The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in New York. After the News Summary we have a post summit Newsmaker interview with Sec. of State Warren Christopher. Then Correspondent Paul Solman reports on retraining workers for a second career. Elizabeth Brackett looks at efforts to control violence in a Chicago housing project, and essayist Clarence Page remembers Martin Luther King. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: United Nations officials announced plans today to evacuate thousands of refugees from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. About 40,000 Muslims are trapped in the town which is surrounded by Serb forces. Several people died during panicked evacuations last week. The officials rejected charges the evacuations would aid the Serb policy of ethnic cleansing. Sec. of State Christopher said today the United States will push to lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims if the Serbs do not sign on to a peace plan. Officials of several European nations quickly rejected that idea. Christopher said lifting the embargo would level the playing field because the Serbs have nearly all the heavy weapons in Bosnia. We'll have a Newsmaker interview with Sec. Christopher right after this News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Boris Yeltsin returned to Russia today from the Vancouver Summit with President Clinton. He moved quickly to transform the U.S. aid package he won into political capital at home. We have a report narrated by Vera Frankel of Worldwide Television News.

MS. FRANKEL: With $1.6 billion in his pocket, Boris Yeltsin wasted no time in hitting the campaign trail after his weekend summit with President Bill Clinton. Yeltsin has just 20 days left to persuade the Russian people to vote yes in a referendum on his continued leadership and economic and political reforms. While he seems to have convinced the West that there's no viable alternative to his rule, the Russian President still has to persuade his voters at home. So after clinching the American aid package from Clinton, Yeltsin flew to the remote Siberian industrial town of Braks. Support of workers throughout Russia will be crucial in Yeltsin's battle against the hard-liners in the Russian Congress who tried unsuccessfully to impeach him last week. At this Alamanian plant, his message was quite simply vote yes on all four questions. As for the aid he secured from America, Yeltsin promised a large chunk of the aid would end up in Siberia. There was additional good news for Yeltsin from the European Community when he returned to Russia. Foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg agreed to intensify talks with Moscow to increase EC/Russian trade. German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said the agreement by the 12-nation trading bloc signaled its support for Yeltsin's reform process.

MR. LEHRER: Senate Democrats again failed to end a Republican filibuster over the Clinton economic stimulus plan. Republicans claim the $16 billion package is filled with pork barrel projects that will increase the federal deficit. Minority Leader Bob Dole said he was prepared to compromise if the new spending was reduced and paid for by other budget cuts. Sixty votes are required to stop a filibuster. Here's how it went today.

SEN. CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN, [D] Illinois: On this vote, the yays are 49 and the nays are 29. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton had some words today about the filibuster. He spoke on board a train to Baltimore on his way to an opening day baseball game.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: If the minority chooses they can stop majority rule, and that's what they're doing. There are a lot of Republican Senators who told people that they might vote for the stimulus program. But there's enormous partisan political pressure not to do it, and, of course, what it means is that in this time when no new jobs are being created, even though there seems to be an economic recovery, it means that for political purposes they're willing to deny jobs to places like Baltimore and Dallas and Houston. I just think it's real sad that, that they have chosen to exert the, the minority muscle in a way that will keep Americans out of work. I think it's a mistake.

MR. LEHRER: The President threw out the first ball at the Baltimore Orioles' home opener against the Texas Rangers. The man on the receiving end was Orioles catcher Chris Hoyle. In the game, itself, the Rangers beat the Orioles seven to four. Outside the ball park, Jesse Jackson led a demonstration to protest Major League Baseball's minority hiring record. President Clinton said it was a legitimate issue to raise. Major League officials released a plan last week to increase the number of minorities in managerial and front office positions. Jackson called it inadequate and misleading. Two new Major League teams began play today. The Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins are the first expansion teams to enter the National League since 1969.

MS. WOODRUFF: Florida Governor Lawton Chiles met with advisers today to discuss recent violent attacks against foreign tourists in South Florida. Six foreigners have been killed in the past four months. The latest murder victim was a 39-year-old German woman who was robbed and beaten to death last Friday in front of her mother and two young children. She was the third German tourist to be killed since December. The German government is preparing a warning packet for its citizens traveling to Florida. That's it for our summary of the day's top stories. Just ahead on the NewsHour, Sec. of State Warren Christopher, Paul Solman on retraining workers, dealing with violence in a Chicago public housing project, and essayist Clarence Page. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to a Newsmaker interview with Sec. of State Warren Christopher. Mr. Secretary, welcome.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: Thank you, Jim. I'm glad to be here.

MR. LEHRER: First, on the Vancouver Summit, the leader of the political opposition to President Yeltsin in Russia today accused the United States of attempting to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia. He said that this $1.6 billion summit package and all the rest were designed to help Yeltsin win that April 25th referendum. Is he right about that?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, what we're doing, Jim, is in the interest of the United States. That's what has to come first for us. Let me just say a few words about that. I think this is a real hinge point in world history. We had a couple more of this earlier this century. We had one after the First World War. The United States stepped back into isolationism. After World War II, we stood up to our responsibilities. We fought the Cold War and won. And now I think we have an opportunity to preserve what we achieved there, to go forward with trying to establish democracy and free markets in Russia. They'll have to do most of it, themselves, but we've got an obligation I think to ourselves, not to anybody else, but to ourselves to preserve the new Russia that's been achieved. So we're doing this for ourselves not to interfere in the Russian election, but because we think it's important from the standpoint of the United States and the world.

MR. LEHRER: But there is no question that, that you would like for Yeltsin to win that election on April 25th, is there?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: That's certainly true. He is the best exponent, indeed, the only exponent of the policies that we care about, i.e., democracy and free markets, and a move in the direction of bringing Russia into the family of nations in an appropriate way.

MR. LEHRER: Does the United States through ambassadors, through the diplomatic service, have an ongoing dialogue with Yeltsin's opponents in the parliament?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Yes. I think that our embassy in Moscow is keeping up that relationship. One thing in that connection, Jim, a delegation of our Congressmen are going to Moscow. Indeed, they may be there right now, headed by the minority leader -- or headed by the majority leader, along with the minority leader of the House of Representatives. They'll be meeting with their opposite members. We're not shutting out that group at all but we do feel that President Yeltsin deserves our support as being the only freely elected person in that country holding a major national office.

MR. LEHRER: But if you were say a member of the Russian parliament or just an average Russian on the street, would it be correct to make the connection between the U.S. aid package and a positive vote for Yeltsin on the 25th?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, we hope the voters in Russia will see the United States aid as coming down to the grassroots, that it's tangible, that it's something that they can feel and touch, and if that causes them to think that President Yeltsin is doing a good job, we'd be delighted by that. But our aim is to promote democracy, to promote free markets, and to try to assist the leading exponent of that who is President Yeltsin.

MR. LEHRER: When you said just a moment ago, and others have said it even more forcefully that there really is no viable alternative to Boris Yeltsin in Russia now, what is that based on? Give me your analysis of what the alternatives are to Boris Yeltsin.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, the alternatives I think at the present time would be Khasbulatov, who is the speaker of the parliament, or the vice president, Mr. Rutskoi. And I think either of them would be a step backward toward a more nationalistic Russia. Neither of those people have got the credentials as a, as a democrat and a small "d" that President Yeltsin had. And I must say, Jim, having spent a number of hours with President Yeltsin in Vancouver, I was impressed anew that this man somehow coming out of a communist past seems to have democratic instincts that are most impressive.

MR. LEHRER: Where do they come from?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, I suppose they come from within himself, but he's the kind of a man who, I guess this is a good day to use a basketball analogy, he's an all around fighter. He's a natural leader. He's a wonderful story teller, but he can also do the tough things. He can talk with precision about a wide range of issues. I was very impressed that the two leaders talked about as many as 50 issues during the hours they were together, and he showed real knowledge about each of them, so he's an all around, all around player, I think, and he's somebody who does seem to have strong democratic instincts when something comes up, you can see him going back to his belief in the people. Like President Clinton said yesterday, it's his faith in the people that is the thing that sort of shines through about President Yeltsin.

MR. LEHRER: Did you have the feeling sitting there that his attitude was please, help me, Mr. Clinton, United States of America, West, rest of the world, because if you do not, I'm going down the tubes?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, it wasn't a beseeching by any means. He wasn't pleading with us. He didn't want charity. He wants partnership. He wants cooperation. He's a proud person, so I do think he feels that his future is at stake. The next 20 days are critical for him. At the same time, he is going forward. He is working very hard. He's energetic. He's robust, and he'll wage a real campaign over the next 20 days.

MR. LEHRER: Did he make the connection between what the $1.6 billion and other things that you all put on the table and his survival and his winning this referendum on April 25th?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: I think he knows he has to do a great many things but he realizes that it will be useful to be able to go to his people and say, they're going to be helpful to us on down to earth things, things that really are tangible, things like housing, things like energy programs, things like a democracy corps, things like privatization, where the people of Russia can buy small businesses, an enterprise fund where the people of Russia will be encouraged to invest in small businesses, themselves, so I know that he feels that that's an advantage to him but more broadly speaking, he realizes that the Russians have to solve this themselves, and he has to demonstrate leadership himself. We are a part of it.

MR. LEHRER: The prime minister of Russia indicated today that there was a -- it was his words -- that there was an element of humiliation to this, and -- I mean, the proud Russian, the once proud superpower, having to come to the United States, their old adversary, and say, please help us. Did you pick up any of that smell up there?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: I found nothing of humiliation in the conversation. These two men talked as equals. I thought it was a very good summit for President Clinton, his first summit, but I saw the two men dealing very much as equals, as two very skillful international leaders operating together and dealing with a common problem.

MR. LEHRER: One of the other things that the Yeltsin critics in Russia said today that problems in Russia are so enormous that $1.6 billion in the United States in grain credits and all those other things is really small potatoes and it is going to have very little impact. My question is this: If the whole $1.6 billion package comes off, and it surely will because the money's already been voted, as I understand it, and it's used effectively, what would be the impact on the enormous problems that Russia has?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, it's certainly a symbolic impact, Jim, but there's still enough North Dakota left in me so that I think that a billion dollars spent wisely is an awful lot of money. But this is only the first step as President Clinton was careful to spell out, going beyond this $1.6 billion from the United States is bilateral funds from the other nations around the world. As you know, the United Kingdom and Canada has already come forward with additional funds. The United States is going to be considering additional funds. President Clinton having learned things from President Yeltsin as to what is needed there, what would be useful, intends to consult with the Congress and probably go back to the Congress for a supplemental fund, and then most important of all, it'll be a multilateral effort, which will be focused on meeting in Tokyo on the 14th and 15th of this month, where the major industrial nations of the world will be sitting down focusing on this one problem, inviting Russia to join.

MR. LEHRER: Is it yours and President Clinton's analysis that the, the overriding problem that Mr. Yeltsin and the people of Russia have now is more of an economic problem than a political problem, you have to help him solve that in order to solve the political problem, or how would you approach that?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, both problems are important but there's a fundamental economic problem. They need to get a grip on their currency. They need to get a grip on inflation, which is turning into super inflation. But at the same time I think the people of the country need to recognize that an opportunity to vote for democracy is very important to them and that there are some of these programs that trend, go beyond the super inflation issue. Some of these programs can be put into effect with or without full control of inflation. So I think you have a joint situation here. The people have to believe in democracy enough to want to vote for President Yeltsin, have confidence in them. At the same time, the economic issues are crucial as well.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, let's go on to another major problem on your plate, and that of course is, is Bosnia. The Serbs have thus far failed to sign on the Vance-Owen peace plan, or agreed to any part of it up to this point. What is your reading as to what message the Serbs have not gotten and why they haven't gotten it?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, let me say about this problem, Jim, it's a very, very difficult problem. You have ancient hatreds of three groups there in Bosnia, the Muslims, the Croats, and the Serbs. They hate each other deeply. It has religious overtones. It's a problem that we inherited when we came into office, and the solution to it is very, very difficult to come by. Now, let me focus on your precise question. Two of the parties have agreed to a settlement of it, the so-called "Vance-Owen Plan," after some modifications were achieve at the request of the Bosnians. Now you have the serbs standing outside and the problem is they've conquered a great deal more territory than would be reflected in the result under the Vance-Owen Plan, and I think they perhaps see the Vance-Owen Plan as a setback for them. The world is going to have to come down in a unanimous force of public opinion in order to try to persuade them to accept the Vance-Owen Plan or some modification of the Vance-Owen Plan. I think the problem is that through their vicious aggression they have taken so much of Bosnia that they are unprepared to accept a reasonable arrangement. But I hope they can have their minds changed about that by the force of public opinion and by an enhanced sanctions regime, which will be debated in the United Nations this week.

MR. LEHRER: And you suggested earlier today on NBC that maybe the time has come to also lift the arms embargo and let the Bosnia Muslims have arms. Explain your rationale there.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, at the present time, there's such an imbalance in the quality of weapons available. The Bosnian Serbs have a great deal of heavy artillery, a great deal of heavy weaponry, whereas the Muslims are badly outgunned. The way the embargo has worked up to this point is much in favor of the, of the Bosnian Serbs, and so if you were to lift the arms embargo, it would have the potential for, to put it rather crudely, leveling the playing field. But I want to emphasize, Jim, that that has some real down sides. The disadvantage of it is that would probably bring to an end the humanitarian effort that's been brought about so courageously by the British, the French and the Spanish.

MR. LEHRER: They would just have to get out of there, wouldn't they?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: They say they would have to get out of there. It would make being there too dangerous. It also has a disadvantage of probably enhancing at least in the short term, maybe in the long term the killing and the bloodshed. So although it has a lot of attractions to it, it is certainly a matter that will have to be weighed very carefully. At the present time I think the majority of the members of the Security Council are probably opposed to it. But that won't keep us from consulting and seeing if we can find a way either to lift the arms embargo totally or in some particular way that might come to some extent of leveling the playing field. But that decision hasn't been taken by the Security Council, and we'll want to approach this on a multilateral basis.

MR. LEHRER: Did Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin discuss this?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: They didn't discuss the arms embargo, as I recall, but they discussed Bosnia quite extensively, and I'm glad to say this is one of the questions that we, we see very much the same. They recognize this as being one of the horrible problems of our time. They are quite impatient with the, I believe, the Serbs, pardon me, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Who are their natural allies.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Natural allies. They're pressing very hard, the Serbs, to come to some kind of agreement. They've joined us in the enforcement of a no-fly zone. They've joined us in humanitarian efforts. So there's a good deal of common ground between us but I know from talking with Foreign Minister Kozyrev that the Russians are among those nations that are very reluctant to lift the arms embargo for precisely the reasons I mentioned, that is, it will probably end the humanitarian effort, and it will also increase the killing. So it's a terrible problem. I said it in another context, that this is a problem from hell. It's just about the most difficult diplomatic problem I've ever seen.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, good luck on that and all other problems, and thank you very much.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Thank you, Jim.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead, giving unemployed workers new skills, curbing violence in a Chicago housing project, and Martin Luther King remembered. FOCUS - SECOND CHANCE

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight we focus on worker retraining. As part of his economic package, President Clinton has earmarked millions of dollars to retrain workers who have lost their jobs. This is especially important for the hundreds of thousands of workers in the shrinking military defense industries. Business Correspondent Paul Solman of Boston public TV station WGBH has found there's a great deal of skepticism about the idea, especially among the workers, themselves.

SPOKESMAN: We just happen to be unfortunate enough to be caught in a position to be where we are today. By the grace of God it could be anybody in this room. We are skilled people. Yet, here we are, going to school to retrain and try to make a career field at 53. This is kind of ridiculous.

MR. SOLMAN: Well, it may be ridiculous, but this is the fate of millions of American workers at the moment and the fate of all these people, Pan Am workers who lost their jobs when the airline was grounded for good in December of 1991. Their weekly meeting at a community center on Long Island is about the only place they can discuss their plight.

TOM GRIFFIN, Unemployed Mechanic: You can't go anyplace. You can't talk to people. You can't -- you have nothing. You can't establish yourself with a bank. You can't establish yourself with a business. You can't go to any type of social functions. There's nothing to relate to. You have nothing.

MR. SOLMAN: Tom Griffin and Al Pineiro were solidly middle class, mechanics at New York's Kennedy Airport for the past quarter century.

TOM GRIFFIN: We've all been in the business 25 and 30 years. We're very talented but we've been thrown away. It's a throw-away society.

DAN LACEY, Labor Expert: This is one of the most tragic things that's occurring in the American work place right now, the demise of the industrial middle class.

MR. SOLMAN: Dan Lacey was a leading expert on labor issues until his death from a heart attack not long after this interview.

DAN LACEY, Labor Expert: The kind of job in which you can earn a middle class existence by just selling pure labor is going away. Frankly, that kind of job is going to the third world. It's moving to Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and that shocks Americans because the bulk of the American middle class in the last 40 years was made up of people who had that type of job.

MR. SOLMAN: In fact, this loss of both good jobs and good job prospects was so shocking to Pan Am workers that seven of Griffin and Pineiro's co-workers committed suicide within the first few months of Pan Am's demise, including one especially close friend of theirs.

AL PINEIRO, Unemployed Mechanic: I can't talk about it. That bothers me a lot. It hurts. To get thrown out in the street at this point in your life with nothing really and then find that the pressure's too much and that there's nobody out there, that you have to kill yourself, this bothers me. It bothers the hell out of me.

MR. SOLMAN: Well, of course, it would bother the hell out of any of us. Even as this economy now expands, America's major companies have been shedding jobs. Unemployment is a clear and present danger in almost every industry, especially for older workers. Not surprisingly then, the Clinton team has been emphasizing job retraining, retooling not our factories so much as our workers. But when I raise this idea at a plant facing job loss, workers are skeptical at best, like these workers at a submarine plant in Connecticut.

WORKER: Educate people to do what?

MR. SOLMAN: I don't know, to --

WORKER: What kind of industry?

MR. SOLMAN: Computers, bio-tech.

WORKER: But how many people would they need for those type of jobs?

MR. SOLMAN: In other words, what good is retraining altogether? Well, to find out, we started at Career Connections at New York's Kennedy Airport, a federally funded program for former workers of Pan Am.

SPOKESPERSON: [role playing session] Hi, Gary. Thanks for coming in. Why don't you have a seat. So I see you're interested in our position as maintenance person here. You've had a long --

MR. SOLMAN: Role playing a job interview, now a common feature of dislocated worker programs.

UNEMPLOYED WORKER: Well, I feel that I have a lot of experience there, and I hope that I could use one of those in this job.

MR. SOLMAN: For these ex-employees it's back to the basics before any formal retraining. On the wall, notice of a job search support group highlighting how to network. Elease Ruddock's purpose is to package people for the job market, but not everybody's comfortable with that.

ELEASE RUDDOCK, Employment Consultant: I have people object to that very, very seriously. I've had a gentleman who came to my class and he said, "I don't see why I should go through all of this. I got my job 25 years ago by walking in there in my coveralls and my tool box. Why can't I get this job this way?" And I said to him, "The world has changed."

MR. SOLMAN: And in this changed world, first and foremost, you need basic job search skills to, well, search for a job. But of course, not everybody from Pan Am will find one, and that leads us to the second, more traditional and most expensive phase of the retraining process, vocational education, so you can learn a new skill and supposedly land a new job, just as they promise in those TV ads.

SPOKESMAN: As you learned how to use each tool that goes into your tool box in six months you get your certificate, we recommend you for a job, your tool box is full, yours to keep, it's that simple. Call us.

MR. SOLMAN: For the 7,000 or so dollars the government spends, for example, on the six-month program in auto mechanics at New York's Apex Technical School, you do get more than a tool kit. You're guaranteed practical "hands on" experience with real teachers and generally motivated classmates. What you're not guaranteed is a paying job, no matter how prospects may appear. The man on the right, Michael Cullinane, made $80,000 a year working hundred hour weeks at Pan Am. The Career Connections program made him call potential employers before it would agree to pay his tuition for this course in AC, air conditioning repair.

MICHAEL CULLINANE, Former Pan Am Mechanic: This is the business, the up and coming business.

MR. SOLMAN: Why?

MICHAEL CULLINANE: It's gettin' more controls, more people need air conditioning. You've got computer rooms. You've got low temperature refrigeration for hospitals. They all have to be repaired, and that's what we're doin' right now.

MR. SOLMAN: Fellow student Howard Lamar, another ex-Pan Am mechanic, also called around and was told there were plenty of air conditioning jobs out there.

HOWARD LAMAR, Former Pan Am Mechanic: And so it's highly marketable, and so I chose to get into it while it's still high.

MR. SOLMAN: And you figured you'd get in before other people flooded the market?

HOWARD LAMAR: I don't know if it'll really be flooded because there will always be opening.

MR. SOLMAN: Now at the time this was either foolish self- deception or healthy optimism, depending on your point of view. But either way, it helped soften the unemployment blow which Mike Cullinane had felt before. In 1976, the brewery he worked at shut down. As at Pan Am, some of the workers couldn't take it, including one of Cullinane's best friends.

MIKE CULLINANE: He killed himself. He thought it was all over.

MR. SOLMAN: His life you mean?

MIKE CULLINANE: A young -- yeah. He thought his whole life was Reinhold Beer. When they closed up, he killed himself, blew his brains out. Why?

MR. SOLMAN: I don't know. You tell me.

MIKE CULLINANE: I don't know why. He was a very good friend of mine. I felt bad. I went to his funeral. Nobody could understand why. In fact, this is the God's truth, he was in air conditioning refrigeration. I just thought of that.

MR. SOLMAN: Now before actually putting this story together, we waited a few months to see how these guys would fare. Sad to say when last we checked with them neither Mike Cullinane or Howard Lamar had found a job in air conditioning or anything else for that matter, which tends to bear out statistics from a series of recent government studies that learning job search skills does improve your chances of getting a new job, but vocational training doesn't. We took these grim statistics to the head of Career Connections, Ronnie Kauder. She didn't dispute them, but then she did dispute us.

RONNIE KAUDER, Retraining Expert: What I'm really concerned about with this piece from the way I'm hearing it is that I feel like you're very pessimistic about the larger economy and about, you know, people getting jobs, and I feel what we do here is we try to build people's confidence. We try to help people to be very positive.

MR. SOLMAN: But you're not suggesting that we ought to be doing a piece that misrepresents the reality of the work place?

RONNIE KAUDER: Well, I think there is more than one reality. There are jobs for people with the right skills. There are jobs for people with the right ideas. There are jobs for people who, who look for a way that they can improve a business or start their own business. You create jobs based on what you offer.

MR. SOLMAN: When we interviewed him, job expert Dan Lacey made the point more broadly.

DAN LACEY, Labor Expert: Jobs are not a finite commodity. New jobs are created all the time. They have to be. That's what makes the American economy work. We destroy the old, we create new.

MR. SOLMAN: In other words, the more education and sophistication we put into job retraining, the better off our economy will eventually be, for two reasons: First, because a skilled work force attracts new business to it, and second, because skilled, self- confident workers create their own jobs. For example, ex-Pan Am flight attendant Sheila Riley who through Career Connections has enrolled at the Parsons School of Design. She's re-educating herself from the bottom up. Today she's being critiqued on her first class project, a model of a glass and marble library.

SHEILA RILEY: [in class] I like the glass because I like to read in the light. I like the black marble. Well, I couldn't -- there's a very fine line between the rheumatic and funereal, but I decided that if it had books all along the wall that would take away some of the blackness, and --

MR. SOLMAN: Riley hopes to go from flight attendant to interior designer and to starting a new business with an English friend.

SHEILA RILEY, Former Pan Am Flight Attendant: You're not going to die if you lose your job. Now is a chance to change careers. Before, I would have gone on forever and maybe we were the lucky ones, because you got a chance to evaluate -- it's a very pollyanna way of looking at it, but you got a chance to re-evaluate your life.

MR. SOLMAN: Would that all dislocated workers could be this flexible in overhauling their skills and creating their own jobs. From our modest sample, however, it seems to be a lot easier for women. Eileen Walsh, a former truck driver in Pan Am's ground service crew, is a mother of five. She's already taken paralegal training, found a job and wants to become a lawyer.

EILEEN WALSH, Former Pan Am Driver: Women are much more resilient. Just the fact that we are women, we've put up with a lot more than men have had to put up with all our lives from day one. I must make that very clear, from day one.

ANDREA ADONICAN MOORE, Former Pan Am Flight Attendant: Definitely. I mean, even as we come through in schools, you see the differences in the way women are treated.

MR. SOLMAN: Andrea Adonican Moore, another ex-Pan Am flight attendant, is studying hotel management. She wants to open a bed and breakfast in Upstate New York, banking on her ability to be flexible.

ANDREA ADONICAN MOORE: We start that way in kindergarten. By the time you get to our age we're pros at it. We do a much better job.

MR. SOLMAN: Of adapting to adversity?

ANDREA ADONICAN MOORE: Yes. Yes, absolutely. I could not agree more. We do. We move on.

MR. SOLMAN: Meanwhile, most of the men seem stuck. Back in the job search classroom, the gender gap was evident.

MR. SOLMAN: If I say to you, what retraining are you going to go into, or do you anticipate going into, what do you say?

UNEMPLOYED WORKER: I would like to get back into aviation again.

MR. SOLMAN: So that's not retraining?

UNEMPLOYED WORKER: No, not really.

MR. SOLMAN: You.

ANOTHER UNEMPLOYED WORKER: Same thing. It's the only job I ever had. I've been there for 30 years.

MR. SOLMAN: But not all Pan am mechanics are such prisoners of the past. John Henkel intends to run his own restaurant some day and he finally convinced former jet engine mechanic Hiram Iguina to follow a similar dream by retraining at New York's French Culinary Institute.

HIRAM IGUINA, Former Pan Am Mechanic: At first I really didn't know what I was going to do. What happens when unemployment insurance runs out? You know, so that's when I, John got in touch with me, and I said, yes, I think I will do that. I won't be making as much money as we used to, but I think I will enjoy it much more. I think I will enjoy it a hell of a lot more than fixing engines.

JOHN HENKEL, Former Pan Am Mechanic: That's right. Even if I don't make the money, at least I'll enjoy coming to work every day instead of dreading it.

MR. SOLMAN: Dreading it because the company was going under, or just dreading the work anyway?

JOHN HENKEL: Both. I didn't like either one.

MR. SOLMAN: Several months after this taping Henkel graduated and found a job in a Long Island restaurant, suggesting that contrary to the supposed prejudice against older workers, it's never too late. Legendary French chef Jacques Pepin is dean of students at the Culinary Institute.

JACQUES PEPIN, Dean, French Culinary Institute: I am 56. It depends entirely on the person. You're never over the hill. I mean, you cook until you die. You eat until you die.

MR. SOLMAN: Well, it can be pretty distracting back stage at the Culinary Institute, especially if you haven't had lunch, so we sampled the fare as we interviewed our host. Dorothy Cann, CEO of both the French Culinary Institute and the Apex Technical School. Predictably perhaps she is optimistic about retraining the American work force. Recently she visited investors in Europe, and got to compare their economies with ours.

DOROTHY CANN, Job Training Executive: If you look at it, Germany has a fabulous infrastructure for education. If you want to be some kind of trades person they not only put you in a program but they have all the jobs lined up, and it's incredibly well organized and efficient, and we just don't have that, however, a lot of these investors were saying they can't wait for America to get their infrastructure together, because the work ethic of the American is so much stronger than anywhere in Europe. An American will work two jobs. An American will work weekends. An American routinely will work past five o'clock, loves overtime. All we have to do really is train our people.

MR. SOLMAN: And perhaps train them as the Germans are famous for doing as apprentices. At Career Connections, Ronnie Kauder looks at it as on-the-job training, subsidizing apprenticeships for people that work.

RONNIE KAUDER: The ones we've done recently, the people are getting, you know, between 13 and 15 dollars an hour in wages.

MR. SOLMAN: And how much are you paying?

RONNIE KAUDER: We're paying the equivalent of half the wage for I think 17 weeks. It's costing us about a little over 4,000 per person. But the person has a job.

MR. SOLMAN: And after the 17 weeks --

RONNIE KAUDER: They're still employed, that's right.

MR. SOLMAN: But practically apprenticeship is a fairly new trend for job retraining in America. Moreover, it's not easy to convince employers to create new jobs even with a government subsidy. Bill Clinton already seems to be meeting resistance to his campaign pledge of getting businesses to invest 1 1/2 percent of payroll in retraining their own employees, or putting them into a government retraining fund, all of which brings us back to the basic point of this story. In an economy in which so many jobs are vanishing, especially those of older employees, it's not so much job retraining as basic re-education that may be needed, even though you can never really know which jobs you're re- educating people for. FOCUS - HOME SAFE HOME

MR. LEHRER: Now a Chicago story. For many years officials there like their counterparts all over the country have been trying to curb violence and crime in public housing projects. Elizabeth Brackett reports on their latest attempt.

MS. BRACKETT: Senque Selvey has a short walk to school every morning, but as Senque winds his way through the tall building of the Cabrini Green Housing Project, he faces more than most 10-year- olds do on their way to school.

SENQUE SELVEY: I gotta like walk down the long way instead of walking the short way, 'cause you never know like if somebody will shoot you with a bullet and a bullet don't got no eye. I know this boy who got shot who want to Jenner. Two more boys, I think, Anthony Feltin and Roosevelt -- I don't know his last name, but Laqueda Edwards got shot too. It's like you gotta be careful to walk to school on Cabrini Green.

MS. BRACKETT: Last fall, Senque lost another classmate to a sniper's bullet. Seven-year-old Don Trail Davis was shot in the head as he walked hand in hand with his mother across the parking lot from his building to Jenner School. Senque's mother and other mothers at Cabrini now shudder when they send their children off to school.

DOREEN SELVEY: Yeah. I pray every morning, you know, before they get ready to go to school. We get on our knees and pray.

MS. BRACKETT: Don Trail was the third Jenner grade school student to be killed by gunfire this year. His death quickly became a symbol of the escalating urban violence that cities seemed to be unable to control. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

MAYOR RICHARD DALEY, Chicago: What we see is unfortunately the wanton violence, the total disregard of human life by gang and drug dealers. And it's almost declaring a war. That's where we are really, declaring a war against the gang dealers and drug dealers and gang bangers in our city and in our nation. We have to. We have a war here, and we have to go after them the same way they go after innocent people.

MS. BRACKETT: Daley and Chicago Housing Authority Chief Vince Lane vowed to take back Cabrini Green from the shooters, the snipers, and the gangs. One week after Don Trail Davis's death, the Housing Project was inundated with hundreds of police officers, city workers and construction crews. Entrances to all buildings were secured and locked. Residents now have to walk through metal detectors and show IDs to get into previously unlocked buildings.

MAYOR DALEY: Before, this building was open 24 hours, seven days a week. Anybody could come in here, drive up, walk off the sidewalk, come in here, get in the elevator, do anything they wanted, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

SPOKESMAN: Now it's more secure?

MAYOR DALEY: That's the key. You have to have security.

MS. BRACKETT: Controlling violence in public housing is a problem plaguing cities across the country. But a recent federal report called Chicago's crime problem "the worst in the nation." The concentration of high density high rises plus well organized gangs mean gangs can virtually control the projects here. Sick of the killing and the drugs, many residents welcome the new security measures.

FRED BOLACK, Cabrini Resident: Considering how bad it's been over here, in a way I kind of understand why, you know, why they got so many police over here and what not, trying to straighten out things, straighten the buildings out, keep all the, keep all the trouble, keep all the drugs and stuff out.

MS. BRACKETT: And when they all, when the police all leave, do you think it will be different?

FRED BOLACK: Yeah, I think it will. I don't know how long it's gonna last but hopefully it will be safe, safe around here for a pretty long time.

MS. BRACKETT: There have been many efforts to curb the violence in the 70 acre Cabrini Green project that sits just to the West of Chicago's Gold Coast and only two miles from downtown. Mayor Jane Byrne moved into Cabrini Green in 1981 in an effort to focus attention on the security needs at the project. The latest effort is the biggest. The city will spend $1/2 million to seal off four buildings, conduct apartment by apartment security sweeps in the remaining thirty buildings, and expand social services. Vince Lane told Cabrini residents this time they too must get involved.

VINCE LANE, Chairman, Chicago Housing Authority: You all have had to duck and dodge bullets long enough. I don't want to go to any more funerals for babies. I don't want to go to any more funerals for anybody, not when they are funerals because someone has been killed in a violent manner. You all have to take advantage of the moment, come out of your apartments, start working with each other, with the organizations that service Cabrini, and let's throw the bad guys out. And some of those bad guys you know as well as I do are your friends and relatives.

MS. BRACKETT: On the street there was no doubt that the heat was on. On the day of the security sweep, 15 police officers went after these young men after a report that a gun had been found nearby.

POLICE OFFICER: Let me tell you something. The minute you leave here you're going straight over to that ID center and get processed, okay? If I see you again out here and you ain't got processed, I'm going to lock you up.

MAN: And I got to get that --

POLICE OFFICER: You need that.

MS. BRACKETT: Some residents complained that the metal detectors and constant checks made them feel more like they were in prison than at home.

ERIK JOHNSON, Cabrini Resident: I think it's kind of being overdone, you know. I mean, it's all well enough that they secured a building and searched a vacant apartment but, you know, this is ridiculous being searched going in and coming out.

MS. BRACKETT: How many times have you been searched today?

ERIK JOHNSON: About four times, just trying to walk with my mother while she's gettin' her identification and just trying to get in the building to get somethin' to eat for lunch. This is ridiculous. I know I couldn't slip nothin' in and out that quick.

CHILD: You can't even go in your own building without perhaps showin' the ID and somebody come -- it's like you in South Africa somewhere, like you are in a concentration camp.

MS. BRACKETT: Community activist Marion Stamps has been working with Cabrini's children for over 20 years. She says the new security measures are not the way to go.

MARION STAMPS, Community Organizer: You have to see the polices in three and four buses and all the cars, I mean, the buses look like tanks, right? They came in our community like they was goin' to Desert Storm. That's no way to treat us. They treatin' us like everybody in this community killed that baby, and that's no way to treat us.

MS. BRACKETT: The crackdown has brought complaints. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Housing Authority, saying security sweeps violate tenants' rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure and their right to privacy.

[ATTEMPT TO SEARCH APARTMENT]

TENANT: [at door] What do you want? No. 1, No. 1, I don't have no drugs. This is a drug free house, okay? So when you come in here I don't want my house all rumpled up and tore up and in disarray.

MS. BRACKETT: But police official Sherwood Williams, who heads up the division charged with securing Cabrini, says the ACLU lawsuit prevents police from being as effective as they could be.

SHERWOOD WILLIAMS, Chicago Police Department: Police can't go into these occupied apartments and search. That'd be a violation of the rights. Even with the emergency inspections conducted by CAJ management team, they only can take, make a cursory type of observations in the apartment. So if I'm a gang banger and I know the police's hands is tied as far as coming in and occupying apartments and so forth, we can take them guns and hid them in drawers and closets and so forth.

MS. BRACKETT: These are the young men who are the targets of the massive effort by the police and Housing Authority. But now even the gang leaders say the killing must stop. These men of the Cobra Nation were out putting up fliers calling for an end to the drugs and the guns. They say even before Dan Trail Davis's death, gang leaders had come together and called for a truce. Dave Mack says after burying four brothers, he knew it was time to stop.

DAVE MACK, Gang Member: It was destroying us. I mean, you can look at the clan. It was black killing black. I mean, if you really look at it, I'm saying there wasn't no white person coming over here, killing us. We was killing our own people, and it's time to stop. You know what I'm saying?

MS. BRACKETT: How did you get people together who had been shooting each other?

ANDRE JOHNSON, Gang Member: You know it was just, you know, it was time for it to unite, you know, saying, it wasn't 'cause of Dan Train, because this, this -- there's been a focus. We realized that we were destroying our nationality from our future youth. You know, we want to get it so the young brothers and sisters growing up, you know, deserve to have more than what we had. We're trying to get this to them.

MS. BRACKETT: Crime has dropped at Cabrini Green since Dan Trail Davis's death. There were no murders and only two shootings in the three weeks after the security sweeps began. The head of the Chicago Police Department, Matthew Rodriguez, says it is more likely that it was the new security measures, not a gang truce, that calmed the projects.

MATTHEW RODRIGUEZ, Superintendent, Chicago Police Dept.: If they choose to take credit for that, that's up to the gangs. My evaluation of a truce would be quite a distance in the future and basically, you know, I don't put a whole lot of stock in it. At the same time, in this city back in the 1920s we saw other criminal, organized criminal activity, other criminal gangs who also purportedly entered into truces and the truce never, never seemed to be longstanding, so based on history, there is nothing for me to take great comfort from.

MS. BRACKETT: No matter what has made the difference, security efforts or a gang truce, Senque Selvey says it is not quite as scary to walk to school now. But Senque and his classmates, likemost everyone at Cabrini, wonder if it will last.

SENQUE SELVEY: I think it'll get better like if they like, like they have police's on the street 24 hours a day, like, like they see any gang members walking down the street they can like tell them to go somewhere else, if they don't, they're gonna arrest them.

MARK JOHNSON: I don't think this neighborhood's gonna get better. I think I have to works, when they get finished with their dealings and everything, get all the cocaine and drug pushers out, it's going to be the same way again, and that people are going to start doing it over again, and they end up, people and police and everything are not going to do nothin' about it. They're just going to keep lettin' it happen, and this neighborhood is gonna stay the same.

MS. BRACKETT: The effort to make life safer for Cabrini's children has been massive. But poverty is still the basic, intractable problem here. The shooting at Cabrini may have stopped for the moment, but at home, Senque Selvey must still deal with a bleak roach-infested apartment. There is little furniture, few clothes, no books. Afraid of the violence outside, his 28-year-old mother rarely leaves her apartment. The television is her main contact with the outside world. Vince Lane says children like Senque Selvey may survive here, but they will not thrive unless basic changes are made in public housing.

VINCE LANE: As long as we sit here with 90 percent of the residents on welfare, huddled in these tiny boundaries, we're going to have problems.

MS. BRACKETT: Solving those basic structural problems will take a long longer than installing metal detectors and running security sweeps, but Vince Lane says Chicago has begun to try. He says the legacy of Don Trail Davis demands no less. ESSAY - DREAM MAKER

MS. WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, essayist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune marks the 25th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Because I have a dream -- [applause] -- that my poor little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream --

CLARENCE PAGE: An entire new generation has come of age since Martin Luther King was shot to death in Memphis. What's happened to the dream? Will it go the way of the dreamer? Perhaps it's a sign of my age that I am irritated, even outraged, when one of today's youngsters says he or she doesn't think Dr. King was a great black hero, not as great as say some other more militant or flamboyant or separatist hero like Malcolm X. Martin has the holiday but Malcolm, who died three years before, has the cult following. After all, how many brothers do you see wearing "K's" on their caps, especially the young bloods too young to remember either man firsthand? A lot of young folks will tell you they think Dr. King was some kind of a patsy for turning the other cheek, for taking abuse in his demonstrations without fighting back. I shouldn't be surprised. It is the obligation of every new generation to irritate and outrage its elders. Our generation did it in the '60s with long hair, bell bottoms, grass and anti-war protests. Their generation does it today with short hair, baggy jeans, rap and the veneration of a militant separatist like Malcolm. It's not that Malcolm didn't have great appeal for my generation too. Malcolm and Martin were powerful voices, two sides of a coin, a good cop and bad cop in pursuit of freedom and empowerment. But 25 years later I have a renewed appreciation for Martin's courage. For one thing, it's a lot easier to rap the white power structure from a soap box in Harlem, where Malcolm usually preached, than it is to go down to the deep South and face the fire hoses and enormous dogs and electric cattle prods of Bull Connor's police in Birmingham, or to march into the cozy white neighborhoods of the North for open housing and economic justice only to get a grip up side his head in Chicago. Whatever else Dr. King may have been, he was not a wimp. His crusade required an inner strength of himself and those who marched with him that was second to none. He refused to contribute to the inevitable cycle of violence. With that, he helped save America, at least for a while, from becoming another Bosnia or Belfast or Beirut. From Beijing to Boris Yeltsin, we have seen others adopt and embrace Dr. King's strategies, courage, and sacrifice to build moral authority, to move humanity, great nations and history. Why, I wonder, isn't that message taught with greater force in our schools? In many ways, Dr. King's image as a fierce, unyielding, drum major for justice has been watered down in recent years. Some of the same well-intentioned folks who campaigned to have his birthday made into a federal holiday have sanctified King, perhaps too much so. They put him up on a pedestal, larger than life, without remembering that a pedestal is a very narrow place to stand. It can be another way of putting someone on a shelf like a quaint relic of the past, bearing little relevance to life today. And the divisive, cynical and resentful politics of the past 12 years have been kinder to Malcolm than to Martin. The voices of division were inflamed by the politics of Reagan and Bush on the one hand, and Sharpton and Farrakhan on the other. In the cacophonous atmosphere of separatism, it's hard for the more temperate and sensible voices of unity, coalition, and cooperation to be heard. Twenty-five years later, it is more apparent than ever that Martin's greatest gift to us may have been a sense of civic togetherness. Dr. King was always ready to question, challenge and subvert an unjust system. But he also was ready to recognize when the time had come to sit down and calmly reason together. Unlike many of those who shoot off their mouths these days, King was a master strategist. He got things done. That's why so many people wanted to stop him. It has been said that King's enemies could kill the dreamer but they couldn't kill the dream. No, they can't. Not unless we let them. I'm Clarence Page. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, on the NewsHour tonight, Sec. of State Christopher said there could be problems with his suggestion of lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia Muslims. He said the idea should be considered on a multilateral basis by the UN Security Council. He also said the United States is backing Russian President Yeltsin in his upcoming popular referendum. He said Yeltsin is the only current Russian leader who supports democracy and free markets. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with a NewsMaker interview with the prime minister of Egypt, Hosne Mubarak. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.