Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 22 August 2002 — Page 10

The Muncie Times • August 22, 2002 • Page 11

NEWS BRIEFS

NEWS BRIEF from page 10 rest of the Act is permanent." Lewis said for these reasons, even though the Voting Rights Act is set to expire in five years, "African-Americans do not face a threat to our right to vote." "I do understand the concern of many African-Americans that there may be a threat to their right to vote. After all, it was only a little more than 30 years ago that southern states used Jim Crow laws to deny blacks the right to vote," wrote Lewis. "A majority of AfricanAmericans alive today lived in a period where segregation and the denial of constitutional rights to blacks were not uncommon. However, the days of legal discrimination and segregation are gone and will not return." Parker-Weaver said it's important that "Congress reauthorize this blood bought right in 2007." "The United States Congress passed this Act that prohibited passing of state laws that would deny AfricanAmericans their full citizenship rights at the table of democracy," said ParkerWeaver. "As long as we have the 15th amendment to the Constitution, we will have the right to vote, but the restrictive barriers that were put in place to deny us like poll taxes, literacy tests, could pop up again." Leaders blast attack on affirmative action, blame GOP for US fiscal mess Jackson points finger at Republicans The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. led a number of leaders and students who denounced the attack on affirmative action -- which could be overturned by the US Supreme Court - vowing to

fight any further erosion of this program on July 21. Shanta Driver - of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Struggle for Equality by Ay Means Necessary - announced students are mounting a 1 million petition drive to fight for affirmative action and will march on Washington DC very soon. The University of Michigan students won their suit upholding affirmative action, 5-4. Driver said this was the first case that went to a full trial on the question of affirmative action. "We made the defense that integration, not just diversity is a compelling state interest that affirmative action programs are desegregation for higher education... that they have to be defended. "The question in terms of affirmative action programs is whether this country moves forward toward greater equality and integration or whether we move backward to separate, but equal, as being a real standard in higher education," Driver said. Jackson also commented on the situation. "That suit said in access to school, gender can be a factor and legacy can be (valid) points because your parents went there. Money can be a factor, grade, age, geography... but race should not be a factor," said Jackson. "If that ethnic cleansing is allowed to occur it'll send us back to 1954. The decision that we won for graduate students is now under

appeal before the US Supreme Court," he said threatening to lead a protest march in support of affirmative action. Driver announced she is gathering 1 million petitions in favor of affirmative action and will march in Washington DC to drive home her point. Not only is affirmative action under attack but also the nation's economy, according to Jackson. He made his comments to the press during the 36th annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Jackson's talk came on the heels of Wall Street taking yet another dive Monday, July 21, which sent the Dow industrials to their lowest close in more than four years. With the election just three-months away, Jackson said, these corporate scandals are negatively impacting investor confidence and the "fuzzy" accounting practices these companies are using will be the political noose around the OOP's neck. Jackson said that fact coupled with a string of corporate corruption scandals including WorldCom's filing for bankruptcy, would disprove the OOP's contention that they are in the fiscally responsible party. The Republican Party will pay the price for the failing economy even though Bush swears it is improving, according to the civil rights activist. A poll taken by Zogby International - a nonpartisan public opinion firm in

Genesee, NY - found that out of 1,003 US voters less than half of those would most likely vote for the next president will re-select George W. Bush. It shows Bush is at his lowest level job performance since preSept. 11. Jackson said Democrats vould benefit from the financial crumbling of the nation's economy, which Republicans cannot dodge. "Bush went into office wit a $1.5 trillion surplus and gave back 1 percent of that money. They backed the truck up to the bank, removed the guards and took all the money out," Jackson said. " In the meantime, what did they do? They (corporate executives) cooked the books, inflated earnings, and avoided more taxes. Then Bush offered them an alternative minimum tax." There will be a 15-year retroactive tax break for larger corporations: $1.5 billion for IBM and $1 billion for GM. "Bush is up to his neck in that culture, he can not fight them because they are his chief benefactors. Mr. Ashcroft has to rescue himself. Mr. Cheney has to go underground. This administration cannot fight. He has to go underground. "He (Cheney) is not running form (Osama) bin Laden. He's running for Halliburton," Jackson said. Black journalists group calls for more minorities in newspaper management MILWAUKEE Newsrooms have made great strides in developing diversity but more needs to

be done to get blacks and other minorities into management positions. National Association of Black Journalists members said last Thursday. Aug. 1. "We're struggling with the fact that many members have reached glass ceilings," said Mike Woolfolk, chairman of the NABJ annual convention and vice president of broadcast. About 2,000 journalists attended the group's convention, which ran through Sunday at the Midwest Express Center. Minorities are working at newspapers and television and radio stations but they tend not to be editors or station managers, who decide what's being covered and how, Woolfolk said. The lack of opportunities causes journalists to move from job to job because they feel they won't ever reach those positions, he said. "Journalism as an industry is a sort of a good old boy establishment," said Woolfolk. Sam Adams, 76, who received NABJ's Ida B. Wells Award for promoting diversity in newsrooms, said there have been tremendous improvements in newsroom diversity since he started in the 1950s, when only a handful of blacks across the United States worked as reporters. A 2002 American Society of Newspaper Editors survey shows about 6,500 minority journalists are working in newspapers today. NEWS BREIFS on page 17