Newspaper Page Text
The Augusta News Review February 3,1984
Mallory' K. MillerrderEditor-Publisher
Paul Walker Assistant to the Publisher
Wanda Johnson General Manager/Advertising bir.
Diane CarswellCirculation Manager
Yvonne Dayßeporter
Rev. R.E. Donaldsonßeligion Editor
Mrs. Geneva Y. Gibson Church Coordinator
Charles Beale. Jenkins County Correspondent
Mrs. Fannie Johnson Aiken County Correspondent
Mrs. Clara WestMcDuffie County Correspondent
Mrs. lleen Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor
Wilbert Allen Columnist
Roosevelt Green Columnist
Al IrbyColumnist
Philip Waring Columnist
Marva Stewart Columnist
George Bailey....,Sports Writer
Carl McCoyEditorial Cartoonist
Olando HamlettPhotographer
Roscoe Williams Photographer
"THE AUGUSTA NEWS-REVIEW (USPSSB7 820) is published
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AMALGAMATED Nation! AtvcrtHat Reproeotattre
PUBLISHERS, INC. *
On Mclntyre ’s defense
Since the recent arrest and
indictment of Mayor Edward
M. Mclntyre, Joseph C.
Jones, and Mary Holmes on
charges of bribery and ex
tortion, the community has
essentially been in a state of
depression.
But rather tham simply
ask how and why did it hap
pen, some people have tried
to do something. We com
mend those who have
organized the defense fund
and the rallies supporting the
accused.
Especially deserving of
praise are Biondell Conley
and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. But
the community has not given
that organization the support
it deserves.
At a recent rally—billed as
a joint rally for the Mclntyre
Defense Fund and Martin
Luther King’s birthday—less
than a hundred people
showed up. That was a
disgrace, not for SCLC, but
for all of us who would allow
others to draw from that that
their is little support for
Mclntyre or Martin Luther
King.
VA to salute vets
Valentine Day, February
14th, is a time for showing
others how special they are
to us.
It also marks the day for
the National Salute to
Hospitalized Veterans, a
time when veterans in
Veterans Administration
medical facilities throughou*
the United States are
remembered by their com
munity.
Although Veterans Day is
the traditional day to tribute
The Mayor Comments
Whitney Young
by Edward M. Mclntyre
Last week if you recall, I started
a series of articles on some proud
moments in
our history as
we begin our
celebration of
National Black
History Week.
This week I
would like to h
turn our atten
tion to Whit
ney M. Young Jr., who succeeded
Lester B. Granger as executive
director of the National Urban
League.
Mr. Young received his BS
degree from Kentucky State
College and his MA degree in
social work from the University of
Minnesota.
It was his experience in the U.S.
Army which influenced his
decision to select a career in race
relations. He worked for Urban
Leagues in St. Paul and Omaha
before moving to Atlanta where he
Page 4
Os course, we all know
that that is not the case. Cer
tainly, the standing-room
only crowd at Tabernacle
December 29 and the out
pouring of money for the
defense shows that the com
munity cares deeply. And
certainly not everyone is a
marcher or a public demon
strator. But it is important
that we show our support for
justice in some way. And
one’s presence at a rally is a
small price to pay when so
much is at stake.
We, of course, do not
know whether the accused
are guilty or innocent. We do
know that they deserve a
speedy and fair trial, and
that costs money.
And until the defendants
have been proven guilty, we
must presume their innocen
ce. Mclntyre, especially, has
given tremendously to this
city. And we have all benefit
ted from his leadership and
sacrificial work. The least
we could do in this hour of
darkness is to give our moral
if not financial support, and
pray that justice will be ren
dered.
to all American veterans, the
Salute specifically honors
hospitalzed veterans who
face unique challenges often
Jar from family and friends.
The Augusta News-Review
joins in this national tribute
to hospitalized veterans by
saluting the patients in our
local VA facility. We pause
to remember the personal
sacrifices they made to
guarantee the freedoms all
Americans enjoy today. We
thank them for that gift.
became Dean of the School of
Social Work at Atlanta University
in 1954.
While Young was executive
director of the National Urban
League, he designed “a domestic
marshall plan”. Some of his
proposals included in that plan
were incorporated into President
Johnson’s anti-poverty program.
In August of 1965, at the 55th
Annual Conference of the
National League, Young outlined
the agenda for the future of the
league.
But before he presented his
agenda, he spoke very highly of
something special to me and I
know to you as well.
He reminded us of the very basic
unit which our society is built upon
and the importance of
strengthening that unit and all of
its members.
I believe also that strengthening
that unit is essential in our efforts
of bringing about the quality of
life we all seek for all people. The
unit—the family.
YoU TELL MR /AEESE 1
NEED AUTHENTIC PROOF
THAT HE’5 REALLY HUNGRY!
I I R
JQ. - - '
Black resources inc.
To Be Equal
Hunger report is a scandal
The scandal of hunger in the
land of plenty led to the appoin
ment of a $
presidential
commission to
investigate 1
hunger. I
report is itself C
a scan
dal, papering
over a serious
national problem and recommen
ding steps that can only make the
problem worse.
The commission essentially dealt
with three questions—is there
widespread hunger in the United
States, why, and what should we
do about it. It answered none of
them satisfactorily. On the
question of whether there is
hunger, the commisssion
pussyfooted around the issue, get
ting bogged down in definitions.
Sure, some people are hungry, it
said, but not all that many and
while we can’t really place an ac
curate number on the hungry,
there’s no widespread national
problem here.
That won’t wash. There’s plenty
of evidence of hunger, and it can’t
just be dismissed as “anecdotal.”
For those “anecdotes” are factual
case histories of real people who
don’t have enough to eat.
Walking With Dignity
Poverty—body and soul
by Al Irby
The most striking aspect of
poverty in America tpday is the
poverty of
ideas about I
solving it. This
need not be so.
To be sure, ffßh
it is a persistent
and compli
cated challenge. H
Yet some steps ™
clearly can be taken, bothin the
short and long run, which
ultimately will alleviate it.
The poverty issue includes both
the legacy of yesterday, and the
hint of tomorrow. Both can be
dealt with using the choices of
today. Too many Americans the
re-emergence of poverty as a
national issue might come as a sur
prise. When President Johnson
declared his “War on Poverty” in
1965, 17 percent of Americans
were poor. According to gover
nment statistics, the figure quickly
sank and remained at about 10
percent until the late 19705, when it
again edged upwards. Now the
Census Bureau reports 15 percent
of Americans (about 34 million
people) live in so-called pover-
Acknowledging that there is
some hunger, the commission goes
on to doubt that malnutrition is a
“major health problem” in the
U.S., as if there’s a level of
malnutrition a decent society can
tolerate. While there’s no national
epidemic of malnutrition, there is
so much hunger and even
malnutrition in poverty areas and
among the poor that failure to ad
dress the situation amounts to a
retreat from decency.
Why is there hunger? The com
mission’s report makes it seem as
though the only reason lies in
bureaucratic practices that allow
some people to fall through, cracks
between the various federal food
programs.
That may be a small part of the
reason, but by far the greater part
lies in cuts that deprive pregnant
women and their infants, school
children, and many of the poor of
participation in nutrition programs
and the food stamp program.
The commission points out that
the programs cuts tried to preserve
benefits for the “truly needy.” But
that meant that people whose in
comes were just above the poverty
line were dropped from aid’
programs.
In fact, such people are
poor—the poverty line is
ty —the highest percentage since
‘65.
The Reagan administration
points out that official figures
don’t include non-cash payments;
if its did the administration points
out, fewer people would be con
sidered poor. That statement has
been proven true. Yet the upward
trend would remain, and the
figures still would be higher than at
any time since the late 19605.
The most difficult aspect of
today’s poverty problem is the
result of yesterday’s deficient
education. Due to inadequate
education many of today’s adult
poor temporarily are unable to
master the more complex tasks of
today’s workplace.
Many are functionally illiterate.
They need special training. Many
of tomorrow’s potential problems
are clearly preventable. A top
priority must be given to im
proving those schools predominan
tly attended by children of the
poor, and for ‘Mercy’s sake’ let
some activist groups began a
crusade to ask for a moratorium
on that heinous “minimum wage
law,” that is locking young Blacks
and elderly untrained people into
meaningless since it is based on an
outdated formula that measures
extreme deprivation, not poverty.
To continue to use that inadequate
measure as a definition of poverty
is a serious policy error.
And to recommend, as the co
mmission does, that the poverty
line definition include the value of
various federal subsidies to in
dividuals is a bad joke. It would
make the line even more unrealistic
by defining some people out of
poverty by virtue of benefits they
get precisely because they are
poor.
Some of its recommendations do
make sense, such as making sure
that the value of food stamps be
raised to the full cost of the Depar
tment of Agriculture’s “thrifty”
food budget. Another would raise
the maximum value of assets a
family could have and still be
eligible for food stamps.
But the commission’s single
most important recommendation
is the most ludicrous suggestion yet
made by a prestigious commission
on a major national issue.
Faced with the clear need for ex
panding food assistance to help
growing numbers of the poor and
the hungry, the commission
suggests a new block grant
program. It wants to give states the
perpetual abject penury.
Good education takes time, but
it remains the surest way out of
poverty. And it is in poorest school
discricts that America’s public
schools are the weakest. Needs in
clude raising expectations of
teachers and school ad
ministrators; to see that ancillary
needs (such as hunger) are met,
and to provide access to that soon
to-be-indispensable tool of
tomorrow, the computer, which is
four times more likely to be
available in affluent as in poor
schools.
Yet to prevent poverty one step
is more important, the nurturing
of the family. The United States
Census Bureau noted last month
that some 45 percent of all
American families in poverty are
single-parent families headed by
women; for both Black and
Hispanic families the figure is
about 55 percent.
Government policies need to be
rewritten so that they actively en
courage a family to stay together;
nowadays some still provide finan
cial incentives to families in pover
ty to split apart. Merely providing
welfare to maintain families in
option of taking federal food and
nutrition funds in a lump sum, then
running their own food program.
Not only is this idea totally
irrelevant to the problem the
commission was supposed to be
considering, it represents a for
mula for increasing hunger. It
would make the system even less
flexible and less effective.
The record of existing block
grant programs contains nothing
that would inspire confidence in
the states’ ability to meet national
social needs through state-run
block grants. Instead of federal
standards and oversight control,
there could be fifty food programs
run by the fifty states, all with dif
ferent eligibility requirements and
all with different payment for
mulas. And you can bet that in
many states, aid will never reach
the hungry.
The states don’t even want the
responsibility. Even before the
commission’s report was
publicized, the National Gover
nors Association opposed the
block grant plan on the grounds
that it would destroy national aid
standards and that the grants
wouldn’t keep up with the need.
The commission flunked its
assignment and the nation still
needs a hunger policy.
poverty threatens to create a per
manent class of poor.
More than government direc
tives toward families needs to be
changed. Society as a whole must
stop the self-defeating denigration
of the family, and must continue
the apparent trend of support for a
strong and stable family, indeed
for other traditional American
values of religion and morality.
Needed now is to help the poor
lift themselves out of so-called
poverty, while temporarily
providing public assistance. An
important step is providing gover
nment financed day care facilities
so young poor mothers either may
continue their education with the
ultimate aim of obtaining a job, or
else actively seek employment.
Many impoverished single
parent families are headed by
young mothers. Day care aid really
works; a Florida study found that
50 percent of families who were
provided child care so that they
could seek jobs found them and
went off public assistance. This
should be done all over the nation,
and break the backbone of
demoralizing “welfare” once and
for all.