And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 22:14:01 EST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Just Looking for Justice:
New RECA Coalition forms
By Cate Gilles
Navajo Times Correspondent
Boulder, Co. - Nine years of working to make the Radiation Exposure
Compensation Act deliver on its promises has spurred Four Corners groups
to join hands and work together. The new Western States RECA Reform
Coalition joins eleven groups in five states-groups of Navajo and
non-Navajo uranium workers and victims of radiation released from atomic
bomb tests.
Roxanne Bristow from the Grand Junction-based Colorado
Uranium Workers Council, said people spoke too soon when they said it
couldn't be done.
"We have bridged over what a lot of people said could never be
done with this coalition," Bristow said. "Myself, I don't care what color
you are-we all bleed red, we all have a heart. We all have to breathe."
When the US government passed RECA in 1990, they issued a formal apology
for sacrificing the lives of uranium workers and downwinders in the
interests of national security. But the apology was limited to a small
group of people who were eligible and could make their way successfully
through the compensation process.
Efforts to change the law began almost as soon as it passed-as soon as
radiation victims began to realize how hard it was to get the compensation
they thought they had been promised. During the long years of waiting for
the justice that RECA promised, a number of RECA reform groups have formed
in the Four Corners States. But until they came together two weeks ago in
Farmington, most of those groups were working separately.
Melton Martinez and Roxanne Bristow are two of the members and organizers
within the brand new coalition. When they think of uranium mining, they
booth remember great pain and great loss.
Martinez is the grandson of Paddy Martinez, who has been
immortalized in the Grants Uranium Museum and elsewhere, as the man who
led prospectors to uranium deposits near Haystack, New Mexico. Martinez
said that the men promised his grandfather $10,000 for his help-but then
never paid the money.
Both Melton and his father Henry later mined uranium from the same
mine. Henry Martinez has a lot of health problems now. And both he and his
son are sure that a lot of the illness that he is suffering was caused by
his exposure to radiation as a uranium miner. But Melton has found that
trying to get compensation money for Henry has been worse than
frustrating. Part of the problem is that the compensation process requires
paper documentation. And when Henry was mining in the late 40's and 50's a
lot of uranium mining companies had a very informal relationship with
their workers, who were often simply paid off in cash for their labor.
Which leaves Henry and his children with a big problem-without the
work documents, accessing compensation is going to be even more of an
uphill battle.
This fact and watching the pain and suffering of aging uranium
workers in communities across Navajo have pushed Melton to get a lot more
involved in the struggle to reform RECA than he ever thought he would be.
During the first coalition meeting earlier this month, Martinez
agreed to be a co-chair man of the organization.
Organizing is making it hard to spend enough time with his family of four
daughters and his young son Paddy, named after his grandfather. But
nevertheless, he has traveled to tens of meetings, and met with numerous
members of Congress trying to persuade them to move on changing the law.
His father Henry, who has lost a leg to disease, has been restricted to a
wheelchair most of the time. He traveled with Melton to many of the
meetings until the long distances and too many hours of driving wore him
out.
Trying to give Congress members a sense of how hard it can be is
not an easy task, according to Martinez. People have to spend hours
traveling to RECA meetings wearing out their already ancient trucks
driving over really bad roads. It is just not right, he said, and wanting
to change things for the better for the uranium people keeps him going.
"When I meet them in person, some of the workers are so sick they
can't go anywhere and they have to carry their oxygen tank around with
them," he said. "But a lot of them started mining after 1971-so right now
they are not even eligible for the compensation."
But coalition members like Martinez insist that they will press on
with organizing to get their RECA amendments bill back in front of the
hearts of Congress. They have taken a position of no compromise-that the
ten points of reform that the Navajo Nation Council approved and that were
later included in the Redmond bill cannot be changed.
The ten points include increasing the amount of compensation from
$100,000 to $200,000, and extending coverage to aboveground miners,
uranium millers and people living downwind of atomic bomb tests who are
currently not covered. If they are approved, changes in the law could
allow all affected Native Americans, not just Navajos to be eligible for
compensation, add to the list of illnesses that are eligible, and should
make the RECA application process smoother and more humane for everyone.
Martinez laughed with some bitterness when he remembered getting
up to run for his health every day at dawn-and ran right through the
uranium mine at Haystack that his grandfather helped to start. He only
knew Paddy Martinez, his grandfather, for a few years and then he was
gone.
Roxanne Bristow also has a lot of memories of the golden yellow uranium
dust and the ore rocks. She spent her childhood living in company housing
at a massive uranium mine operation near Uravan, Colorado.
"I remember picking up the yellow uranium rocks and putting them
in my mouth," Bristow said. "It was so very beautiful up there. I can
still see it. Even though it is deadly, it is still home."
"But that's a hell of a way to look at it, if you go home it will
kill you," she added.
And kill it did. First cancer took her father when she was only
15. And she said that no child should be tortured by watching their dad
die in this way.
"I can still remember hearing my father just screaming, just
begging for someone to blow his brain off, he was in so much pain," she
said.
Less than a year later, her grandfather died of cancer, followed
in short order by two of her uncles. Another uncle died five years ago of
cancer, and now it is her aunts who are sick. All of them worked in the
mines.
And like Martinez, watching so many of her loved ones suffer and
die has given Bristow a goal she won't let go of: she wants the US
government to take full responsibility for what it did.
"They murdered my family. We weren't criminals, just workers. But
they gave us a death sentence worse than what condemned murderers get,"
she said.
The new coalition reported this week that they are working with
members of Congress on reintroducing acceptable RECA amendments bills.
And Kelsey Begaye made a commitment to the people harmed by radiation when
he was serving as the Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council. Now that he is
President, he is keeping his word. During his second week in office,
Begaye is in Washington, D.C. meeting with members of Congress. And RECA
amendments are among the topics at the top of his priority list, according
to Navajo Nation Washington office staff.
---30---
THIS SECTION SHOULD GO TO COMMUNITY NOTES:
Church Rock, N.M.-A public meeting is scheduled at the Church Rock Chapter
House at 12:00 noon on January 24-to explain RECA reform. Uranium miners,
millers, drivers and other uranium workers are all invited and the meeting
is open to everyone who is interested.
Call(505) 287-3848 for information.
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