The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Tuesday, Pres. Bush vowed to prosecute those responsible for recent racial bombings, a new government report said student writing and reading skills remain poor and Space Shuttle Columbia was successfully launched. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, we focus first [FOCUS - BLACKS IN AMERICA] on the state of black America today with John Jacob of The Urban League, conservative activist Robert Woodson, Sociologist Joyce Ladner, and Journalist Clarence Page. Next [FOCUS - WASTE NOT, WANT NOT] Tom Bearden reports on a fight over where to put garbage in Northern California, then religion [FOCUS - SCRIPTURES IN SCHOOL] in the public schools. We hear about today's Supreme Court case with attorneys Douglas Veith and Allen Daubman. And we close with a Roger Rosenblatt essay [ESSAY - SALUTE TO COPS]. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Bush today vowed to bring bigots to justice. He made the comments as he signed a Martin Luther King Day proclamation at a White House ceremony. The documents makes next Monday, January 15th, a federal holiday. Mr. Bush told an audience of civil rights activists that recent attacks against judges and civil rights workers will not be tolerated.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Particularly when we hear of bombings, obscene phone calls, hate mail, each one of us must speak out, and there is no place for the baggage of bigotry in the United States of America. Teddy Roosevelt called this pulpit, called the Presidency the bully pulpit. Well, I will continue to use that pulpit, hopefully with sensitivity, always to denounce and work to bring to justice the bigots who stain this good and decent land.

MR. LEHRER: The National Urban League today called for a $50 billion urban martial plan to help black Americans achieve greater economic progress. The call was part of the League's annual state of black America report. Pres. John Jacob said his plan would focus on education, jobs, healthcare and housing. He spoke at a Washington news conference.

JOHN JACOB, National Urban League: At a time when we hear policy makers talk of a new martial plan, and a new economic development bank for Eastern Europe, we need to press upon them an urban policy plan and an urban investment bank that invests in our own people and our own cities. The end of the cold war must mean the start of a renewed drive to bring America into the 21st century by investing in its own people and its economy.

MR. LEHRER: We will have more on this story after the News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Ironically, minorities were just about the only group that improved in an otherwise gloomy report released today by the U.S. Education Department. The agency's annual national report card concluded that black and Hispanic schoolchildren are making progress in reading and writing skills. But the report also indicated that they still lagged far behind white students, and even more discouraging, the report states that overall, literary skills in America's elementary through secondary schools have improved little since 1971. Sec. of Education Lauro Cavazos presented the findings this morning in Washington.

LAURO CAVAZOS, Secretary of Education: The reading and writing skills of America's students remain dreadfully inadequate, dreadfully inadequate. As a nation, we should be appalled, frankly be appalled, that we have placed our children in such jeopardy. Reading and writing are the basic tools of learning, the crux of the academic enterprise. Without solid literacy skills, we can never expect improvement in mathematics, science, history, or geography, and the cost to this nation in terms of intellectual strengths will be staggering, truly devastating.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Supreme Court today heard arguments on a public school's right to bar religious clubs from using school facilities. The case involves an Omaha, Nebraska, school district which prevented a student bible study group from meeting on high school grounds. A lower court ruled that under federal law the school had to let the group meet since it sanctioned other club activities such as chess and scuba diving. We'll have more on the case after the News Summary.

MR. LEHRER: In Panama, a top Noriega aide and 11 other Panamanians have been given diplomatic asylum by Peru. U.S. troops have surrounded Peru's ambassador's residence because one of those inside was a top military officer under Noriega. This evening, Peru called on the United States to remove its troops from the area. One additional note on casualties from the U.S. invasion, the U.S. Defense Department said today 220 Panamanian civilians were killed during the fighting.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Space Shuttle Columbia began a 10 day mission today blasting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this morning. NASA calls the launch a success. It came after four delays and was three weeks behind schedule. The highlight of the mission will be to rescue a scientific satellite that is falling out of orbit. The Columbia astronauts will try to grab the satellite with the shuttle's robot arm. They will then stow it aboard for the ride back to earth.

MR. LEHRER: There was violence today in South Africa. It was between black railroad workers who are on strike and those who are not. At least six people were killed, another eighteen were hurt. We have a report from South Africa by Mike Hannah of Independent Television News.

MR. HANNAH: The dead are carried away from a railway station just outside Johannesburg, more victims in a bitter two and a half month strike by black railway workers. At the platform, the aftermath of what eye witnesses described as a virtual massacre. Hundreds of striking workers at arrived on this train to attend a union meeting. They were met and attacked by a large body of black employees of the Paris Staple South African Transport Services who'd refused to join the strike. Union leaders accuse the security forces of direct complicity in the violence. Police, they claim did little or nothing to disperse the armed workers waiting for the train to arrive, and a union lawyer alleges no arrests were made after the attack took place. The police have vehemently denied the union's claims. A spokesman said officers at the scene acted responsibly to end the violence.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Soviet Union today told its economic allies it's time to change the way they do business. Moscow made the proposal at a meeting in Bulgaria of the Soviet East European Trading Alliance known as COMICAN. Kremlin officials proposed that their partners start trading with hard currency at world prices instead of dealing in non-convertible rubles. Switching to a convertible currency will make it easier to do business with the West. That's it for our summary of the day's news. Just ahead on the Newshour, the state of black America, a California garbage crisis, religious clubs in public schools and some thoughts from Roger Rosenblatt. FOCUS - BLACKS IN AMERICA

MS. WOODRUFF: Blacks in America at the start of a new decade make up our first focus tonight. As we reported President Bush attacked bigotry and racism today. He vowed to bring to justice those responsible for the recent bombings in the Southeast directed at civil rights figures. Also today John Jacobs the President of the National Urban League called for a 50 billion dollar black economic aid program. Jacob's proposal was part of the annual State of Black American Report released by the Urban League. We look at the state black America now from four different perspectives. John Jacob of the National Urban League who released today's report. he joins us from a Studio outside Washington. Robert Woodson is President of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a research organization here in Washington. Joyce Ladner is a Professor of Sociology at Howard University School for Social Work, And joining us from Chicago is Clarence Page a Member of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Tribune. John Jacob let's go back to you. With out asking your to summarize an entire report tell us what the Urban League is saying this year about the State of Black America.

MR. JACOB: A demographic revolution that is taking place in the country. When you consider the fact that America is saying that she will not have a human resource base to fuel our economy to put people to work but to have that work force you will have to draw from minorities and women a population that is presently outside of the main stream it is clear that we have to do certain things in order to prepare that work force to occupy those positions. Again when you look at the fact that we are supposed to get a peace dividend from the cold war cooling down and all the experts are saying that we ought to be able to reduce military spending by about 50 percent. That would suggest that we should have about 150 billion dollars available to do other things. I am suggesting that we ought to take a 100 billion dollars of that to bring the deficit down. That should get interest rates in the range of 4 to 5 percent but to also take that other 50 billion to rebuild our infrastructure that will prepare us for being competitive in a global marketplace and in doing so to deal with some of the social ills that confront that population that this country will be dependent upon in order to be competitive in a global marketplace.

MS. WOODRUFF: Before we get to the price tag John Jacob is there something that happened to Blacks in America in the last year that led you and the Urban League to this conclusion or is this the accumulation of things that happened over the last 10 or 20 years?

MR. JACOB: The truth of the matter is that when the Walls came tumbling down in Eastern Europe there became some discussions around developing a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe. I argue that we haven't dealt with the problems of the intercity here in America and that as we think about how to be supportive of those in need in Eastern Europe we should be concerned about how we prepare our own human resources to make this country economically viable, to make this country economically competitive. I am not to the only one who is saying that we will need the minority work force in order to be competitive. That is being said from the White House to the Department of Labor to the private sector. I am simply saying that in order to get them equipped and in order to get this countryequipped we have to rebuild the infrastructure and we have to renew that population so that they can be competitive and participatory.

MS. WOODRUFF: Robert Woodson is that a logical argument that you are hearing?

MR. WOODSON: Well certainly the Urban League has been consistent over the years in is diagnosis of the problem. But I think that leadership requires more than that then giving vague and general prescriptions about what must be done. What is absent I find is a prescription that goes to the black community and talks about what is its personal responsibility to itself. It is impossible to expect people to invest in you more than you are willing to invest in yourself. Money is not the primary problem facing Black America. We have 10,000 blacks that are killed annually at the hands of other blacks when only 500 are killed at the hands of white police. Another 30,000 black and hispanic people are killed as a consequence of the choices that they make and the chances that they take, drug addiction, crimes of violence. So that any kind of agenda for black progress has to talk about not only what people external to the black community must do but it must talk about what we must do. How are we going to invest the 200 billion dollars that we make annually because it is unrealistic to expect people to do more for you then you are willing to do for yourself.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that unrealistic Joyce Ladner?

MS. LADNER: I don't think so. I would simply suggest a combination of what both of the gentlemen have stated. That is we must have a two pronged attack. I don't think that we will solve the problems of infrastructure by blacks alone with in black communities. I think that it is vital that blacks to set an agenda. That blacks determine what the program should be. We have to know why 50 billion instead of 59, or 51 or 250. And we also need to recognize that in trying to solve this problem that we are not going to be able to put black men to work. we are not going to be able to put black women to work alone. That this has to be dealt with at the federal level at the state level. So I would say that we emphasize two things. One is an external focus as John Jacob is emphasizing here and also as Bob Woodson is saying that a lot of the problems are systemic are internal in the community and I am very encouraged that a lot of black organizations and individuals are trying to solve those.

MS. WOODRUFF: Clarence Page in Chicago let's go back to John Jacob's original prescription that what is needed is a 50 billion dollar Urban Marshall Plan. Does that sound logical to you?

MR. PAGE: If you put both programs together you have an excellent combination of programs and agendas that we need. For one thing the idea of having a marshall plan for Urban America is not new. Jesse Jackson was talking about back in the 70s. What is different here now is that we do have the money, potentially the peace dividend as it is called to be able to afford the plan but I wonder do we have the will, do we have the internal resources to enable to make that plan work. The Marshall Plan worked in Europe because Europeans certainly had a strong educational base, they had a strong will, a purpose and a heritage that I am afraid that is lacking in Black America. Certainly a lot of that money should got to education and with that kind of resource we can begin to rebuild Urban America. Certainly I hear a lot of good things in what both gentlemen are saying.

MS. WOODRUFF: John Jacob are we lacking a unity of purpose that Clarence Page just described?

MR. JACOB: Idon't think that we are lacking a Unity of purpose but let me go back to Bob Woodson's comments because I think that it is misleading to suggests that African American Communities and African American Organizations have not been trying to deal with many of those issues and indeed dealing with those issues. Educational problems, the drug problem. We, for instance, at the Urban League have a major education initiative going and a major drug initiative going but we are not the only ones. So to suggest that this is a proposal that only deals with the external is to be misleading. I think that we have attempted to deal with the internal in what we evidenced is that no matter how much internal activity that takes place without national leadership and a national fueling of this effort we are not going to have the impact that it needs.

MS. WOODRUFF: Can I stop you right there because you responded to something that was just said by Mr. Woodson so let's come back to Mr. Woodson.

MR. WOODSON: What I said was that if we look historically at the black Community blacks had a rich tradition of entrepreneurship of self development even when we were being lynched everyday. Up until 1950s 80 percent of all black families were whole. Durham, North Carolina in the 20s was known as the Black Wall Street. So what are the implications for today. Forty thousand Blacks in Durham control more wealth than a million blacks in Chicago. Is that because White people are fairer in Durham then they are in Chicago, is that because there was a Marshal Plan? No it is because of that rich tradition of self development that enabled external forces to creatively respond.

MS. WOODRUFF: You are talking about entrepreneurs and business people?

MR. WOODSON: Yes. But to continue to give a litany of despair year after year that only talks about our inferiority is a assault on the self esteem of Black Americans and no wonder we respond by killing one another and despising our own developments.

MS. WOODRUFF: John Jacob.

MR. JACOB: I think that it is naive for us to act as if the GI Bill was demeaning to white folks, that FHA was demeaning to white folks, that highway construction was demeaning to with folks. We have always had an activists government that has built a middle class. They did it very effectively for white America. What I am suggesting is that we have to have both an internal structure and an external structure and because in fact we are going to have the resources now with the cooling off of the cold war we ought to dedicate some of those resources for rebuilding the infrastructure, for including African Americans and other minorities and females in to main stream America and to provide the leadership in dedicating the resources to do that. Unless we do that I do not think that we will be able to be competitive in a global marketplace given the fact that this is the work forces that this country will be dependent on.

MS. WOODRUFF: How do you arrive at the figure 50 billion dollars? Where did you come up with that number?

MR. JACOB: Well first of all we began with Secretary Cheney's budget of 300 billion dollars for defense. That is the present budget right now. The Brookings Institute did a report as well experts like Bob McNamara has said that we can reduce military spending given the current events to the tune of some 250 to 500 billion dollars over the next decade. Given those numbers then what we suggest is that you can take a portion of that may be even up to 2/3 to reduce the deficit and with the remain of that we can invest in the infrastructure and in dealing with some of these problems. So it is simple mathematics. If we are going to reduce defense spending by half and we are already spending 300 billion dollars that would suggest that we ought to 150 billion dollars left and I am suggesting that we put a 100 billion dollars of that into reducing the deficit and put the remainder in to dealing with an urban Marshal Plan.

MS. WOODRUFF: What is 50 billion dollars do Joyce Ladner?

MS. LADNER: I am not sure. You see my concern is that I would want know from John Jacob who is going to decide how to spend the 50 billion. 50 billion might be a very figure. I don't know I haven't read the report since it came out only today. But I am very much interested in who is going to decide what the priorities will be. Who will determine what the policies will be. Will they be locally or will they be local community based as Bob Woodson probably would emphasize or will they be state run.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why does it matter who runs the program?

MS. LADNER: I think that it matters a great deal because it matters that if we don't decide up front who is going to determine what the programs will be and how much will be allocated then we might repeat some of the mistakes of the great society program of the 60s. They fail to institutionalize a lot of the program. We may fail in fact to implement the kinds of programs that people themselves fell would be most important to them. So I would not like to see a lot of policy makers sitting in Washington to decide that they know what is going to be best for people living in Hattisburg, Mississippi or wherever.

MS. WOODRUFF: Clarence Page I haven't forgotten about you and I want to come back to you in a moment but on that point do want to go back to John Jacob and ask him if you run risk, if you spend that much money over a short period of time of doing the very same things that were done during the great society and making some of the same mistake.

MR. JACOB: Well we could spend a great deal of time about the great society program but let me suggest to you that all of those programs were not failures. But let me get back to Joyce's point and I am willing to concede that in fact I would be interested in having an answer to all of those questions but I would suggest to you that we don't want not be a part of that agenda while they are diving the 150 billion dollars. I think what we ought to be doing is getting a commitment and then debate how we are going to spend the money and who ought to be participating in that decision.

MS. WOODRUFF: Clarence page you spoke earlier about questioning whether there was a will a unity of purpose. What makes you doubt that that Unity of purpose that that will might be there.

MR. JACOB: Well you certainly have two very fine example of two different black political perspectives and ideological perspectives in John Jacobs and Bob Woodson even though they both have strong back grounds in the Urban League coming from the school of the great Urban League leader Whitney Young. There is quite a bit of diverse opinions with in the black community and even more diversity when you look at not just African Americans but European Americans too. I think Joyce Ladner makes a very good point when she speaks about the great society programs. many of those programs were failures but at the same time John Jacobs is right in saying that a lot of those war on poverty programs did work. They worked very well. Who is going to decide which philosophy is going to be the one to follow in putting together prescriptions for the future. As far as the will of European Americans is there a political mandate right now for a large amount of government spending for domestic social programs. I am afraid there is not. That is why we need some kind of programs, some kind of progressive change on the ground that we can point to show some progress. We are seeing it in certain school systems around the country. We are seeing in certain local housing initiative. There is not the strong national sense of purpose that we had in the days of War on Poverty or the new deal for that matter.

MS. WOODRUFF: Robert Woodson are we talking then primarily we are facing a local solution?

MR. WOODSON: No I am not saying that.

MS. WOODRUFF: That the Federal Government doesn't have a role?

MR. WOODSON: No I am saying that in the last 25 years we have expended 1 trillion dollars in federal, state and local monies to aid the poor. Seventy cents of every dollar goes not to the poor but to the people who serve the poor.

MS. WOODRUFF: What do you mean by people who serve the poor?

MR. WOODSON: I am talking about social workers, psychologists, counselors, reviewers, evaluators. The fact is that 70 cents of every dollar goes not to the poor but to the service industry.

MS. WOODRUFF: You mean just through inefficiency.

MR. WOODSON: No I am just talking about the way that it is structured. Kenneth Clark called it welfare colonialism. And I an merely saying that we have got to begin to restructure this so that you can not talk about a single Black America. There is no state of Black America. The people on this show. I bet you our incomes have not declined in the last 25 years. Conditions have gotten much better for 1/3 of the Black Community but for the 1/3 that is at the bottom it has gotten worse and to suggest that there is a single prescription that will help the people on this show and those who are washing dishes in hotels is really misleading and is an abuse of the conditions of poor blacks to use their conditions to advocate solutions that help people like John Jacob and Bob Woodson and the rest of us.

MS. WOODRUFF: John Jacob no single state of Black America?

MR. JACOB: Well no one has ever suggested that Black America was monolithic but I do think that Bob is correct in his pronouncement and I think that to be absolutely correct we should be judging this country on what we do for that one third that is at the bottom and our proposal is designed to address that 1/3 at the bottom.

MS. WOODRUFF: Joyce Ladner.

MS. LADNER: I think that we are beginning to develop a consensus around certain areas that are absolutely critical not only for black America but also for the nation at large. John Jacob has made a very good start in suggesting that we do need to declare the cities a disasters. The infrastructure does need repair. Black mayors are taking over cities that have an eroded a tax base. The services are virtually non existent in many places. We must deal with problems of homelessness. we've got to develop policies and programs to develop new housing stock. We've got to repair the infrastructure. We've got to provide for child welfare services. We have border babies all over the country now emerging. We have homeless families. We have a critical drug problem around which the consensus is developing, and I think those are the problems for that 1/3 at the bottom, that we really have to move on very quickly.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, is that a racial issue we're discussing, or is that an economic issue? JOYCE LADNER, Sociologist: It's both. It's both. There are people who would argue that it's one or the other. I think they're inextricably linked. The fact is that a majority of these people, a large percentage of these people are black.

MS. WOODRUFF: Bob Woodson.

ROBERT WOODSON, Center For Neighborhood Enterprise: See, I think what we're doing is meeting and talking about what white America should do, how much it should spend. We have over 200 black organizations that expend in excess of $6 billion in hotels every year at conventions and if you look at the agendas of what is being discussed, it is not discussing what we should be doing. Perhaps if those organizations came together in clusters of 10 and agreed to have their conventions in a single city, then we could buy our own Hiatt Regency Hotels and provide an employment base for the black under class instead of just advocating increased expenditures on infrastructure and then begging white people for 10 percent of what wealth they create.

MS. WOODRUFF: We started this program tonight hearing from President Bush talking about how he's going to use the power of the bully pulpit to do away with bigotry and talking about the bombing attacks and so forth. John Jacob, how relevant is it that we have a President who says he makes it a priority to erase bigotry and racism in this country?

JOHN JACOB, National Urban League: Oh, I think it's absolutely important. I think if you consider what has happened pre George Bush during the last 8 years of the Reagan administration, it was an activist government that, indeed, was activist against civil rights and created a climate in which much of the stuff that we see today taking place was fueled during that period. To have a President use the White House as a bully pulpit, to say that he will use all of the powers of that office to obviate those kinds of conditions, I think began to set another kind of climate that enabled us to move forward with dealing with not only the issue of race, but the issue of improving the overall condition of this country.

MS. WOODRUFF: Clarence Page, is there that much of a difference between the Reagan and the Bush administration in terms of setting a tone for black Americans in this country?

CLARENCE PAGE, Chicago Tribune: No question that George Bush has sent much more positive signals than Ronald Reagan in spite of the negative implications of his Willie Horton campaign. Nevertheless, it is very important that any President, well, reform has to start at the top. National attitudes are set at the top. Unfortunately, the Reagan administration made, I'm afraid, white Americans a little too comfortable with their prejudices, a little too comfortable with the idea, that well, blacks should be able to pull themselves by their own boot straps and they don't need any kind of outside help from anybody else. It is true that we need self help. We also need some coordinated national effort of government help. I'm waiting for the Bush administration to come up with some kind of real program, some kind of an agenda to come behind those lovely words he's given us.

MS. WOODRUFF: Go ahead, Bob Woodson. You agree?

MR. WOODSON: Yes. We keep talking about, and I have to quote Rev. Jackson, I don't do it that that often, he said, "Decisions made in our own house" --

MS. WOODRUFF: That's Jesse Jackson.

MR. WOODSON: Yeah, Jesse Jackson -- "are more important than decisions made in the White House". Poor blacks were conditions that climbed under Jimmy Carter, under Gerald Ford, under Nixon, under Reagan and now under Bush. So we need to stop conveying this notion that somehow the destiny of black America is determined by which kind and gentler white man is in the White House. Our destiny is in our own hands and white people who are totally indifferent. If racism were to disappear for the body politic of America, it would not alter the serious conditions facing our problems in the inner-cities.

MS. WOODRUFF: Just quickly, Joyce.

MS. LADNER: But we don't live on an island. We're not separated from the rest of white America. Bush is the President of black America too, and I do think that under Reagan there was a very activist posture to erode the gains made by the civil rights movement and so on, but I would like to see President Bush do more than make a couple of appointments at the top among black Americans. I'd like to see him to do more. I'd like to see him construct some policies and programs that would carry out this agenda.

MS. WOODRUFF: A quick last word from you, John Jacob.

MR. JACOB: Well, I think that this debate is an important one, but I think that we still ought to recognize the fact that whatever we end up doing on behalf of improving the conditions of this country, we're going to have to pay for it, and paying for it is not simply a self-help effort. It is going to take the government making an overall commitment by putting some money on the table to deal with these concerns.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. John Jacob, we thank you for joining us, Clarence Page in Chicago, and here in Washington, Joyce Ladner, Robert Woodson, thank you all. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the Newshour tonight, a landfill argument in California, the Bible study Supreme Court argument and our Tuesday night essay. FOCUS - WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

MR. LEHRER: Next tonight a story about money, politics and garbage. Correspondent Tom Bearden reports from Contra Costa County, California.

MR. BEARDEN: This noisy, smelly place is where the mostly affluent residents of Contra Costa County used to dump their garbage. It's the Acme Landfill in Martinez, just across the bay from San Francisco. The site has some serious problems. It's leaking toxic chemicals and had been repeatedly ordered closed. After several emergency extensions, it finally shut down at the end of November. Contra Costa County has two other dumps, but one of them also will close soon, leaving the county facing a near crisis situation. County government has been trying to reach a consensus on where to put a new dump for years. Earlier this year, they identified five sites and held a referendum asking voters to choose. They turned down all five. Now the supervisors are asking the city councils at each of the incorporated towns in the county to approve a waste management plan that includes the same five sites. The people who testified at those meetings agree a new landfill is needed but they all brought long lists of objections to the site nearest their homes. Among them was the mayor of the town of Pittsburg, Nancy Parent. One of the landfill sites called Keller Canyon is in the hills just South of town.

MAYOR NANCY PARENT, Pittsburg, California: Those hills all just taper down to our city and they are our foothills. Now in our general plans, those are open space. The county calls it open space, but under the county's definition an appropriate use of open space is a dump.

MR. BEARDEN: Keller Canyon is a huge natural bowl now used for grazing cattle. The Keller Canyon Landfill Company wants to virtually fill it with the state of the art landfill. Proponents say it would look something like this. This is the Altamont Pass Landfill where the cities of Oaklandand San Francisco dump their garbage. Like all new landfills, garbage is deposited on top of a layer of clay which is backed up by a plastic liner. It's expensive system designed to catch any leakage and prevent groundwater contamination. Any new landfill in Contra Costa will have to be built to the same or even stronger standards. But Parent is afraid the new landfill will be like the old designs, generating a lot of noise, foul odors, attracting sea gulls and rodents. And Parent says it's entirely too close to people. She is convinced the landfill will destroy property values.

MAYOR PARENT: Young families who have bought these homes which are affordable for California and who have come here because they can afford to buy a starter home and start a family have sunk every damn dime they have into those homes and struggle to make $1,000 a month payments on them. And that's their future, that's all that they can see is their investment. And it frightens them.

MR. BEARDEN: County Supervisor Nancy Fahden who supports this site says that's not how modern landfills work.

NANCY FAHDEN, County Supervisor: I believe you will not know it's there, you can't hear it, and you can't smell it. You just will not know that there's a landfill site there.

MR. BEARDEN: Mayor Parent says the site near Pittsburg is the front-runner only because the other cities are wealthier and more political clout.

MAYOR PARENT: Outside of we have the most open space, the next biggest thing is those people out there are those people out there.

MR. BEARDEN: The least politically powerful people in the county.

MAYOR PARENT: Probably.

MR. BEARDEN: The poorest?

MAYOR PARENT: Outside of a portion of West County, yes.

MR. BEARDEN: Mayor Parent is pushing this site called Marsh Canyon. It's also a huge natural bowl also used for grazing. Mayor Parent told the city councils Marsh Canyon is much more desirable because it will affect far fewer people. But there's a mobile home park just over the ridge from the canyon. People argued just as strenuously against a landfill in their backyard. Topping their list of objections, they say people will have to pay much higher rates to haul their garbage here, because it's much further away from the places that generate the garbage.

MARY WILLIAMS, Marsh Creek Association: This site would cost in transportation costs alone over $200 million more than the Keller site over a 30 year period.

MAYOR PARENT: That differential is something like 50 cents a month on somebody's garbage bill, and so what we're saying is, would you pay 50 cents a month not to have it in somebody's backyard?

MR. BEARDEN: But Supervisor Fahden points out that all the sites are backyards.

MS. FAHDEN: In any of the landfill sites, the five that the board of supervisors has approved on the general plan, there will be homes. So none of the sites is unique in that respect, there will be homes.

MR. BEARDEN: There are environmental objections to Marsh Canyon as well. The Sierra Club calls it the Yosemite of Contra Costa County. Some snicker at that, saying it's badly over grazed and eroding. They accuse the environmentalists of their own "not in my backyard" syndrome. But there is more at work here than self- interest. There is a lot of money to be made or lost. Standing behind two of the sites are two of the biggest waste disposal companies in America. Browning-Ferris Industries is backing Keller Canyon near Pittsburg. Waste Management wants to build Marsh Canyon. How much money is at stake? Some 50 million tons of garbage will be generated here over the next 40 years or so. A conservative estimate is that it will cost $20 a ton to dispose of it, or somewhere around a billion dollars. Supervisor Fahden says that's why one company campaigned hard to have its site approved in that referendum.

MS. FAHDEN: Waste Management spent almost $2 million trying to convince the voters that Marsh Creek was the site. They sent videotapes out to I don't know how many homes. They must have spent, I figured it out I think once, over $16 a vote.

MR. BEARDEN: But Waste Management's John Rowden says a lot of money is being risked too.

JOHN ROWDEN, Waste Management, Inc.: We're not venturing the kind of capital out there that we are without an idea that is profitable, however, we run considerable risk. Again, we mentioned the political risk. There's also the technical risk involved not only in the short-term but in the long-term. You have liability, and I think in the future recognition of potential liabilities with this kind of a site will increase.

MR. BEARDEN: The fact that the county government, itself, will also make money on the new landfill irks Mayor Parent.

MAYOR PARENT: By the way, the county is planning to take a franchise fee off the top of whatever they permit.

MR. BEARDEN: So they benefit financially?

MAYOR PARENT: Uh huh.

MR. BEARDEN: How much?

MAYOR PARENT: It depends on the franchise fee. For a transfer station, they're talking about 2 percent -- off the top.

MR. BEARDEN: Parent says the county stands to make $20 million. Despite that, she says she understands the supervisor's reluctance to act.

MAYOR PARENT: This is a terrible kind of public decision to have to make because you can't make anybody happy and you can make lots and lots and lots of people very unhappy, people who contribute vast amounts to campaigns, so they put it off and they put it off and they put it off, and they put it off for 17 years.

MR. BEARDEN: Other cities have been putting it off too. Each day Americans throw away nearly four pounds of trash apiece, a hundred and sixty million tons every year. At the current rate of construction, the United States will run out of landfills in eight years. FOCUS - SCRIPTURES IN SCHOOL

MR. LEHRER: The Supreme Court of the United States heard an argument today about a Bible study class and we are now going to hear the same one. Five years ago a group of students at West Side High School in Omaha, Nebraska, asked their principal for permission to start an on-campus Bible group. No, said the principal, because it would violate the Constitution's insistence on the separation of church and state. This prompted one of the students, Bridget Mergens Mayhew, to file the suit that was argued before the high court. She stated her position to reporters in Washington today.

BRIDGET MERGENS MAYHEW: We're not second class citizens. We don't, we shouldn't be pushed to another area. West Side has 30 clubs that meet on their campus and they've never been pushed anywhere else or told to go anywhere else based on their content, speech content. And this is the first, the first club in the history of the school that's ever been asked to leave.

MR. LEHRER: The principal, James Findley, also spoke about the case today in Omaha.

JAMES FINDLEY, Omaha High School Principal: Bridget told me on her initial request that that she felt there were students at West Side High School that she had to talk to and promote christianity to. I feel like probably parents who send their students to West Side High School or to any public school have, if they aren't christian, if they're Jewish, whatever other religion they might be, do not expect that they're going to have somebody coming to them recruiting them.

MR. LEHRER: Now to our version of the argument the Supreme Court heard today. It is between Douglas Veith, the attorney who represented Ms. Mergens Mayhew in the early stages of the trial and Allen Daubman, who argued the school board's case before the Supreme Court today. Mr. Veith, what specifically was it your client wanted the school to do?

DOUGLAS VEITH, Attorney: Jim, Bridget just wanted the school to treat her equal to all the other clubs. She wanted to be able to have a club that would meet after school with all the other clubs. The school at the time that she requested this had approximately 30 other clubs that were already meeting. Those clubs varied in subject matter in chess all the way up through scuba diving club.

MR. LEHRER: And she felt that the school had an obligation to do this because of the other clubs they already permitted, is that right?

MR. VEITH: She felt that this was her right, her free speech right, to be able to gather together on a voluntary after school. She was not at all intending to force any students to attend the club. It would be purely on a voluntary basis.

MR. LEHRER: Would a faculty member be involved in this?

MR. VEITH: She was willing to go without a faculty member if that's the way the school wanted to do it. If they required a faculty member, she was willing to have such as a monitor only and not as a real sponsor of the club, so to speak.

MR. LEHRER: Would it have been basically a christian-oriented class?

MR. VEITH: That was her intention. It wasn't a class, Jim. It was going to be a club.

MR. LEHRER: But a christian club?

MR. VEITH: That was her intention.

MR. LEHRER: And would it be, in fact, one of its purposes have been to promote christianity, as Prof. Findley just said?

MR. VEITH: No, I don't believe in the way that Dr. Findley said it that that was at all intended. What she intended to do was promote christianity amongst other members of her school that were christians. As a christian, she felt a need to fellowship, to be able to share with other christians, to strengthen one another as they went through the school.

MR. LEHRER: Would there be religious services involved?

MR. VEITH: No, that was not intended at all. There would have been Bible reading in the club. There would have been sharing and praying for one another.

MR. LEHRER: An opening prayer and closing prayer and that kind of thing?

MR. VEITH: In a club like this that certainly would be one of the activities that could take place.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Daubman, why was it that Principal Findley was, do you believe, was right in saying no way?

ALLEN DAUBMAN, Lawyer For Omaha Schools: Well, I think there were two principal reasons. First of all, there was a concern about the granting of permission to the club being viewed a sponsorship of a particular religious belief by the school district. That concern was present because of the close degree of supervision and direction that the school has historically exercised over the co- curricular clubs at the high school. The second concern was not so much with this school or with this particular club, but with the other clubs that would necessarily follow. If this club were allowed to meet, the school district would not be able to deny access to school and school sponsorship of other clubs of any description, and of primary concern there were adversarial clubs.

MR. LEHRER: You mean, you weren't concerned about other religious clubs. Say the Jewish students in the high school wanted to have a Jewish club or say there wanted to be a spinoff and the Catholics wanted to have a club or the Buddhists wanted to have a club or the Moslems. It was beyond that, right?

MR. DAUBMAN: It was much beyond that. This case is very largely incidentally about religion. The issue came up because it was a religious club that was requested to meet, but I think the denial of any request by any adversarial club would have come from the school district.

MR. LEHRER: When you say adversarial, it's an adversarial club because they would advocate, why would it be adversarial? I don't understand why a Bible, a christian Bible class would be adversarial.

MR. DAUBMAN: The school officials felt very very strongly that the co-curricular clubs at the school which they sponsor should not be clubs which would advocate a particular ideology or political point of view or philosophy.

MR. LEHRER: I see.

MR. DAUBMAN: It's that concern that caused them primarily to deny the club requested in this case.

MR. LEHRER: Because they would be, obviously if it was a christian club, they would be pro-christian over other religions, is that what you mean?

MR. DAUBMAN: Well, that's part of it but also quite recently, although this wasn't at issue before the court today, there was a request for a club that was either a pro-choice or a pro-abortion club, I don't recall which one, that request was denied by school officials again because they did not want to be sponsoring a co- curricular activity that expressed one point of view on controversial issues.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Daubman, did Mr. Findley, the principal, make this decision on his own, or was it kicked upstairs to the school superintendent, the school board or others?

MR. DAUBMAN: It was kicked upstairs to an associate superintendent and the superintendent of schools at that time for consideration of the request. They concurred with Dr. Findley's initial denial of the club. And then the students and Mr. Veith appealed that denial to the board of education, which upheld the decision of the administration.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Veith, do you agree with Mr. Daubman that what the students had in mind, your client and the other students had in mind, was a club that advocated the christian position?

MR. VEITH: I don't look at it necessarily, Jim, as it being an advocacy club. If that's the truth, then they have a number of other clubs that advocate positions at the school that are already in existence. For example, they have one that is directly connected with the Rotarians and which advocates a particular philosophy. Bridget, again, wanted to get together after school on a voluntary basis with other students just like every other club was meeting after school. What Mr. Daubman and Mr. Findley, his client, was trying to do was trying to find out what are they going to talk about so they can discriminate based on the content of the club, what was going to be said inside the club.

MR. LEHRER: I'm sorry. I don't follow you there.

MR. VEITH: Well, Dr. Findley assumed that the club was going to talk about Jesus, was going to share about the christian faith, was going to read the Bible. Those were all assumptions that were made. Bridget just said, I'd like to get together with a group of friends of mine, meet in one of the classrooms, and if you want us to have a sponsor, fine, and if you don't have a sponsor, that's fine. She wasn't refined enough to go on into the legal issues of this. She just wanted to be treated like everybody else was being treat.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Daubman, do you have a response to that?

MR. DAUBMAN: Well, I take issue with a club being closely with the Rotarians that expresses a particular ideological belief. That club that Mr. Veith is referring to is simply a club that engages in community service. That is a major thrust of education today, to inculcate students with the idea that community service is something that they ought to be engaging in. And I think it's entirely appropriate for those sorts of things to be conducted as club activities.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Veith, let me ask you a general question, forgetting the specifics now at West Side High School in Omaha. What do you believe is really at stake here? Is there some overriding issue that all Americans should be concerned about along with the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court?

MR. VEITH: Jim, this problem of equal access has been addressed by many different school districts across the country. And I think what is really at stake is the rights of students to speak freely during the school day during their free time or after school during free time, during club times, about what they believe, and being able to express their ideas, express their faith. So many people try to confine christianity or any other religious belief to Sunday only, and these are students, Bridget was one of those, that felt, no, christianity went beyond that, it's a daily lifestyle, and I need to be able to encourage my friends, they need to be able to encourage me, and we have a right to do that, because there's a whole bunch of other people at the school that are engaged in advocacy situations and engaged in promoting one or the other philosophy.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Daubman, from your perspective and that of the school board, what is the overriding issue here?

MR. DAUBMAN: Well, I think there are two overriding issues. First of all, we did not have a problem with Ms. Mergens and her fellow students engaging in christian fellowship. That went on all the time at the school long before the request for the club was made to the administration.

MR. LEHRER: In what form, in what form?

MR. DAUBMAN: On an informal basis during free time during the school day and before and after school. That was known by the administration and no effort was made to step in by school officials at all.

MR. LEHRER: You mean small gatherings where, worship services, you mean, that kind of thing?

MR. DAUBMAN: I don't know. I would not characterize them as worship service, but certainly students getting together in christian fellowship. That was going on at the school during the students' free time. It's when the students sought what was tantamount to official sponsorship of the school district of that activity that the issue comes into play. I think the overriding issue, however, is not so much the religious aspects of the case but rather to what extent are school officials going to be able to develop and maintain co-curricular activities. If the court rules against the school district in this case, there's every reason to believe that school districts will either have to narrow the co- curricular activities that they currently offer to students, or they will not have control over other student activities that students may wish to engage in.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Veith, is that a legitimate concern, do you think, of Mr. Daubman and the school board?

MR. VEITH: I don't think so, because right now the school engages in all kinds of activities where students are allowed to freely think. What Mr. Daubman is saying is these students can go to school and they can make decisions about abortion which is presented in the classroom even, they can make decisions concerning Satanism, which was brought out in one of the classes through the movie "The Omen", but at the same time they can't just freely engage in an activity to encourage one another. Not only that, what Mr. Daubman is saying is we want to treat this group separate but equal and there is no such thing. You either treat them equally, and let them meet like all the other clubs, or cut out the club system and go back to reading, writing and arithmetic where the school maybe belongs if they feel that strongly about it.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Daubman.

MR. DAUBMAN: I would tend to agree with Mr. Veith if we had a forum at West Side High School where students engaged in those sorts of speech activities through co-curricular clubs. That was not the forum at the high school. The school district feels very strongly that controversial issues such as those mentioned by Mr. Veith ought to be dealt with openly and forthrightly, but that it be presented in such a way as that all sides of the issues are presented. By not being able to control the co-curricular activities in the school district, the balance treatment of divergent points of view cannot be maintained by the school district.

MR. LEHRER: He's right about that, is he not, Mr. Veith?

MR. VEITH: No, because today in the schools, young people are so far advanced from what they were twenty, thirty or forty years ago, they're able to determine what type of morality they want to follow, and where does the school come off trying to say, well, this is moral, this isn't, this is what we're going to teach on, and this is what we aren't going to teach on? Our Supreme Court spoke on that in the sixties with the Tinker case out of Des Moines, Iowa. Students don't leave their constitutional rights on the steps of the school house as they go in. They have those rights of free speech. Mr. Daubman's, the facts don't match up to what Mr. Daubman's saying about these students still being able to freely meet. Dr. Findley testified at the trial that had there been regular meetings that he knew about, even though they were informal, in a classroom after school or whatever, he would have refused to allow those students to meet.

MR. LEHRER: All right. We have to leave it there, gentlemen. Thank you both very much for being with us tonight. ESSAY - SALUTE TO COPS

MS. WOODRUFF: Finally tonight our Tuesday essay. Our regular essayist, Roger Rosenblatt, has some thoughts about the deaths of policemen.

MR. ROSENBLATT: When a policeman is killed doing his work, the event is both noted and muted as a combination of the expected and the inconceivable. Week after week, policemen go down in America. In New York City not long ago, a murder suspect shot and killed two detectives who were driving him back to prison. The killer managed to get hold of a revolver while in detention. As the two police detectives sat in the front seat of the car, the murderer shot them both in the back of the head, two cops suddenly dead. A week earlier in New York, another policeman was stabbed to death in a fight resulting from a minor traffic accident. Make it three cops dead. "Anytime a copy dies, a piece of every other cop dies," said a detective attending one of the funerals. Anytime a cop dies, a piece of every citizen dies too, but the citizens have no way of expressing their loss, so the feelings are kept inside. For that reason, policemen are known to think that the people do not appreciate the risks a cop takes, but that isn't so. What is so is that cops are regarded as part of the American landscape, which is the way it ought to be in a democracy dependent on law. As part of the landscape, they are expected to endanger themselves. Citizens acknowledge this fact but do not express it maybe because the life and death risks a cop takes are wholly unimaginable to those of us who wander about in zones kept safe for our benefit. Expressions of understanding of what policemen go through are thus consigned to fiction. Television has produced a surprising number of high quality police shows over the years from Naked City to Policewoman to Cagney & Lacey to Hill Street Blues. One reason these shows were or are so good is that cops are ready made heroes. The contests of good and evil do not have to be invented. The stature of the profession does not have to be invented. The image of the bad cop as depicted in the movie Prince of the City is always especially horrific and frightening because the bad cop is the exception who proves the rule. The rule is the good cop doing service in obscurity. An episode of Hill Street Blues fewer viewers will ever forget had the young good guy policeman walk into a store and stumble accidentally upon a robbery in progress. The cop was shot down before he had time to react. The audience felt the same way. Every journalist makes it his business to ride in a police car at least once. When I did it, it was all boredom and routine. Then some guy made an illegal U-Turn and the cops pulled him over. When they approached his car so cautiously, hands ready to pull their guns, one saw in a single scene the full range of their work, from routine to peril. For the people they protect, the cops' peril is routine as well, routine and extraordinary. We see both factors in our peripheral vision every time a police car moves through the streets. We see it in every cop's face which we recognize and do not recognize. I propose a ceremony of appreciation for every town and city in the country, that once a year all the citizens, not just the policemen, hold a memorial service for all the slain cops. In New York, there is this familiar outrageous scene, uniformed policemen carrying the flag covered casket of a fellow officer high on their shoulders. Widows weep, children stare, colleagues hang their heads. People at home watch the scene on TV newscasts, feel the loss and swallow the feeling, but the murder of a cop is their death too. We should gather together, show our grief to the cops and to ourselves. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, Pres. Bush vowed to find and prosecute those responsible for the recent wave of racial bombings. The Education Department said student reading and writing skills remain poor and the Space Shuttle Columbia was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Jim. That's our Newshour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.