Word: roadblocks
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...night is balmy. The highway is lit by a full moon. Suddenly, as the car crests a hill, there it is, just 50 yards ahead, a terrorist roadblock: two small foreign cars, parked across the pavement. With only a second to react, the driver lunges at the emergency brake to lock the rear wheels, then jams down hard on the brake pedal too. He jerks the steering wheel to the right. The rear of the car twists savagely in a 180° "bootleg" turn...
...brakes again, and just as his car is shuddering to a stop, he slams it into reverse and guns the engine. Seconds later he takes his foot off the gas and turns the steering wheel hard. Tires screaming, the car spins around once more, but is again facing the roadblock. There is no choice now but to pray, step on the gas and try to ram his way through...
...breathless, loses control, can't think. Can't do anything, in fact. Finally he just stops the car. "All you learned just dropped out of your head," Scott chides. The next try is much better. He spins the car into a good J turn, evading a sudden roadblock, and escapes. When Scott concedes that the move was a "reasonable reaction," the student feels as proud as a small boy the first time he manages to stay up on a two-wheeler. Fear turns into exhilaration. He can hardly wait for the next ambush...
...whatever their motives for coming, they share the problems of most immigrants: finding housing and jobs or vocational and linguistic training. They often cannot speak English--and everywhere these immigrants turn, their language is a roadblock. Cambridge has a bilingual department and bilingual training in its scholls, but it cannot serve every Hispanic in the city. The language barrier prevents many immigrants from obtaining any but the most menial jobs, and hampers their efforts to obtain social services. For several years a coalition of minority groups, including Hispanics, has tried to get interpreters at the Cambridge Hospital, but the hospital...
...prospect of declining prosperity. Says Abram Bergson, director of Harvard's Russian Research Center: "Over the coming decade, the Soviets will be lucky if the increase in consumer goods is half what it has been lately." The central planning that helped achieve rapid industrialization has become the roadblock to further economic development...