European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - April 19, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Friday. April 19, 1991 the stars and stripes commentary Ellen Goodman 1c i am n0t Usua 1 by Nosta 1 Gic for the had old Days. I leave that Peculiar form of melancholy and memory to others. I have friends who look Hack with fondness at the grammar school teachers they feared and the High school coaches they despised. I know elders who transform the mud and pain of world War ii into a landscape of foxhole friendships. 1 read memoirs by people who water Down the cold anxious hunger of the depression with the phrase a Well we were poor but we did no to know  i rarely share such revisionist emotions. The contemporary Lens seems More reliable to me than any Rose coloured re Tro spectacles. But in the past week i have had two encounters with nostalgia about the worst of times and the Best of times. Once when i left the movie theater after Quot the Long walk  again when i turned off the television after a separate but  these were two finely drawn stories from the Central drama of my childhood a the desegregation of America. One told the Legal tale of Brown is. The Board of education the other was about the bus Boycott in Montgomery Ala. Each ended in a moral Victory. And yet each left me oddly sad i was not Wistful for the old South. Nor for the terrible struggle Over Jim crowds body. The nostalgia i Felt was rather for a time of moral certainty and great Hope. A time when Thurgood Marshall stood before the supreme court arguing that segregated schools were simply evil. A time when a Black maid Odessa Carter could do the right thing by walking to work instead of Riding on the Back of the bus. A time when the lines were Clear and so were the enemies. I wonder what Justice Marshall thought As he watched lawyer Marshall did he too feel a twinge of nostalgia in the decades that have elapsed Legal segregation died but racial isolation remained. Legal Equality the precursor to economic Equality promised More than it has delivered. Found today on University greens Are some of the children of integration sit ins for separate dorms. In the inner cities saw in the past years nov a \ a i.  a a into Nevis univ u / i w some Black educators Call for All Black All male afro Centric schools. Imagine this. In the �?T50s, civil rights lawyers argued that the psyches of Black children were destroyed by segregation. Now a in either a Mirror image or an insult to the moral reasoning of the Brown Case a a new generation argues that segregation is the route to Black self esteem. At the same time the civil rights cases that come before the supreme court today Are Likely to be about reverse discrimination. The face of the old enemy May still be visible in political ads about  but the faces of old allies Are full of ambivalence about affirmative action. A a a a a a a. A a a a a a a in the �?T90s, they ask when the Middle class son of a Black professional is wooed by colleges is there a need for racial preference but when a Trade or corporate Board still admits Blacks in Only Token numbers can we afford to give up racial goals in the debate Over fairness that wonderful word a a evil is rarely heard. A a a a a a a a a a a crack does More damage now Young Black men run for their lives from each other and it is far More complicated to talk about racism. The civil rights leadership with its eyes on the prize is often accused of overlooking an underclass. The younger generation of Blacks is split by Success As Well As failure. They Are criticized for not joining a movement they have trouble finding. Today a problems almost always seem harder than yesterday s. In the Good had old Days the Issue was Access. In the Good bad old Days the work was opening doors. Now the issues Are poverty As Well As  work is not just getting admission but truly belonging. Maybe we Are not truly bereft of great civil dramas just temporarily Blind to them. But in  hornless moment this cause less time an Era defined by ambivalence not action. 1 miss something the sense of possibilities. I am nostalgic for the future i once saw Way in the past. C the Boston Globo a James j. Kilpatric educators first amendment rights violated you have to Marvel at the sheer stubbornness of some people. In january the supreme court rejected a petition from a fellow who had spent four years appealing a $35 ticket for speeding. Soon the court will decide the Case of six Michigan teachers who have de vote to years to a suit that finally might win them 50 Bucks each. A in each instance it Isnit the Money that matters. It truly is the principle of the thing. In the matter of the Michigan teachers the principle is important to every non Union worker who resents the impositions of a Union shop. The suit presents questions As Justice William Brennan once remarked that Are questions a of the utmost  these Are questions of individual Freedom. The Basic facts Are not in dispute. The peripheral facts Are in Large dispute. Ferris state College in 1981 entered into a collective bargaining contract with the Ferris faculty association. The association is affiliated with the Michigan education association Mea and the National education association Nea. The contract is a Union shop contract. Under its terms faculty members must join the association or As an alternative they must pay a service fee equal to the dues paid by Union members. Failure to join the Union or to pay the service fee is cause for dismissal. The fee amounts to s2s4 a year of which $211 goes to the Mea. $48 to the Nea and the balance to the Ferris faculty association. James p. Lehnert Elmer s. Junker and other faculty members at Ferris refused to join the Union and elected to pay a service Fec instead. They resented the political and lobbying activities of the Union. They demanded for example the return of a portion of their fees spent to promote a nuclear freeze and to support a ballot proposition involving Utility rates. They especially objected to expenditures in preparation for a strike that would have been unlawful if it had been called. Their Contention is that their service fees May be used Only for the limited purposes of collective bargaining contract administration and grievance adjustment at Ferris College. Every other expenditure is simply a not  a the Union for its part contends that a Broad array of expenditures should be counted As germane to the Ferris contract. When Union officials lobby at Lansing for increased state Aid to higher education they Are seeking to Benefit All members of the bargaining unit. When officials attend a state convention of the Mea they similarly Are profiting from contacts that will Aid them in negotiations at Ferris. If my count is Correct the Ferris Case will Mark the eighth time the supreme court has grappled with the rights of non Union workers under Union shop contracts. The National right to work Legal foundation has been lighting for the rights of non Union members from the beginning and has won six of the earlier seven cases. The series began in 1956 in Nebraska in a Case brought by a Railroad worker Robert e. Hanson. The court upheld the Validity of Union shop contracts As such and left open the Issue of a dissenting employees rights under the first amendment. A. 1 Hen came the Street Case of 1961, establishing the Rule without elaboration that unions May not use the dues of dissenting workers Lor political and ideological purposes. In 1963, in the Case of Anna Mae Allen the court went a Little further toward protecting dissenters  in 1977, in a Case involving Detroit teachers the court went further still. It began to spell out the constitutional principles explicitly. Since then three other cases a Ellis in 1984, Hudson in 1986 and Beck in 1988 a have reaffirmed these principles. The pending Case from Ferris state College May serve to define non germane expenditures More clearly. When the Ferris Case reached the 6th . Circuit two judges took a Broad and benign View of a unions prerogatives. Just about everything they Felt is "germane.�?�. Judge Gilbert s. Merritt dissenting had the better a View. To. Allow a Union to exact payments Lor lobbying electoral campaigning and Public relations he said Force the dissenters to support ideological positions with which they disagree. The objectors must choose Between submitting to the Union or losing their jobs. Such forced association and coerced speech in Merritts View violate the f first amendment. Exactly so. 1 a Universal