NORTHWEST
BOOKS

REGIONAL WRITERS
IN REVIEW




On the Take:

Book Reveals Graft in Seattle's Recent Past

reviewed by Doug Collins
The Free Press


On The Take:
From Petty Crooks to Presidents
by William J. Chambliss
Indiana University Press


William Chambliss turns academics into adventure in this book about Seattle corruption in the 1960s and 70s. Essentially a sociological study, the book is also a roller-coaster account of Chambliss' undercover participation in Seattle's seamy underside of illegal card games, pinball scams, and a massive system of police payoffs and media coverups. It is also a chronicle of a pivotal period in local and national crime and politics. Originally published in 1978, the book was reprinted in 1988 and is still available by order at bookstores.
Using events that occurred mostly in downtown Seattle, Chambliss argues that the roots of graft were in laws that were selectively enforced. For instance, topless clubs were required by pious local law to have an extremely large square footage of floor space in order to operate, i.e. the customers shouldn't get too close to the dancers. Chambliss asserts that since none of the many topless clubs in the area met this legal standard, any club that wanted to continue operating would have to give a payoff to a police "bagman" who would visit monthly, take his small cut, and funnel the rest to police, business, and political leaders. Similar situations existed for tavern owners and operators of card and bingo halls. Individuals who resisted the payoffs were greeted by code inspectors, thugs, or simply busted by the police to demonstrate that the vice squad wasn't always in the donut shop.
So why didn't anyone go running to the newspapers to expose these schemes? Some of the most fascinating assertions in the book involve the complicity of Seattle's two daily newspapers with the crime network. Some newsmen received gifts from crime network figures, and according to Chambliss, at least one of the city dailies received low property tax assessments in exchange for squelching news of local corruption. Don Duncan, a longtime Seattle Times reporter whose journalistic investigations closely paralleled those of Chambliss, told Chambliss that he had been unable to get his investigative stories published in the Times, and that he had been told to quit his "yellow journalism". One local investigative newsmagazine, Seattle, a venture financed by KING Broadcasting, dared to print a story detailing the relations of Ben Cichy, a pinball magnate and payoff figure, who allegedly visited county prosecutor Charles Carroll's house on the first of every month. Major advertisers cancelled, newsstands refused to sell the magazine, and KING owners put pressure on the editor to back off. Soon after, the magazine went out of business, and Cichy himself wound up drowned near his house before an official investigation was completed.
Surprisingly, the institution most responsible for cracking the crime network was not the media, but - don't fall off your chair - Richard Nixon and the Republicans. Chambliss contends that nationally, until the 1970s, nearly all campaign contributions from crime networks went to Democrat politicians, and that Nixon was determined to turn the tables. Chambliss' book gives an account of how this political move repercussed on Washington State in the form of personnel purges in the Seattle Police Department and eventual reportage in the daily papers of some aspects of graft.
An intriguing conclusion of Chambliss' is that "as long as providing things that are heavily in demand is illegal, then...crime networks of one sort or another are inevitable.." Chambliss argues for decriminalization of "vice" both because of its inevitability and because of the need for orderly legal processes for all businesses. When business is illegal, it cannot resort to courts to solve disputes; so it solves them instead through violence.
In fact, some of what Chambliss suggests has become fact in Washington. With pull-tabs, lotto, and casinos, gambling has become legal, and perhaps too accessible. Furthermore, it's a huge revenue source for the state rather than for crime network leaders. According to Don Duncan, now retired from the Times, the Seattle Police Department is also comparatively cleaner than a generation ago: "The cops nowadays are doggone clean. They probably wouldn't even fix a parking ticket for a friend." Well, maybe for Bill Gates.






Cannery Workers Martyred
in Struggle for Justice

Review by Doug Baker


Triumph Over Marcos
by Thomas Churchill
Open Hand Publishing, 1995


Most who remember Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo recall that they were Cannery Union leaders, murdered one 1981 afternoon in their office near Pioneer Square because they had begun to eradicate many of the unsavory practices commonplace among Alaska salmon canneries. In the popular mind they were the victims of racketeers and corrupt union bosses. However, the deaths of Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo were at the confluence of several complex historical events: struggles for union democracy, factions within the Filipino-American community, and the international effort to overthrow the Marcos dictatorship of the Philippines. Thomas Churchill, in his book Triumph Over Marcos endeavors to popularize how Domingo and Viernes "lived their lives and stood in the front line," in the midst of these histories.
Churchill avoids the tone of a history lesson by creating a fictionalized account of the ordinary personal lives of Domingo and Viernes. It is an accessible, engaging approach that renders the complicated meaning of their lives intelligible at a personal level, with the tone of a thriller. The hectic narrative follows Silme and Gene over the decade of the 1970s from adolescence until their death by assassination. Less satisfying is the lengthy final section of the book, about the post-assassination trials against the killers, which finally concluded in a successful 1989 civil suit against the Marcos family.
Domingo and Viernes were both children of Filipino immigrants. Silme Domingo was raised in Ballard, in a family known for union activism and Seattle Filipino community stature. Gene Viernes grew up in Yakima farm country, and was na•ve politically when he met Silme in 1971. Triumph Over Marcos describes how the two college students and several friends, employed during summers as cannery line workers, became immersed in the Katipunan ng Demokratikong (KDP), a cadre-based anti-Marcos movement. Silme and Gene "believed [the KDP] to be the ideal vessel into which all the progressives in the Filipino movement could eventually fit...the push against the Kingdome was linked with staying in the cannery workers union; smashing the patriarchy across the Pacific was connected to supporting pineapple plantation workers in Hawaii." Silme and Gene's union work, always in the context of KDP objectives, is recounted in a breathless tone of youthful adventure: sleep-deprived meetings, countless rallies, and crashing in ramshackle movement houses. The book documents a transformation of values and a growing away from their former interests. Eventually both find their relationships to family, friends, and love partners deeply affected. At one point Silme nearly forgets that he is to be best man at his brother's wedding. After absent-mindedly delivering the wedding address, he races away to a rally.
Always close friends, Domingo and Viernes became uncommonly courageous leaders in tandem during the last five years of their lives. By 1972 both had been blacklisted from Alaska cannery work (with union complicity) for challenging cannery management. Silme's investigative tour of canneries to gather evidence for class action suits led to creation of the reformist Alaska Cannery Workers Association and a series of now-famous (e.g., Wards Cove) discrimination suits. In Churchill's retelling, Silme joins his sister Cindy for a walk around Green Lake one evening and wonders aloud whether he should risk the mission: "there's no law in those canneries but the owners, one of their people could take me off the in a plane, land...shoot my ass...I'm history." As movement leaders, Domingo and Viernes learn to refuse to openly entertain the possibility of standing aside from such risks. Finally, Gene boldly visits the Philippines, in part as a journey to rediscover his own heritage, but also to create an alliance between Seattle cannery unionists and anti-Marcos unions in the Philippines. Eventually, collaboration between Philippine (and most likely American) intelligence operatives and corrupt opponents within the cannery union, leads to the June 1981 assassination.
Triumph Over Marcos is unsatisfying in several ways. The final section, on the trials after Domingo and Viernes death, is meandering and uninspired. To be fair, the two lead characters have been removed by assassination, and it is never easy to write exciting stories about courts. However, had peripheral characters been given more interesting roles throughout, the final section might have been more engaging.
More troubling, the dynamics of the union, community and even movement politics Domingo and Viernes lived through remain murky in puzzling ways. For example, a key part of Domingo and Viernes' union activism aimed to promote rank and file involvement in a tumultuous period of internal factionalism. Granted, the book is intended to popularize history rather than pick over its details. However, the book tells us virtually nothing about this central dimension of their lives. Evidence about the real attitudes and actions of the cannery workers is largely absent. Cannery workers, the principle people among whom Domingo and Viernes organized, are barely visible supporting characters in this story.
These minor complaints aside, Triumph Over Marcos is a great read. At one point Silme predicts of the KDP anti-Marcos campaign "It's just step-by-step work until we get him". This is the kind of imagination that it took to have a chance at defeating Marcos.

[Home] [This Issue's Directory] [WFP Index] [WFP Back Issues] [E-Mail WFP]

Contents on this page were published in the October/November, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
WFP, 1463 E. Republican #178, Seattle, WA -USA, 98112. -- WAfreepress@gmail.com
Copyright © 1995 WFP Collective, Inc.