Mr. HINES. In answer to your question, Congressman, I don't think the officials in the U.S. Senate or Congress are being hysterical in any form or manner when they have, when the statement they have made about more police protection and even to the extent of bringing in armed forces of the United States.

I think it is a necessary evil more or less, and when I say evil it is something we ought to be ashamed of rather than have to do it, but as long as the hire of people—people that are hired by the Congressman and Senators of this country sit on their duffs and say "well, if I do this I am going to lose votes and lose votes," the hell with the votes, the country is going to hell. We have got to start worrying about the people in it before we start worrying about people's political futures, and I think it has, what it has come down today, is politics above all and the hell with the people. It is a hell of a statement to make, but it is true. Mr. MACHEN. Don't misunderstand me that is the reason for having you all here, that is perhaps a written record that some of them have refused to acknowledge.

Mr. HINES. Let me say this one thing and then I will let you go back to the others and I don't like to hog the show. But I think right today you have a situation where we have two very outstanding political parties, Republicans and the Democrats, and this has been the tradition and history of this country and I am very proud of it.

Today you have a third party entered into it, and I have my reservation of who I am going to vote for and who I am not going to vote for and that is not anybody's business but my own, but I think when people come out and say that the Democrats or Republicans ought to choose up sides and cast their votes to go to keep another party from becoming a Presidential candidate or a Presidential appointee or nominee of this country, then I think it is a disgrace to this country.

The only reason why that gentleman is getting the votes that he is going to get, and he is going to get quite a few from what I hear, is because the other people, the members of the two parties who are going to run, don't have the guts to stand pat and say "and let's stop all the horse manure here and get down and put an end to the lawlessness in this country," and believe me that is the only reason why Governor Wallace is going to get a lot of the votes he is going to get. They are sick and tired of all the politics being played on this thing.

Mr. Dowdy. I think you are right about that, and I wish you would tell the young man over here, the Karate expert, if he gets jumped again to mark one of them up so he can be identified and be easy to find. Mr. HINES. Fine.

Mr. Spinks?

Mr. MACHEN. I would just like to comment about politics. I do not feel that this is a partisan political issue. I think this is an issue that the members of both parties on both sides of the aisle are deeply concerned about and what we are concerned about is not personalities or the partisan politics.

Mr. HINES. Right.

Mr. MACHEN. But we are concerned not only with the answer here but with some of the root causes, too, but we think law enforcement ought to be the number one priority.

Mr. HINES. That is right.

I told Representative Broyhill in a meeting in his office that I voted. both sides of the street. I voted Democrat and I voted Republican and I vote for the man I think is doing the best job, and I am not saying it and I didn't say it when Representative Broyhill was there because he was there, but I have voted for him every time he has

run.

Mr. BROYHILL. I want to comment on that statement in a moment. Have all the other people who have something to say spoken? I have a couple of comments on that, and I think you made a very fine point. Mr. SPINKS. I would like to say-I am Chairman of the Night Lino Chapel and Chairman of the Union, we have about 218 men in this section and it is responsible for, the main purpose is printing the Congressional Record, and we have been writing letters and making phone calls to the police, the Congressmen, the Senators, and to anyone who would listen to us, and we have been talking and talking, and we have been getting a lot of this done, and a lot of promises, but in the meantime, the meantime now, our men are getting beat up. It is not safe to come to work any night.

Even in one of our memoranda recently from our officials they wanted us to walk in large groups. Well, there was a good example right over here. Three of our men were walking together, and big men, too, and they got waylaid and help up. Another one here was beaten, and this man here was beaten and robbed, and this is just kind of a guessing game every night of who is going to be next, whose car is going to be missing when you get off from work. Your wheels, your car stolen or anything, every night something, someone is affected in some way, and we have to work under this pressure and try to get the Congressional Record out.

All of these men right here now worked 10 hours last night and haven't been to bed yet and they have got to get back to work pretty soon, too.

Mr. MACHEN. We have been making them work overtime?

Mr. ROCHON. That is the understatement of the year.

Mr. SPINKS. I have been through two wars already, and I am not afraid to fight, but we do need a little ammunition or something to fight back with and we don't have that here.

In a speech by our President just a while back, he encouraged all Americans to take up their places of responsibility beginning with the home and the community, and then our places of employment, in every area and every walk of life.

Now, my people have nominated me to serve them as Chairman. They are turning to me and now I am turning to you, I have got to turn to somebody, we have got to have some answers somewhere. They expect us to do something, and we are literally sitting on a powder keg at the GPO, and something is going to pop soon unless we have some drastic action taken, and now.

What are our places of responsibility anyhow? I think we have some real good citizens. What do you want us to do, what can we do?

One thing I would like to bring out right now, now you folks have been nice enough to help to arrange for parking lots all over the city and shuttle us back and forth on busses. But we are parking in 10 different places now, and we have the same problems, they are scattered all out where the police couldn't protect us if they wanted to. While

they are trying to get legislation passed, I wish that they would give us a parking lot close by, clean out those old buildings or something, and get some lights out while they are trying to get some legislation through, and get lights and some kind of police protection.

Man, I am telling you it is not safe to walk a block with two or three men any time of night.

Just here a while back some of our folks were invited over to see how this end of the Congressional Record worked, and to see the functions and all over here in the Congress. Well, I would like to extend the same courtesy to you folks to come over there and see how that end works and walk to work with us and help these men to set on these linotype machines and produce the work for the Congressional Record every night. That is all I have to say, thank you.

Mr. Dowdy. The next gentleman.

Mr. ROSENLUND. I represent the night proof room at the Government Printing Office. I guess as well as Darwin Spinks or any of the other gentlemen here we have had as many beatings and we have men today, we have a man today after a beating two years ago he still suffers from a wrist that is bent and will never be the same, and he has lost teeth, money, and he has been inconvenienced and his sick leave and annual leave have gone down the drain, nobody is going to give him that back.

Mr. Hines touched on a subject about the building that we have in the neighborhood that don't house anybody and it is certainly going to cost the Redevelopment Land Agency more money two years or three years from now than it will today to tear the buildings down. Labor isn't going down, it is going up. We don't know why they are standing there, all they do is house criminals or whatever you want to call them, thugs.

I had occasion a couple of weeks ago when a police officer took me down there to show a car that was stripped. He didn't even want to take me down there. He felt his life was in danger and he had a pistol on his hip. Now, this is the neighborhood that we have to walk through. We had occasion, what touched a lot of this off was back in May a women by the name of Mrs. Bish-Mr. Bish was up in a proof room, as a matter of fact his name is in the style manual, she came down to put in retirement papers for her husband, and this is 10:00 o'clock in the morning, on North Capitol Street was beaten up and robbed. Today she still suffers. She has a broken shoulder, she will never lift her arm above her head the rest of her life.

All of these things aren't necessary. But it all goes back to law enforcement. We don't have enough policemen. We have been told, off the cuff we have been told, that that precinct over there is short 100 men. Why are they short 100 men? Don't we pay enough taxes to hire enough people to put in these precincts? If the men won't take these jobs there must be a reason. What is the reason? We all know what the reason is, nobody is backing up the policeman. Everybody is backing up the criminal. It seems the thing to do today is be the criminal.

I am more concerned with right now what I have as a situation developing in my chapel. The Government Printing Office about a month or two ago found it necessary to issue a memorandum stating the law in the District of Columbia about carrying weapons, and

believe me that Government Printing Office is becoming an armed camp, and it is all I would like to see some innocent person protecting their life kill somebody who deserves dying, and what are they going to get, they are going to get plenty of misery because they are going to be charged with murder, their families are going to suffer, friends are going to suffer, and why? Just to protect themselves.

We have this, and other things can develop. We have men who come in there with weapons, we try to talk them out of it, they say "Well, supply us with protection." We can't supply them with protection. We can't protect ourselves.

You have men, we work in teams and partners, we work under tension, we are working 10, 12 hours a day, we are working 6 and 7 days a week. We don't spend as much time with our wives as we do with our partners, and I don't think there is a man in this room can spend as many hours with his wife without an argument once in a while, and we do have arguments, and that is all we need to do is somebody pull out a pistol and shoot his best friend because that pistol happens to be handy.

And why is it handy? Because he needs it for protection.

Now, we have had, like I say, we have had other things, we have men who have purchased new automobiles and others that won't purchase new automobiles; which doesn't help the economy. They won't purchase new automobiles. Why? Because they are just going to be stolen.

We have a case where a man went out and bought a new Chevrolet Corvette, put all kinds of locks on it, put them on the hood, put them on the rims, put them on the wheels and what did they do? They laid them out on the seat and took the motor. We don't have any protection, that is what we need.

This parking lot situation, we find it hard to criticize the management of the Government Printing Office, we know how hard it is for them to meet the terms that we expect them to meet. They have a lot here, and they have a lot there and like Mr. Spinks said it is almost impossible to protect the people coming and going from these lots. It is almost impossible to explain to our people why those buildings have to remain standing when they don't house anyone. They are not going to house anyone. Why aren't they parking lots?

Why doesn't an agency that employs 7,500 people have a parking lot? Industry outside that is comparable to the Government Printing Office have to have parking lots. Most of your communities would not even let them operate unless they supply their people with parking lots because the counties and cities and so forth, they can't take care of these things. The companies have to do it. Why can't the GPO do it? Why can't other agencies do it? This is the answer that we have to give our men and we don't have them. I don't know if we are going to get them here today or any other time, but this is something we should be working for because we are just getting people hit over the head every day, cars robbed every night.

We had a man bought a new car a couple of months ago, was stolen two weeks ago, they had to order new parts that were taken off, he got the car back, he hasn't even got the parts that were ordered and it is stolen again. So that is all I have to say, gentlemen.

98-228-68

Mr. DOWDY. I will say this: This committee is attempting to provide parking lots, I don't know whether we will get the cooperation everywhere that is necessary, and also as far as the police we are trying to get them under some sort of organization where they won't have the restrictions placed on them to keep them from protecting people. We are doing what we can along that line.

Mr. HINES. Yes, sir, one other thing before we adjourn or we will recess ourselves from your presence, on this Black United Front thing, I would like to make one statement on that. I think I voice the concern and what is in the minds of most of the working people in this community, I know in our union, I think it is a disgrace that we have members of the City Council backing up such an organization as this: I am the first one to say don't cut out the right of free speech of anybody because we make our living off of free speech and the publicizing of it, publication of it. But I think it is a crime that members of the City Council have made it justifiable in the image of this Black United Front to kill a cop or kill anybody that stands in their way, and I think these people on the City Council if they don't have the good sense to resign after making such a statement, I think that action should be taken that they should be removed from the City Council, if

necessary.

Mr. DOWDY. It was my understanding that probably this member of the City Council you are speaking of is backed up by the rest of them or at least the majority of the rest of the Council anyway.

Mr. HINES. Yes, it is really a shame that that thing has to go on. Mr. MACHEN. I might just ask for the record-you all mentioned the buildings abandoned, are they government owned, do you know, or not?

Mr. HINES. I really couldn't tell you.

Mr. MACHEN. If we had someone from my office or the staff go down there and pinpoint these buildings where we could get the addresses and so forth then perhaps we could ascertain and what could be done. Mr. HINES. I think the vice president of our union, Mr. Taylor, can probably tell you. He is probably more informed on that than most of us.

Mr. TAYLOR. The RLA does have title to these buildings. These have been condemned and 70 percent are unoccupied and the ones that are living there are living there on a 30-day notice.

Mr. Dowdy. If they were decent buildings the RLA would already have torn them down.

Mr. TAYLOR. This entire area from North Capitol to 1st Street Northwest and from H Street to I Street, if they could tear that down and put a parking lot in there it would answer a lot of the problems. There is nothing but a bunch of slums and most of the places have been condemned; at least 90 percent of this is owned by RLA but all of it facing on H Street adjacent to GPO has been acquired by RLA.

Mr. ROCHON. I think you will find also the triangle across the street from the Main Post Office borders on G Street and North Capitol and Massachusetts Avenue, most of that, I think is in the same position, and G Street, according to the Police Department, is the worst street in the area, the Government Printing Office, and, boy, they really have something over there, pool halls.

Mr. Dowdy. The most dangerous street you mean?