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Unfair Blast At Toussaint

To the Editor:

TWU Local 100 lore has it that President John Lawe went hat in hand to see Governor Hugh Carey in 1982 to mitigate Taylor Law loss of dues check-off four months into an 18-month penalty period. The dots were never formally connected, but many averred that that these men with roots in the Emerald Island made common cause to stand TWU Local 100 back on its feet again financially, following the 1980 transit strike.

The thread of ethnicity that continues across the decades through our political world in New York places our Governor Paterson, a man with roots in the English-speaking Caribbean, in league with the TWU Local 100 President with roots in Trinidad. The two leaders proudly stood shoulder to shoulder at this year's massive West Indian Day Parade. Their photo together was worth a thousand words.

As Lawe was to Carey, so Toussaint is to Paterson. Eight short months following the latter's inauguration, TWU Local 100 was restored to financial health after close to 17 months without dues check-off. Once more we find that ties that bind are the ties that bind, or put another way, the blood is thicker than the mud. And if Lawe got it done this way and never gave up the story, why shouldn't the same hold for Toussaint? Like it or not, this is the way of politics in New York.

Station Agent Marty Goodman, who lambasted Roger Toussaint on this issue, needs a refresher course on TWU Local 100 history. John Lawe had to promise to never threaten to strike again. The penalty for doing so would have been reinstatement of loss of check-off. The current TWU Local 100 president had to follow a similar procedure.

The character played by Richard O'Brien in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) led his fellow Transylvanians in a signature dance called the "Time Warp." Lest he be confused with this character in the castle of that cult movie, it's time that Marty Goodman learned a few new steps.

RUSS SMITH