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OUR VOICES                              JACKSON

stable, from the salt of the earth. The vision that we seek will not come from the White House or the State House but from your house and my house. An example sums up for me the comprehensive vision we must have: Last year when the DC-10 crashed in Chicago, as people viewed the charred remains of the passengers and the wreckage, the first assessment focused on the state of the pilots. Were they alert? Were they sober? Were they qualified? A superficial analysis would have stopped there, attributing the disaster to pilot error. But there was a second inquiry about the condition of the plane. In great detail, they checked the engine, the radar equipment, the fusilage, the wings, until they found a weakness in the bolts on the engine mounts. An independent analysis reveals that the present crisis in this nation is more than pilot-president deep. The entire structure is faulty and a major redefinition of the nation and its purpose is in order.

Today, we demand a broader focus and a new focus. We must focus on summer jobs, not merely summer (Olympic) games. We must focus not merely on the 50 hostages in Iran but the seven million unemployed hostages looking for work in this nation, and the half-million American prisoners who are, for the most part, political prisoners, and who cost us an average of $17,000 a year. If one goes to any state university on an average of four years, it would cost less than $20,000. By comparison, if one goes to any state or federal penitentiary, it would cost between $60,000 and $130,000. Employment and education are cheaper than welfare and incarceration.

We demand a new focus. The young who are the victims must fight for change. They must combine direct action with political action. We must register as voters the 3.1 million graduating high school students. They must come across the stage with a diploma in one hand, symbolizing knowledge and wisdom, and a voter registration card in the other, symbolizing power and responsibility. Then in the fall, every institution of higher learning must register the 11.2 million students to vote when they register for classes. This generation can determine the course of this nation.

Black colleges must be seen as institutions of necessity to be cherished. They produce 40 percent of all black graduates. They have developed a specialty in transforming rejected stones into cornerstones: in giving life and nutrition to dry bones. They deserve 50 percent of Title III Funds and $100 million in research.

We must find a new focus. We must do it as a coalition. The Blacks, the Latinos, the women, locked out, will either fight together to achieve an expanding, healthy economy or fight each other over the crumbs of a sick economy. In the short run, we must reject the balance-the-budget hysteria. In the short run, we must

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