RALEIGH, N. C
VOL. 49, NO. 41
TUESDAY
APRIL 17,1990
flMHHHHHW .....
N.C.'s Semi-Weekly
DEDICATED TO THE SPIRIT OF JESUS CHRIST
SINGLE COPY f\C
IN RALEIGH £.00
ELSEWHERE 300
REV. JESSE JACKSON
JacksonsThe
Farm Crisis
Is Growing
Farm Income
At Its Lowest
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (AP>—
Favorable reports from the
federal government are
misleading because the family
farm crisis not only still exists
but is expanding, the Rev. Jesse
Jackson said last week.
During an appearance at the
all-day musical benefit to raise
money for economically troubled
farmers, the civil rights leader
painted a grim picture for the
concert recipients.
“Since 1980, we’ve lost about
75,000 farms largely because
farmers couldn’t earn enough
from their crops to pay their
bills,’’ he said during a news con
ference and then later repeated
on stage to the concert crowd.
Jackson said reports from
Secretary of Agriculture Clayton
Yeuttei cite tarm income’at
record levels, a point some Farm
Aid critics have raised as
evidence this concert, the fourth
of its series, was unnecessary.
But Jackson countered the
criticism.
“What [ Yeutter] doesn’t say is
that when the numbers are ad
justed for inflation farm income
in the last decade was at its
lowest since 1910,” the former
presidential candidate said. “He
doesn’t mention the 50 million
Americans drinking con
taminated water or the risk of
salmonella in corporate
produced chicken and the syn
thetic growth hormones that are
fed to our cows.”
Flanked by farm leaders and
performers, Jackson wore a
Farm Aid tee-shirt, a black wind
breaker and a baseball cap. He
toM reporters at the news con
ference that the government
needed to establish an economic
(See JESSE JACKSON, P. 2)
State Revenue Shortfalls
Budget Ax May Slash Local Jobs
BY W. MASON. JR.
Staff Writer
Some heads are going to roll. Pro
grams will be cut. Some services will
be reduced. Some state workers may
lose their jobs. Others who were hop
ing to get jobs won’t get them.
The State of North Carolina is try
ing to handle a $400 million budget
shortfall.
Officials overestimated, thinking
they were going to generate more
state revenues from taxes and other
funding sources than actually came
in. In other words, the state spent
money it didn’t have. And now, since
the money is already spent, officials
are scrambling to figure out how
they’re going to balance the budget
by the July 1 deadline.
And the ax already has begun to
slice a path through state education
and road programs, two of the state’s
biggest funding sources.
Local school system officials will
be wielding the budget ax over the
next few weeks as they look for close
to $40 million to cut from their
budgets. The $40 million reduction
will be distributed on a per-student
basis with the reductions based on $36
per average daily membership in
schools.
State Superintendent Bob
Etheridge and James 0. Barber,
assistant superintendent for financial
services, met with finance officers
and superintendents from each of the
state’s eight education regions on
April 5. At this meeting, the decision -
was made to allow officials of each
local school system to make their own
decisions on how to reduce expen
ditures. Possible options mentioned
at that meeting included delaying
summer school, putting a freeze on
hiring non-instructional positions and
making cuts in staff training.
Etheridge said he is particularly
concerned that small school systems
will have a difficult time with the
reductions.
“This late in the school year, it will
be very hard for local systems to find
these funds. With many local officials
presenting their budgets to county
commissioners at this time, it makes
it even more difficult to ask local
government for the funds.
“I am concerned that any further
reductions could have a direct impact
on children in classrooms across the
state. At a time when we keep talking
about the need to improve education,
cutting funds for education sends a
poor message to local educators.”
State education officials will con
tinue to monitor the budget situation
to see if revisions to the $40 million
cut will have to be made.
The state’s largest school system,
(See BUDGET AX, P. 2)
woman Beaten
DEPUTIES TRAIL RAPE SUSPECT
Victim
Met Man
At Club
Wake County deputies are continu
ing to search for a man who raped
and beat a Sanford woman early this
month.
Deputies said the woman was at
tacked after she was offered a ride
home. The man was described as a
black man in his late 20s about 6 ft., 2
. inches. He was also described as slim
with a short hair style. Deputies said
he was driving a greenish gray four
door Buick built in the late 1980s.
Deputies said the victim, 28, had
gone with two male friends to the
Casablanca Club in New Hill
Holleman Road in the New-Hill com
munity in the extreme southwest cor
ner of the county.
According to deputies, at about 1:80
a.m., the woman’s friends began
arguing with each other in the park
ing lot and she decided to leave.
Deputies said at that point the
woman asked a man to drive her to a
nearby house, deputies said the
woman did not know the man.
Deputies said that the man drove her
down a dirt road near the Shearon
■ Harris Nuclear Plant, began beating
her on the head with a gun and then
raped her in the car.
In other news, a man who was
released from the Wake County Jail
on bond last year while awaiting a
drug trial is continuing to be process
ed by the court system.
The man was arrested on charges
of trafficking in more than 300 doses
of crack cocaine with a street value of
more than $8,000, authorities said.
Parrish ‘Flip’ Griffith, 23, of 210 yi.
64th Street in New York, was arrested
in Raleigh, deputies said.
(See CRIME, P. 2)
FOUNDATION AWARDS—During the recent Jackin
Robinson Foundation A words Dinner hold in Now York City,
MMor Browing Company Piasidont Leonard fioldstain (right)
chats with New York Mayor David Dinkins (centei) and
Charles Schmid, Mier senior vice president of marketing.
Jk
Boldsteln served ss s vice chairman of the event. More
then $300,000 was raised to support the foundation,
which provides educational and leadership development
programs for urban youth.
The Clock Is Ticking Away Un A
Black Vs. White Confrontation
W. MASON, JR.
Sun Writer
An Aaaljria
Time is about to run out.
The upsurge in racial tension in this
country that has been boiling like a
pot of unattended water is about to
spill over into violence in the street
like we’ve never seen it before.
Older people who have been
through the turbulent 60s are so
scared of what’s about to happen that
they have to ignore it and pretend it
Lack Of Good Hangout
Causes Americans To ‘Miss Out
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP)-Moet
Americans are missing out on an
essential part of life because they
have no “great good place" to meet
Mends, discuss the day's events or
Just hang out, says sociologist Ray
Oldenburg.
H» neighborhood tavern is a
example of such a place but it
and other great good places, in
cluding the cafe, coffee house,
general store, barber shop, beauty
' parlor and even the laundromat, are
fading from the American scene,
says the University of West Florida
professor.
“It’s as though there is a con
certed effort to shut down the infor
mai public life of society,” Oldenburg
said in a recent interview.
The number of taverns, for in
stance, has dropped from 152,000 to
fewer than 50,000 in the last 40 years,
he said.
Oldenburg blames the insulating
effects of suburbs, shopping malls,'
zoning laws, automobiles, television
1
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anu other features of modern
American life. The consequences, he
says, are bad for the individual, the
community and the country.
“These kind of places used to be
the grassroots democratic cells,’’
Oldenburg said. “People found out
their common problems and
discovered their common strengths.
It is a far cry from sitting home and
watching Walter Cronkite give you IS
minutes and then tell you ‘That’s how
it is,’ and you can’t argue with it at
ail.”
The loss of the informal meeting
.place also is taking a toll on the
human spirit, Oldenburg contends.
"If people are atomised, if they don’t
get together... they become docile
employees and voracious
consumers,” Oldenburg said.
“You’ve got to find contentment
oOlIlcWnoTc •
That somewhere, he believes,
shouldn’t be home or work, both too
insular, but a third place, a home
away from home where people can
find novelty, perspective, friendship
and Just plain fun.
Oldenburg has put his provocative
argument into a book, “The Great
Good Place,” published in January
by Paragon House and already in its
third printing. It has mads Oldenburg
a national guru of Informal meeting
and what be calls “the art of
been quoted and his book
reviewed by some of the
.Heleda
on a bar
■,Wts., where
(See HANGOUTS, P.l)
doesn’t exist in order to cope with dai
ly living.
Younger people, that post 60s
generation, is so ignorant of what
happened during that period, they
don’t know what’s about to occur.
In case you missed it, the small,
peaceful town of Teaneck, N.J. turn
ed into a war zone last week after a
white city police officer shot and kill
ed a 16-year-old African-American
youth following the officer’s routine
sweep to remove young African
Americans from the street corners.
The youth, who police said had a
gun, ran away and was chased by the
officer, who finally shot the youth
during an altercation that even the ci
ty police don’t have all the details
tsee CLOCK TICKING, P. 2).
Earth Day Looks
At Protecting
Our Environment
BY DR. ALBERT JABS
An Analysis
One does not have to be a Thomas
Malthus to know that we may have
turned the environment into an
enemy. According to a study released
by the Institute for Southern Studies,
the South’s environmental health is
less protected and in worse condition
than that of any other region.
What can you and I do? For one
thing, we should put political
pressure on all elected officials and
mandate national, state and local
policies which improve the environ
ment. Secondly, every school board
in the country must insist that a
course in ecology be required for
every elementary and secondary stu
dent. Thirdly, that the media be more
accountable in producing programs
which nave environmental and
ecological lessons.
With 5.3 billion people in the world,
and 95 million more mouths to feed
each year, the church, educa titm and
government must work to meet this
growing challenge. As shortages in
(See EARTH DAY. P. 2)
INSIDE
AFRICA
JOHANNESBURG, South
Africa—Nelson Mandela said recent
ly the country’s black farm laborers
are being exploited and called on
rural towns to end segregated public
facilities.
“No white farmer has yet gone to
prison for the murder of one of their
workers, nor will that happen as long
as farmers continue to enjoy the pro
tection of local police and
magistrates,’’ the anti-apartheid
leader said at an African National
Congress rally in Nelspruit.
He cited the case of a white farmer
who was recently fined only $34 after ■
his black worker died as a result of a
beating.
In other developments: In Pieter
maritzburg, facitonal fighting con
tinues, despite recent promises of ac
tion by President F.W. de Klerk. The
South African government has yet to
show significant progress in stopping
the fighting that has pushed black
communities to the brink of civil war.
Ten days ago, de Klerk told Parlia-1J
(See INSIDE AFRICA, P^%)
Working In The
Home Becoming A
Trend Of The 90s
The home office ha*, become the latest trend, bringing with it
word* such a* "telecommuting," "flexiplace,” and "worksteading.”
But reality ii different from theory, according to an article in the
current issue of Esquire, and the house workplace dream can turn in
to a nightmare of lower pay and fewer benefits.
The concept of the worker liberated from the workplace goes
back to the 1970s when futurists such as writer Alvin Toffler began to
predict that technology would relocate work. Toffler wrote that peo
ple would be drawn back home, toward a harmonious “electronic
cottage."
The word telecommuter was conceived by a Californian named
Jack Niles as he sat dead-still one morning on the Santa Monica
Freeway, staring at a sign that flashed "maintain your speed.”
A survey by LINK Resources reports that M.6 million people,
nearly a quarter of the work force, currently work at home.
The actual trend and the lifestyle achieved by working at home,
however, remain way behind the operative fantasy.
The LINK Resources figure at M.< million people already work
ing at home includes anybody who reports they do some work at
home—even late-night labor brought home in a briefcase.
The full-time home work force is growing rapidly, but it now in
cludes only 9.7 million of the M.9 million. If yen define telecom
muters as those sUU connected to a company via computer network
lines, the number liTjust under three million.
Another apparent myth Involves being a productive worker and a
(See WORKING TREND. P. 2)