Senior Citizens

(continued from page 3)

older men than women, particularly in those men who worked assembly-line jobs. "They just tend to stay home and vegetate," according to Penfield.

Once president of the more conservative Association of Retired Persons, Penfield joined the Senior Citizens Coalition because she believes its issueoriented and activist tactics are the most effective way to fight existing conditions. Not only do the demonstrating and lobbying carried on by the Coalition achieve concrete gains for older persons, but the members feel a heightened morale and confidence in their ability to influence change.

The Senior Citizens Coalition is able, because of its emphasis on member participation, to mobilize large numbers of people for demonstrations. For example, 500 members recently marched to City Hall, demanding better police response to complaints from seniors. As a result, a new Senior Response Unit has been formed in the Cleveland Police Department with a direct telephone line for use by older Clevelanders. Another area in which the Coalition has been effective is utility rates. In 1976, as the result of a sit-in at Governor Rhodes' office, senior citizens won a 25 percent discount on major heating bills. The Coalition also puts unremitting pressure on local utilities, attending stockholder meetings and staging protests at utility officers' homes and offices. The Coalition is currently demanding a 25 percent cut in gas rates for older people, abolition of service charges, and no more rate increases.

Hospitalization is another great concern to older people; in one of their demonstrations against rising Blue Cross rates, Coalition members carried a casket to Public Square in a symbolic burial of their policies. The Coalition is currently negotiating for a free health facility for senior citizens, located downtown so that it is easily accessible, complete with beds and such free services and equipment as

Ione Biggs (~~~tinued from page 3)

who demand equal respect and equal pay."

Even though Ione Biggs is a member of the Board of the Civil Service Employees Association, the lack of a grievance procedure prevents her from challenging these hostile moves toward forcing older women into early retirement. Sanctions taken against this group of workers has made others submit to the pressure from Krakowski and Forbes to remain silent. "People feel they have no choice," Biggs said. "They don't want to go through what I did. And the knowledge that it could happen to each one of them. It is awful." Generous raises are also awarded to those who purchase fundraising tickets during the campaign.

hearing aids and eyeglasses.

The Coalition also hopes to see the development of centralized health records, both locally and nationally. Doctors now have no way to check what medication may have been given a patient elsewhere, so that patients may get different drugs and/or different dosages from different doctors, creating obvious health hazards. Further, more geriatric specialists must be trained to treat the growing population of older Americans.

Another concern to older people in the arca of health is the low building temperature now being advocated by the government as an energy-saving technique. Little research has been done on the possibly deleterious effects of this policy on the health of senior citizens. How many deaths of older people, attributed to heart attacks, might actually have been the result of hypothermia-lowering of the body temperature? Many of the senior citizen highrises in Cleveland, the Coalition reports, are uncomfortably cold for their tenants.

Further, while some attention has been paid to housing for older citizens, there is still a great lack of comfortable, affordable space where they can live. Many of them have no choice but to live in the new highrises, where there is a great lack of personal freedom. For example, tenants are not permitted any pets-even birds, and all visitors are screened at the door and some turned away without asking the tenants whether they want to see them or not.

The Senior Citizens Coalition plans to meet with other groups fighting for the rights of older people, such as the National Peoples Action in Chicago, to formulate national actions on behalf of senior citizens. Membership in the Coalition is open to any person 55 or over, or any disabled person or hardship case, regardless of age. For more information, call 696-6525, ext. 431.

Providing much-needed emotional support, the Leaders WW is working with lone Biggs to find an avenue for appro ng this problem. In the meantime, Biggs wants the readers of WSW to know that women are "the targets of extreme abuse at the hands of Krakowski and his aides. While all the men supervise, the qualified women with good records, especially the older men are catching hell. We are political es..... j knows about us."

Lend your support to lone Biggs by writing to her in care of CWw, 1258 Euclid Ave., Cleveland 44115. Raise your voice in protest by writing to the Bar Association (which condones pressuring civil service employees as an inevitable part of politics) and to the Plain Dealer (which knows the truth but hasn't said a word about it).

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