ATTENTION VOLUNTEERS AND DISTRIBUTORS: WE'RE MOVING!! After nearly four years of operating out of the U-District's University Baptist Church, on June 1 Eat the State! will be moving our files, distribution, work parties and general mayhem to the Independent Media Center, 1415 3rd Ave. between Pike and Union downtown. We're very excited about the move for several reasons: it's more centrally located, more accessible (no more locked gates and flights of stairs to negotiate), and most of all it's a chance to be working with a lot of other really cool independent media projects in town. Drop by and say hi--our first meeting and distribution night in the new space will be for our next issue on Tuesday evening, June 7. (See calendar for details.) And of course we want to give our utmost thanks to Univ. Baptist--co-pastors Anne Hall and Tim Phillips and the staff--for being a good home for the last four years. UBC is one of the most courageous, active, and politically progressive churches in town; we're proud to have been associated with them, and through our connections with Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia (whose computers we use for administration) we won't be gone entirely.--Geov Parrish

Hats off to UW's Washington Students Against Sweatshops (WSAS)! After UW President Richard McCormick refused to drop UW's affiliation with the industry-friendly monitoring group Fair Labor Association (FLA) for the more stringent Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), WSAS won an ASUW referendum on the issue and staged a week-long sleep-in in Red Square leading up to a UW Regents' meeting last Friday.

While the goals of the two groups are ostensibly the same--to improve the welfare of Third World workers in the clothing industry--their methods are quite different. Six of the FLA's 14 board positions are given to industry representatives; there are no industry reps in the WRC. This gives industry interests a near-veto power over FLA items for which a majority is required, and an absolute veto where a super-majority is needed--as with the decertification of a plant or company not compliant with labor standards. With the FLA, companies selected to carry out monitoring of labor conditions in alleged sweatshops are picked by the industry, and often have no working relationship with local NGOs. Which plants are to be visited, and when they will be visited, are industry-selected and known in advance. Sanctions against companies found in violation also vary widely. The WRC also espouses a living wage standard for sweatshop workers, a demand notably missing from the FLA.

The campaign to get McCormick to reverse his decision is far from over; it figures to be a major campus issue when school reconvenes in fall. Congrats to WSAS for awakening the normally quiescent UW campus and finally bringing an issue that's sweeping campuses nationwide to Seattle in a big way.--G.P.

Much ado was made in the local sports pages about the "exaggerated" nature of baseball superstar Rickey Henderson's "bad reputation" after his acquisition last month by the Seattle Mariners. He's really a misunderstood, but good, guy, you see. Yet those endless reports centered almost exclusively around things like team chemistry and willingness to hustle. None of the reports mentioned another, more ominous story: Henderson's alleged attacks on women. In July 1991, a woman filed a complaint against him for assault after an argument in a hotel room. And in August 1994, Henderson was sued by his stepsister, who claimed that he raped her repeatedly as a youth, from the time she was eight years old into her teens. (He denied the charges.) Why is it that allegations of bad team chemistry are important, but allegations of assaulting women aren't even mentionable?--G.P.

Hey, what's that smell? It's the stench of another developer-friendly scheme coming out of ex-developer Paul Schell's office: the dramatic upzoning of areas around light rail transit stations planned for Martin Luther King, Jr. Way S. in Rainier Valley. Curiously, it's the city itself that's doing the developing, through the Seattle Housing Authority, which has two major housing projects, Rainier Vista and Holly Park, near proposed stations at Edmunds St. and Othello St. Plans oozing out of the city's planning office and revealed in recent hearings have blindsided neighborhood activists who usually track these things pretty closely--one characterizes the schemes as "an unholy alliance between DCLU, SHA, Sound Transit, and the city." The upzoning would dramatically increase neighborhood density, decrease the amount of low-income housing (supposedly SHA's mission) in Phase III Holly Park and the Rainier Vista remodel, and leave SHA as the landlord of mixed-use commercial developments that would siphon business away from the Rainier Ave. commercial district. All in all, it stinks. Can you say "gentrification"?--G.P.

And speaking of Schell, his performance was abysmal at a recent First A.M.E. Church meeting with black church leaders demanding police accountability. In the wake of the David Walker shooting, nearly 1,000 people, about 70% African-American, packed the church to lambast the city. Instead, they heard Schell waffle and refuse to commit to any kind of meaningful action to rein in a police department that is presently out of control. It showed, once again, what was obvious during the WTO debacle: Schell is incapable of leading the city and controlling his own people, and he should resign for the good of all.--G.P.

Mexico's FBI invaded Chiapas state on May 9. The government initially announced that the PFP (Policia Federal Preventia) had been dispatched to prevent forest fires in the Montes Azules Biopreserve, where, coincidentally, the Zapatistas happen to reside. After this story was laughed out of existence, violent incidents fortuitously occurred, which the government blamed on the Zapatistas. The Zapatistas responded with their own suggestions regarding the source of hostilities. The government then decided that some of the incidents were family disputes over land, and that one of the incidents had never happened at all (despite the government's detailed accounts, including the names of those involved). The government now says the initial fear of unrest was overblown. Chiapas doesn't really need the PFP after all. None of this has embarrassed the PFP in the least. Lest anyone wonder who is in control: after the government insisted that the PFP would not operate in the Montes Azules preserve, the PFP announced they were already active there.

"Security Plan 2000," now ostensibly aimed at confiscating illegal firearms, involves the PFP, army, state police, and the federal attorney general's office. Upon arrival in Chiapas state, PFP agents immediately began operations in Zapatista communities. Residents report increased police and military intimidation. Army patrols are accompanied by immigration inspectors, on the lookout for rebel-friendly tourists. Members of the state legislature National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) joined to denounce the PFP deployment. Speaking for both parties, PRD legislator Jose Juan Ulloa Perez said that the government was engaged in "a clear strategy to destabilize the state and thus be able to increase the number of police agents." A message from the Zapatistas, released on May 11, said that the government is "desperately seeking a way to restart the fighting in Chiapas so as to repair the disastrous electoral campaign of the ruling party candidate [PRI's Labastida] for the presidency." More information can be found at: www.ezln.org, www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/chiapas95.html.