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By JOHN WEIR

ret er obably too much to ex-
: 3H journalists schooled in
editors War tradition, whose
tientat are either still Nixon-
‘i oe Or at least anxious
oj eeeiaad measure of Cana-
4 viet understanding and
fap tation shouldn’t go “too
Ped refrain from mixing
of frie ag with the shafts
Ais ei in their reports of
Of th Inister Trudeau’s tour
&€ USSR,

Ere have sly sneers at the
Who of older Russian women
perc _“svelte” Margaret
u, Ominous references to
ee of “police” (when
ent Comes here he’ll have
We ey, Of police protection too
nude “a and similar—at best
and fe petty, at worst hateful
ene cracks and innuendo.
~ blag Mt Canadians could just
and try to forget such
e ia it’s a different thing
ity yy, Comes to falsifying real-
things 4 May or may not find
Detie © emulate in the Soviet
ed by nce, but no good is serv-
. Perverting that experience.
Rese Bain Looks ...
cept fh for example, is an ex-
Tents ae George Bain’s com-
the nN the May 26 issue of
“p Tonto Globe and Mail:
Were epithe contrast, there
Moscow, forehand, of course,
00,009 the metropolis of
of the ? and Kiey, the capital
Soviet Ukraine—Regina to the
"Wan ~MOn’s vast Saskatche-

lapses,

Minigt”®S in Kiev that the Prime
Who}; T said that Ukrainians
Tong “© Sone to Canada have
Mlitiggy e™Selves living in a
basic g Structure of the same
Itt pj ce" 28 that of the Sov-
bring an observation to
Blanca hyone up short at first
np hat Mr. Trudeau was talk-
tederalion Was his great subject,
hearers nt’ Which, he told his
Nee a Kiey, ‘permits a bal-
onal © struck between the
lOcay, requirements and the
Parti the common good and
“Wey cular interest.’

Want na yes, but one would not
far yo take the parallel too
ligg t ae Obviously the repub-
Ution hay Compose the Soviet
eion, “Ve their areas of sov-
Not Y, Nevertheless one does
MeVigiishy won to contradict the
Memia,,” held notion that the
ttieg -o the constituent en-
ay, Rene, rather smaller than,
Davig oF €rt Bourassa, William

W. A. C. Bennett.”

Mt Doesn't See . . .
Re or: “ither George Bain can’t
King get's Wearing the wrong
Bins ype @8Ses, because he be-
Patison an upside down com-

Ow

Wine 4, °28katchewan (we pre-
and), ons an ‘agrarian hin-
any high) Oviet Ukraine is a
4eatian Y developed industrial-
; indy ot: one of the 10

: rial States in the
ES (not It is a national re-
In Wante &@ province). If Mr.

IS, he wy, d to make compari-

the es have been closer
a Ukrai h if he had compared
Bbee jin the USSR with
Ml the .» Canada — if Quebec

ac to self-determina-

o4
¥

tion, had established its sover-

eignty, and had _ voluntarily
united with English Canada as
an equal in a new type Confed-
eral Pact. :

Of course, Mr. Trudeau was
off base in his remarks about
the Ukrainians—that’s because
he stubbornly refuses to recog-
nize the national question at
home, and therefore he muddles
it up abroad as well.

About Ukrainians

The Ukrainians in Canada are
not a nation, Mr. Trudeau, but
the French Canadians are. And
as a matter of fact, the original
Ukrainian immigrants to Can-
ada—they started settling here
exactly 80 years ago — came
from ‘tthe Russian and Austro-
Hungarian empires, which did
not recognize their national
rights just as the rights of
French Canada aren’t recogniz-
ed today.

The Ukrainian people in their
homeland won their indepen-
dence, established their sover-
eign state and finally united
their divided territory as the
result of the 1917 October Revo-
lution in Russia. The Ukrainian
Soviet Republic was an initiator
of the move to establish the new
type of federation, the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, and
the people of the Ukraine voted
practically 100% in a referen-
dum endorsing that move.

The USSR Set-up

Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Bain
both could have gained from
studying the USSR and its con-
stituent republics. They would
have found it worth while.

The Soviet Union is a new
type of federation of national
states.

What are its features?

e First, the union is volun-
tary and each partner can at
any time separate. Each con-
stituent republic is itself a sov-
ereign state, and they together
form the USSR, which is also a
sovereign state. (In case any-
body should trip over the mean-
ing of “sovereign” they can
quickly find the proper defini-
tion in international law — it
deals with supreme power over
its government, territory, etc.).

e Secondly, the division of
responsibilities between the cen-
tral and the republican govern-
ments is mutually agreed: no de-
cision can be foisted on any of
the republics. To make sure that
in deciding all-USSR matters
the will of a larger republic
does not override that of a small
one, there are two Houses of
Parliament — the Supreme Sov-
iet, elected on the basis of popu-
lation, and the Soviet of Nation-
alities, elected by the republics,
autonomous republics and na-
tional regions. In_ this second
body the smallest republic has
the same number of ,votes as
the largest—and there must be
approval by both Houses before
any bill becomes law.

Surely that’s not the same as
our BNA Act!

Socialist Nations

These are the framework dif-
ferences, but the flesh-and-blood
differences are still greater.
They consist in the fact that the
nations and nationalities in the
Soviet Union are socialist, there
is no drive to exploit or keep
down either individuals or na-
tions, all are engaged in lifting
up the backward areas to the
top level and continually lifting

eee

it

A. welfare nightmare

By WILLIAM ALLAN

DETROIT—President Nixon’s
statement against welfare aid
for the poor and jobless are
part of a national campaign to
set working people against un-
employed people on public as-
sistance. A vicious part of this
campaign is Nixon’s implication
that welfare aid is milking
those employed to pay for those
getting aid. This is done to split
the growing alliance between
working and unemployed peo-
ple.

This alliance makes sense to
people here, with 313,000 job-
less reported by the Michigan
Employment Security .Commis-
sion (MESC); an _ additional
90,000 on welfare; 100,000 on
Aid to Department Children
26,000 getting aid because of
injuries — making a total of
over 500,000 unemployed in
Michigan. Some 40% are black,
Chicano, Puerto Rican workers.

Nixon, .a bourgeois to the
core, wouldn’t .know or care
about the suffering of those on
welfare.

Here is the story of one of
them, Rene Alvarado, a Puerto
Rican unemployed worker. He
spoke recently before the Lead-
ership Conference on Welfare
Reform in Detroit, at Cobo Hall.

He wore an_ open-necked
work shirt, a worn sweater, a
pair of baggy pants. He got to
the heart of the cruelty of the
welfare system, after dozens of
white-collar welfare workers
had talked around it. The reason
was simple — they had never
experienced the welfare depart-
ment’s injustice. Alvarado has,
and his story brought even the
hardened welfare officials to
tears.

Two years ago Alvarado was
involved in an auto accident in
Cleveland. Unable to find a job
after that, he, his pregnant wife
and four children, moved to
dynamic Detroit. He was a
truck driver and the company
in Cleveland he drove for had
insurance with a firm that went
bankrupt, so he got nothing for
the accident and resultant in-
juries. In Detroit he stood in
long unemployment lines, seen
now everywhere in this depres-
sion city. He told the Con-
ference:

“I was getting desparate. So
I took my wife’s wedding ring
and my watch and sold them.
Soon the money ran out. We
didn’t have any money for milk
so we fed our children sugared
water. I’ve never been on wel-
fare. I don’t know anything
about it. But my children were
starving. So I went to the wel-
fare office for help. They said
they couldn’t help me, but come
back in three days and they

that top level for all—and they
do it together because that’s
the socialist way of life, that’s
the communist world outlook,
that’s proletarian international-
ism.

We may be excused for rais-
ing an eyebrow when Mr. Bain
finds Ukrainian government and
party leaders Shelest and
Shcherbitsky small in Kiev—but
didn’t they look big when he
saw them in Moscow as part of
the all-USSR leadership? Maybe
there’s food for thought in that
for Mr. Bain.

Why do Bourassa, Davis or
Bennet (why leave out Thatch-
er?) loom so big in his eyes. Be-
cause of their postures of “inde-
pendence” as each in his own
way serves the monopolies and
tries to sell our heritage to the
highest Yankee bidder.

Please!

gave me some food stamps. But
you can’t buy soap and you
can’t buy toilet paper.

“My wife contracted an ab-
scess on the inside of her
mouth. So I went to the Depart-
ment of Social Services and
they said I need a medical slip,
which they would send me in
the mail. I didn’t get the slip.
My wife developed an abscess
on both sides of her mouth. She
began crying all the time. I
went back to the Department
of Social Services. They told me
to go back home and said they
would send me a medical slip
in the mail. I went back home
but the slip never came. One of
my wife’s eyes closed and the
slip didn’t come.

“I was sitting in the bedroom
and heard her trip and fall. She
was ready to. have the baby any
day. I rushed into the living
room and found my wife on the
floor. The kids were crying.
There was pus and blood all
over the floor. The kids began
throwing up. I didn’t know what
to do because I didn’t have a
medical slip. So I took her to
the emergency room of the De-
troit General Hospital where
they took good care of her. The
doctor asked me why I waited
so long to bring my wife in. I
told him I didn’t have a medical
slip, my wife had the baby
without any problems, I still
don’t have the slip and I don’t
have a job.

“My wife was taking medica-
tion and she couldn’t breast
feed the baby. So I went to the
Department of Social services
for baby bottles and other sup-
plies and they told me my wife
could breast feed the baby if
she wanted too.” (A woman
welfare worker in the audience
holding a handkerchief over her
nose and mouth quickly walked
out of the hall.)

“So I sold a pint of blood,”
said Alvarado, “for $7 and
bought some supplies. You

know $7 doesn’t go very far.
My wife’s abscess got worse so
I went back to the Department
of Social Services and they said
they would mail me a slip. But
they never mailed it.

“A friend of ours told me

about the National Welfare
Rights Organization. I contact-
ed them and they got me the
slip.

“Meanwhile, my wife had her
glasses stolen by a man while
she was waiting for me outside
the unemployment office. She
couldn’t see my face in the light
of day for four months. I went
to the Department of Social
Services and they told me, that
if she waited this long, she
could wait another four months.
My wife tripped over a table
when she was carrying the baby
and you should see the bruise
on the baby’s back. I applied
for a back brace over a year and
a half ago from the welfare, but
still haven’t got one.

“Our landlord told us we
would have to pay for the
apartment’s utilities. The wel-
fare office said they couldn’t af-
ford it, so they moved us to
another apartment. It was one
room and no furniture. We had
to eat cold canned food stand-
ing up. You can’t realize how
bad that grease tastes when it
is cold.

“If you think welfare is an
easy life, you’re crazy. Its noth-
ing but a nightmare. Some-
thing’s got to be done,” Alvara-
do concluded, “‘we have to have
welfare reform.”

The conference of 400 wel-
fare workers, after listening to
Alvarado, went on_ record
against Nixon’s recent welfare
plan of $1,600 a year for a fam-
ily of four, now under study by
the U.S. House Ways and
Means Committee. Nixon’s plan
is loaded with new welfare re-
strictions, the same that Alva-
rado was fighting for the last
two years.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1971—PAGE 9

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