Media & Gay Reporters/Nelson Case Update 10/10/97 id XAA10547; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 23:38:54 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source:hnoble@eskimo.com Sat Oct 11 12:05:12 1997 Statement to the Media by Sandy Nelson October 10, 1997 My defense committee and I are angered but not surprised that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear my case against The News Tribune of Tacoma, Washington. This refusal leaves newspaper reporters in Washington state without the same free-speech and political guarantees as their readers and publishers. I will keep speaking out against publishers' unconstitutional attacks on reporters, and someday when a fair Supreme Court hears the issues, a majority of justices will surely reject TNT's absurd assertion that the civil liberties of an individual reporter could interfere with freedoms of the owners of the presses. My political activism has never hin-dered the publication of the paper or dissemination of its line, yet I am held up as a great danger to journalistic ob-jectivity. This is ridiculous. Nelson vs TNT, et al, was a cutting-edge battle to stop employer retaliation against workers who used their First Amendment rights. From the beginning, the case received solid labor backing from the Washington State Labor Council, Newspaper Guild International, and dozens of unions, including AFSCME, which represents 1.3 million US workers. And it received the historic backing of the American Civil Liber-ties Union of Washington, which in the past always defended the publishers' freedom of speech. This time the ACLU pro-claimed that publisher rights could not smash employee rights. In 1990 I spent my off-duty hours working on an effort to preserve a Tacoma law that protected lesbians and gays from discrimination in employment and housing. When that law was lost, I participated in a citizen initiative to create a state law for the same purpose. Today, I continue to fight for the employment rights of lesbians and gays by supporting Initiative 677. The News Tribune demanded that I abstain from all political activity and moved me from my education beat to the copy desk where I lost my byline and reporting career. With help from the Newspaper Guild, I filed a suit before the National Labor Relations Board that resulted in a final decision that the NLRB is not responsible for protecting workers' constitutional rights. The ACLU filed the present suit in 1993. In 1995, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Vicki Hogan ruled in favor of the TNT's Summary Judgment petition. We then appealed the case to the Washington State Supreme Court which found that state law protecting workers from employment harassment due to their involvement in electoral issues does not apply to newspapers. This week the US Supreme Court denied the ACLU`s appeal of that Washington decision. My lawyers, defense committee and I are very proud of what we accomplished in the past seven years: o We persuaded the Washington State Supreme Court to uphold the state's Fair Campaign Practices Act, which bars employ-ers from retaliating against workers for their political ac-tivism. We will continue to inform Washington workers about the Act and urge them to use it for political self-defense. o We took every opportunity to publicly expose media "objectivity" as a myth and marketing tool. We will continue to denounce such hypocrisy and join others who are opposing the US media monopoly. o And we built the foundation for the next reporter who steps up to continue this good fight. I want to thank my lawyers--James Lobsenz, William Bender and Paul Chuey; the ACLU of Washington; National Lawyers Guild; Sandy Nelson Defense Committee; Washington State La-bor Council and every individual union that endorsed the case and donated money; the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women, which continued their long history of fight-ing for the right to be radical; Seattle Gay News and every organization and individual journalist, queer, feminist, person of color, radical and union member here and abroad who helped pursue this long, arduous battle. We would never have accomplished so much without all of you. For more information contact the Sandy Nelson Defense Committee, P.O. Box 5847, Tacoma, WA 98415 USA (253)756-9971, (253)759-3988 fax e-mail: hnoble@eskimo.com * * * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytsxp-10.12.97-23:38:41-11472