1-UILS 08/ZD/91 DDQDD ^i^CHUIL
NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION
UILSON LIBRARY UNC-CH
CB 393D
CHAPEL HILL
NC 27599-393D
OLUME 71 - NUMBER 47
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA — SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1993 TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913
PRICE:30 CENTS
Durham NAACP Honors
Benjamin F. Ruffin
By Ray Trent
Ilie massive crowd that
scended on the Pearson Cafeteria
iiirday night was as diverse as
group can be. The occasion
isthe 19th annual freedom fund
iner of the Durham Branch
lACP.
k honoree was Benjamin S.
ffin, a man who has affected
rham and the nation from his
ly years in the fight to improve
using, employment and
jhborhood environments,
he efforts of Ben Ruffin and
ny others to push Durham
ard equality for all with
■dies, demonstrations and sit-ins
the 1960s bore fruit. Ruffin
dits the 21 neighborhood
incils that came together for
rights. He said he was "only
soldier in the army of
teousness."
lom humble West End
jinings in Durham, Ben Ruffin
led a bachelor’s degree from
rJi Carolina Central University
master’s degree from UNC-
ipel Hill. In the sixties, he
icied community self-help
ips.
1977, he joined the staff of
icmor Jim Hunt as a special
stant. Among his
implishments during these
years were increasing the
kr of black judges in the state
expanding the number of
srity state employees.
:n Ruffin then moved to the
presidency of North Carolina
ual Life Insurance Co. In 1986,
noved to the RJR organization
re he serves as vice president of
erate Affairs. In this position,
in leads the company’s
iiity programs in education
on, business development and
Jiunity involvement.
MS. BRENDA SCARBOROUGH. JAMES C. BLACK IRESLM BOOK TO RUFFIN s
Haitian Refugees Live In
Miserable Bahamian Limbo
BENJAMIN S. RUFFIN WITH PLAQUE
Ben was honored by community
people who touched his life. An
African proberb says that it takes a
whole village to raise a child and,
in Ruffin’s case, the "villagers"
were successful.
John Edwards of Durham and
Joseph Green (president of
Metrolina Carriers, Inc.) — both
friends from childhood — spoke of
their youth experiences with
Ruffin.
The well known Coach Russell
Blunt of Hillside High School, said
that Ben owes him for "taxi"
service during his youth. And
educator, Mrs. Johnnie B.
McLester told of Ben’s early
education trials. Bert Collins,
president of N.C. Mutual, and Mrs.
Julia W. Taylor, president of
(Continued On Page 4)
By Richard Cole
NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) -
Sclieg Baptiste fled into the night,
bashes and fences slashing at his
arms and legs as Bahamian
immigration pohce raided a squalid
Haitian shantytown.
He escaped, but months later he
sits on the steps of his shack on the
outskirts of Nassau and remembers,
fingering his scars. He wears,
without a frace of irony, a t-shirt
affirming "It’s Better in the
Bahamas." Like most of his
increasingly unwelcome
countrymen stuck in their
Bahamian limbo, Baptiste has no
residence papers, no job, no
prospects. He is afraid to go home
to tire violence of Haiti. And he
doesn’t have the 52,500 to reach
the Florida in a smuggler’s boat
So he awaits the next Bahamian
immigration raid.
"They come at 2 a.m. They knock
the doors off and come in. We
jump over fences, run through the
bushes - that’s how I got these
scars," he says.
"Now we sleep in the bushes - the
children too, sometimes," says
Baptiste, 31.
The crisis in Haiti and the
growing flood of immigrants is
taking its toll on the once-sleepy
Bahamian islands east of Florida.
A tropical paradise where houses
don’t have numbers, no two clocks
show the same tirqe and everyone
picks up their mail at the post
office was not ready for a mass
Haitian migration.
The Bahamas’ Roman Catholic
Bishop Lawrence Burke estimates
25,000 Haitians are now marooned
in the Bahamas. Haitian consul
Joseph Etienne says 35,000 to
40,000.
Attorney General Orville
Tumquest says Haitians, most of
them illegal, account for a fifth of
the archipelago’s 260,000
residents.
"There is a genuine feeling our
culture is being threatened," says
the bishop.
Robert Sweeting, member of
parliament from the Bahamian
island of Great Abaco, says the
government has decided whatever
the number, it’s too many. Almost
100 percent of the births in his
city’s government hospital are
Haitian. Haitians, most illegal, now
account for 30 to 40 percent of his
island’s population.
"It just got completely out of
hand," he says. "These people were
just allowed to come in and squat.
We’re determined to deal with it."
That policy is strongly supported
by Gregory Powell, 31, an
unemployed Bahamian cruising the
streets of Nassau.
"I’ve got nothing agamst them.
But there aren't enough jobs for
everyone, and they’re making it
much harder," he says.
The crackdown is ruthless by
U.S. standards, although sporadic.
When illegal Haitian iiens are
arrested, they languish in Fox Hall
prison or other jails unul their often
penniless families come up with
cash.
The father of Elizabeth Antenor’s
(Continued On Page 4)
he Shape-Up Becomes A Shake-Down
By Rick Hampson
violence is a given.
Nov. 8, six men from a "minority construction coalition" swarm a
fork high school building site in Brooklyn demanding jobs. Told
lbs are available, one hurls a cinder block at the contractor’s
tad, opening a gash that needs seven stitches,
tc months previous, dozens from a similar work gang rush an
ished Ralph Lauren clothing emporium in Manhattan. They bash an
ician with a 2-by-4, then crush an architect’s face and push him off
finished stairway.
Los Angeles, where blacks says they’re being excluded from the
lots building boom, similar "jobs councils" show up at work sites,
limes physically assaulting a foreman, commonly shutting the job
threat of violence exists when you deal with my organization,"
Deacon Alexander, the leader of one such group, the L.A.
^ployed Council. "I certainly hope it does." Such groups are still few
is Angeles - from three to half a dozen, say the best guesses. As
I as 30 so-called minority construction coalitions roam New York
some legitimate, some no more than street gangs. They regularly
*id on city construction sites, looking for a piece of the action,
lew York’s depressed construction industry, some groups want jobs
feir black or Hispanic members; others seek cash payoffs or
fonate "security contracts." Those who refuse get frouble, ranging
picketing to vandalism to outright invasion,
aplaints of New York City work site incidents soared from 249 in
to 616 in 1992. In June, 31 leaders from eight coalitions were
M for extortion and conspiracy. But the scam goes on: As of Sept
le police had already logged 607 construction gang incidents for
I frequency of the incidents slowed slightly after the indictments,
Jt. DarJel O’Rourke, supervisor of a police task force, predicted the
® would recur. "They’re just laying low, waiting to see what
Ms."
fro -don’t work, NOBODY works! WE don’t work, NOBODY
i!" Architect Barry McCwmick was halfway up the unfinished
tay, talking to a carpenler about banisters, when he heard the
commotion He turned to see dozens of black men running in the front
door, clutching pipes, tire irons, hunks of wood.
McCormick, the carpenter and 20 other workers were finishing the
interior of a Ralph Lauren clothing emporium called Polo Sport
designed to evoke the life of the ski lodge, the beach house, the yacht,
gang'^’ surging •" - a rowdy, angry, armed
McCormick, 44, was not surprised. By the time of that Aug. 11
invasion, construction gangs had already paid several visits to Polo Sport.
The contractor had hired two members, even though the payroll already
included many Hispanics.
Now they were back, in force.
Three men bounded up the stairs past McCormick. A fourth bumped
into the architect, spinning him around, then slammed a board into
McCormick s face.
The blow broke the bone over his eye, fractured his cheek in three
plares and opened a bloody gash. Everything went white. Then
McCormick fell hands on his chest, pushing hard. "When his eyes cleared,
he was falling off the side of the open staircase. He landed 10 feet below
dazed and bleeding.
His wasn’t the only blood. An electrician who yelled, "Nobody tells me
when I can work!" got a 2-by-4 in the face.
Minority jobs coalitions have existed in New York since the 1960s.
Frozen out by the clannish, mostly white construction trade unions,
blacks and Hispames have found that virtually the only way to get work
is to go to sites and demand it.
Coalitions range from a few dozen members to several hundred.
Some have helped thousands of blacks and Hispanics to get union jobs.
Others, however, are concerned with extortion, not integration; they’ve
turned the shape-up into a shake-down.
One contractor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he once
pomted out to a black coalition boss that most workers on his site WERE
black. To which the leader responded: They aren’t MY blacks.
Some say the coalition threat has been overblown, especially in an
industry where organized crime rakes off millions.
If you talk to the coalitions, they’re not that bad," said Manny
Fernandez a labor relations expert for Morse-Diesel in New Ywk, one of
the nation s largest construction companies. Thqy’ie trying to put their
people to work. If they didn’t, who would?" In the past, union workers
did battle with the gangs. These days, union hard hats usually put down
their tools and walk away; the invaders are too well-armed. On June 9,
1992, for example, police responding to a shootout in front of a Brooklyn
jobs coalition headquarters found eight guns, including six
semiautomatic pistols.
There s another factor in the coalitions’ favor: Since many contractors-
hire too few minority workers to comply with government rules, they’re ^
reluctant to call police when someone puts the arm on them.
Rather than risk a few hours’ delay, which might cost thousands: of
dollars, contractors traditionally have hired a few laborers on the spot at-
S25 an hour.
Such arrangements are now in jeopardy. With New York’s consfruction-
indusfry depressed - about half the 100,000 union members are
unemployed - contractors are less willing to hire unnecessary workers,
and coalitions are more desperate for income.
Hiring from one group no longer guarantees others will stay away;
accordingly, some contractors hire the nastiest coalitions to run off other
gangs, thus fueling the coalitions’ battle over scarce work sites.
Last year, at least six people were killed in construction gang turf
batdes.
"Orie week two gangs might be allies, the next week they’re at each
other s throats, said O Rourke. There used to be some respect for tuff,
he added, "but the economy knocked the hell out of that." The
construction drought also is forcing gangs to shake down smaller
projects, including brownstone renovations in neighborhoods that need
housing.
Earlier this year, one gang even tried to shake down a black man who
was personally installing a boiler in his own house in Queens.
And what of Polo Sport? McCormick and the electrician were taken to
the hospital. The gang drove off in a battered bus. By the time police
stoRied it a mile away, only five men were aboard. Five others were
picked up, and all 10 were charged with assault and released on bail. The
one who attacked McCormick was not among them.
The morning after the incident, several job cqalition members were
back at Polo Sport, asking for work. By then, desl^er Lauren had hired
armed guards to protect the site - just another cost of building in New
York.