appear on the

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEB. 13, 1981—Page 10

TRIBUNE PHOTO—SEAN GRIFFIN

darkened screen indicating what
has been punched up on the key-
board. Units similar to those in
newspaper newsrooms’ have
recently been introduced widely in-
to many insurance offices, banks,
airline reservation desks and travel
agencies.

The long term health effects of
the new machines are still largely
unknown but already there have
been indications of chronic vision
problems such as cataract forma-

tion and deterioration of eyesight

as well as other problems including
chronic headache and temporary
blackout linked to operation of
VDTs.

In addition, four women at the
Toronto Star, all of whom had
worked with VDTs, gave birth to
children with birth defects, raising
renewed concern about possible
radiation emission.

‘Frankly, we’re very worried

about the possible effects of

VDTs,”’ Guild administrative of-
ficer Patricia Lane said last week in
announcing the local’s participa-
tion in the study.

The Vancouver local will be one
of two Guild locals involved in the

43
q
|

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first part of the study, a pilot survey
which is to be followed by a detail-
ed questionnaire sent to some 2,000
Guild members across the conti-
nent. It will ask about health effects
of VDTs, as experienced by
members, the level of exposure to
the machines and the working con-
ditions, and is intended to identify
what areas should be subject for
full medical examination.

Those examinations, in turn,

will be carried out by the Mount |

Sinai School of Medicine under the
direction of Dr. Arthur Frank.

Mount Sinai gained prominence
earlier for its pioneering work in
studying asbestos workers and was
the first to identify and win official
medical recognition of the cancer
known as mesothelioma, which is
peculiar to asbestos workers.

As part of the the Mount Sinai
study, the Vancouver local is laun-
ching its own ophthalmalogical
study which is expected to take
some two to five years to complete.

That study is to be conducted by
Dr. Arthur Beattie who is affiliated
with the University of B.C. depart-
ment of ophthalmology and is

director of the Vancouver General

tion C8TS wrod te ecencr a s.
SEGENT: telicteran rere ecstece,

of VDTs

Hospital Visual Function Asses*
ment Unit. ‘

Dr. Beattie will work closely
with Mount Sinai and will study
Vancouver Guild members wh?
work with VDTs as well as a ‘‘cod’
trol group” of office workers wh?
do not use VDTs.

The need for an independetl
study has been underscored by the —
attitude of Pacific Press which, a”
cording to Lane, has been to di

_ count Guild members’ health cof
‘cerns with VDTs.

She said that the experience #!
Pacific Press has so far been ‘“e®
tremely bad,” citing the case of of
copy editor who suffered split ¥
sion and severe headache w.
driving home after working all da)

ona VDT unit. He was forced 1
pull over, blindly, to the roadsidé

When the Guild posed the p!0
blem to the company, the respon
was only, ‘‘One lousy headache? Js
that all you’ve got? One lous)
headache?” according to Lane.

She added, however, thal
Pacific Press had responded

favorably to the study when i
formed of it by Guild officers.

Ee