Show r a1!— 1 2A Standard-Examin- Friday er ag igiww June 29 1390 Opinion fit f'’ ‘ w cl m ti cc th Protest must not b w m ol diminish oval bid bi U1 w w w a: ' (f n ra hi h -- : P pi th di oi I prepared for the scheduled stop of the Utah Sports Authority on Thursday The Sports Authority composed of prominent Utahns from throughout the state were in Ogden at 4600 South just east of Harrison near the site selected by the Weber County People for Jobs Opportunities and the Olympics Committee on which to build the multimillion dollar speed skating oval reUnfortunately the body with the decision-makin- g venues for had witness what to Olympic sponsibilities turned out to be a experience for those who had labored long and hard to reach the day that they could show off the site and explain their proposal to the Sports Authority and approximately a hundred community leaders who turned out for the occasion The Sports Authority did not see the good side oT Ogden In a protest orchestrated by one elected official a demonstration turned ugly when Weber State University acting president Allen Simkin began speaking Booing hissing and chanting erupted when Simkin said “the site enjoyed community support” The chanting forced Simkin to stop in The protesters were few in number They were shown courtesy something they denied the proponents of the skating oval Council member Bonnie McDonald spoke in behalf of the few constituents who had been enlisted to stage a demonstration to show disfavor for the speed skating oval for the benefit of the Sports Authority Ogden’s efforts to gain approval as a Olympic venue site were further hampered by Ogden Mayor Scott Sneddon who allowed his personal political agenda to stand in the way of the official position of the Ogden City Council Sneddon selectively chose to inform the Sports Authority that he would prefer that Ogden get more consideration for the practice ice sheet than the speed skating oval McDonald and Sneddon failed to consider the will of a population of 150000 people who went to the polls in Weber County to vote 57 percent in favor of Weber County being named as a venue for the Olympics or a Dan Jones poll taken earliej this month that reflected 77 percent for the speed skating venue in Weber County At risk is one of the greatest opportunities this community has had to be a central player in the upcoming bid for Utah to gain international attention and enhanced prestige through the Olympic bidding process Inherent in the democratic process is that occasionally we don’t get our way The contingent of protesting residents believed they had legitimate complaints over the impact to their area They had a right to speak up They diverted attention away from the purpose of the meeting They were undemocratic in their behavior Conversely the proponents should have been prepared to effectively cope with the demonstration and mitigate its impact Ian Gumming chairman of the Sports Authority on the other hand was generous He was so interested in having of the public input that he insisted that the site of the presentation which had been announced to all factions for the Aerospace Complex on 42nd and Harrison be moved to the 4600 South location He did this make it more convenient for neighbors and to accommodate the few dissident members of the neighborhood The 4600 South properties remain in the running for the oval although the chances of being selected were more than likely dramatically marred When other Sports Authority venue stops were made Ogden’s competing cities displayed generous hospitality Ogden’s misfortune with the Utah Sports Authority must not spell doom for Ogden’s venue bid The bid package is viable It’s just too bad that what Ogden has to offer was not presented in a logical formal public forum There is a sense of disappointment and dismay permeating throughout the community today because of the chain of events Letters of support for Weber County People for Jobs Opportunity and the Olympics should be forwarded to Ian Cumming co Utah Sports Authority 324 South State Salt Lake City 84111 ng f J I f a Ogden was robbed of an opportunity to present its proposal to become the speed skating venue for Utah’s bid to host the 1998 Winter Olympics Games Democracy worked in favor of a handful of southeast bench residents who chose to torpedo the presentation : mid-senten- j i ti a ri d d e P l‘ bi ct sc S( cl fc 01 C bi D R I B) Kir bi S 2 2 4 S d V N ll tl w A 5 0 d ( t I I ( I 4 - ' ce ‘Nobody cares deeply about Indians WASHINGTON — Out of sight they say is out of mind The aphorism applies with singular accuracy to the nation’s 900000 na- tive Indians Other minority groups have their vociferous defenders Almost no one speaks for the Indian tribes Why am I writing about Indian affairs? I truly don’t know An interesting case cropped up last month in the Supreme Court I ran into Arizona’s Sen John McCain in the Capitol a few days ago and we fell to talking about the status of Indians in contemporary society Their status said McCain is just about nil: “Nobody cares deeply about the Indians Congress doesn’t care The White House doesn’t care The states don’t care Over the past 15 years every part of the federal budget has increased in constant dollars — every part but one That one is the budget for Indian affairs” The relationship between the American people and the Indian tribes is perhaps the strangest legacy in our history In the Declaration of Independence Jefferson charged that King George III had “endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages sexes and conditions” Jefferson’s characterization doubtless was deserved The bloody history of Indian massacres is not pretty reading But neither is it edifying to read the chronicle of grand theft brazen swindling and sheer brutality imposed upon Indian tribes by the white man It is a chronicle of broken treaties and broken James Kilpatrick hearts The most dramatic chapters of that history ended around 1900 A few years earlier in 1887 Congress adopted the General Allotment Act It broke up large tribal holdings and distributed land to individual owners in parcels of 40 to 160 acres The idea was to make farmers of Indians who then would be assimilated into the larger community The policy proved disastrous but it was not abandoned until 1934 Since then not much has happened In 1983 President Reagan established a policy of promoting strong tribal governments with In theory broad powers of the policy still exists but a study last year by a Senate investigating committee found that the old paternalism has not greatly dimined ished That study released in November provides melancholy documentation of the rule of out of sight out of mind This correspondent paid no attention to the study when it appeared It wasn’t until recently that I got around to nJing the report The committee found “fraud corruption and mismanagement pervading the institutions that are supposed to serve American Indians” Paternalistic policies had created a federal bureaucrat “ensnarled in red tape” The Bureau of Indian Affairs had done virtually nothing to expose sham companies operd enterprises Among the ating as BIA’s responsibilities is economic develop Indian-owne- 5 ment but “45 percent of all reservation Indians live below the poverty lines almost half of all Indian adults are unemployed and the majority of those who do work earn less than $7000 per year” I asked Sen McCain if this devastating report had produced a galvanic effect at the B’lA and be just shook his head Patricia M Zell chief counsel to the Senate committee on Indian affairs is more optimistic The BIA she said has been “very responsive” At the bureau a spokesman said the problem of sham contractors is steadily diminishing as tribes make fewer contracts and do more work themselves So life goes on The BIA keeps tabs on 307 separate tribes scattered across the nation Some tribes are quite small A few notably the Navajo and the Sioux are large Some maintain strong tribal governments but beyond the 300 reservations most tribal organizations are loose The US Supreme Court hears two or three Indian cases a year On May 29 the court dealt with a murder on the Salt River Reservation in Arizona In April of 1989 the court upheld the power of Mississippi’s Choctaw tribe to govern the adoption of twin children born off the reservation Both cases were packed with human interest The legal points involved fascinating chapters in American history But this was “Indian stuff” This correspondent covers the high court closely but do I brief the Indian cases? No way I mean who cares? Who really cares? Universal Press Syndicate Serious science done in San Francisco SAN FRANCISCO — Serious science did get done at the contentious Sixth Internation- al Conference on AIDS here But the scientists’ uneasy relations with gay pretesters and PWAs (persons with AIDS as they prefer to be called) are reshaping and perhaps changing forever how science is done Organizers of the largest gathering ever on earth devoted to a single disease were determined not to give offense to the activists and protesters who have disrupted so many conferences on AIDS But dozens of AIDS groups were itching to take offense however peripheral and unscientific the excuse Although they failed to disrupt the scientific proceedings they did distract the scientists the protesters conference orTo ganizers put PWAs on the program as speakers One Peter Staley of the activist group York pressured the opening ceremony audience of several thousand scientists to stand and led them in an Bush chant “300000 dead Where is George? Shame shame shame shame Many scientists were persuaded to wear red armbands to protest US immigration policies that list AIDS with infectious diseases Some skipped conference sessions to watch the street theater antics of activists whom police herded behind barricades outside the convention and to join a huge HIVAIDS march sponsored by dozens of organizations Many also made obligatory remarks about “discrimination" being in part responsible for AIDS Few stressed individual responsibility n to avoid the nsks of exposure to HIV or the responsibility of infected people not to spread the virus further June Osborn dean of the School of Public pre-em- pt ACT-UPNe- w anti-Geor- well-know- ge Ml MIWMtlllllMlimMBBaMaMM— a Jean Beck Health at the University of Michigan and chair of the US National Commission on AIDS did emphasize that “HIV infection can be prevented by knowledgeable avoidance of risky behavior — and there will never be a better vaccine than that” After hearing a dais full of speakers talk about lack of condom use by African women by black and Hispanic women in the US users one and by sex partners of black woman had enough Janet Mitchell chief of perinatology at Harlem Hospital tartly pointed out “The condom goes on the man — not the woman Men should not be excused from responsibility by making condom use women’s role” In all about 2500 scientific papers were presented out of 4500 submitted Protesters demanded to know what was in the rejected abstracts and charged that scientists and the government are suppressing promising alternative therapies such as herbology acupuncIV-dr- ug ture and nutritional supplements to concentrate on what makes money “Scientists are greedy” shouted one PWA from the podium “The government is killing us” read protesters’ signs No great breakthroughs were announced at the conference But there were hundreds of little pieces of new knowledge teased out of thousands of studies that may someday add up to a vaccine and a cure but do not yet Scientists dissected the deadly virus looking for vulnerability where it could be attacked explored how it changes and tried to find a way a vaccine might work They pioneered new ground in cell biology seeing how to make cells impenetrable to the virus or prevent its replication inside Others looked at drug treatments how they work at what stage in the disease they are most effective why their usefulness wears off how they can be combined to boost their power They reported on improvements in HIV detection and screening They studied which infected individuals progress to AIDS and tried to determine why and whether are involved And they worried about how much they can change scientific procedures designed to ensure that drugs are safe and effective before they become generally available — in response to activists’ demands to stop using placebo controls open drug trials to all who want to join and speed up the intolerably slow process of FDA approval The street theater abrasiveness of activists is rooted in the underlying anguish of course: 263000 cases of AIDS reported in 156 countries 132436 in the United States Six million to 8 million people are infected with HIV according to the World Health Organization a toll that may reach 15 million to 20 million by 2000 Despite all the painstaking research reported in San Francisco HIV is still considered a sentence of eventual death Much can be gained by a closer partnership between people with any serious illness and the physicians and researchers concerned — as AIDS trailbreakers are showing The abrasiveness and anger of the activists may well have been effective and energizing But a simple “thank you” for all the unprecedented research effort wouldn’t be out of place either Chicago Tribune full-blo- i t |