Newspaper Page Text
May 18, 1995
8
GOING PLACES
Let’s save our city
he media has spread the unhappy
word around our nation that Augus
ta now faces the possibility of finan
cial bankruptcy.
This surprising and embarrassing news
should prompt everyone to start immedi
ately toward putting our financial house in
order.
Basic services to residents should not be
affected. In the meanwhile, basic fairness
should be accorded our city employees.
There is widespread criticism and con
cern in the community about the layoff of
skilled, loyal and valuable employees. The
case of Gary Bussey is said to be a prime
example, with him learning about his own
layofY from the media.
We have been operating too long “living
high on the hog” like a big city of 250,000,
wherein we have less than 45,000. There
must be a change. While there will be pain
and disagreement, let’s pull together coop
eratively and save our city now.
By discussion, and sound and innovative
planning and action, we can and must save
our 260-year old city.
While I know that a great deal of earnest
discussion is being put forward by many,
may I just throw in a few observations
which may be helpful?
Retirement. If there are some 20 to 30
persons eligible, let the process move for
ward. No replacements. Immediate freeze
Public education must
be spared the budget ax
T heturbulent political weatherin Wash
ington bodes ill for public education,
especially urban school districts.
The threatened rescission of federal fund
ing for schools, not to mention the talk of
eliminating the U.S. Department of Educa
tion entirely, meansitis showtime at last for
systemic school reform.
The world today bears little resemblance
to that of a mere half decade ago, much less
a generation ago. Communism has crum
bled, and market economies reign supreme.
This ruthless competitive world waits for no
nation, no corporation, no ethnic group and
no individual. Should any competitor falter,
there’s always an emerging country; a lean,
mean start-up company; an entrepreneur;
or an eager immigrant poised to fill the void.
In such a cut-throat economic environ
ment, all youngsters must possess state-of
the-art competencies, such as critical think
ing and computer skills, in order to compete
in the labor market. Crudely put, if they are
not equipped to put something on the table,
they will not be at the table of opportunity in
the 21st century.
The challenge is especially daunting for
low-income youngsters in struggling inner
city schools who start out so far away from
the table. Yet if the rhetoric that reformers
espouse — “all children can learn” — is ever
tobecome reality, the pace of positive change
in urban school districts must escalate, and
soon.
It strikes me there are several levers for
effecting systemic educational change:
*Establishing national academicgoalsthat
set competency standards for all students to
meet, and for all school systems to see that
students meet. *
*Formulating a crisp and convincing vi
sion of the kind of education we want for all
kids and communicating that vision aggres
sively, sothat opinion leaders and the public
— including non-parents, business leaders,
and the media — understand and embrace
the vision. _
Providing adequate financing for public
education so that educators have the where
withal to do their work and all children have
equitable access to learning tools, from text-
o Charles W. Walker
Publisher
Frederick Benjamin
W FO CU S Managing Editor
Dot T. Ealy
Marketing Director
Since 1981 ' Rcl-' e daE j°“ S
: opy Editor
A Walker Group Publication Extma s
roduction
1143 Laney Walker Blvd. pESTRTRTER.
Augusta, GA 30901 Reporter
T Jimmy Carter
724-7855 Distribution
Derick Wells
Art Director
Sheila Jones
Display Advertising
Faye Davis
seß e T
AUGUSTA FOCUS
J. Philip Waring offers sug
gestions for averting a financial
calamity in the city of Augusta.
on all but necessary spending.
Salary cuts. There must be deep salary
cuts downward from the very top in order
to minimize the layoffs. We must spread
the pain.
Tax increase. There’s not been an Au
gusta tax increase in many years. The
world will not end.
Increase water rates. Look now at
how to cut back on and terminate expens
es on physical capital expansion.
Travel. Immediate cut-back and termi
nation on out-of-town and local travel
however it is possible.
Suggestions. Get ideas in from all staff
members. Let's have everyone participate.
Collection of unpaid fees and monies
owed our city.
Frequent auditing and financial ex
aminations, and public exposure. Let’s
see where we are now and publish our
goals for future months.
Volunteers. Use them when possible
and practical.
Yes, let’s save our 260-year-old city from
financial disaster. God bless us all in this
endeavor!
Hugh B. Price sounds the
alarm over the threatened
rescission of federal funding for
public schools. School change
needs to be accelerated for
poor inner-city students, if they
are to compete.
books to technology, to profit fully from
instruction.
*Modernizing teacher training, induc
tion, and professional development sothat
educators have the skills and habits of
mind to serve children, in all socioeco
nomic circumstances, well.
*Empowering parents and guardians to
function as sophisticated, insistent, and
yes, constructive consumers of their chil
dren’s education.
*Providing for some form of choice with
in public school systems to keep educators
on their toes and give parents genuine
options if they are unhappy.
*Making certain there is an adequate
development infrastructure in place after
school and over the summer to support
the social development of youngsters, es
pecially preteens and teen-agers, in ways
that reinforce their formal education.
Some five years ago, I suggested that
public education had a decade at the out
side to shore up its credibility and recap
ture public confidence. The seismic elec
tions last fall, and their aftermath, con
firm that the soul-searching is now well
underway, at least within the souls of
lawmakers. Many programmatic cows
long considered sacred are feeling the
Congressional scalpel. Even Big Bird’s
wings seem sure to be clipped.
We have found so much that does work.
It’s time now to take school reform to the
next plateau by reaffirming these reforms
that are so crucial — to children, to public
education as an institution, and finally, to
democracy.
Editorial
CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNAL
In the valley of the shadow of death
tthe beginning ofthis
Ayearthere were 2,976
Americans on death
row. In a country where
African Americans make up
12 percent of the popula
tion, 40 percent of those on
deathrow areblack. Insome
states, like Pennsylvania,
that percentage approach
es 60 percent. They are
those who live daily in the
valley of the shadow of
death, in the words of
Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is
on death row in Pennsylva
nia.
You hear a lot of talk to
day about the death penal
ty, whether in the govern
ment’s resolve to invoke the
death penalty for those re
sponsible for the Oklahoma
City bombing, or in the case
of Susan Smith, the mother
accused of killing her sons
in South Carolina, or in the
mouths of politicians seek
ing tosound tough on crime.
What you do not hear about
are the hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of death penal
ty cases where innocent
people are convicted or
where poor or black prison
ersreceive very inadequate
legal advice. Here is one
such story.
Girvies Davisis scheduled
to be executed by the state
oflllinoison May 17. Girvies
Blacks goingindependentin’96
hough the media
I haven’t covered it,
political leaders of
both parties and all Black
elected officials should take
note: the New York State
Black Political Convention,
attended by over 300 dele
gates from across the state,
issued a resounding repu
diation of outmoded Afri
can-American political al
legiances and charted a new
course for the future of our
community. While the con
vention discussed and
passed resolutions on tradi
tional social issues from
drugs to education, it also
passed a strongly worded
resolution giving unquali
fied support to a move by
the Black community into a
third party. It backed a pro
gram for ballot access re
form. And in a striking re
buff of Black elected
officialdom, the delegates
voted to support term lim
its.
These votes capped what
has been 15 years of work to
bring independent politics
and support for a break with
the Democratic Party into
the mainstream of African-
American political life. This
has not been an easy pro
cess. When I ran for presi
dent in 1988 as an indepen
dent, becoming the first Af
rican-American presiden
tial candidate ever to be on
the ballot in all 50 states, I
was attacked by much of
the Black political establish
ment for endangering our
relationship to the Demo
George Bush quits the National Rifle Association.
(R N\ ' e NRA!
'Q h \ . %N\QA?%AGU” TE‘ EVERY
\\‘ ~_ R
“ . : - N ! =
“"l ) 1\" ILY ——————e— (‘UN; LOADw 4 ”‘
Ry ‘\" s&' == B . el
b~ "'!' — T
lh 1 .|‘ §:" L 1 ’:u",'-."n ‘ E \" >,~'s‘ l\ . (\:‘V"'Jfi
WA |"” - it E q 7 l v N
e — ' i—= T
% AR | I wiil
E e AN 1€ PUT e ' i e
: A K / |l|'; S Afi 1! [ 5 "., |
T| A éb‘v o MW' Qi ()
! ” }/‘ ¥ ‘ \ q ‘ {\'Pfi*" ‘!ifl:;‘%'wnn Tt
I T| T N
i =@ AP RN R Ll
Sy Yo
k i\l Y. A Al The Christian Science Monitor
Bernice Powell Jackson decries the fact
that, in the race to mete out the harshest
penalties to convicted criminals, many
innocent, mostly poor and black, victims
wind up on death row. A case in point is
that of Girvies Davis.
Davis may be innocent of
the crimes for which he will
be executed. Convicted sole
ly on the evidence of an al
leged confession, which he
claims was coerced, Girvies
Davis is trapped in a legal
system which so far has
been unable to respond to
the very real inconsisten
cies of the case.
Girvies Davis, a fourth
grade drop-out from East
St. Louis, admits that he is
involved in an armed rob
bery in which a store clerk
was killed, although he de
nies that hekilled the clerk.
Ten days after his arrest for
therobbery, police cameinto
Davis’ cell at midnight and
took him on a four-hour
drive to look for “evidence.”
When he returned, he is al
leged to have written a con
fession to more than 20
crimes, including 11 mur
ders — virtually every un
solved murder in the
Belleville-East St. Louis
Dr. Lenora Fulani supports the call for
African-American involvement in a new
multi-racial third political party. The recent
New York State Black Political Convention
resulted in a repudiation of traditional Dem
ocratic Party links.
cratic Party. Evensoaquar
ter of a million Americans,
most of them Black, voted
for me. Far from endanger
ing our relationship to the
Democratic Party, I was
attempting to create a new
vehicle for Black political
power, given that the Dem
ocratic Party was clearly in
the midst of abandoning us.
Nothing made that more
clear than the Democratic
Party’s publicinsults toßev.
Jesse Jackson that year.
In 1992 I ran for presi
dent again, but this time it
was white America that
came alive and challenged
the two-party system.
Twenty million Americans
voted for Ross Perot and
other independents that
year, and my campaign be
came the vehicle for build
ing bridges between Black
and white independents.
All the while, grassroots
support for insurgent and
independent politics was
growing in the Black com
munity. In 1994, Rev. Al
Sharpton and I, running
insurgent primary cam
paigns against the state’s
two leading white Demo
area at that time.
Girvies Davis was then
convicted of four murders
and sentenced to death for
one of them, the murder of
Charles Bibel, an 89-year
old Belleville man. The
problem is that Girvies
Davis could not have writ
ten that confession because
at that time Girvies Davis
was illiterate and unable to
write more than his name,
a fact of which the jury was
keptunaware. The problem
is that even the prosecution
admits that other persons
committed three of those
crimes to which he con
fessed. The problem is that
the prosecution systemati
cally used peremptory chal
lenges to exclude all Afri
can Americans from the
Davis jury, a practice which
the Supreme Court later
held unconstitutional in a
ruling that they did not ap
ply retroactively. In fact, in
each of his trials, he faced
crats, became New York
state’s two highest Black
vote-getters. While Rev.
Sharpton and I, even with
our differences and some
times heated public dis
agreements, carved out a
more and moreindependent
road for the Black commu
nity, some African-Ameri
can leaders — most partic
ularly Jesse Jackson — con
tinued to campaign for the
Democratic Party. So far,
no amount of insult and in
sensitivity to Jesse or to
African Americans has
caused Rev. Jackson to
make a clear move in the
direction of independent
politics. In contrast, the
Black Convention’s state
ment indicates a historic
new emphasis in Black pol
itics: namely, that the fight
for the Black Agenda is in
extricably tied to the fight
to democratize and restruc
ture the political process,
and ultimately to the emer
gence of a new party. Per
haps Rev. Jackson will see
the Black Convention as
still another invitation to
“go independent.”
While Rev. Sharpton
(with whom I worked close-
an all-white jury.
The irony is that, in the
16 years since his incarcer
ation, Girvies Davis is a
changed man. He learned
to read and write, earned a
GED, and experienced a
religious conversion his
former prison superinten
dents described as “very le
gitimate.” He finished a cor
respondence degree from a
Bible college and became
an ordained minister.
Despite all of these facts
and a variety of other com
plications and complexities,
Girvies Davis is scheduled
to die on May 17 unless he
receives a stay or unless he
receives clemency from Gov
ernor Edgar. It would be a
tragedy if an innocent man
is executed for a crime he
may not have committed.
This is but one story from
the valley of the shadow of
death. But it could be the
story for many, especially
the poor and especially the
black, on death row.
Note: If you would like to
write to Gov. Jim Edgar
asking for clemency for
Girvies Davis, you may
reach him at the State Cap
itol, Room 207, Springfield,
111. 62703, fax him at 217-
782-3560, or e-mail him at
governor.illinois@accessil.com
ly in the buildup for the
convention) and I have had
very distinct differences
over issues of political ap
proach (including the extent
to which cooperation with
the Democratic Party is or
isn’t necessary to advance
the Black Agenda and the
tactical choice between a
multi-racial vs. an all-Black
third party) the convention
became a forum for our re
establishing our political
partnership. This develop
ment was noted publicly by
numerous convention dele
gates and of course by Rev.
Sharpton and me as well.
I have been building a
road to Black participation,
and leadership in a new,
major multiracial third par
ty for a decade and a half. In
the last several years we;
have seen that process move
forward in ways which are.
complicated and dangerous,.
but also very exciting. The
decision taken at the Na
tional Black Political Con
vention 23 years ago in,
Gary, Indiana to focus on,
increasing the number of’
Black elected officials
through the Democratict
Party was, in my opinion, a
tactic (that failed), not a
strategy. African-American
politics and our sensibility
has always been, and will
always be, independent.
And it was that strategic
sensibility which shaped the
process and the outcome of
New York’s Black Conven
tion. \