Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 9 December 1995 — Page 2

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THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, USB

EDITORIALS

One by one we can save our children We are sometimes overwhelmed by the stories concerning the loss of life and hope which involve young people. The recent death of 4-year-old Danielle Eubanks, who was apparently run over by a 15- year-old boy, is an example of such a story. In effect, two lives were destroyed by this incident and the parents and relatives of both are living through a nightmare. The headlines will fade in a few days and the pain of this tragedy will live for many years in the hearts of these children’s loved ones. Without question a story such as this disturbs and frightens us. We know a 15-year-old boy is not supposed to be driving and we know he was breaking the law by doing so. We heard accounts given by witnesses which indicate he was looking to get involved in some sort of trouble and that he may have been involved in gang related activities. Their are those in our community who are trying to head off such tragedies and they are growing in numbers. Caring people are working with teens in more and more ways in an effort to help teach young people there are better ways to live than to run the streets. It is clear most young men and women want more than the street life has to offer. But it is also clear that increasing numbers of youth need help in finding alternatives. The death of this little girl should be another compelling reason that we should try to do more to help. There should be one more adult willing to work with kids in trouble than there were before this tragedy. There should be one more church or mosque or synagogue willing to reach out into its community to help save a young person’s life. There should be one more company willing to invest in a youth program. There should be one more teacher willing to go an extra mile with a troubled student. There should be one more parent willing to provide more love and discipline and support to their children than they did yesterday. Danielle’s mother Audrea Eubanks, has taken a photo of her fatally injured daughter so that she might better be armed to warn others concerning this kind of random and chaotic violence that haunts so many of our youths lives. Our response to Audrea Eubanks needs to be action. We should reach out to other young men who are on a similar path as the young man who apparently drove the car that killed Danielle. We should try to prevent the next tragedy by grabbing the next troubled young man or young woman we see and try to get them to find a better way to live. This is not an easy thing to do. But it is much easier than burying a child. And it is much easier than sending a child to prison. Let’s all remember Danielle by doing something for a young person that needs help. One by one we can save our children.

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Congress’ threats to Black farmers

It’s hard to reconcile all of the political rhetoric requiring people to work with Congress’

proposed cuts in two Agriculture Department

programs aimed at helping minority farmers. It’s hard to explain why other Agriculture Department subsidies, aimed

at more prosperous and usually white

farmers, are not being cut while

programs to assist poor Black farmers

are.

The last 25 years has seen a great decline in ownership of farms in the South by African-American farmers, with many worrying whether there would be any left. African Americans, who had owned land and farmed it since after the Civil War, were losing or selling that land at alarming rates. Between 1954 and 1987, the number of African-American farmers dropped by 95 percent. A federal government program was designed to help stem that tide and, indeed, has helped stem the tide of Black-farm loss. This program, the Socially Disadvantaged Applicant Program, provides emergency loans to African-American farmers who are about to lose their farms. According to a recent New York Times article, one Republican congressional staff member asked why we need this program when there is an established loan program for all farmers, calling it “indefensible.” The answer to the question of why we need this program is quite simply racism. African-American farmers who have been helped by this program remember vividly the treatment they received for years from local white Agriculture Department officials, when their loan applications were often lost or delayed. African-American farmers remember vividly difficulties in getting loans from white-owned banks. They remember the indignities of the treatment they received when they applied for loans. Under this special program, much of that has changed. In the Mississippi Delta, the 2,500 African-American farmers have an African-American Farmer’s Service Agency staff person, who works with them directly. This staff

person helps the farmers fill out the

applications correctly and

provides personal support, which can

make a big

difference to these farmers who often are living on the edge.

Preliminary budget work indicates that this special program, targeted to helping farmers of color, will be folded into a

pared-down program for all small farmers. The staff people working with the African-American farmers will be eliminated. In the meantime, no cuts are contemplated for the crop deficiency payments program, which provides assistance to well-established fanners who are mostly white. Meanwhile, African-American farmers who have farmed their land for generations are in increasing danger of becoming extinct. It’s a tragedy for them and a great loss for us all.

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Rights

Journal

By BEIMKE

P0WIL1 JACKSON

The greatest threat to our future

Which of these two is the greatest threat to the lives, the health, the families, the future of Americans: (1) A 20-year-old ghetto kid, most likely Black or Hispanic, who possesses 5 grams of crack cocaine that can be sold on the streets for perhaps $500? Or, (2) A 40-year-old socialite, most likely white, who possesses 500 grams of powdered cocaine that he can sell for $50,000 to Hollywood actors, Broadway actresses, TV pundits, Wall Street brokers and millionaire sports heroes? The U.S. Sentencing Commission and the U.S. Congress decided that the kid with 5 grams of crack cocaine is more to be feared and therefore must get a mandatory sentence of five years in prison. The socialite with the 500 grams of powdered cocaine might get a five-year sentence, but that is not mandatory; he might get probation. That is so unfair, so stupid, that you would think every member of Congress would have seen it immediately. Senators John Breaux, the Louisiana Democrat, and Hank Brown, the Colorado Republican, have now recognized this wrong to the extent that they are cosponsoring legislation to wipe out the discrepancy, apparently by inacasing the punishment for the socialite to the same draconian level as that imposed upon poor ghetto dwellers. The original premise within the Sentencing Commission was that crack is highly addictive, and

The

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By CARL ROWAN

that a poor male on it might mug old women, rob liquor and convenience stores, rape Black and Hispanic girls. So it was a “favor” to Blacks and Hispanics to lock up the children and grandchildren of Black America. That racist nonsense more than anything else is responsible for the fact that our prison population has soared to the point that we are adding 220 new

prison beds per day and spending $31 billion a year to manage our prisons and jails. That judgment that the wretched possessors of 5 grams of crack are the great crime villains has created a social abomination in which one out of every 3 young Black men are incarcerated, on parole, or somehow caught up in the bad side of our criminal justice system. The Sentencing Commission recently realized its error. It asked the House of Representatives to alter the crack user/powder user discrepancy. The House said no and, incredibly, President Qinton swallowed some bogus advice and refused to strike down an injustice that, continued, will

contribute to explosions in the teeming prisons and killing streets of America. The solution is not a phony promise to imprison all the “high-class” powder snorters; it is to mount a major campaign to determine how many of the central-city kids arrested with a smidgen of crack ought to be released from prison immediately and put on probation. Justice — and I promise you, the nation’s peace — requires this law enforcement admission: that this society has erred terribly in foreclosing any decent future for vast thousands of young men who were not and are not the greatest villains of a drug-cursed America.

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