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Text File | 1987-07-06 | 11KB | 237 lines

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Copyright
[c] 1987 by Michael Finley Writing Services
2096 Dayton Avenue * St. Paul MN 55104 * [phone]


UNION
OF GRIEF:
Doris
Aiken Works to RID the World
Of Highway Deaths

By
Michael Finley

Each
of us has seen the face peering out of the gray of page one: the
calm look of the high school portrait, the morning after some life-taking
crash out on the Interstate.  The face's expression is optimistic,
it thinks it will live forever, yet something has already failed
it.  And for a moment we ache inside, for the face and for the face's
family, before turning the page.

Doris Aiken, founder of RID (Remove Intoxicated Drivers) didn't
turn the page.  The sorrow of seeing two neighbor kids, the same
as her own children, killed by a drunk driver -- mangled beyond recognition,
really -- moved her in 1977 to inquire just how DWI (Driving While
Intoxicated) arrests were handled in her home area of Schenectady,
NY.

"I wanted to know why the driver of the car could still drive and
why he wasn't in jail as most killers would have been, people who
wield knives and guns instead of automobiles.

"I found out that the odds were 2 to 1 that a person will be involved
in an alcohol-related car crash in his or her life.  Every year,
about 25,000 people died in alcohol-related crashes.  Drunk driving
was a part of American life, and it was out of control."

Her inquiry not only resulted in the founding of the 132-chapter
RID-USA, but has influenced the federal government's stand (using
highway dollars as hostages) behind the new 21 drinking age standard,
incurred the wrath of the alcohol industry and legal profession,
and sent a message to judges across the nation that leniency toward
drunk killers will no longer go unnoticed.

Right now, Aiken says, the battle against drunk drivers is at midpoint,
with victory by no means certain.  Groups like RID and Mothers Against
Drunk Drivers (MADD) have called public attention to the problem,
and put forth ideas on reducing the killing, but what had been a
rash of newspaper and magazine articles about the movement has dwindled.
 The battle is no longer "news," and the media has moved on to more
fashionable issues.

Some media have even banned people like Aiken from making appearances,
due to her uncompromising stand against advertising alcohol products
-- no national medium has broadcast the RID message since 1983.
Aiken is anxious that attention not let up now -- the cost of a new
wave of denial, she says, will be a new wave of slaughter.

"We've had five good years, in which the deaths have dropped each
year.  Suddenly, at the end of 1985, they've started rising again.
 They went up every month in 1986 except April.  We're looking at
a 5% rise overall -- and that's before
we raise the speed limit to 65."

What's happening, Aiken says, is backlash.  South Dakota is challenging
the federal government's 21 drinking age mandate before the Supreme
Court.  New York is weakening its dramshop laws (giving victims the
right to sue bartenders who permit drunk patrons to drive away to
commit crimes).  Massachussetts and Nebraska are trashing their seatbelt
laws -- in Massachussetts, the seatbelt law became the cause of a
popular radio deejay who ranted against it for hours every day, until
the rant unearthed a groundswell of macho indignation.

The drinking man and woman will always have two good friends in
the alcohol industry (distillers, brewers, advertisers and taverns)
and the defense bar, Aiken says.  Booze advertising tops $900 million
yearly these days, and it zeroes in on precisely the most vulnerable
and most deadly demographic chunk, young drinkers.

Michelob
owns the night,
is one current campaign, featuring the music of rock star Phil Collins.
 "Think about what that says a moment," Aiken says.  "That when it's
dark, alcohol is king, that young people can forget about the need
to be loved and get smashed instead.  'Michelob owns
the
night.'

"I'm not given to quoting Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist
often, but he has says that there are some things in a society which
though legal should not be advertised -- pornography, prostitution,
alcohol, cigarettes and gambling."

Free speech has been defined within the context of the public good
since the days of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the rights no
one has to "cry fire in a crowded movie house."  But the only rights
the media seem concerned about are the rights to the $900 million
they don't want to try living without.

Of course, the legal profession is always looking for ways to protect
us and our children, Aiken says.  Open up your Yellow Pages to the
ATTORNEYS section and regard the dozens of pages of ads promising
success with DWI -- imagine how sorry these attorneys are for extricating
clients from causing the deaths and mutilation of innocent individuals
and the annihilation of whole families.

"One way to judge how strong your state's drunk driving laws are
is by lawyer fees," she says.  "If the laws are good, the fees will
be low, because lawyers cannot guarantee acquittal or plea bargaining.
 If they are lax, fees will be high, because one way or another,
your lawyer will get you off."

A Florida lawyer Aiken read about got every
single one
of his over 1,200 DWI cases off last year.  A typical charge for
a first time offender is $1,500.  "The Florida laws are like Swiss
Cheese.  Highway deaths in Florida rose 17% in 1986 alone.  In New
York, by comparison, you'll see lawyers charging $150 or $200 for
first timers, with no possibility of plea bargaining out of an alcohol
charge."  Guess which state's attorneys are unhappy with its drunk
driving laws, Aiken asked.

"Then there are a minority of judges, prosecutors and police who
are themselves alcoholics and who want to trade favors with one another.
 The game is called 'Let the big guys sail through court and show
their gratitude to me when I need their help.'"

RID's national strategy is less visible than other anti-drunk driving
organiztions, partly because of having been blackballed from so many
media.  "Grassroots organiztion is our strength," Aiken says. "We
counsel victims and organizing them to do the work of preventing
future tragedies.  We lobby at the state and national levels.  We
expose those who consistently stand in the way of public safety,
such as judges with significantly more lenient records toward drunk
drivers than average."

Aiken, a former television personality, runs RID-USA out of her
home with the assistance of her husband Bill, RID's vice president.
 And being Unitarian has played an important part in her work.

"Bill and I were married in a Unitarian church in Santa Monica 33
years ago," Aiken says.  "Bill was Episcopalian and I was Lutheran,
and the UUA gradually became our home."

"My hope is that Unitarians reading this won't just say what a great
thing RID is, but ask themselves how their church can play a part.
 We've always been known for our liberality of thought, our ability
to cross lines on an issue -- fighting drunk driving is an issue
that everyone cares about, in which ordinary people are really up
against terribly powerful groups who do not want the right thing
done.

"Another thing is that RID chapters actually attract new people
to the churches, because meetings are held there, and the community
starts to see the UU church as a place that's concerned about everyone's
welfare."

The drunk driving issue does not separate according to liberal or
conservative, Aiken says, although some of the measures RID suggests
-- highway checkpoints, automatic blood testing of crash victims,
no "right to refuse" breathalyzer tests -- are the sort that ACLU
members instinctually resist.

"I'm a charter ACLU member myself," Aiken says.  "And I have found
the group more than willing to publish my letters about the system
going wrong."

What exactly does Aiken think the rights of drunk drivers are?
"I think they have the right to a defense like everyone else," she
says.  "But I do not feel that they have the right, unlike other
groups, to withhold evidence of a crime -- in this case blood tests,
or periodic checkpoints.

"Individual rights often are secondary to the rights of the group
to safety and security.   No one has the right to say that the public
interest is secondary to one's individual right or privacy.  Nor
do you see lawyers jumping up and down about the invasion of privacy
experienced at airport checkpoints.  Why?  Because no vested interests
are threatened by airport searches."

In any event, she says, a 3/4-ton vehicle running at 65 mph by a
driver under the influence of alcohol is simply not as "private"
a situation as one's living room at 0 mph.  Thinking people understand
that distinction, and are becoming involved.

RID chapters operating out of Unitarian congregations in Ithaca,
Syracuse, Poughkeepsie, Schenectady, and Glen Falls, New York have
all signaled their commitment to fighting drunk drivers.  "The secret
of RID is that we are powerful in our numbers," Aiken says.  "We
leaflet, we speak up, we make people uncomfortable at times."

She described one New York legislator, who, coming home after tabling
an anti-drunk driving bill, found neighbors with handouts in his
own local supermarket, demanding an explanation for his action.
When the legislature reconvened, that legislator changed his position.

"I
think it makes the special interests very afraid when they have to
fight against ordinary people made powerful by their grief," Aiken
says.  In the end, all the interests have is money.  They have no
real power.  It must terrify them to see that people who have suffered
terribly, have lost family members or themselves been crippled because
of their
greed, are finding a voice now.

"The energy behind all this grief, now channeled into positive action,
is enormous.  RID can't succeed without its one great weapon -- the
eloquent voice of the victim."

The eloquent voice will be heard less often in months to come, Aiken
warned, as proponents of harsh measures for drunk driving are stifled
and as the print and broadcast media lose interest, as they did with
the nuclear freeze a couple of years ago, in another life/death issue
which had run out of "fresh angles."

But Doris Aiken and the other members of RID are likely to continue
sounding the alarm.  "Some people think of me as a troublemaker,
as a zealot," she conceded.  "There have even been death threats.
 I don't like that.  But if it means fewer people dying in crashes,
I can take it.  Because I've learned that individuals, working together,
can
make a difference.  Once you know you've got that chance, you're
harder to discourage."

#  #  #

Individuals
interested in starting RID chapters in their churches or communities
should contact: RID, PO Box 520, Schenectady, NY 12301.