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Good evening. I'm Greg Fitzgerald and this is GBH Journal. Tonight David Freudberg raises the question where do we go from here as we begin a five part series examining the MBTA. An historical survey of worker controlled industries will be the subject of a progress report by labor historian David Montgomery. Vietnam Veterans Against the War founder John Kerry remembers the war and what it meant to him. And Louis Lines looks at May Sixth and what it meant for America. All this tonight right after a look at some local news. For black women living in Boston the past three days has been a nightmare. Three black women have been killed within a three mile area of the city since Friday, 11 since the first of the year. Police say this string of murders is apparently random and unrelated although they say one murder may create the mood of violence that leads to another. The latest murder was discovered this morning in the Back Bay. In her 20's, the woman was found off an alley behind a Commonwealth Avenue apartment building. She has not yet been identified. Since the first murders, 6 men have been arrested in connection with 7 of the killings.
Since late last week Army personnel have been attempting to correct a potentially dangerous situation in Natick where a highly radioactive sample of cobalt 60 has slipped off its track and is lying above water at the Army labs. The Cobalt 60 sample which is used to preserve food will not go back into its protective water, and, until it does, workers cannot enter the room where it is stored. An army spokesperson says specialists are making tools that should enable them to lower the Cobalt back into the water. Cobalt 60 is used to irradiate foods, killing bacteria so that food can be stored on the shelf without refrigeration. The sample emits gamma rays, an extremely powerful penetrating type of radiation considered to be among the most dangerous to living organisms if exposure is too long or intense. Massachusetts Senate liberal John Oliver is willing to trade one for a one on a pay raise for the governor and his high ranking staff, if Governor King gives the 6 percent cost of living increase to welfare recipients which the legislature passed last July. Oliver is willing to vote favorably on an 88 percent salary
increase for the governor. Oliver today asked the public service committee to reject a bill that would hike the governor's salary in stages from its current $40,000 a year to $75,000. Other high-ranking state executives would be elevated as well under this bill. Oliver said he was not opposed to salary hikes per se, but said an increase for the top echelon of government should be held up until budget appropriations are increased for welfare recipients, state college students and elderly shut ins. And finally, negotiators for the city of Worcester and a union representing about 1800 public service employees spent the day in Boston today as mediators attempted to settle a contract dispute. Worcester mayor Thomas early called a special city council meeting tonight to discuss both the mediation session and strike contingency plans in the event of a walkout. A union spokesperson said strike preparations are still in the works despite a ruling by the State Labor Relations Commission forbidding a walkout. And that's the news. Commuters in Los Angeles formed long lines over the weekend waiting to buy gasoline.
President Carter has been attempting to get authorization from Congress to ration gasoline nationally. And here in Massachusetts, State Energy officials are preparing an emergency plan with the goal of saving gasoline. In the face of this new gas saving climate, public transportation has begun to assume an even greater importance, Tonight, Journal reporter David Freudberg begins a five part examination of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. This week we'll survey the needs and feelings of MBTA commuters drivers, planners, and crisis managers. For an overview, here is the first of David's series Public Transportation. Where is it going? Boston is one of only seven American cities with a sophisticated system of public transit. The diversity of services offered here is practically unique. Street cars, buses, Rapid Transit, trackless trollies and commuter rail. We have the nation's first subway line and a long history of government subsidy to public transportation as a necessary utility. With proliferation of the automobile the MBTA and its counterparts
across the country experienced a decline in passenger use since World War 2. But today that trend has reversed as the "T" has tried to address its image problem that public transit is rundown, unreliable, dirty, and operated by rude workers. Mostly that's untrue. Service has improved increasing MBTA ridership by 50,000 over the past three years. On the average workday now, well over a half-million commute by the T, and at a base price of just a quarter. A citizens group the Association for Public Transportation, has tried to promote the system by publishing an MBTA guide titled, Car Free in Boston. Its editor is Gordon Lewin. Public transportation is a necessity in the city. If our MBTA system didn't operate tomorrow the city would stop functioning. Period. People are going to be looking to public transportation as an alternative to
driving their cars. It's a pro- partly a question of availability of gasoline stations and it's also going to be really a question of cost. The costs of owning an operating automobile are getting more and more expensive. And public transportation can't provide a good alternative. First question we have to address is how much do people know about public transportation that even exists. We all know about the basic subway system and there's a red, blue, orange, green lines but do we know all about the buses that operate in the city that you can get to beaches recreational areas by public transportation. Most part people don't know about all the services out there. That's the first step of saying what's out there and how to use it. And then that goes on the question of what people's attitudes towards public transportation. Sure there are problems in the system. There are ... there are any case. Most of the people run that system are good people work very hard at a hard job but
there's an occasionally be a driver to be abusive to a person. Now do you stop using public transit because you heard someone, your neighbor who had a situation where a driver was abusive when a question was asked. Like saying if a gas station attendant yells at you when you don't have an exact change do you stop driving your automobile. You have two systems out there. You can use it but you have to know how to use it and what's available. You know as oil gets tighter people I think will be looking. Public transportation on the other hand is the MBTA improves its service. The liability is the vehicles they're maintaining. They're clean. You know these aspects also are a way to increased use. Gordon Lewin of the Association for Public Transportation. The main frustration for those who do or might use the MBTA is the number of equipment breakdowns causing delays and the build up of crowds. Mostly this is due to inadequate maintenance. A problem of money. Huge federal grants
from the Department of Transportation pay for new facilities that make commuting by the T more attractive to suburbanites among others. But according to Ann Barrie a senior researcher for the State Legislative Joint Committee on Transportation. It's upkeep of equipment that suffers. You have to decide you're going to do the glamorous things you're going to do the useful things. And frequently wind up doing the glamorous things like extensions and stations that you cut ribbons and pry into some of those priorities are changing. People are beginning to see that you can't let the rest of the system deteriorate because when the people come in from the suburbs they're not going to have anything to distribute them downtown. The operating policies you know from what we can see the MBTA is a lot of problems and a lot of their management is crisis management and that's what determines what's done in a day to day basis. But when it seems as though when they've had the opportunity to take the time out from the crisis management from putting out the fires, the derailments, the you know individual occurrences that muck up everybody's ride to work.
They do do some things that are very useful to the rider. They try and make better use of their resources by improving bus routes, by improving the fare collection on, say, the Riverside line, by, um, reconstructing their vehicles in-house, by taking the old trolleys and completely rebuilding them by rebuilding their track system, by, um, managing the resources they have better attempting to make the service better overall within the constraints of the financial resources they have. And that's but that's I think a small part of it primarily they're trying to deal with the system that's old. That has a lot of problems it's very complex. And I think that's pretty much how the priorities are set in day to day basis. Ann Barry, a Beacon Hill researcher on transportation. Tomorrow our series samples a cross section of MBTA commuters for their verdict on how well the system does. For GBH Journal, I'm David Freudberg. In the hallways of the rings of smoke that he blew a picture he saw, which I'll tell you.
In fancy he saw a building grand. In which he was in supreme command. There were ladies and planners and milling machines too and wheel presses and bolt cutters there were quite. Horizontal and Vertical mills by the score of sliders and shapers a great many more while the shop. My what a marvelous place. Men moved like as though they were running a race and he thought of what a great change he'd wrought since he the other machinists of top to do their work for themself fast enough for the loping over there but to make all the money for the company, and they'd be treated like cattle instead of like men. The poem which labor historian David Montgomery is reciting is from the 1920s, a time when a new scientific management concept known as time-study analysis was being implemented by industrialists throughout America. Essentially a laborer's work and movements were measured to the second, and more and more efficient ways to speed up a worker's productivity were measured and used, many times with the violent objections of the trade unions. The concept of time studies was just one of a number of the tools used by
management during the turn of the century which saw Labor-controlled crafts transcend into management-controlled industries. Those industries have today few similarities with the kind of worker-control shops of the late 19th century. But the idea of a worker-control shop is returning to America and in many cases the movement picks up its steam from a trend by corporate conglomerates to pack up their bags and leave worker communities: Youngstown Steel in Ohio; the Colonial Press in Clinton, Massachusetts; First National Stores in Dorchester. In all 3 cases the community stepped in to manage the operation and the focus of the industry. David Montgomery, professor of Labor History at the University of Pittsburgh, spoke recently at MIT's work and technology lecture series on worker control. Montgomery linked the Youngstown Steel cooperative with worker-control movements across the country. If a community-operated plant with any degree of worker control is going to operate, It must be linked to the production of use values. It must be
linked to a political program that has as its objective not the accumulation of profit but the producing of specific items that the country needs. The Youngstown idea has not been carried to fruition but it's caught on. Some of you may have been in or around or heard of Madison, Wisconsin. One may know that the newspapers of Madison, Wisconsin, did, as so many newspapers have been doing in recent years, refuse to come to terms with all of their unions and found themselves eventually in a total shutdown of, of, um the paper. What was unusual in Madison is that having gone out on strike and realizing that there were all the various groups of workers needed to put out a paper walking the picket lines together, they decided to start their own newspaper. And the Madison Press Connection came into existence as a rival newspaper. It has staggered along and is still with us. It has a
network of readers such as few other papers could boast because in order to get circulation and in order to get funds to get going, they had to go to unions and farm groups and community organizations all over Wisconsin and tell them what they were doing. And as they did the groups to whom they talked told them what they thought of the newspaper. And it wasn't always too complimentary. Whereupon the newspaper would mend its ways. So the next meeting would go a little better. Here is a newspaper in daily contact with its, ah, readership. But more than that, as I walked in the office the first thing I saw was an- a workplace that business-like in the proper sense of the word, than anything I'd ever seen before in my life. Each department had been physically designed by the people who work there. Designed to make their work as comfortable, speedy, easy, accurate as they
could possibly make it. And at the same time, the necessary flowers, pictures, etc. to make it not the most gruesome and grungy place that one could possibly work. Very clearly they were putting [rapping] up a newspaper, not playing games, and doing it by their own collective decision and operation. A group of these workers told me that they had gone to a seminar held by their unions and management consultants on the question of worker participation in management. They had listened to all the proposals on workers' participation here, there or elsewhere as they were described to them and said nothing till close to the end, when one finally raised his hand and said, "I'm sorry, ah, we can't quite relate to this discussion. You see, we found in the Press Connection that we don't need management's participation [laughter] [applause]
University of Pittsburgh labor historian David Montgomery, speaking at a recent work and technology program at MIT. A complete 30-minute program featuring the remarks of Professor Montgomery can be heard tomorrow night at 10:30 on GBH radio and repeated Thursday at 12:30 in the afternoon. [banjo music] Watching some of the television news capsules of yesterday's May 6th coalition demonstration in
Washington, one noticed few reports in which reporters did not make reference to the marches against the Vietnam War a decade ago. Without a doubt the numbers of the people, the spirit, the speeches and the music were reminiscent of the '60s. Yesterday's demonstration also happened to fall very close to a number of anniversaries related to the Vietnam experience. May 4th marked the ninth anniversary of the Kent State killings, and today marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the French regime in Indochina. With all that in mind we thought we'd bring back a familiar voice associated with the anger and frustration of the Vietnam War. John Kerry was the founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Kerry, who is now assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, was interviewed last year by John Morgan. Here's a replay of that interview. Immediately upon arrival things hit me which, within hours and even, y'know, days, gave me real pause to stop and consider what we were doing in
Vietnam and I think that my opposition began to build from the very moment that I was there. Ah, when I first got off an airplane and saw the remarkable buildings and construction that the Americans had undertaken on Vietnamese soil an' ah, saw the relationship between the Vietnamese and ourselves, as it was manifested in many many different ways, from- from, ah, the jobs that the Vietnamese were doing vs. the jobs Americans were doing to so many other things, and immediately began to sense that it was not really a partnership operation at all. And I think that's what began to rankle, perhaps as much as anything. Did you discuss your feelings, once ambivalent, becoming more defined about the war with other men, other people there? Well, absolutely there were discussions there in Vietnam on a frequent
basis. Ah, there was considerable amount of debate among many of the troops who were there on a continuing basis as to whether or not they felt that what they were doing was right or whether they ought to be there or whether particular missions were absurd, and if they were, why were we undertaking them in the first place. And I think there was a great deal of opposition right there. I left Vietnam with a very definite purpose and intent of trying to end the war and of committing myself to that effort, and I didn't know particularly how I would do it or what steps could be taken except to tell the story where I could. Would you just organize that frame of time as to how you went about your next course of action? I began to write a book on Vietnam, and in the middle of that I became involved with some other veterans who were opposed to the war, and as veterans we began to become active together to voice our opposition. And suddenly I really found myself caught up in the process of
organizing veterans and of working with veterans in an effort to voice the opposition. Ultimately we organized the March on Washington in 1971 of veterans, and suddenly found myself in Washington with about 5000 veterans, uh, demonstrating before Congress. And I think there we had an opportunity to be extraordinarily effective in our opposition, and sort of I think that was the crest, really, of the veteran opposition of the war, if not even American opposition to the war. We're talking on one plane in a very superficial level of the war, versus your experiences and feelings and the experiences and feelings of other people. And I know it's very difficult to bridge those two planes because it's a- it's something that has passed, but it is incorporated in you. But I feel that there's so much more that you could say concerning what you saw in Vietnam and what built your feelings, and how motivated and driven you
were once you returned on a political and emotional level. There is -- and that's a tough question -- and there isn't, if you know what I mean. Um, It's -- a lot of us just blocked out. I mean it's there but I just, you know, I just don't talk about it. I mean I spent a long time just trying to put the war behind me and I want to leave it there. Um, and I think a lot of people feel that way. A lot of them aren't as lucky as me. Now, politically, how do you look at America? Things have changed. And I think people have changed and politics has changed. But I don't know if, ah, if we've really learned something that is, that's going to be lasting. And I think that war is something which unfortunately, uh, can easily be glamorized, is quickly forgotten except for those who carry the scars with their lives every day. And I
think it's very very tough to predict in the future what is gonna happen, particularly because history is the process of reacting to felt needs. And as long as people feel something is necessary, ah, they'll do whatever they have to do to satisfy those needs. John Kerry, founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He is presently the assistant district attorney for Middlesex County. That interview conducted by Joan Morgan took place one year ago. (music) Well, reminiscent of the Vietnam War era or not, yesterday's anti-nuclear
demonstration in Washington was the biggest yet. Louis Lyons tonight has some comments about that protest -- who was there and why. "Protest" is the top word in the headlines. 100,000 or so marching in Washington to demonstrate against the use of nuclear power. It's compared to the anti-Vietnam protests of the '60s, and the dominant chant is inventingly adapted from that: "Hell no, we won't glow." Ralph Nader called nuclear power our technological Vietnam. Many of the organizations marching are the same as against Vietnam, but reinforced by as many new ones whose names suggest the fear of nuclear explosions. This fear has mobilized a more militant demand even than inflation that is reached a new peak with the April price figures. The protests on inflation are inside the paper in the angry Letters to the Editor that they share with those denouncing decontrol of oil. Protest so fills the air that a public figure can select from an assortment of vexing problems. John Kenneth
Galbraith, with characteristic individuality, chooses inflation for a colorful letter to The Times flagellating his fellow economists. "Why in the world do we need economists," he says, "only to tell us that things are getting worse and that nothing can be done. Are my friends so without professional pride that they have no sense of what it is to fail?" "Friends" here is not used in the spirit of amity. Galbraith has long been goading the administration's economists to adopt wage and price controls. Senator Kennedy attacks the decontrol of oil in a long letter to The Globe. And the windfall tax, he says, is what one might expect to see written by the oil companies. It'll tax only 5 percent of their windfall. Kennedy made a definite selection of the protests he chose to emphasize. He declined the invitation to speak at the anti-nuclear demonstration. He was going to Florida to see his ill mother, he explained. One might guess that he was just as glad to avoid too close
company with some of the Washington demonstrators, though he sent word that he was anti-nuclear, too. Some of them were pretty far out, and their tirades more so. But Governor Brown was not abashed by a congregation that included, beside the inevitable contingents of communist and socialist parties, such activists as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Gray Panthers, along with the pacifist Mobilization for Survival, the crusading Union of Concerned Scientists and several alliances: Clamshell, Shad and Prairie. The governor said, speaking with Jane Fonda and Ralph Nader, "Nuclear power," Brown said, "is a health issue, it's an environmental issue, but fundamentally it's a political issue. I don't think it's going to go away." So he is staying with it. Representative Conte, Republican of the Berkshires, used a college commencement yesterday to charge the oil companies are holding back supplies waiting for higher prices. He
believes decontrol can be stopped and says he'll fight to keep control on oil. Conte urged that the President replace James Schlesinger with someone with new ideas for leadership. The demonstration leaders would hardly have been surprised that President Carter declined their invitation. But he said it was a legitimate demonstration. "I understand the concern about nuclear power," he told reporters, "and we're doing all we can to reassure people that what nuclear reactors we do have are safe." The President insists that only nuclear power can meet the future energy needs of the country to free us from OPEC's control of oil prices. Scientists accept the administration view of solar energy that the technology for its economical mass scale production has not yet been developed. But some believe that coal would more safely and sooner fill the gap if the effort the administration puts into promoting nuclear energy went to stimulate Western strip-mining. The
President must wish he could mount a stronger demonstration for the SALT treaty as came unbidden against nuclear power. For SALT is clearly in trouble in Congress. Some of the foes of nuclear power are natural supporters of arms control, but is has not proved as an unifying issue. Disarmament has become the leading social concern of many churches, occupying the place with them that civil rights held. And some of the organizations that marched in Washington yesterday would stop nuclear development more for fear of war than of nuclear accident. That's what motivated the Concerned Scientists before the danger of accidental explosions, and the problem of disposal of nuclear waste, had come to the front. The most ardent supporters of disarmament are disillusioned by the very limited scope of SALT. But others see it as at least a symbol. The President would view its defeat, as Secretary Onley saw the Senate's rejection, by 3 votes, of the high hopes of the arbitration treaty with
England back in 1897. "A calamity," Onley said, "not merely of national but of worldwide proportions." Barbara Tuchman said, "It shook the general belief in man's moral progress. Today the belief to be shaken would be rather in man's chances of survival." Commentator Louis Lyons. [music] And that's GBH Journal for tonight. Tomorrow night part 2 of David Freudberg's series on the T. The producer of GBH Journal tonight, Marcia Hertz; our director, Becky Rourke; and our engineer Margo Garrison. I'm Greg Fitzgerald. Good night.
Series
WGBH Journal
Episode
News; MBTA
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-655dvjjd
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Description
Series Description
WGBH Journal is a magazine featuring segments on local news and current events.
Broadcast Date
1979-00-00
Created Date
1979-05-07
Genres
News
Magazine
Topics
News
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:30:18
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 79-0160-05-07-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
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Citations
Chicago: “WGBH Journal; News; MBTA,” 1979-00-00, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-655dvjjd.
MLA: “WGBH Journal; News; MBTA.” 1979-00-00. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-655dvjjd>.
APA: WGBH Journal; News; MBTA. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-655dvjjd