NATIONAL NEWS

FULLILOVE vs. KREPS:

Affirmative Action on Trial Again

New York (LNS)+When the Supreme Court convenes in October, it will once again be reviewing an anti-affirmative action case. Although the new case, Fullilove v. Kreps, hasn't received the publicity that its predecessors, Bakke and Weber, had, the stakes are just as high, maybe higher.

The case began as one of a number of lawsuits filed throughout the country against the Public Works Employment Act, which requires that 10 percent of each federal grant awarded under the act go to Third World contractors. The plaintiff is H. Earl Fullilove, a trustee of the New York Building and Contractors Industry Board, and the defendant is Juanita Kreps, Secretary of Commerce, whose department administers the program. So far, 12 Federal district courts have upheld the program; three have declared it illegal. }

What the Supreme Court will say is anybody's guess. The legislation providing for the Act expired last December 31 and virtually all of the $4 billion authorized under the program has already been spent. In addition, the court told Bakke "yes" and Weber "no."

What the case does is once again raise the issue of "reverse discrimination". James Haughton of Fightback, a New York City-based Third World hiring advocacy group, told LNS: "The 10 percent set

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aside didn't really guarantee minority contractors work. And there have been reported cases of white contractors creating 'Black fronts'." Luis Moro of the Black Economic Survival Council (BESC), which has been holding demonstrations at construction sites, expressed a similar view: "The construction industry in New York is seven percent Third World. It should be at least 33 percent. We usually have to go through changes, have to beg for jobs." As for Third World contractors getting contracts, Moro noted that that was one of "the hardest things in the world."

In an interview with LNS, Fullilove stated that he didn't know what the suit would accomplish. "We're hoping that the case will be successful. The Act establishes quotas and we are opposed to quotas. It also cuts across the 14th Amendment," which, according to his interpretation, "made all of us equal:" Ironically enough, Fullilove agreed that Third World contractors weren't really getting the 10 percent. "In West Virginia, there was a case where two white contractors hired the same Black man as a front." But as for whether or not Third World contractors should get the business at all, he stated that "We didn't want the precedent set. This time it's 10 percent. Next time it could be 15 or 20 percent.'

When asked how many minority contractors were in his organization, Fullilove first stated that he didn't know "exactly what the figures are" and then

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conceded that the numbers were "not too large." Third World workers who are hired to work at construction sites are usually the last hired, sometimes don't belong to the unions and are frequently paid about half of what white workers earn for the same jobs. Often, for example, Black workers will be making $6 or $7 an hour, while white workers standing next to them are making as much as $100 a day.

"Blacks and other minorities can't get jobs unless minority contractors are hired," Gerald Horne of the Affirmative Action Coordinating Center told LNS in a phone interview. "On a broad level, this case is significant because it could have an effect far beyond the narrow confines of Blacks in business."

"You can't understand where the myth of reverse discrimination is at unless you see that it is a part of all the other myths that are being propounded," Horne stated. "They're all part of a concerted effort to roll back the meager gains won by Blacks and women. If there is something called reverse dis-

crimination, then we have to say that by the same token the taking of slaves from slaveowners at the end of the civil war was a form of discrimination because they were deprived of their property."

Horne dismissed both the logic and the legal basis. of arguments against affirmative action: "If you don't have quotas, then people can just say, 'Yeah, we made a good search, we just didn't find anybody." Quotas are important because they set goals. What's the use of affirmative action without quotas? I think that in terms of the constitutional basis of this case, if you examine the 14th Amendment, it was designed to climinate the vestiges of slavery."

Horne noted that Fullilove's pitch against affirmative action, purportedly based on the 14th Amendment, echoed arguments used against passage of that amendment and the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau at the end of the Civil War. "Ironically enough, arguments dismissed in the 1860's are bugging us today,"

Opportunities in Carpentry

The AFL-CIO Carpenters' Union will help 660 jobless or underemployed persons, including women, pass apprenticeship entry tests or enter apprentieeships under the $1,484,352 renewal of a contract with the U.S. Department of Labor. The contract stresses recruitment of women, Vietnam-era veterans, and minority group members. All par'ticipants must be economically disadvantaged and will be recruited largely through local state employment service offices.

The program will operate in 32 states through subcontracts with joint apprenticeship committees and housing contractors having collective bargaining agreements with the union. Trainees on the job will

get the same benefits and wages as regular workers. The contract will provide for on-the-job training costs, supplemental instruction, and, in some cases, allowances for trainees.

For further information about the contract, contact Duane Sowers, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, 101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20001, (202) 546-6206, or the Federal representative, James Clark, ETA Office of National Programs, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C. 20213, (202) 376-7615. -Ohio Report Vol. 5, No. 4

WIFE RAPIST CONVICTED

James K. Chretien, 32, of Lawrence, Mass., was recently sentenced to a 3to 5-year jail term for raping his estranged wife Carmellina last February. Chretien has the dubious honor of being the first American to be convicted of wife rape, and the conviction reflects a growing willingness of juries to convict husbands of raping their wives.

The couple were separated at the time of the rape, waiting for a divorce decree to be final. Chretien twice broke into his wife's apartment; the second

time, after a fearful quarrel, he raped her. The oldest child testified about the incident before a jury of eight men and four women.

Massachusetts is one of five states which permit women to file rape charges against their husbands, even if they are living together. The others are Oregon, Nebraska, Delaware and New Jersey.

Lesbians Barred from U.S.

New York (LNS)-Less than two weeks after the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) issued a new directive reversing its previous policy of prohibiting lesbians and gay inen from entering the U.S., at least 120 women attempting to enter the U.S. from Canada for the Michigan Women's Music Festival were stopped at the border and not allowed entry. One woman, according to a member of the Ithaca Feminist Radio Collective, had "Sexual Deviant" stamped on her passport.

On August 13 the INS announced that it would no longer attempt to exclude visitors to the U.S. on the basis of their sexual orientation. This reversed a 1952 law which stated that persons "afflicted with psychopathic personality" (among them homosexuals) could be denied entrance to the U.S. The INS action followed protests from lesbians, gay men, and their supporters concerning a June incident in which INS officials stopped a gay man from England from entering the U.S. at the San Francisco International Airport.

According to Ginny Vida, the media director of

The Guardian October 3, 1979

the National Gay Task Force (NGTF), the NGTF has registered a formal complaint with the INS and the Attorney General's office. Lionel Castillo, the direc-

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tor of the INS, told Vida that he has launched an investigation into the INS refusal to admit women coming for the Michigan Women's Music Festival.

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