By The Year 2000; The Underclass

<v Announcer>More and more people sliding into the underclass. <v Tanya Fortson>I'm just trying to get a better place for me and my children. <v Announcer>Welfare. Is it a helping hand or a trap? <v Announcer>Major funding for By the Year 2000 is provided by the James Irvine <v Announcer>Foundation to promote civic and social responsibility and the development <v Announcer>of sound public policy through the understanding of community issues. <v Announcer>And by the Michael J. Connell Foundation. <v Announcer>Additional funding is provided by the law firm of Latham and Watkins proudly <v Announcer>supporting public discussion of community issues. <v Announcer>And by Kaiser Permanente working with Southern California for <v Announcer>a healthier tomorrow.

<v Speaker>Those who live in the underclass of this, one of the world's richest societies, usually <v Speaker>get most of the worst of everything. <v Val Zavala>Extreme poverty goes with crime ridden neighborhoods. <v Val Zavala>The worst schools and often lifelong dependance on welfare. <v Val Zavala>I'm Val Zavala. <v Joseph Bendi>And I'm Joseph Bendi. This program is part of our month long look at the have <v Joseph Bendi>have not society. In Southern California, the number of people falling into the <v Joseph Bendi>underclass is growing. <v Joseph Bendi>Why? Decent paying jobs are disappearing and without enough education, <v Joseph Bendi>the very poor have nowhere to turn. <v Val Zavala>There are about 22 underclass neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. <v Val Zavala>Residents in these neighborhoods are very poor and mostly black. <v Val Zavala>This is their story. <v Val Zavala>They live in neighborhoods where crime is so high, not even their laundry is <v Val Zavala>safe from thieves, where Mother's Day is on the 1st and the 15th - when <v Val Zavala>welfare checks are delivered.

<v Val Zavala>And where eight out of 10 births are to teenagers who sometimes become grandparents <v Val Zavala>in their early 30s here. <v Val Zavala>More than half of high school students will never walk in a graduation line, <v Val Zavala>where poor health care means they spend more time than anyone else in emergency rooms. <v Val Zavala>And where tensions are so high that tempers flare at a moment's notice. <v Val Zavala>Just as the rich are gated away from the rest of society, so are the underclass, <v Val Zavala>some living in the projects, low rent prisons of despair, where <v Val Zavala>success is found mostly on street signs. <v Val Zavala>All this despite their living in one of the wealthiest cities on earth. <v Val Zavala>These are society's underclass. <v Leonard Schneiderman>What one is attempting to describe the use of a word like <v Leonard Schneiderman>underclass is not the fact that there are people at <v Leonard Schneiderman>different income levels in the society. <v Leonard Schneiderman>But the progressive disconnectedness of a group of people from the mainstream <v Leonard Schneiderman>of the society.

<v Val Zavala>Dean of the UCLA School of Social Welfare, Leonard Schneiderman. <v Leonard Schneiderman>We have a kind of polarization going on, a kind of two tier society <v Leonard Schneiderman>in which the polarization between the haves and have nots is intensifying <v Leonard Schneiderman>very greatly. The ladders available to people to achieve upward <v Leonard Schneiderman>mobility have been cut off at the bottom. <v Val Zavala>And a changing job picture is one reason why. <v Val Zavala>Gone are high paying blue collar jobs replaced by low paid service sector <v Val Zavala>jobs. The lucrative information based jobs are unattainable by a poorly educated <v Val Zavala>underclass. Twenty years ago, a high school diploma and hard work meant a ticket <v Val Zavala>out of the ghetto. Today, that's next to impossible. <v Val Zavala>They are unable to keep up in a world that is rapidly changing, one requiring high <v Val Zavala>levels of education and highly skilled workers. <v Val Zavala>And because they've been unable to adapt, it's getting even more difficult to get out of <v Val Zavala>the ghetto. The world is passing many of them by. <v Val Zavala>Their numbers tripled in the 1970s alone.

<v Val Zavala>At last count, there were two and a half million people nationwide. <v Val Zavala>Using 1980 census data the urban Institute measured <v Val Zavala>the underclass. They looked for neighborhoods with an overpopulation of welfare <v Val Zavala>dependents, high school dropouts, female headed households <v Val Zavala>and jobless males. <v Val Zavala>They found 880 underclass neighborhoods nationwide, 22 <v Val Zavala>in Los Angeles alone. <v Val Zavala>Among them, Watts. <v Val Zavala>Despite the riots 25 years ago, it is still economically depressed, <v Val Zavala>but it's home for 24 year old Tanya Fortson, a high school dropout <v Val Zavala>and single mother of three. Tanya is a third generation welfare recipient. <v Val Zavala>She lives in Nickerson Gardens, the largest housing project in Los Angeles, <v Val Zavala>where she sees the despair daily. <v Tanya Fortson>They feel, why should I have to work? <v Tanya Fortson>I have a girlfriend now who is working and she only makes I mean, she works seven <v Tanya Fortson>days a week, and she only makes $730 a month, OK? <v Tanya Fortson>I make more than her just sititng on my behind and waiting on the mailman.

<v Val Zavala>Tanya and many like her have fallen into a trap. <v Val Zavala>Victims of a program originally designed as a safety net, but the net is slowly <v Val Zavala>pulling them under. Faced with little more than the prospect of low wage jobs, <v Val Zavala>most stay on welfare and low wage dead end jobs <v Val Zavala>mean the young men of the underclass resort to an underground economy of selling <v Val Zavala>drugs seen as the only way out. <v William Rathburn>When people are poor, there's no question but that a larger percentage of those people <v William Rathburn>are going to get involved in crime. <v Val Zavala>And this lifestyle has severe consequences. <v Val Zavala>Many young black men are being killed in gang warfare. <v Val Zavala>Those who avoid getting shot end up in jail. <v Val Zavala>Today, one in four young black men are either in jail or under court supervision. <v Val Zavala>Many expect to go to jail, according to Leon Watkins, who runs a South Central L.A. <v Val Zavala>Crisis Hotline. <v Speaker>I've heard some of the guys say it's not if you go to jail, it's when you <v Speaker>go to jail. It was out there on the street.

<v Speaker>And that in and of itself is something different than what it used to be a few years ago. <v Val Zavala>Fred Owens and James Weaver may be the next generation of underclass. <v Val Zavala>Both are 16 and both have been in trouble for gang activity with <v Val Zavala>no father in the home, Fred wanted to help his mother financially, so he began <v Val Zavala>making over fifteen hundred dollars a week selling drugs. <v Fred Owens>I just say kept a secret to myself say, hey, I will come in and pay the bills and <v Fred Owens>whatever she wants, I give it to her. <v Val Zavala>Many parents close their eyes to the crimes their sons commit, <v Val Zavala>something ex-con Marshall Brown has seen time and time again. <v Marshall Brown>Their mom was gonna go along with it, you know, because mom would like the money. <v Marshall Brown>That's what's happening, it's happening all around here that you got. <v Marshall Brown>You got 15 years of 15 year old taking care, his whole family, <v Marshall Brown>you know, and provide transportation. <v Marshall Brown>And so, what do you know, how how would they lose it if they feel they're surviving? <v Val Zavala>These men speak from experience. <v Val Zavala>They're prisoners in a halfway house awaiting release.

<v Val Zavala>To them, crime and drugs are both a matter of survival and a ticket <v Val Zavala>to the American dream. <v Marshall Brown>You can't give a man that's um say I have three kids and a <v Marshall Brown>wife. You can't give him three dollars and thirty. <v Marshall Brown>Minimum wage. Three dollars - four dollars, thirty five cent. <v Marshall Brown>So it results back to dope, you know, where they can make money. <v Alan Hudson>I was looking for that goal. <v Alan Hudson>You know, that's all I wanted was that go a nice family, a nice home and <v Alan Hudson>a car to get back and forth to work. <v Alan Hudson>In other words, I'm going to ride the boat like everybody else. <v Val Zavala>But along the way, people are being terrorized. <v Val Zavala>Every week this group meets to help residents cope. <v Val Zavala>Some have lost sons in this urban battleground. <v Val Zavala>Mrs. La Floras son was killed during an argument sparked by a minor car <v Val Zavala>accident. <v Ellamae LaFleur>When the police came to the house, it was about three o'clock and <v Ellamae LaFleur>they told me about it. I couldn't believe it because <v Ellamae LaFleur>it just was it just was a real shock.

<v Ellamae LaFleur>I couldn't believe it. <v Ellamae LaFleur>He's always in my mind day and night. <v Ellamae LaFleur>We wer very close. <v Speaker>When the sun goes down I stay home. <v Speaker>Early in the morning I stay home. <v Speaker>And it's very dangerous in my neighborhood. <v Speaker>Because you see little kids, little teenagers, eight, nine, <v Speaker>10 years old, pushing kids. <v Speaker>And I'm afraid to go out of my house at night. <v Woman>You didn't put that there. <v Val Zavala>Some parents have spirited their children out of the neighborhood altogether. <v Val Zavala>That's the case with Beverly Williams and family. <v Val Zavala>Now, its daughter, Robin Stern, who today joins the military. <v Beverly Williams>And there are a lot of young ladies watching. <v Beverly Williams>And if you go and show them that you can do it and <v Beverly Williams>they'll change you. <v Robin Stern>Aw Mommy.

<v Val Zavala>Two of Beverly's other children are in the Job Corps in Northern California and a stepson <v Val Zavala>has left gang life altogether to live and work in South Pasadena. <v Val Zavala>They're a model family that has avoided the trappings of an underclass. <v Val Zavala>But there are less drastic solutions than getting kids out. <v Val Zavala>One is a mandatory approach called gain. <v Val Zavala>And it requires all welfare recipients except those with children under six <v Val Zavala>to get jobs. If you have no skills, you're trained. <v Val Zavala>Child care, health benefits and transportation are also provided. <v Maxine Waters>We've got to keep apartments right? That's right. <v Maxine Waters>We've got to take control of our lives. <v Maxine Waters>Give yourselves a big round of applause. <v Val Zavala>A second approach is voluntary and emphasizes individual motivation <v Val Zavala>and job readiness. Project billed is the brainchild of Assemblywoman Maxine <v Val Zavala>Waters, a former welfare child herself. <v Val Zavala>Her program comes directly to the people in the projects. <v Val Zavala>The primary focus.

<v Maxine Waters>We have any other special talents? <v Val Zavala>Is building self-esteem and motivation. <v Val Zavala>It makes people literally want to get up and sing. <v Singer>[Sings "You'll hold my hand, you might not say a word, but <v Singer>I see a change when I show my face"] <v Maxine Waters>Motivation is an extremely important part of this <v Maxine Waters>job training that we do. We try and open people's minds up to the possibilities <v Maxine Waters>and let them know that they really can do something about their lives if they want to. <v Val Zavala>But some feel such programs don't get to the root of the problem. <v Val Zavala>What's needed, they say, is massive redevelopment. <v Val Zavala>Much more than two recently built watch shopping centers. <v Mark Ridley-Thomas>The point is that this shouldn't be the <v Mark Ridley-Thomas>only sort of development that happens in south central <v Mark Ridley-Thomas>Los Angeles. It's not simply a question of <v Mark Ridley-Thomas>having a job alone. It is the kind of job that this

<v Mark Ridley-Thomas>community needs. <v Mark Ridley-Thomas>I'm arguing for a diversity of opportunity. <v Val Zavala>Which includes bringing industry and other types of businesses <v Val Zavala>into a community where the drug economy and welfare has been the only option. <v Woman>I want to try and get a better place for me <v Woman>and my children. <v Val Zavala>Our discussion will involve two levels of underclass needs. <v Val Zavala>One is the need to survive. <v Val Zavala>The other. The need to find a way up and out. <v Joseph Bendi>And our panel includes from Washington, D.C. <v Joseph Bendi>You've just seen in our brief report Maxine Waters, California state assemblywoman from <v Joseph Bendi>Los Angeles. Here in our studio, Gary Blasi with the Los Angeles Legal Aid Society. <v Joseph Bendi>Virginia Postrel with the Reason Foundation, a Santa Monica based public policy think <v Joseph Bendi>tank. And Denise Fairchild, director of the local initiative Support Corporation. <v Joseph Bendi>It's an organization that helps the poor through economic development. <v Joseph Bendi>And I'd like to ask our first question of Assemblywoman Waters.

<v Joseph Bendi>Can you do it through voluntary operations? <v Joseph Bendi>Ms. Waters? Or does it have to be a coordination of everything if we're ever going to <v Joseph Bendi>solve the underclass problem or even make a dent in it in the next 10 years? <v Maxine Waters>It needs to be a comprehensive approach to dealing with the <v Maxine Waters>failure of education, the failure of government, the failure of families, <v Maxine Waters>the failure of the society to deal with problems in inner cities <v Maxine Waters>and ghettos. It must be comprehensive. <v Joseph Bendi>And the programs that we now have on the books, the comprehensive program, for example, <v Joseph Bendi>GAIN in the state of California. <v Maxine Waters>Oh GAIN is not working in California. There's not even a gain office in Watts <v Maxine Waters>where you have the problem of welfare. <v Maxine Waters>And the problem of joblessness. <v Maxine Waters>That particular program was contracted out to some entrepreneurs by the county <v Maxine Waters>supervisors who are making money off of it, but they have done nothing for the people of <v Maxine Waters>Watts. <v Joseph Bendi>When you say they're making money off it, what do you mean by that? <v Maxine Waters>Well, they're private contractors who contracted with the county instead of the county <v Maxine Waters>operating that GAIN program.

<v Maxine Waters>There's not even a GAIN office in Watts where clearly you have a disproportionate <v Maxine Waters>number of people on welfare. <v Joseph Bendi>If GAIN were use the way it was designed to be used, wouldn't it work, isn't that the <v Joseph Bendi>right idea? <v Maxine Waters>That's one possibility, one way of helping to deal with the problem. <v Maxine Waters>But that's just one way. <v Joseph Bendi>And you have some other way. <v Joseph Bendi>Miss Fairchild, yours is a very interesting combination of business and private <v Joseph Bendi>enterprise. How does your idea work? <v Denise Fairchild>When we talk about the underclass is as it's defined. <v Denise Fairchild>We're really talking about intergenerational poverty. <v Denise Fairchild>And that means there's been a legacy of deprivation and that deprivation is defined <v Denise Fairchild>by people, actually corporations and the public sector taking resources <v Denise Fairchild>out of our communities. There's been a wholesale rip off of our community in terms of <v Denise Fairchild>industries moving out. Other job creation opportunities not available. <v Denise Fairchild>The maldistribution of public resources, to the extent that we're looking at community <v Denise Fairchild>development block grant funds being evenly distributed across the city of Los <v Denise Fairchild>Angeles when the greatest need is in south central Los Angeles, for example,

<v Denise Fairchild>shows that what we have to do is bring resources back into the communities. <v Denise Fairchild>We have to invest in our neighborhoods, invest in the capacity of <v Denise Fairchild>the of the people in South Central, and that's what we try to do. <v Joseph Bendi>Over the next 10 years if you had your way, how would you change one community, one <v Joseph Bendi>underclass community? How does it work? <v Denise Fairchild>I don't disagree with Maxine Waters, who talks about giving hope and vision <v Denise Fairchild>to people who never had the opportunity to achieve. <v Denise Fairchild>Job opportunities to create their own businesses. <v Denise Fairchild>And that's what we try to do if they come with an idea of owning their own community then <v Denise Fairchild>we say, give us your ideas and we'll invest in housing. <v Denise Fairchild>We'll invest in commercial development. <v Denise Fairchild>We want to support the idea of them being the community builders that they own <v Denise Fairchild>and control their own neighborhoods. Right now we do not own or control our neighborhood <v Denise Fairchild>it's controlled by people outside our community. <v Joseph Bendi>And Ms. Postrel how does that different from what you have in mind yet? <v Joseph Bendi>As I understand it you have a pretty heavy sort of meat axe approach to this problem.

<v Virginia Postrel>Well, you've already set me up to be the bad guy. <v Virginia Postrel>Knock me down. I think we have to get away from the idea <v Virginia Postrel>of thinking of the underclass as some sort of black box. <v Virginia Postrel>That's them. They are the underclass. <v Virginia Postrel>And this is something that crossed the political spectrum. <v Virginia Postrel>You find the underclass is individuals who have one way or another <v Virginia Postrel>become trapped in a difficult situation. <v Virginia Postrel>One thing I think we need to do is to realize that any system we have will reward <v Virginia Postrel>certain types of individuals to make certain kinds of choices. <v Virginia Postrel>And in a sense, punish others. <v Virginia Postrel>The system we have right now punishes those who get <v Virginia Postrel>a job if they're on welfare, for example, like the woman in the <v Virginia Postrel>video was talking about, who get married if they're on welfare, <v Virginia Postrel>who save money. There was a recent case of an unusual case <v Virginia Postrel>of a woman who had saved thousands of dollars by scrimping, scrimping, scrimping over a <v Virginia Postrel>long time on welfare. She was in trouble with the law, and yet she was planning for her

<v Virginia Postrel>family's future. Our current system punishes those kinds of people. <v Virginia Postrel>What we need to do is get to a system where we say, yes, welfare is <v Virginia Postrel>a safety net. That means it's temporary. <v Virginia Postrel>That means we, for example, will provide you the equivalent of AFDC <v Virginia Postrel>in that package of benefits for two years. <v Virginia Postrel>During that time, if you get a job, great, you can keep your benefits. <v Virginia Postrel>But when the time is over, whether it's two years, three years, that's it. <v Virginia Postrel>You're not going to get anymore for five years or some <v Virginia Postrel>some fairly lengthy and finite period of time. <v Virginia Postrel>And it sounds very heartless, but what we've done is we're trapped generation after <v Virginia Postrel>generation of people. <v Joseph Bendi>What do you do with those you've trapped? If indeed, let's say in our community, they may <v Joseph Bendi>be as many as one hundred thousand or more and they are trapped and there is no way out. <v Joseph Bendi>And the underclass has been defined as a behavior problem more than poverty, but <v Joseph Bendi>that they have learned or not learned through a bad educational system, through crime, <v Joseph Bendi>through drugs, through teenage pregnancies.

<v Joseph Bendi>They have learned a life that is unending and self-perpetuating. <v Joseph Bendi>How would you solve it? <v Virginia Postrel>Well, clearly, I would say the crime and education problems are major and <v Virginia Postrel>they're major not only for the people who have to live in these neighborhoods and who <v Virginia Postrel>feel trapped by them, but also their major deterrents to, for example, businesses <v Virginia Postrel>coming into these neighborhoods. So one thing I think we ought to look at is getting a <v Virginia Postrel>grip on crime. And by which I do not mean pouring lots and lots of <v Virginia Postrel>police - although probably you could use some - from outside. <v Virginia Postrel>I think we ought to look at creating some type of program of <v Virginia Postrel>people from the neighborhoods working as sort of a souped <v Virginia Postrel>up community watch with some public police training and with pay. <v Virginia Postrel>This is not just going to be good citizenship, but a form of perhaps a part <v Virginia Postrel>time job opportunity. Similarly, we've trapped people educationally. <v Virginia Postrel>We say, first of all, we put the housing project here. <v Virginia Postrel>We don't. Give, say, vouchers and say you'd live anywhere in the city, the housing <v Virginia Postrel>project there, you're stuck there. Your kid goes to this school. <v Virginia Postrel>You're stuck there. You the parents have no way of opting out,

<v Virginia Postrel>opting for a different school in a different part of town. <v Virginia Postrel>We need to look at those kinds of choices. <v Joseph Bendi>Mr. Blasi, you deal with homeless people and that's your main constituency. <v Joseph Bendi>How does that sound to you? <v Gary Blasi>Well, I think you have to look at the problem realistically and realistically, I think we <v Gary Blasi>know what the solutions are. <v Gary Blasi>You know, 30 years ago, there was a tremendous problem in this community and in the <v Gary Blasi>country of poverty and extreme poverty among the elderly people. <v Gary Blasi>We pretty much solved that problem. We solved it with Social Security and the SSI <v Gary Blasi>program. Those programs have tended to work because they've had political support. <v Gary Blasi>The difference between what we're tonight calling the underclass and the elderly <v Gary Blasi>is that the elderly have both political clout and political support out there in the <v Gary Blasi>community. We know what to do. It's a question fundamentally of resources. <v Gary Blasi>Now, there are ways to do it more efficiently. As Denise was was pointing out, and there <v Gary Blasi>are some things that are obviously wrong with the welfare system that traps people at the <v Gary Blasi>bottom of a slippery slope. <v Gary Blasi>Some in some instances, I think intentionally so that people will become dependent

<v Gary Blasi>but - <v Joseph Bendi>Funds a major industry. <v Gary Blasi>It's a major industry. And there are people like the agency that that <v Gary Blasi>Maxine Waters was talking about that are making a lot of money off of this. <v Gary Blasi>But fundamentally, it's a question of resources and it's also a question of resources <v Gary Blasi>over time, we're talking about kids who are now, <v Gary Blasi>say, 35, who went to schools here, who got high school diplomas, <v Gary Blasi>who read at the second and third grade level. <v Gary Blasi>They can't conceivably compete. <v Gary Blasi>We're now paying a price for the segregation and for the abandonment <v Gary Blasi>of a whole class of people in Los Angeles over a long period of time. <v Gary Blasi>And to think that we could fix that with some nifty little gadgets and some little <v Gary Blasi>enterprises just not going to happen. <v Gary Blasi>It's going to take a tremendous amount of resources. <v Denise Fairchild>It's a real need to bring added resources to underserved communities. <v Denise Fairchild>When we recognize that that poverty is something that did not happen overnight <v Denise Fairchild>or even the last 25 years, that there has been a legacy of deprivation. <v Denise Fairchild>That means we need a lot of money. But what we can not lose sight of is that

<v Denise Fairchild>money in and of itself will solve the problems. <v Denise Fairchild>It becomes a question of who owns that money, who controls it, how it's going to be <v Denise Fairchild>used. The critical thing is that that money needs to go - the direct beneficiary <v Denise Fairchild>needs to be - low income residents themselves. <v Joseph Bendi>As I watch the evening news, I'm sure you do, too. <v Joseph Bendi>You think the homeless people, the poor people, the people we've seen in our opening <v Joseph Bendi>report are all the bearers of the bad of our society. <v Joseph Bendi>We've got to somehow put the foot on their neck and keep them under control, or else <v Joseph Bendi>we're all going to be in trouble when in fact, they may be able to solve their <v Joseph Bendi>own problems, but they simply haven't been empowered to solve them. <v Joseph Bendi>Is that possible? <v Virginia Postrel>Well we don't trust people to solve their own problems? <v Virginia Postrel>Nobody on this panel except for me trusts people to solve their own problems. <v Virginia Postrel>They want to create agencies they want. <v Virginia Postrel>They want to bring resources from Washington into the community. <v Virginia Postrel>You know, these women care about their children. <v Virginia Postrel>They may have a lot of problems. They may not be the perfect mothers, but they care about <v Virginia Postrel>their children. If you give them a chance to choose

<v Virginia Postrel>a school for their children, they may not choose the school that the Harvard educated <v Virginia Postrel>lawyer in Beverly Hills would choose. <v Virginia Postrel>But they're going to try to find a school that is safe, that they <v Virginia Postrel>see other children are learning at - these are not -. <v Speaker>But how would you get them there? You'd have to bus them there, let's say if they don't <v Speaker>have one in their own neighborhood. <v Denise Fairchild>There's no way - <v Virginia Postrel>That you're going to bus for when people do not have choice, but not when they do? <v Joseph Bendi>I understand what you're saying, but the problem endemic to the underclass is bad <v Joseph Bendi>schools and the bad and the educational system does not serve them. <v Joseph Bendi>The bad crime, all of the worst of the worst is there. <v Joseph Bendi>How are you going to put a good school down in that? <v Virginia Postrel>Well, there are there are fine private schools in the inner city all over this country <v Virginia Postrel>that managed to pull from the same group of people. <v Virginia Postrel>Now, maybe you say the parents who manage to scrimp and save for private school <v Virginia Postrel>care more. But I think that's one way you can use vouchers <v Virginia Postrel>- the v word - to do that I'm sure.

<v Joseph Bendi>Ms. Fairchild is shaking her head. <v Denise Fairchild>There's two levels of conversation. <v Denise Fairchild>And one is the fact that we're dealing with structural inequality. <v Denise Fairchild>And when when inequality is built into the system, that means <v Denise Fairchild>you're going to have to have public policy to change how funds and <v Denise Fairchild>resources are distributed. You gonna have to change how bankers do use their banking <v Denise Fairchild>practices. So there will be a need for agencies because there will be vulnerable groups, <v Denise Fairchild>whether they're senior citizens, whether they're the young, whether the mentally ill. <v Denise Fairchild>There will always be a need for social services and support for <v Denise Fairchild>vulnerable groups. But by the same token, while we have that layer, we're working with a <v Denise Fairchild>larger policy issues, we also have to look at what I call agency issues and the ability <v Denise Fairchild>to work with individuals, with capacity, with motivation, to strive <v Denise Fairchild>to be someplace else and improve the quality of their life. <v Speaker>It's awfully unfulfilling for the viewer if he or she feels that you have not had a <v Speaker>chance to at least sum up and in the brief time we have left let's start with Ms. <v Speaker>Waters in Washington. Give me a summation about how we're gonna get to the 21st century

<v Speaker>and solve this underclass problem or at least deal with it fairly and effectively, Ms. <v Speaker>Waters. <v Maxine Waters>Well, certainly I'm a strong advocate for support and resources. <v Maxine Waters>I find that the so-called underclass have been dropped off of America's agenda. <v Maxine Waters>We have programs that do not work. <v Maxine Waters>We have job training money that's unspent, spent incorrectly. <v Maxine Waters>We brought in the private sector. And these job training programs because they were <v Maxine Waters>supposed to help. They have never involved themselves in the Jeptoo program, the private <v Maxine Waters>industry -. <v Joseph Bendi>Ms. Waters, we're running out of time. <v Maxine Waters>Support in order to people want to work. <v Maxine Waters>Let's give them a chance. Let's help motivate them. <v Maxine Waters>Let's work with them. <v Joseph Bendi>Mr. Blasi. <v Gary Blasi>Well, you can't make something out of nothing. <v Gary Blasi>And people talk about they don't want to throw money at this problem, but they <v Gary Blasi>recognize that if you want to solve a problem in Eastern Europe or you want to solve the <v Gary Blasi>problem of the savings and loans or you want to build bombers, that takes money. <v Gary Blasi>And I'm saying that if we take the same 200 billion dollars, we're gonna spend on the <v Gary Blasi>savings and loan bailout, some of the 70 billion dollars we're gonna spend on one bomber,

<v Gary Blasi>some of the billions that we're going to ship overseas, spend a little bit of it here <v Gary Blasi>rebuilding our inner cities. We can solve this problem. <v Joseph Bendi>Ms. Fairchild, Ms. Postrel, Thank you. <v Joseph Bendi>But I can't give you the opportunity to sum up because we're out of time. <v Joseph Bendi>But I think since we ended with you in the last brief round of discussion, your points <v Joseph Bendi>were made too. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Miss Waters. <v Joseph Bendi>Now, let's go to Val for a preview of next week's show. <v Val Zavala>Next week, we wind up our month long series on the have have not society with a one <v Val Zavala>hour special in it. We'll look at the growing gulf between rich and poor, <v Val Zavala>at the shrinking middle class and at proposed solutions. <v Val Zavala>Some experts are proposing nothing less than a massive Marshall Plan to rebuild our inner <v Val Zavala>cities. Join us next week on By the Year 2000 for the Have Have Nots <v Val Zavala>Society. And if you have any comments or show idea, write to us at By the Year 2000, <v Val Zavala>KCET TV 4401 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, <v Val Zavala>90027. I'm Val Zavala. We'll see you next week. <v Announcer>Major funding for By the Year 2000 was provided by the James Irvine Foundation

<v Announcer>to promote civic social responsibility and the development of sound public policy <v Announcer>with the understanding of community issues. <v Announcer>And by the Michael J. Connell Foundation, additional funding was provided <v Announcer>by the law firm of Latham and Watkins proudly supporting public discussion of community <v Announcer>issues. And by Kaiser Permanente.