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Up Date (continued from page 5 )

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Parent Issue
Day
17
Month
June
Year
1976
OCR Text

Up Date

 

um continued from page 5

 

Former Clinic Director Faye Roberts and co-founders Pam Carter and Jenette Salters are the latest casualties in the split, which originally stemmed from disagreements over the Club's financing by the Feminist Federal Credit Union and ideological differences between local feminists and City Club leadership.

 

The City Club, located in the old Women's City Club building at Park and Elizabeth, is the first project of its kind in the nation-- a complete cultural, recreation, shopping, and service center for all women, completely funded and operated by feminists. Since the Feminist Economic Network bought and renovated the building and opened its doors to a crowd of 5,000 in April, membership has been steadily building, despite the leadership problems.

 

Dissenting women from the Feminist Women's Health Center (on Eight Mile Road) and the Feminist Federal have attacked Club Coordinator Laura Brown (also director of the Feminist Women's Health Center in Oakland, California) and accused the City Club of abusive practices against them and its own workers. They characterize the City Club as a "capitalist" venture and insist that, as such, it is incompatible with the aims of feminism. "We are to blame for allowing them to push capitalism on us," says Marsha Roberts of the 8 Mile Road Clinic.

 

"We left on good terms with the City Club," says Jenette Salters. "People trashing each other is not where we are at. They tried to destroy the City Club, and we saw it as racism on their part."

 

"It turns my stomach talking about it," says Laura Brown. "People are being manipulated and played with and treated in an unbelievably racist manner. They (Roberts, Carter, and Salters) could not stand to live n a community where people were challenging their credibility."

 

The City Club means too much to the feminist movement and to this community to have ts survival and growth continually periled by the contending factions. We hope local feminists will be able to heal their wounds soon so they can concentrate their energies not on destroying each other's projects, but on building feminism. The City Club deserves the unified support and participation of all local women. If some women feel they cannot in good conscience take part, their time would certainly be better spent on their own projects than on continuing to try to discredit the City Club.

 

Bro. Shango, otherwise known as Bernard Stroble (SUN, June 3), is out of "the hole" at Jackson Prison. Prison officials tried to railroad Shango into a transfer from Jackson to Marquette Prison, Michigan's Upper Peninsula "Siberia."

 

Shango was one of the inmates indicted following the 1971 Attica Prison uprising in New York. Acquitted of all charges there, he was extradited to Michigan to serve a life sentence for a first degree murder charge. No longer a "common criminal," Shango 's .political development grew as a result of his incarceration.

 

When Detroiter Billy Holcomb was returned to Jackson, despite his record of community involvement in working with East Side street gangs (SUN, June 3), he was informed by prison officials of rumors that he and Shango were planning a major prison uprising. The information supposedly came from unspecified "FBI sources." Shango was transferred from the prison's "general population" to "segregation."

 

Shango's lawyers secured a court hearing for May 20, but the day before the hearing, state attorneys admitted that their FBI sources were "third-hand hearsay." Shango is back in "general population" at Jackson, but is still under constant surveillance by prison officials.

 

--Jan Prezzato