Newspapers / The Carolina Times (Durham, … / Dec. 11, 1982, edition 1 / Page 18
Part of The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
18-THE CAROLINA TIMES-SATUROAY, DECEMBER 11. 1982 Editorials Business In The Black Let’s Not Sqoander Our Resources White House Recommends Waste Dui'ham’s black community has quite a significant cache of im portant resources. ■ ^ We have a soUd financial base upon which to build a strong economic movement. We have a strong academic base upon which we can build a powerful movement for individual success. What we lack though is a creative, bold and imaginative strategy that will help us effectively manage and allocate these Therefore, we believe that Durham’s black business, academic and political leadership should begin spearheading the formation of a “think tank” for the black community. The role of this “think tank” is both simple and complex. First, it would be a gathering point of information and data perti nent to the success and effectiveness of black people here. Se cond, it would begin crafting that creative, bold and imaginative strategy we need. ^ ...... Finally, the “think tank” would also communicate its findings, conclusions and r^ommendations to the public-at-large and help motivate them to action. The overall goal of this “think tank” would be.to help us effec tively manage our resources. For example: * What can’the black community do to keep Mechanics and Farmers Bank, and Mutual Savings and Loan from being swallowed up, as the financial industry continues toward total deregulation. , * What can be done to not only increase the numbers, but also the quality and success of Durham’s black businesses? * What'can be done to maximize the transition from school to work for our students? , The questions go on and on because there is indeed much to be done. So we call on the leadership of North Carolina Mutual, Mechanics and Farmers Bank, Mutual Savings and Loan, NCCU, the city schools, the Durham Business and Professional Chain, the NAACP, the Durham Committee, and ourselves to at least sit down early in 1983 and discuss the idea. The goal of this first meeting will be to determine if we can develop a “think tank,” or some other mechanism, if necessary, that helps to protect rather than squander our considerable resources in this community. The Breakthrough Shift Bishop W.H. ^ MILES Thousands of Negroes had been segregated from churches right after the Civil War. Under the ieadeship of Bishop Miies and Bishop. R.H. Vanderhorst they founded the’ Coiored Methodist Church, (Episcopat), in 1870. Age Before Bullets By Charles E. B Two hundred fifty billion dollars is enough money to. operate the state of California for a decade without one cent ‘ in taxes. It is also the minimum amount of money to be spent by the swords of war in the White House this fiscal year. Fighting a war is expensive even if no shots are fired by either side. Since the USSR is committed to protecting its interests, it is hopeless to imagine frightening the victors of the German Fuehrer to falling to their feet at the very sight of new weapons. .Especially a “dune buggy”. The U.S. Army’s newest fast attack vehicle is a $25,000 “dune buggy” job. Fat tires to match fat heads no doubt. It is doubtful this four wheel contraption could compete with a $2,000 three wheel Honda “big red” on rough open terrain. To be taken seriously, the Defense Department requires a reorganization of the U.S. Army. Navy and Air Force at the very top of command. Otherwise, a conti- nuing*waste of taxpayers money will make a mp'ckery of the U.S. military. A sihgle Soviet rifle shot could cause the loss of $25,000 and the life of an individual hop ping around in one of those unprotected skeleton cars. Concern is center in the White House not on military spending waste but cuts in social security benefits. Before the blood letting of programs to benefit the poor the people who operate the White House only wish they could cut social security benefits. But the President has now push ed them to the point of no return. He ha& foreclosed many options for dealing with a projected budget deficit of $200 billion by ruling out both any cutback in his defense buildup and any new taxes. To take funds from any other part of the federal budget means to fool with social security benefits. By this time, ev most conservative middle-class voter can see whose ox is going gored. It HS suspected that much of tl billion weapons budget to pay work exorbitant wages. Wages not subje the social security tax which wonl tribute to the strength of the social ty plan. Wait, there’s worse new projected cost of 39 major w systems for all three military servii escalated to a total of $452 billion year — $1.6 billion above estimate just three months earlier. Enough to make ends meet for at least six based on a short fall projection o million in social security Reasoning and reconsidering the recommend a change in White •rhetoric, if not residents. Public Works Employment By Congressman Augustus F. Ha After almost twenty years of fighting both real and imagined battles for Durham’s poor. Operation Breakthrough has been forced to change directions. From an agency that used federal money to do for the poor what no one believed the poor could do for themselves. Breakthrough must now become an agency that teaches poor peo ple to do for themselves. The success or failure of this shift pivots on the ability of Breakthrough and its clients to quickly unlearn old error and learn new truth. The old error is the philosophy that teaches poor people that their poverty is definitely not their fault. The new truth is the understanding that no matter whose fault it is, the poor person must accept the challenge and the respon sibility of changing poverty to success. The old approach has not worked. For nearly two decades now. Breakthrough has been fighting, ori beh^f of black poor people, for integration, voting rights and other anti-racist laws. But the people who were poor then are, for the most part, poor now. . Then we said that in addition to racism, the system was just wrong, too. So again, community action agencies and other groups joined the fray, seeking to change the system. The goal, they said, was to give poor people easier and more effective access to the system. And so it has been, through food stamps, bigger, better and scattered subsidized housing, program after program, the poor are still poor. So now. Breakthrough, forced by the new block grant concept in program financing, seeks to change the client, rather than simply alter the system. But the task will not be easy, because, first all, competition for the dwindling resources is keen and there is some question of Breakthrough’s ability to achieve competitive efficiencies and productivity levels. By far, the biggest problem Breakthrough faces is changing the attitudes of poor people who for years have been taught that poverty is not their fault. In addition, many of them equate help with instant gratifica tion. R6al help is that which gives a person a solid foundation upon which to build a solid and productive future. That’s the bottom line of Breakthrough’s new shift. It behooves this entire community to pitch in and do whatever we can do to help Breakthrough overcome the obstacles and achieve this goal. To do nothing, to stand by idly by not only virtually dooms Breakthrough to extinction, but is also dooms poor people to a kind of living death as technologytontinues to remove any need for the poor. We live in a complex society full of competing interests. We see that dynamic competition at work each day in a wide range of settings. Senior citizens organize and lobby for programs of benefit to themselves. Groups choose sides on the issues. It is rare, though, that we find a situation where the needs of the nation as a whole can be served by applying the ef forts and energy of competing groups to the solution of the problems of many. Much earlier in our history as a nation, it has been proved that certain of our seemingly competing national needs and priorities can be coordinated to the mutual benefit of both the specific in terest groups and to the overall society. In recognition of the severe unemploy ment problem faced by a nation in the depths of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt in his May 6, 1935 Executive Order established the .Works Progress Ad ministration (WPA). According to the Executive Order, the Works Progress Ad ministration (WPA) was, in part, established to “be responsible to the President for the hondkt, efficient, speedy and coordinated execution of the work relief program as a whqle, and for the ex ecution of that program in such a manner as to move from the relief rolls to work on such projects or in, private employment the maximum number of persons in the shortest time possible. The dual and widely stated purposes of the program were: (1) to give public work to people in need of jobs and (2) with these people to build useful public im provements or perform useful public ser vices. The largest portion of WPA funds (79%) were applied to three types of con struction projects: (1) 517,431 miles of public highways, roads and streets, (2) construction of 25,796 hew public buildings and the rehabilitation of 67,724 existing structures and (3) construction of 1,736 new utilities, improvement of 914 utilities and additions to 78 utilities. The contribution to society of the WPA workers and those in the Civilian Conser vation Corps, alone, is immeasurable. Roughly 75% of all CCC camps were employed under the. direction of the United States Forest Service. The work of the CCC enrollees covered many areas in need of attention: fighting forest fires, forest conservation, reforestation, conser vation of wildlife, preservation and restoration of historical sites and monuments, irrigation projects, the building of dams and canals and insect and rodent control.. Subsequent estimates are that the CCC workers alone advanced rehabilitation of the American range by ten todwenty years. There are some similarities ..between the America of fifty years- ago' and the America of today. While our current unemployment rate of 10.4% is nowhere near the 24% rate of unemployment in 1935, the current unemployment rate is the highest since World War II. In 1935, as today, there was the waning expecta tion that the economic downturn would be succeeded by a miraculous economic upturn. Then as now, the nun households seeking outside assista growing. At a recent emergency meetinj U.S. Conference of Mayors, may state health officials met to desci national crisis of caring for the he the poor, the cold and the hungry Arthur Holland of Trenton, Ne« typically said 'of the situation in “I’ve been in public service since 1 this is the first time we’ve had a si chen. More and more people are to the mayor's office asking for a stay at night.'*' ' It seems that we have again co period in our history where we mu dinate the energies, efforts and n competing national priorities mutual benefit of the competing and the society as a whole. Studie WPA enrollees have shown that tl majority of the workers did nc charity, rather they wanted a cli work. We do not have to do any today to determine that the mill unemployed Americans desire to opposed ro depending on the chat society, and in many cases doing the basic necessities of life. We must develop jobs program give needed employment to large of unemployed Americans and wl ply the efforts of these workers to provement of the society as a wl this way, we as a nation can birds with one stone.” APRI Andropov’s Mandate By Bayard Rustin On November 2nd tens of millions of American voters freely exercised their electoral franchise and voted in democratic elections. The results of that election — substantial gains for the Democratic Party — were interpreted as a repudiation of Reagonomics and a shift away from the administration. Some ten days later a second election occurred in the USSR. This one was not a nationwide referendum. In fact that elec tion, although its repercussions are worldwide, involved a more limited number of voters — an even dozen in fact. No voter registration campaigns were conducted in that election. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers did not man the phones to assure that voters went to the polls. No issues were openly debated nmong the contending candidates vying for public favor. Instead a dozen elderly men decided the direction of a world superpower in the shrouded .secrecy of a Kremlin meeting room. When Yuri Andropov emerged as the victor, he did so without the benefit of a broad national consensus. He was the in strument of the far narrower eoncensus of the totalitarian Soviet state. In our country much press speculation focused on what policy changes the shift in leadership might augur. Andropov, for fifteen years the head of a brutal Soviet Secret Police, was curiously touted by some as a closet liberal. Others more cor rectly cited his years of ruthlessness as director of the world’s most feared securi ty apparatus. Few commentators, however, focused, on the larger picture — the role of interest groups in the totalitarian state. Interest groups do indeed exist in Soviet society. However, these groups are different from the interest groups in our own country. All are devoted to a rigid party line. Only those groups which preserve the Soviet dictatorship are permittted to partake in shaping of public policy. Independent in terest groups, representing the desires of workers, national minorities and religious groups, are not permitted to make their voices heard in the debate over official policy. Thus anyone who emerges to replace a fallen leader cannot be expected to em bark upon a fundamentally different course. The power interests — the army, the secret police, the party bureaucracy — would not countenance such a change. In this regard the selection (actually, something akin to a coronation) of Com rade Yuri Andropov, is not like the politieal choices that you and I are entitl ed to make every Election Day. Andropov’s mandate is far more nar row. In the final analysis, under the. Soviet dictatorship the Andropo date can only be the mandate predecessors — to brutally repress sent and preserve the power of an ched dictatorial elite; to keep thi powderkeg from exploding. L.E. AUSTIN Editor-Publisher 1927-1971 [USPS 091-380] (Mrs.) Vivian Austin Edmonds Editor-Publisher Kenneth W. Edmonds General Manager Milton Jordan Executive Editor C. Warren Massenburg Advertising Director L.M. Austin Production Supervisor Curtis T. Perkins Contrlbubng Editor-Foreign AfWd • • • Published every Thursday (dated Saturda the week lollewing Christmas) In Durham. United Publishers, Incorporated. Mailini P.O. Box 3825, Durham, N.C, 27702-3* located at 923 Old Fayetteville Shoot, Oa 27701. Second Class Postage paid at Oord Carolina 27702. Four Great Lies Of Control Volume 60, Number 49. ♦ That white people are omnipresent, all-knowing, practically infallible, and that racism is an aberration of character. ♦ That success for blacks In this country is based more on our abilities to keep secrets from whites than upon skill and execution. But, of course, if you believe this lie, along with the first one, success is impossible. * That progress for blacks in America can be measured only In the light of white benevolence. Thus, there are no really talented, skilled or committed. .blacks, only blacks upon whom whiles have smiled. • That above all things, blacks cannot trust each other — which of course, 'leaves us in the psychologically suicidal position of trying to trust whites. POSTMASTER: Send address chaa* CAROLINA TIMES, P.O. Box 3825, Doll 27702-3825. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: One year. S • 48c sales tax lor North Carolina rosidaj copy 30c. Postal regulations REQUIRE a* merit on suhscriptions. Address all com* and make all chocks payable to: THt TIMES. NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRES Amalgamated Publishers, Inc., 45 West* New York, Now York 10036. Member: United Press International Pl« National Newspaper Publishers Assoc® Carolina Black Publishers Association. Opinions expressed by columnist newspaper do not necessarily represents this newspaper.
The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Dec. 11, 1982, edition 1
18
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75