The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. In the headlines today, the Supreme Court made it easier for school officials to search students for drugs and other contraband. Major banks lowered their prime lending rate to 10 1/2%. Jamaica was hit by rioting over gas price increases, and Brazil elected a civilian president for the first time in 21 years. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: Here's a rundown on our NewsHour contents tonight. After the summary of the day's news, we have four focus sections and a profile. On Martin Luther King's birthday we debate whether Reagan policies are working for blacks. Elizabeth Brackett updates the feuding between whites and blacks in Chicago politics. Judy Woodruff backgrounds Brazil's return to democracy, and we analyze today's Supreme Court decision on searches in schools. Finally, we profile Chicago's best-selling priest, Father Greeley.News Summary

LEHRER: School officials were given increased freedom today to search students and their property. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a six-to-three vote, ruled teachers and administrators do not have to have a court-approved warrant to conduct searches, nor do they have to meet a probable cause test, as required of police. The court said school authorities need only have reasonable grounds for suspecting the search will turn up evidence a student is in violation of the law or school rules. The decision overturns a New Jersey lower court ruling which declared the search of a girl purse for drug paraphernalia was unconstitutional. One of our focus segments tonight is on today's decision. Robin?

MacNEIL: There are a number of pieces of economic news today that in the eyes of government and private economists added up to evidence that the economy is on a satisfactory course. The government said retail sales slipped a tenth of a percent in December, but would have been up but for poor car sales. For the year 1984, retail sales were up 10.4%. The Federal Reserve Board said that industrial production was up 0.6% in December, the highest rise in five months. Leading banks today joined the move to lower their prime lending rate from 10 3/4 to 10 1/2 percent. The stock market, which showed big gains yesterday, closed down today with the Dow Jones industrial average off 3.75 points at 1230.79.

LEHRER: Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker had some works today about interest rates. After meeting with a group of Republican senators, he said the rates will come down if Congress passes a deficit-reduction plan that cuts at least $50 billion the first year and has some follow-through.

PAUL VOLCKER, Federal Reserve Board Chairman: I thought all along that you've got to think, and you're just talking round numbers now, that $50 billion plus in a convincing way is what you need to have a psychological as well as a real effect over a period of time.

LEHRER: The Republican Senate leadership had other meetings today on budget cutting and the federal deficit, including a session with members of the Business Roundtable, an organization of the nation's 200 largest companies. They also warned the senators about the dangers of a large deficit.The combination of meetings drew this comment from Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, who was accompanied by Roundtable President Robert Beck when he met with reporters.

Sen. ROBERT DOLE, (R) Kansas, Majority Leader: Well, I think we've sort of had the one-two punch this morning. We had Paul Volcker for breakfast and these follows dropped in for coffee, and they all gave us the same grim news. We've got a problem. And Paul Volcker told us this morning that he thought in '86 that $50 billion was on the margin. It really wasn't going to get us a medal for anything, but $50 billion in hard to get in '86. He made the same point that Mr. Beck made and others this morning -- others at the Roundtable. We've got to look at '86, '87, '88 and beyond. We're looking -- we're not going to be satisfied with a $100-billion deficit in 1988.

ROBERT BECK, president, Business Roundtable: Perhaps as serious as anything else, in order to put this in perspective, is to recognize that the total federal receipts this year are a little less than 20% of the gross national product. Defense, the entitlements and interest on the debt exceed total receipts for the first time in the history of the United States. So if you wiped out everything else in government, including the Senate and the House and the administration and all of the revenue sharing programs, everything else, you still couldn't balance the budget because defense, entitlements and interest on the debt exceed the amount of money coming in.

LEHRER: There was also word on one specific budget cut President Reagan has in mind. It's an 11.7% reduction in funds for the National Endowment for the Arts, with the bulk of the reduction coming from opera, music and dance programs. White House spokesman Larry Speakes today confirmed a New York Times story about the proposed reduction.

MacNEIL: If Martin Luther King had lived, he would have been 56 today, and many communities held celebrations although his birthday does not become a federal holiday until next year. There were marches and services in many cities -- Atlanta, Savannah, New Orleans, St. Louis, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Tuskegee, Alabama, and in northern cities like Chicago, Columbus and Boston. President Reagan said King had given the nation a new hero to admire and emulate. The President received a group of blacks sympathetic to his policies. Afterwards, Robert Woodson, who heads the Council for a Black Agenda, said the black community needed to challenge traditional wisdom as Martin Luther King had done.

ROBERT WOODSON, Council for a Black Agenda: The black community, in order for it to overcome some of its difficulties, must establish, I think, a strategic alliance with the Reagan administration to address some of our problems. But we realize that over the past 20 years we have been engaged in an alms race, A-L-M-S, to the point where 20% -- there's been a 25-fold increase in the amount of federal dollars to address the needs of the poor over the last 20 years, yet one-third of the black community is in danger of becoming a permanent underclass.And so that increasing the alms race further and expanding the social welfare complex that has become a Pentagon of poverty, with most of the money going to professional service providers, that this would not benefit the black community. And so we must move away from the maintenance programs of the welfare state and expand the business formation rates and economic development activity of the black community. And so that we have offered several proposals to accomplish this.

MacNEIL: In our first focus section after this news summary, Robert Woodson and Benjamin Hooks, head of the NAACP, debate Woodson's contentions. Also, Elizabeth Brackett reports on blacks in Chicago politics.

LEHRER: A B-52 bomber carried four unarmed cruise missiles over North Dakota and Canada today on a 15-hour test flight. The purpose was to test the missile's guidance system and was the first of three planned this year. There were demonstrations of various sizes in several Canadian cities to protest the test flight. In North Dakota, anti-nuclear groups protested by calling members of the North Dakota congressional delegation on the telephone.

Meanwhile, in Belgium a bomb heavily damaged a support building a mile from NATO headquarters in Brussels. A leftist group aligned with the Red Army terrorists in West Germany claimed responsibility for the bomb, which was in small car parked near the building. Two U.S. military police guards were slightly injured by flying glass. It was the eighth bombing in Belgium in four months.

MacNEIL: A summit meeting of the Warsaw pact countries which was scheduled to open today in Sophia, Bulgaria, was postponed, and that touched off new speculation about the health of the Soviet president, Konstantin Chernenko. He is 73 and suffers from emphysema. Western diplomats in Moscow said Chernenko's poor health seemed the most likely reason for cancelling a meeting with the other Communist countries of Europe.

LEHRER: Increases in gasoline and propane gas prices triggered riots in Jamaica today. The Caribbean island nation was paralyzed for most of the day as demonstrators blocked roads and caused all businesses, schools and government offices to close. Police used tear gas to disperse crowds in some areas. There were reports two people died in the rioting.

Further south, in Brazil, South America's most populous nation, civilian government returned today. Seventy-four-year-old Tancredo Neves was elected president by the country's electoral college.Brazil had been under military rule for 21 years. Neves has been active in Brazilian politics for 50 years. He defeated a military-backed candidate for the presidency. We'll have a focus segment on the significance of today's change later in the program.

MacNEIL: A federal grand jury has indicted 26 people for operating a multi-million-dollar drug ring for 10 years in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. The Justice Department, announcing the indictments, alleged that the group distributed nearly 300 tons of marijuana and hashish. The government is seeking to confiscate more than 1,000 acres of ranchland in Virginia and Maryland, a condominium in the Virgin Islands, bank accounts, jewelry, antiques, pension funds and 12 motor vehicles. The indictment claims that the enterprise, using firms selling rugs, gems, jewelry and precious metals as fronts, made more than $100 million in illegal profits. Are Blacks Better Off?

LEHRER: Today was Martin Luther King's birthday and many chose to note it in many different ways. As we just reported, President Reagan did so by meeting with a group of black academics, economists, businessmen and others who generally represent one side in the new debate among black leaders over agendas and methods. That debate is the centerpiece of our first focus segment tonight. The group which met with Mr. Reagan today is called the Council for a Black Economic Agenda. Its president is Robert Woodson, a conservative activist who specializes in inner-city neighborhood problems. He is joined tonight by Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP and a sharp critic of President Reagan's approach toward blacks.

To you first, Mr. Woodson. What did you tell Mr. Reagan today?

ROBERT WOODSON: We said to Mr. Reagan that it is important for him to go beyond policies that would cause the Republicans to be low-budget Democrats by merely defining fairness to blacks as how much money is pumped into the social welfare system. We said to him that he must support policies of development of the black community that would, for instance, promote small-business formation rates. We know that Japanese-Americans have the highest median income of any other group in this society and one-third of them are in business for themselves. This is compared with 8% of blacks who are in business for themselves, and half of those businesses don't employ anyone. So that one of the specific recommendations that we made was a revision in the tax code, Section 1244, that would make it possible for investors to invest in small businesses located in distressed communities and write them off their taxes the way you do your mortgage interest. We secondly recommended that tax incentives be given to employers to train low-income people. And the third on the economic recommendations was that those people receiving unemployment compensation and welfare payments be allowed to use portions of that money as venture capital to fund small businesses that would employ themselves, similar to the British and French models.

LEHRER: What did the President say to all this?

Mr. WOODSON: The President and Mr. Meese and the Vice President, Mr. Baldrige and others assembled there, I think, were responsive to these proposals. They say they were unique, and they weren't accustomed to receiving these kind of proposals. And they pledged to explore them further and assigned Mr. Jack Spawn to act as liaison with us to explore these further.

LEHRER: Mr. Hooks, in New York, what do you think of these ideas?

BENJAMIN HOOKS: Well, one or two things that Mr. Woodson said are fairly good. The rest is just hogwash, of course, and of course those that are good the NAACP has been in to the President four years ago.

LEHRER: Let's start with the hogwash.

Mr. HOOKS: Well, let's say this. First of all, we have been in favor of some kind of tax incentives for those small businesses. We have been in favor of continuation of the 8A program. This administration is threatening to undo the Small Business Administration. We have been trying to deal with the low-income people. And the thing -- and four years ago we presented to Mr. Bush, in Mr. Reagan's sickness, a 130-page report where we tried to deal with the problems constructively of this country, not just the black community, because after all, black people are American citizens and we're not going to do well with a $200-billion budget deficit that this administration is dealing with any more than white Americans will. Secondly, when you talk about somebody on Social Security using that money for venture capital, I think that's hogwash. When you look at the amount of money people get, I don't know what kind of business you're going to go into, what you have left over. The fact is that in this four years black people have fared very poorly. Today black people are paying more in taxes at the poverty level than they were four years ago, largely because the tax reductions did not affect the bottom class of people, but Social Security tax had risen. And I've got information here from the Congressional Budget Office, I've got information from the Department of Labor that indicates that blacks are much worse off economically today than they were four years ago.

LEHRER: Do you challenge that, Mr. Woodson?

Mr. WOODSON: I agree that blacks are worse off, but the question is, we have been -- there has been a slow decline in the conditions of blacks over the past 20 years in spite of these massive expenditures of programs. In fact, many of the social programs of the welfare state have in fact destroyed black families in the name of helping them. We have, for instance, a foster care system that spends $2 billion to maintain about 300,000 kids away from stable families. The mortality rate is twice that of the national average. A third of them end up in our prisons. So what we are doing in the name of helping families is incubating tomorrow's criminals at public expense, when 80% of those federal dollars of the $2 billion spent annually go to the social welfare complex so you have a perverse incentive for changing those. I don't hear any challenge to this on the part of those who promote these traditional social programs. There's no discussion of these.

LEHRER: Like Mr. Hooks. Mr. Hooks?

Mr. HOOKS: Well, whenever I cite figures I try to give the source. I don't know where those figures come from. There are a lot of inflammatory words --

Mr. WOODSON: Health and Human Services --

Mr. HOOKS: -- "social welfare," "the social-welfare complex" and all that kind of thing. I've heard those figures thrown around, but I have before me the information from Congressional Budget Office, from the Census Bureau, and the fact of the matter is that I was dealing with what has happened in the last four years. If we want to go back 20 years or 30 years there are a lot of things wrong with this country that we have been trying to address all of these years.We've been a little bit unsuccessful. And my major premise is very simple, that black people are a part of this country. Unemployment for white people in the last four years has declined 33%. For black, folk it's only declined 22%, and that comes from the Census Bureau. The fact of the matter is that, as I mentioned a while ago, if you look at a family of six at the poverty level, federal taxes have risen $1,000 in the last four years. That does not contribute to capital formation. And what we have to deal with is the realistic fact that the NAACP is an organization that recognizes that blacks are part of the American system, and we know that we're not going to do well if the country's doing poorly. Just before this program came on it was obvious, as has been stated, that unless something happens the federal government is spending more in the budget in interest on the debt than the income. So we've got to deal more than little Bandaid programs that Mr. Woodson is talking about. We've got to deal with the fundamental problem of this county. Reduce this budget deficit, reduce -- increase the taxes and bring about a program that all of us can advance, not just black people.

LEHRER: But he says -- you just heard him say that your approach, the traditional approach, won't work anymore. He says it isn't working.

Mr. HOOKS: Well, I don't know what this means by my approach --

Mr. WOODSON: I think it has -- we have history -- we have history behind us. The very fact that even if you had the most generous president and the most generous Congress and social -- existing traditional approaches were funded four times what they are now, you know, it would create dependency. We still have increase in the number of single family headed households, we have an increase in the number of children being born to teenagers. Some of these problems can be solved through government action. But I challenge you to look into what are problems that are internal to the black community. Is it reasonable to ask the federal government to be a father to black children, or is that a responsibility of the black community to establish its own system of monitoring itself and drawing upon its strengths to address its own problems instead of always looking to outside government Moses to save us from ourselves? I think we have internal strengths, resources, that are in our indigenous, grassroots organizations that have demonstrated that they can solve --

Mr. HOOKS: Well, let me --

Mr. WOODSON: -- many of these problems if we would just recognize them as a resource.

Mr. HOOKS: I think we're just mixing apples and oranges. Talking about the federal government being the father to children is not what this discussion is about. It is about the economic problem and how it attacks black America. Those who are married, those who have two-family heads of the household, those who are single parents. These are facts that we are prepared to deal with. Now, to hear a lot of foolishness thrown around and all of these cliches and phrases that appeal to certain far-right constitutencies is not what I'm here about. I'm here to discuss realistically and practically some programs that we can deal with. I come here armed with facts that I deal with every day. I represent an organization that has more than 40,000 members, and they write me, they talk to me and I hear from them. And the problems in America are beyond -- when I hear somebody talk about 15 million abortions in the last 10 years, all of these problems we could talk about in another program. But today I thought we were trying to deal with the impact of the Reagan budget and tax policies on black America.

LEHRER: What is your position on it?

Mr. HOOKS: And the impact on that has been detrimental. It has been terrible. And black America is worse off. The Urban Institute divided black America into five classes, from the top to the bottom, and in every class the impact of the Reagan administration policies has been detrimental.

LEHRER: You just deny that, Mr. Woodson, or do you think it's irrelevant?

Mr. WOODSON: I think it's irrelevant. I think if a Democrat had been elected and they had funded all the programs that Mr. Hooks talked about, 10 years from now we would still find one-third of the black community, if not more, in a permanent underclass. What we need are some new, practical, innovative ideas that goes beyond where we are now. And if Dr. King had been alive today, I think he would have founded a group called a Council for Black Economic Agenda. After all, when he died he was in Memphis addressing the needs of poor black garbage workers, dealing with some economic issues. He challenged traditional wisdom, and for doing so was opposed by the same traditional leaders. So that we need to move in new directions and at least explore these alternative possibilities to determine whether or not they are hogwash, as Mr. Hooks contends, or whether or not they carry the seeds of some new, innovative approaches to the problems. What's wrong with testing something new?

LEHRER: Mr. Hooks?

Mr. HOOKS: Well, the problem is I haven't heard anything new. The NAACP was founded in 1909, the Urban League was founded in 1910, and before the NAACP or Urban League came into into existence, Booker Washington founded the National Negro Business League. I've been a supporter of that organization all of my life. We have believed in black capitalism, black enterpreneurship. The NAACP has a very aggressive program now. We think we've provided, in pacts we've signed with more than 30 American companies, jobs for hundreds of black folk. We have made opportunities. We have supported Jack Kemp's enterprise zones. We have come out in favor, we have worked with Perry Mitchell on the Small Business Act. We have made every effort we can. We have supported the MacDonald Corporation as they have these hundreds of black folk now owning these businesses and other fast-food franchises employing over 100,000 black kids. We are working hard on these programs. Now, what Mr. Woodson is talking about, new, innovative and different, that remains -- I'm sure our time has run out. That remains to him sometime to talk about what new, different, innovative is besides a group of black leaders getting in to see Mr. Reagan.

LEHRER: All right. Mr. Hooks, Mr. Woodson, thank you both very much. Robin? Feud in Windy City

MacNEIL: Martin Luther King's birthday also provides the take-off point for our next focus section, from Chicago.

[voice-over] Today marked the first time Chicago has officially observed the King birthday. It did so in a day of ceremonies and a concert at Medina Temple and with a tribute from Mayor Harold Washington.

Mayor HAROLD WASHINGTON, Democrat, Chicago: And the question is, does his legacy live? I think it does. I hope you think it does. But whether it does or not, Chicago today is dedicated to the proposition that it should. Thank you very much.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Stevie Wonder sang a birthday song to the civil rights leader who had a profound influence on this city, a city still very much divided on the race issue, as correspondent Elizabeth Brackett reports.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT [voice-over]: The city that celebrates Martin Luther King's birthday today gave a far different reception to the civil rights leader 18 years ago.

Dr. MARTIN LUTHER KING [1966]: I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I have seen in Chicago.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: In 1966 King and his followers spent weeks marching for open housing, marching through hostile white neighborhoods. Finally the city agreed to strengthen its open-housing laws.

Dr. KING: It's definitely a closed society, and we're going to make it an open society.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Today that society has opened up. Blacks have achieved the kind of political power King fought for. For the first time, a black man has become the mayor of the city of Chicago. But that political power has not meant racial harmony. In fact, many believe that in the last year racial tension and racial violence increased in the Chicago area.

KALE WILLIAMS, fair housing activist: It's been fairly widespread. It's not been concentrated in any particular area.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Kale Williams, the head of fair housing group formed as a result of the King marches, says his organization reported 31 racial incidents in the Chicago area last year. Before 1984 the group recorded an average of 10 racial incidents per year.

Mr. WILLIAMS: What we've seen is a sharp increase in the number of incidents and the seriousness of incidents where black families moving into white areas have been harassed, been intimidated and, in some cases, attacked with extreme violence.

CONGREGATION [singing]: "-- redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; redeemed, redeemed --"

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Mr. Enell Hall and his 10-year-old son Mark barely escaped when their home was fire-bombed shortly after the church bought a house for Hall and his family in an all-white neighborhood.

MARK HALL: My father was sleeping when he heard the explosion. Then he cried out, "Fire! Fire!" By the time my mother got Monique and Marvin ready down to the stairs, the whole place was on fire.

Rev. ENELL HALL: That thing was gutted by fire, the building and the upstairs also dark with smoke.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Hall, a native of Jamaica, says he was stunned by the level of racial hatred the fire-bombing showed.

Rev. HALL: It might not be premeditated attempted murder, but the result of what happened could have been murder. We could have lost our lives. Whether he had planned to do it or not.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Businesswoman Patricia Tsoukalas was also shocked by the intimidation and harassment that followed her move into a previously all-white apartment complex in the Chicago area.

PATRICIA TSOUKALAS, businesswoman: It was very hard for me to face the fact that this is 1984 and this is, you know, this is going on.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: The telephone and electric lines leading into Tsoukalas' apartment were cut. Her door locks were filled with glue and the tires on her car were slashed.

Ms. TSOUKALAS: They were afraid that I was a blockbuster, that the building would become contaminated with roaches and all the things that black people are so stereotyped with.

BRACKETT: How did you know these incidents were directed against you because you were black?

Ms. TSOUKALAS: Because it was stated in the first letter I received that "us niggers has chased them out of certain areas back in the '60s" and that I was not going to chase them out of this area.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Whites in neighborhoods where Dr. King marched 18 years ago say they have never condoned incidents of racial violence. But they say as neighborhoods have changed from white to balck they too have become victims.

MARY JANE FARRELL: We believed that the last neighborhood we lived in nine years ago could peacefully integrate, and we stayed, and it didn't. And two of our children were beaten. When the first black family moves in there's salways a lot of hullaballoo, but when I was the last white family to move out there was no press there and there was no police there to guard my kids.

BRACKETT: Both whites and blacks blame the increase in racial tension and racial violence on the continual battling of the politicians here at City Hall. The mostly black supporters of Mayor Harold Washington and the white supporters of Alderman Edward Vrdolyak have fought for control of the council and of the city since the day Harold Washington was elected.

[voice-over] Despite pleas from the clergy, business groups and community organizations, the level of rhetoric between Washington and Vrdolyak supporters has not cooled off during the first two years of Washington's term. The former chairman of Chicago's Urban League and a Washington supporter says the battle has heightened racial tension in the city.

EDWIN BERRY, civil rights leader: Well, I think that the thing that has happened in the last year more than anything else that has gotten attention and exacerbated the problems are what are referred to here as the council wars. And the council wars have taken on the aroma of a strictly racial thing.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: The leader of the opposition, Alderman Edward Vrdolyak, admits that the battle has increased the racial division in the city, but, he says, not necessarily the level of racial violence.

[interviewing] Do you feel responsible for the increase in racial violence?

EDWARD VRDOLYAK, alderman: No. I'm doing my job, and I'm doing my job I think the best way I know how for the people that I represent and for all of Chicago, for that matter. I mean, most of the people in this town now that have a nickel's worth of brains have figured out that this is not a fight about race,but it's a fight about political strength and power.

BRACKETT: Would you say that what we've seen in Chicago going on today, is it racism or is it power politics?

JAMES MONTGOMERY, Mayor Washington's cabinet: Obviously it is a combination of the two. To the extent that you can convince the white community in Chicago that it is inappropriate to judge this mayor on the basis of his performance but to judge him on the basis of his race, you enhance politically your power base by polarizing people and making it us and them.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Regardless of who's to blame there has emerged in Chicago an attitude which seems to say that it's okay to be up front about racial conflicts.

Mr. BERRY: I think that we get a reflection of what those people who are very prominent leaders do in terms of how the little people in the neighborhoods act out their feelings. And they don't know how to fight with words. They fight with tire irons and bombs, firebombs.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Others say it is national as well as local politics that have increased racial tension.

Mr. WILLIAMS: What I surmise is that there is kind of a climate at both the national level and the local level of withdrawal from a commitment to civil rights and equality and justice, which lets people who, to begin with, are bigoted or disturbed or unbalanced, makes them feel that somehow the climate has changed so that they can begin to act out their prejudices, where before they may have felt that it was completely unacceptable and they didn't do it.

BRACKETT: So, while much of Dr. Martin Luther King's dream has been achieved in Chicago, that success has often meant that racial antagonisms, once hidden by the political system, are now out in the open. And many think that the city is nearly as tense now as it was when Dr. King marched in Chicago 18 years ago.

MacNEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the significance of Brazil's return to democracy, a debate on today's Supreme Court decision permitting searches in schools, and a profile of the Chicago priest who's a best-selling novelist. Brazil: Back to Democracy

LEHRER: We next focus our attention on Brazil, the South American nation which today returned to the rule of civilians. Judy Woodruff has more. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jim, today's election ends 21 years of military rule in South America's largest, richest and strongest nation. The transition to civilian rule has been relatively smooth, although today's vote was not by direct citizen ballot. The new president, Tancredo Neves, was picked by an electoral college, approved by the military. However, one public opinion poll has given Neves the support of almost 79% of Brazil's 131 million people. Long known as South America's sleeping giant, Brazil is one of the leaders in the Third World. Its economy is the world's tenth largest, and the problems faced by the new president are equal to its size. Brazil currently has almost a $100-billion foreign debt. Its democratic institutions have been weakened by the long military rule, and its economy has produced a huge gap between rich and poor. For more on today's move to democracy and the new president of Brazil, we turn to Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies and the Center for Brazilian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

Mr. Roett, first of all, just how important is this election?

RIORDAN ROETT: The election is very important because for Brazil it begins the final step in consolidating a return to democracy that began in the mid-1970s. Second, it is a very ironic election because it is electing a man who is not supposed to be president of Brazil, that is, the leader of the opposition party in Brazil. And, finally, it presents an opportunity to begin to address the long-ignored social agenda in Brazil, and Mr. Neves has said that will be his agenda.

WOODRUFF: I gather that the military had expected that they were going to be able to pick a candidate of their own choice. What happened? Whey didn't the military candidate win?

Mr. ROETT: Well, the hope was that the electoral college would serve to endorse a candidate chosen by President Figueiredo. They tried very hard in 1984 to do that, but they really were out-maneuvered by the former governor of Sao Paulo, Mr. Maluf. Mr. Maluf proved to be so unpopular in national campaigning that it was quite easy finally, at the end of '84, to put together a new coalition with the opposition and some dissidents from the government and Mr. Neves, a long-time warhorse of Brazilian politics, emerged as the consensus candidate.

WOODRUFF: So how much power will the military have now?

Mr. ROETT: Well, not a great deal. In national security areas, a great deal. In areas of economic development and social programs, far less. I think they're rather welcoming the return to the barracks and allowing the civilian politicians to retake political power.

WOODRUFF: Where is Mr. Neves on what we call the political spectrum? Is he right, left, center?

Mr. ROETT: Well, that's a great irony. Mr. Neves has moved through Brazilian politics, cutting a mighty swath for decades, moving from what we thought to be the left in the 1960s to what is now really the center-moderate-pragmatic part of the Brazilian political life in 1985.

WOODRUFF: And what would you say his priorities are as he steps into the presidency?

Mr. ROETT: He has said himself that he going to address the social agenda. After three years of recession and a tremendous drop in real wages, increasing hunger, malnutrition, infant mortality, Mr. Neves has said he is not going to deal any longer with other people's agendas. He wants Brazil's internal agenda to be the most important one. That means creating jobs. It means maintaining real wages somewhere about where they are, and turning to questions like Social Security and support for children and for the poor. To do that he's going to have to face a very serious economic situation, and that is the real [challenge] for democracy in Brazil. Can the new president respond socially with very limited resources economically and still maintain a democratic and civilian government? It's a tremendous challenge for Tancredo Neves and for Brazil.

WOODRUFF: What makes you think he should be any more successful at it than the military that preceded him?

Mr. ROETT: Well, I think he has less pretentious objectives and goals in the 1980s than the military did during the 1970s.

WOODRUFF: Well, those goals you just described sounded pretty massive.

Mr. ROETT: Well, they're important, but I think there's also a great deal of pent-up expectation that Tancredo, as he's called in Brazil, who is a well-tried and seasoned politician, is going to be able to build the kind of support he needs politically, bring together the resources he requires and really make some bold steps in 1985 and 1986. I think democracy wins ultimately, as we have seen in Argentina, because the people are willing to give a great deal of time to their political leaders to work out practical, pragmatic solutions. And I think Tancredo Neves will have that opportunity in Brazil this year as well.

WOODRUFF: What about relations with the U.S., with the Reagan administration?

Mr. ROETT: Well, I think relations between Brazil and the United States have been on course in the last few years. I think the most difficult issues will be economic. That is, the need to resist protectionism on the part of the United States, the importance of continuing to buy Brazilian exports, and, on the part of the private commerical banks, to work out a restructuring of Brazil's $100-billion debt that is at least as good as Mexico's deal and that given to Venezuela recently.

WOODRUFF: Well, how much of an impact can he as one person have no the debt and some of those other huge economic and trade problems that you just described?

Mr. ROETT: Well, individually not very much. As President Alfonsin found out in Argentina, one can certainly talk about them, but the real power centers are outside of Brazil, which is why it seems to me the most important item in the bilateral relationship is for the United States to continue to understand the importance of economic space in Brazil for Tancredo Neves. And that means continuing the very difficult fight against protectionism, providing emergency assistance when required, and making sure that there is enough economic resources put at the disposal of the new president to be sure that his democracy is not destabilized.

WOODRUFF: So I guess I come back around to the question I was trying to ask a minute ago. How much difference does one person make?

Mr. ROETT: Well, it makes a lot of difference in terms of the Brazilians now believing that they are now governing their own country once again. Mr. Neves has promised to rewrite the constitution. There will be a constituent assembly. There will be direct elections for president, probably in four years. We have new elections for Congress in 1986. There is in Brazil a sense of euphoria, a return to democratic elections. That means they're willing to be a good deal more patient, I think, with a democratic civilian president than they would be with a continuation of military government or someone the military had chosen. This gives him time to work out short-term and then, hopefully, medium-term solutions to these problems.

WOODRUFF: Is it still accurate to call Brazil the sleeping giant?

Mr. ROETT: No, not when you have a country that is the tenth-largest economy in the world, the eighth largest in the West, which now exports in many years as many industrial products as it does, agricultural products; that is now able to compete with the industrial countries in producing and selling arms to the Middle East and other Third World countries, and when you have a very sophisticated industrial base in and around the city of Sao Paulo. Brazil is no longer a sleeping giant. It's not quite clear what it's becoming, but it certainly is not that any longer.

WOODRUFF: If all that's the case then why has it had such a difficult time getting on its feet economically?

Mr. ROETT: Well, when you have 130 million people, there are bound to be very great disparities. And you mentioned earlier one of the most difficult ones, and that is income distribution. During the period of what we call the economic miracle, when Brazil grew very fast in the 1970s and when they borrowed a great deal of money to grow very fast, a number of people were left out of that growth. And some estimate that anywhere from one-third to 60% of the population is really at the margin in terms of income and in terms of participating. That's the social agenda I was talking about.

WOODRUFF: And Mr. Neves may have some effect on that?

Mr. ROETT: We hope that he will be able to begin to redirect patterns of consumption, production internally and to be able to turn towards resolving those issues with domestic resources in Brazil.

WOODRUFF: Mr. Roett, we thank you for being with us.

Mr. ROETT: You're very welcome. Civil Rights at School

MacNEIL: Our next focus section looks more closely at today's Supreme Court decision making it easier for public school teachers and officials to search students suspected of breaking school rules. The case involved a 14-year-old New Jersey girl who was found to have drug paraphernalia in her purse and was later convicted of selling marijuana to fellow students. The school's vice principal searched the student's purse after she was suspected of smoking in a restroom, a violation of the school's rules. The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed the marijuana conviction, saying the search had violated the student's constitutional rights. Today the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that decision. It said that although students did have some constitutional rights against illegal searches, school officials have more leeway than police to search for evidence of possible wrongdoing. When the Supreme Court heard arguments in this case last fall, we heard from two lawyers who filed friend-of-the-court briefs on opposite sides. They're back with us this evening. From Washington we have Gwen Gregory, deputy legal counsel to the National School Boards Association and, in New York, Barry Goodman of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ms. Gregory, first from you, what's your reaction to the decision today?

GWEN GREGORY: Well, I agree with It. The Supreme Court, I think, has found a good balance, to use their term, between the right of the child, the student, to have a right of privacy and also for the school officials to be able to protect the other children in the case of drugs and weapons, and also to provide an educational environment, because primarily the school officials are there to educate and not to act as police officers.

MacNEIL: Mr. Goodman? A good balance?

BARRY GOODMAN: No, I don't think so, not at all. In a sense I'm relieved by the decision, I should say, in the sense that the school boards had gone into the Supreme Court arguing that the Constitution has absolutely no application in the school setting. So I'm happy that the Supreme Court did not agree with that. However, I am very dismayed by the broad scope of the decision. I think that the Supreme Court has opened up the possibility for a Pandora's Box by the broad scope, in the sense that I think school officials may now start to search students for virtually any infraction of school rules. The Supreme Court was very unclear as to what grounds, in terms of violation of school rules, would justify a search of a student. It could be a very frivolous violation of school rules that would justify the search of a student.

MacNEIL: In fact, Ms. Gregory, one of the dissenting justices today in the six-to-three decision, John Powell Stevens, said it allowed for searches, as he put it, even for the most trivial school regulation. What's your response to that worry?

Ms. GREGORY: Well, I suppose it allows for that, but school officials really have a lot more important things to do than be constantly searching students. The problem is that the way the lower court decision had read, they had no power at all to search. And thus the school officials were in a position where, even where the educational environment was being disrupted, they still wouldn't be able to search because the standards were so vague. As I say, I really don't see that the school officials are going to be doing that much searching.

MacNEIL: What's your response to that?

Mr. GOODMAN: Well, I certainly hope that they don't do that much searching, and I would think that a good school administrator wouldn't. However, I think that there are a lot of school administrators who will look at this decision as a basis upon which they can search students for virtually any reason whatsoever. One thing that's important to remember in terms of the decision that was handed down today is that the court did not differentiate between the search for drugs or weapons and the search for some minor infraction of school rules, such as, maybe, possession of cigarettes, which was the case in the TLO matter. She was caught smoking in the girl's room, smoking regular cigarettes, and that's what she was searched for. The court doesn't differentiate between the types of -- between the grounds for searching for drugs and weapons and some minor infraction such as smoking cigarettes.

MacNEIL: If, however, this results, as Ms. Gregory suggests, in protecting other students from drugs or weapons and makes schools more manageable and administratable, won't the result be good?

Mr. GOODMAN: Oh, I don't think there's any question that we want to have schools that are safe for our children. The question, really, is how broad the mandate has to be, how broad the rule has to be, the power has to be for school officials to search students. I don't think it has to be as broad as the Supreme Court has announced today. I think it can be very limited. It can be applied to situations where drugs are suspected, where weapons are suspected. It doesn't have to be as broad as they've enunciated.

MacNEIL: Ms. Gregory, why should school students, particularly high school students, why should they have less right or less portected rights of search than ordinary citizens do from the police?

Ms. GREGORY: I don't think they do, actually. The rules with regard to police officers remain exactly the same as they've always been, and a student who is being subjected to a search by a police officer has exactly the same rights as any other citizen. However, what the court was saying and what we argued in our brief was that in the context of the school setting, the relationship between the student and the educator is not the same as that between the police officer and the citizen. I think it was Justice Powell that pointed out that the confrontational attitude between a citizen and a police officer should not be encouraged at all in the school system. They're there in a -- almost like the parents, though they certainly are public officials. The relationship is different.

MacNEIL: That's right, isn't it, Mr. Goodman? I mean, the school teacher or administrator stands in a different relationship to students than a police officer does to a citizen?

Mr. GOODMAN: Well, in a sense, yes. However, in reality school administrators under state law must turn over evidence that they find to the police, and in a sense really are extensions of the police because they are governmental entities that have no choice but to turn over evidence that they discover to the police.

MacNEIL: Well, are you suggesting then that this new ruling permits the police to get the school teachers to do what they're not permitted to do themselves in the schools?

Mr. GOODMAN: I think that that is going to occur very often. I don't think it's going to happen in all cases, but I think that you are going to find a lot of collusion between school administrators and the police. One other thing that Ms. Gregory said that I want to take issue with, and that is --

MacNEIL: Let me just get her reaction to that one first and then I'll come back to you. Do you share that anxiety, that police will use this as a way into the schools?

Ms. GREGORY: No, I don't.As a matter of fact, personally I think a different rule should apply when the police officers come into the school and say, you know, "Would you go check out Sally Jones?" And in fact the Supreme Court stated today in the majority opinion that they were not ruling on that issue if there was in fact collusion. So I don't think that that's what we're talking about here.

MacNEIL: What's the other point you wanted to take issue with?

Mr. GOODMAN: That is, Ms. Gregory said that this is not an exception to the rule and this is not -- that juveniles under this decision would not have any less rights than adults. I think that it's very clear that this decision is unprecedented. There is no such exception with regard to adults. I think that adults in a similar situation, such as administrative searches by, oh, firefighters, OSHA inspectors, etc. have the full protection as if police were conducting the search. This has established a lower standard for a small group in our society, juveniles. I think one thing that people should keep in mind is that once a precedent such as this is established for a small group such as juveniles, the court then will probably rely upon this decision to expand that exception to apply to adults.

MacNEIL: Ms. Gregory, that worry you?

Ms. GREGORY: Well, the school system is unique, and I might say that I can't think of any other situation where the state forces a citizen to be in a certain place from 8:30 in the morning 'til 3:30 in the afternoon. And that's what they do with the kids. They're forced to be there by the state. And the state thus owes them a duty to protect them, to assure that they're not assaulted by other children or given drugs and so forth, and also that there is a very strict standard of conduct. The parents expect that. Society expects that. And it's good for the children as well. For all of the children, not just those others.

MacNEIL: Ms. Gregory, thank you for joining us tonight from Washington; Mr. Goodman, in New York.

Ms. GREGORY: Thank you.

Mr. GOODMAN: My pleasure.

MacNEIL: Jim? Best-Selling Priest

LEHRER: We close tonight with a profile of Andrew Greeley, Father Andrew Creeley of Chicago, the Catholic priest who writes novels and otherwise stirs up storms about the Catholic Church. Our profiler is JoAnne Garrett of public station WHA, Madison, Wisconsin.

JOANNE GARRETT, WHA [voice-over]: He is one of the country's more unusual priests, for Chicago's Father Andrew Greeley is more than just a man of the cloth. He is also a sociologist, a journalist and a best-selling novelist. He has earned a national reputation as a spokesperson on the concerns of Catholics. He has earned enough money to be able to give most of it away and still afford an apartment in Chicago's prestigious John Hancock Towers. And Father Andrew Greeley has earned a sizeable flock of devoted followers. [Greeley with fans] They send him a steady sterm of correspondence. They stop him on street corners.

FAN: I understand what you are tryingto relate in those books, and I understand whole heartedly, they -- they go with the times.

Father ANDREW GREELEY: Thank you. That's what I'm trying to do. The next me --

FAN: You got another one coming out?

Father GREELEY: Yeah, but the one after that, the one a year from now, takes place right around this neighborhood. You know, the woman has a haunted art gallery over on Oak Street, two blocks down.

GARRETT [voice-over]: These are those books and, yes, you can find a little of what's on the covers between the covers and, yes, they go very well with the times. Author Andrew Greeley has sold 12 million copies of those books.

Father GREELEY: The typical reader is a college-educated Catholic woman in her 30s who doesn't go to church.

GARRETT: Who doesn't go to church.

Father GREELEY: Who doesn't go to church regularly. And that, you know, that's my congregation.

GARRETT [voice-over]: Greeley began his writing career 25 years ago in Chicago with an article on changes in the Catholic Church. He now has scores of non-fiction books to his credit, but it is his five fiction books, those religious novels, that have raised the church's ire by suggesting that the church pays too little attention to its power to forgive and panics at the mention of sex.

Father GREELEY: It hasn't dwelled nearly enough on the sacramentality of sex, that sex reveals God in a very powerful way. Sex is the best hint we have of how God loves us. God's love for us is not a little less than the aroused man or woman for a lover, but more. But there is a continuity. You want a hint of what God's passion is like, then it's the sexually aroused lover. People will say, well, a priest shouldn't know about sex. "How do you know? What do you know? How do you know so much about sex?" And the answer, well, I'm being facetious, I say that's my affair. But the serious answer is, hey, I'm a male member of the human race with the usual number of hormones and fantasies and reactions and responses. I read books. I know people, and of course I know what sex is like. You really wouldn't want a priest that didn't, would you? Because how in the hell would he be able to give people advice? How would he be able to be sensitive to their problems and difficulties? You do't have to go to bed with people to know what sex is like.

GARRETT [voice-over]: Some critics have been quite harsh, but that flock of readers has responded with a comforting deluge of mail. A copy of a letter that one correspondent sent to the cardinal.

Father GREELEY: "Greeley is honest. He does not gloss over imperfections wherever they may occur. He openly finds fault with some of the institutional shortcomings of the church. All of his novels, however, are essentially theological. There is only one message, that divine grace shatters the categories of human justice with its weighing and reckoning. Obviously this motif demands a stage setting of less-the-perfect world." And she goes on to find currents of Dante and the Scriptures and Carl Reinert and Hans Kuhn in my books. God bless her, says I! A woman of taste.

GARRETT [voice-over]: Ah, the thorny issue of taste.

Father GREELEY: These are business reply cards that we bound into 25,000 copies of the paperback of Ascent into Hell.

GARRETT [voice-over]: The sociologist Andrew Greeley has waged a campaign to quantify the tastefulness of novelist Andrew Greeley's books.

Father GREELEY: A number of agree-disagree items about the book. For example, "The book has deepened my religious faith." One item says, "Andrew Greeley ought to be ashamed of himself for writing such trash." She disagrees with that, God bless her! "I can hardly wait to read his next book." She agrees with that, as do 80% of these folks.

GARRETT [voice-over]: It is an odd way for a priest to commune with his flock. Yet, if the goal is to spread the good word, Greeley seems to have found the forum, despite any objections of his church.

Father GREELEY: I think at the present time if somebody -- If a priest, particularly -- rises above the level of mediocrity and performs reasonably well and has some success, he is in trouble with his colleagues and his superiors. And if he does a number of things well and with reasonable success, then he's got three choices. He either knuckles under and stops doing it, or he leaves the priesthood, or he does what I have done and drifts to the margins of the priesthood. Not leaving, but being totally unaccepted -- not totally, but largely unaccepted by his diocese and by his colleagues.

GARRETT [voice-over]: Greeley has no official parish. He is permanently assigned to teaching and research duties such as his sociological studies conducted here at the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago.

Father GREELEY: I have been told that if I want to be accepted back in the archdiocese, you know, officially accepted and recognized, then I've got to do public penance for all the harm my novels have done. And I said to the man who brought me the message, "Well, but, you know, look, we've got all these letters and we've got the research done that shows that the reaction of the readers is just the opposite." "Oh, no, Andy," he said, "It's not the people that read your books and like them that we're worried about. It's the people that haven't read them but are shocked that you wrote them." He says, "You should do some public penance to appease them."

GARRETT [voice-over]: Greeley has his feisty side. He earned his P.h.D at the University of Chicago, but apparently antagonized too many to get tenure there. He now spends his time writing in Chicago and teaching at the University of Arizona.

Father GREELEY: No, obviously I'm not going to get ahead in the church. That's never going to goal. But to have influence? To preach the message loud and clear? Yeah, that's why I became a priest. That's why I am a priest, and that's basically why I take the kinds of chances that, for example, writing fiction is bound to involve. I don't mean that my novels are sermons in the way I give a Sunday homily. They are stories in which the religious imagery, the religious insight is structured into the nature of the plot. You can't moralize in a novel and get away with it. At least, maybe you can throw in a sentence or two of explanation. The story itself should teach the lesson better than any explanation you can give for the story.

GARRETT: Do you find when you get your surveys back from your readers that they have gotten the point?

Father GREELEY: Oh, yes. Sometimes the critics don't, but in overwhelming numbers the readers do indeed know what I'm up to.

LEHRER: That profile of Andrew Greeley by JoAnne Garrett of public station WHA in Madison, Wisconsin. Robin?

MacNEIL: Once again, the main stories of the day. The Supreme Court ruled that school officials may search students for drugs and weapons without a warranted.

Most major banks lowered their prime lending rate to 10 1/2%.

Riots swept Jamaica because of increases in the prices of fuel.

And a civilian was elected president of Brazil for the first time in 21 years.

Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin, and we'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.