ustxtxb_obs_1985_02_08_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

But Carol was successful and persistent. The legislature did ban the short-handle hoe and did finally extend workers’ compensation to the people she loved more than any others. Carol always kept her perpetual sense of outrage smoldering and directed to strengthening the United Farm Workers Union, politically and organizationally. Her courage was remarkable. She sang at our weddings, celebrated our birthdays, helped baptize our kids, and gave us day-to-day support in the grueling, thankless work of the movement. She marched with us and brought others with her. She organized the 1982 seven-day march across the Valley protesting below-minimum wages paid to farm workers. Carol’s personality and skills helped the union develop its political clout in South Texas. Once shunned in the late ’60s, the UFW, through voter registration and get-out-the vote drives, won the respect and the attention of state officials, supreme court judges, and a myraid of area politicians. And, during Sr. Carol Anne Messina and Cesar Chavez the 1983 freeze, Governor Mark White became not only the first governor to visit the union hall, but, accompanied by Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby, he also signed the workers’ compensation law in San Juan. Carol was fun, too and personable. How many nuns are there who smoke, make long distance collect calls from “Mother Jones,” or wear t-shirts emblazoned with such slogans as “If Jesus Christ had had an ACLU lawyer, things would have been different”? Religion for this Sister of Charity was decidedly unhierarchical but amazingly profound, drawn from the faith of those around her. As she lay dying, Carol was amazed at the number of people who wrote and visited her; and she rejoiced in the court victory extending unemployment benefits to farm workers three days before her death. Carol certainly would have found ironic the poetic tribute paid her by the Texas Senate \(the Senate passed a resolution Jan. 16 honoring her memproud of the UFW eagle she wore next to the emblem of her religious community as she was buried with the final rites of the church. Carol will be remembered as a good and decent woman, a religious woman, who as Ted Kennedy said about Robert, saw wrong and tried to right it and saw suffering and tried to heal it. POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE v Amarillo has just passed a city ordinance prohibiting known prostitutes from waving their arms at cars. City Attorney Merril Nunn doesn’t anticipate enforcement problems. “If they’re a prostitute and generally the police and the ladies know each other, sometimes on a first-name basis and they see them doing that,” Nunn says, the women are subject to arrest. “They’ll give her a chance to explain who she was wavin’ at,” Nunn says, but “generally, the police don’t. have any problem knowin’ what’s goin’ on.” When in doubt, cut V At work at his Capitol office on New Year’s Day, Senator Phil Gramm found some strange wires connected to his telephone, decided they were connected to an unnecessary buzzer system, and proceeded to pull out his scissors and snip them away. The Capitol police suddenly materialized at Gramm’s door. It turns out Gramm had set off the alarm system with his hasty snipping. Stay tuned. It’s a good bet Gramm will continue to cut things in Washington without knowing what they’re connected to. V In a story headlined “Baker’s Texas Philosophy,” the January 12 New York Times business section painted Secretary of the Treasury James Baker as nigh unto a populist. An unidentified “senior Administration economist” described Baker as someone who “likes low interest rates. That’s a characteristic Texas position institutionalized by Wright Patman, and Lyndon Johnson had it as well.” Then the Times goes to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, who describes Baker as a “progressive capitalist,” defined by Bentsen as “a free market person tempered by the belief that we believe there are some things the government has to do.” \(Does it take one to know The article then went on to discuss the fact that Baker’s father once ran the Texas National Bank, which eventually became part of Texas Commerce Bank. Baker, himself, was a director of Texas Commerce Bank. Texas Commerce chairman Ben Love told the Times that Baker “grew up in a home where talk about financial matters was as natural as talk about baseball or football. He walks the walk and talks the talk [of banking].” It’s enough to send Wright Patman into permanent gyration. V Headline in the McAllen Monitor, January 7, 1985: ZACARRO’S HUSBAND PLEADS GUILTY. Must have been caught up in an excited editorial rush. V The Ag Department’s ballyhooed pesticide spraying rules went into effect January 21 except on the South Texas tomato farm of Tommy Helle. Helle has filed suit against the department, charging that the economic impact of the regulations on farmers was not taken into account. The rules will not be enforced on Helle’s land until the case is settled. Helle’s attorney for the case is Donald Allee, who is known for his work on behalf of South Texas grower Othal Brand. V This was to be the month the Department of Labor was to finally come forth with federal standards requiring toilets and drinking water for farmworkers in the field \(TO The department has resisted the move for 13 years but agreed in court in 1982 to promulgate the standards by February 16. Now officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration say the rules won’t be ready until April 16. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are writing letters to Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan to protest the delay. V The Texas Right-to-Lifers have been making the rounds at the Capitol, showing legislators and aides pictures of aborted fetuses and such. Rep. L. B. Kubiak, D-Rockdale, was the first to file ,..01,1471.t,64posMaremr. .$0,,,,, 16 FEBRUARY 8, 1985