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The Path Of Black Political PowerMargaret EddsRICHMOND, Va.–The headline that greeted city residents on the morning of March 5, 1977 seemed calculated to send a new round of shudders through corporate boardrooms and whites-only neighborhoods already reeling from the week’s election returns. "Power to the People," the Richmond Afro-American triumphantly proclaimed, raising a verbal clenched fist to a city and state steeped in the virtues of patrician, oligarchic rule. Nine faces–five black, four white–peered from the page, recording an historic first. Never before had a Southern city elected a black council majority to do its business.
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The Modernization Of Pepe LopezAlma GuillermoprietoSANGUINEDO, Spain–Depending on how you look at it, Pepe Lopez came to farming by accident or by inescapable destiny. The accident was that he was caught without work papers and deported from Switzerland ten years ago. Destiny was waiting for him in the beautiful and backward region of Galicia, Spain, on the seven hectares of land his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had farmed before him, and which Lopez says he had wanted so much to escape.
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The Origins Of Conservative Foreign PolicyJohn B. JudisAmerican foreign policy has always had its great debates, from the imperialists versus the internationalists. Since the early 1950s, the great debate between the advocates of containment and of liberation: between those who favor containing Soviet communism within its present geopolitical campus and those who favor rolling it back and liberating the people under its sway.
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Child Poverty In America: The Homeless FamiliesStephen ShamesCalifornia is the homeless capital of America. Ventura County–an affluent, suburban area, next to Los Angeles County–has between three and five thousand homeless. |
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Waking Up On The Moon: The Hmong In AmericaSpencer ShermanFRESNO, California–Making her way through hundreds of Indochinese refugees waiting for English class to begin, Barbara Christl shakes her head as she holds out the morning newspaper. "Here. This is the problem," she says, heaving the paper on her desk. The day’s front page feature is a ten-years-after look at refugees from the Vietnam War. The headline says, "Indochinese Refugees Adapt Quickly in U.S." The story opens describing a Vietnamese man in Houston who came to the United States a decade ago with nothing. Today he is on his way to becoming a "Texas tycoon." The piece quotes a former official of the U.S. Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy as saying Indochinese refugees have "shown a remarkable ability to enter into mainstream American economic life." Christl, director of English as a Second Language programs for Fresno County, looks like she is ready to scold a child. "You see, people think the problem has gone away. Or if not, that things are moving in that direction."
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Saving SteelJohn StrohmeyerChilly drafts of wind pour through cracked windows and holes in the roof of Bethlehem Steel’s tool shop. The interior looks like life had suddenly stopped, as though men had simply abandoned work stations and left their equipment to rot. Pigeon dirt covers rolling tables where streams of steel billets used to flow. In nearby sheds, hundreds of dies, once meticulously cut by skilled craftsmen, sit rusting and neglected because someone else’s dies are now shaping this nation’s tool steel.
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