Demands For Housing Now
Coalition Call End To
wnue Aincan-American leaden
•cron the country are endorsing a
march for affordable housing, North
Carolina Gov. Jim Martin has an
nounced that $516,437 in federal
fronts has been received to provide
cy services to the state’s
i population.
-— from the 1968 Emergency
Community Services Homeless Grant
Program will be distributed among 32
if the state’s Community Action
Agencies and groups serving migrant
and seasonal farmworkers. Wake
Opportunities in Wake County
raesives $10,U5. The grants will be
afalnistered by the Division of
fcooomic Opportunity in the Depart
ment of Natural Resources and Com
munity Development.
Gov. Martin said the funds will
enable the local agencies to provide
urgently needed services to homeless
individuals and to develop follow-up
and long-term care.
Across the nation groups and
organizations are calling for an end to
homelessness and mobilizing to con
vince Congreas add the president of
the critical need for an increase in
federal assistance to address the
crisis.
Housing Now, a broad coalition of
70 national organizations, is sponsor
ing a series of events throughout the
country this summer and fall,
npumi
MB. SHELIA A. NADER
'vXX'iflrfiW
MS. JESSIE COPELAND
RHA Board Elects New
Officers And Chairman
Recently, the Raleigh Housing
Authority Hoard of Commissioners
started Shelia A. Nader as the new
board chair.
Commissioner Nader was ap
lpoiated to the Housing Authority
board in 1985. She has served as
legislative committee chair, a
member of the personnel manage
ment committee, and board vice
chair for the post two years. She is a
mouther of the Wake County League
of Women Voters and served as presi
dent from 1WO-83. She is a vocal ad
vocate for increasing the supply of
housing for low-income and
moderate-income fagntUf and the
oUuty. Her volunteer work in the
coaununity and church has extended
Outgoing chairman William R.
WhsOey, Sr. provided strong leader
ship during his tenure. Commissioner
Wlndley was appointed to the board
in tin and served as chairman for
the post two years. He retired from
state service in 1965 after 35 years.
WbxUey has a high profile in political
circles and is currently employed as
a staff assistant to Rep. David Price.
His civic affiliations have expanded
over broad areas of the Raleigh com
munity.
Jessie Copeland, a resident of the
Chavis Heights community for
almost 38 years, was elected as vice
(See HOUSING. P. 2)
U.S. Racial Politics
The ElectionTacticsOf DavidDuke
ox n.i. suinivn
Special To Tka CAROLINIAN
Aa Analyito
The election of David Duke, the
former grand wizard of the Ku Klux
Man, to a seat in the Louisiana House
of Representatives from a suburban
diatrict was neither a fluke nor an ac
_e’s victory was the result of a
carefully-crafted campaign in a
small, overwhelmingly white district
that has been adversely impacted by
a long economic recession, fear of
crime and paranoid feelings that
fedora! and state tax dollars are be
ing spent to sustain welfare systems,
“—action and minority set
In the February runoff, Duke
received 8,459 votes to 8,232 for his op
ponent, John Treen, brother of a
former Louisiana governor. It is easy
to read too much importance into an
election where fewer than 17,000
voters went to the polls. On the other
hand, Duke’s election marks the first
time in this decade that an
acknowledged member or former
member of the Klan has won election
to a Southern legislature.
His attacks on “wasteful welfare
systems that encourae illegitimate
births, affirmative action and minori
ty set-asides that promote the in
culminating in a massive marcn in
Washington on Oct. 7.
The inarch and rally will bring
together homeless people, advocates,
local and state public officials,
church leaders and others to demand
immediate federal action to restore
billions of dollars in federal funding
which have been cut from the budget
since 1961, and to emphasize that a
permanent solution to homelessness
must be based on guaranteeing op
portunities for all Americans to enjoy
decent and affordable permanent
housing.
Dr. Joseph E. Lowery, president of
the Southern Christian Leadership
conference ana one oi uie conveners
of the coalition, said, “We call upon
the nation to act with a sense of
urgency to eliminate the painful
poverty that is reflected in
homelessness, joblessness arid
underemployment, and afflicts the
nation with results that include loss of
self-esteem and desperation.” ,
In a statement Issued by the na
tional Rainbow Coalition, Rev. Jesse
L. Jackson noted, the 1948 Housing
Act established a federal commit
ment to provide “a decent home and
suitable living environment for every
American family.”
The call for a national campaign
was issued oy national nomeiess ad
vocate Mitch Snyder, Barry Zigas
(president of the National low In
come Housing Coalition), Louisa
Stark (president of the National
Coalition for the Homeless), and
Chris Sprowal (president of the Union
of the Homeless).
Others included National Educa
tion Association President Mary
Futrell, Rabbi David Saperstein, Na
tional Women’s Political Caucus
Chair Irene Natividad, National Ur
ban League Washington Office Direc
tor Robert McAlpine, Congress of Nfa-,
(See HOMELESS, P. 2)
New York State Reviews
Return To Death Penalti
Blacks And
Hispanics
Penalized
Blacks and Hispanics would be
most likely to be sent to the electric
chair if New York reinstates the
death penalty, particularly if they kill
whites, opponents of capital punish
ment charged last Tuesday.
But state Sen. Dale Volker, the
Buffalo-area Republican who spon
sors the death penalty legislation,
said his foes were unfairly using
other states’ experiences. He said
courts are extraordinarily sensitive
to racial discrimination with the
death penalty.
Both sides of the capital punish
ment issue are stepping up their lob
bying efforts as a legislative attempt
to override Gov. Mario Cuomo’s veto
of the death penalty draws near. And
both sides were addressing the ques
tion of racial fairness lastvndu,
’‘It wW be our men who willbe ex
ecuted in the state of New York and
innocent people will be killed,” said
Assemblywoman Cynthia Jenkins, a
Queens Democrat.
Jenkins, who is black, said
statistics prove a death penalty would
be biased against minorities. The
U.S. Supreme Court said in 1976 that
states could impose the death penal
ty. Of the 106 executions nationwide
(See DEATH PENALTY, P. 2)
The North Carolina Coalition on
Adolescent Pregnancy, a statewide
United Way agency dedicated to the
prevention of teen pregnancy, has
released a report titled “The
Myths—The Facts—Family Life
Education in North Carolina
Schools.” This publication describes
research on family life •education in
North Carolina schools. The research
showed that:
•Although North Carolina schools
receive high marks for introducing
family life education relatively early
(78 percent in grades 7 and 9), less
than half (47 percent) provide any in
grades 11 and 12 when teen pregnan
cies rise substantially. Ten thousand
11th and 12th graders became preg
nant in North Carolina in 1987.
•Less than nine hours per year is
spent on family life education during
7th and 9th grades, a small amount of
time for such a complex subject area.
•40 percent or more of the school
districts never cover such topics as
chastity, rape, values and sex, and
sexual exploitation.
•The majority of school districts
reported that less than one percent of
the parents take the option to have
their child excused from family life
education classes.
Barbara Huberman, coalition ex
ecutive director, noted that “We can’t
ignore that 75 teens become pregnant
in North Carolina each day. One key
(See FAMILY LIFE, P. 2)
competent... demonstrate now
skillfully developed code words can
effectively state the racist case
without using the kind of bare
knuckled language usually
associated with the Klan and other
racist groups.
District 81, where Duke won his vic
tory, is located in Metairie (pro
nounced Met-er-ree), a suburb of
New Orleans, a city with a 80 percent
black majority and serious crime
problems.
District 81 has only 43 registered
biack voters out of an electorate of
19,000. Its residents are a mi.: of
wealthy, middle
1
.1 s. $
tensely conservative, having given
former President Ronald Reagan and
President George Bush more than 85
percent of its votes in the 1884 and
1988 elections.
One cannot look at the Duke victory
without taking into account the fact
that Louisiana has been
economically devastated since the
1984 collapse of oil prices. The state
has lost more than 450,000 jobs in the
last four years. More than 100,000
jobs have been lost in the New
Orleans-Metairie area alone.
Equally depressing has been the
state’s brain drain. Many middle
class families have seen one or more
college-educated children leave the
state for better economic oppor
tunities elsewhere. Crime has steadi
ly risen and spread to the suburbs.
Much of Louisiana’s middle class is in
a tax revolt, feeling that tax in
creases will benefit the less fortunate
while impacting negatively on the
middle-class quality of life.
In this environment, David Duke
has flourished. At 38, he is no
newcomer to the racist game. While a
student at Louisiana State University
in the early 1970s, he proclaimed
himself the leading campus advocate
of white supremacy, attacking blacks
and Jews. While at LSU, he founded
the White Youth Alliance, a group af
filiated with the neo-Nasl National
Socialist White People’s Party of Arl
ington, Va.
After graduating, Duke exchanged
his swastika for a Klan robe and
became a full-time racist, rising
quickly to become a grand wizard in a
faction of the Ku Klux Klan. The Anti
Defamation League began monitor
ing Duke during his years at LSU and
a voluminous file
average in Louisiana in education*
and income. The district also has one
of the state's highest percentages of
residents over the age of 60. It is in
juMsnt umc.ni
INSIDE
AFRICA
BY DANIEL MAROLEN
Professor David Webster’s
gangster-style assassination at his
-Johannesburg home recently was a
r lesson in blood for South African
' whites. Webster, who taught an
thropology at the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, was
fatally shot by three white men
traveling in a car.
In today’s South Africa such
assassinations are commonplace and
■are no surprise when they occur,
especially if the victim belongs to one
or other of the banned anti-apartheid
organizations which President Botha
and his racist regime hate like the
plague.
Webster held a prominent position
in the multiracial United Democratic
Front, South Africa’s largest anti
ajprtheid organization which was
^mnftd with 16 others under Presi
dent Botha’s state of emergency pro
clamation. No wonder he was
assassinated.
The brutal murder of Webster
. shocked and angered numerous South
Africas of all races because they lov
ed his staunch fight for democratic
rights for every South Africa, ir
respective of race, color or creed.
But, more importantly, Professor
Webster’s death was a lesson for all
white South Africans who are not
“Afrikaners” or “Boors,” like David
Webster, The lesson of this dastardly
murder is that apartheid poses the
same danger to non-Afrikaner whites
in South Africa as it does to in
digenous Africans. Apartheid
discriminates againsts South African
Jews, Englishmen and Frenchmen,
merely because they aren’t
“Afrikaners” or “Boers.”
Because South African Jews,
Englishmen and Frenchmen are not
Afrikaners, they wield no power in
(See INSIDE AFRICA. P. 2)
Library Opens
After $360,000
Refurbishing
The Wake County Public Library
System announces the reopening of
the renovated Richard B. Harrison
Library. The branch, located at 1313
New Bern Avenue in Raleigh, will
have an opening ceremony at 6 p.m.
on Monday, June 12.
The newly renovated facility was
designed by architect Kurt Eichen
burger of Raleigh. The renovations
which cost $360,000 include new fur
nishings. new {Mint, carpeting, win
(See LIBRARY, P. 2)