News Addition; News Addition Segments, updub edit master 6

Amarillo, Texas. It's 300 miles from anywhere. The railroads put this town on the map a century ago. The cattle business keeps it on the map today. Amarillo is a typical West Texas town, except for the mysterious factory 17 miles away. It's called the Pan Text Plant. Every nuclear warhead in the American arsenal was built here. This is the final assembly point, and it's the only assembly plant we have in the nation. Weapons testing evaluation is done for us. Secrecy is so strict here that reporters are not allowed inside the Pan Text Plant. Spokesman Tom Walton presents a slideshow instead. The mission at Pan Text is for full. We fabricate the chemical high explosive material that goes into a nuclear weapon. We assemble the nuclear weapons that go into the nation stockpile. We maintain and evaluate all of those weapons, and then we dispose of weapons that come out

of the stockpile for retirement. The plant is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. It's run by a company called Mason and Hanger. With 2,500 employees, it's the largest factory in the Panhandle of Texas. Pan Text officials insist that working here is safe, and for years employees believed it. That is beginning to change. I got hurt out there, you know, I got zapped. And that's what really brought me around. John Bell worked for 30 years as a Pan Text machinist. I can't say that they don't care any about the worker. I feel that they don't care that. Bell was injured in September of 1987. It was night. He was called to drill out a part

that was stuck in a nuclear bomb. I started drilling it sparked, and I stopped, and I said, is this normal? And they said, yeah, that's all right. So I drilled a hole in the thing, and it was hard. It create dust. I breathed some of it. And I, it caught fire, and I breathed the gas, and I was over this thing for an hour and a half. What John Bell inhaled that night is a radioactive uranium compound called tubeloy. It wasn't his first accident in the plant, and he isn't the only worker to complain of exposure to dangerous chemicals. Susan Smith began to work with plastic explosives at Pan Text in 1983. Yeah, it bothered me real bad when I first started machining it, because it left a funny

smell in your nose that it seemed or it may not have been in your nose, but it seemed like no matter where you went or if you just got out of the shower or what, you could still smell that smell. And everything tasted real salty, that I would eat, whether at home or whatever, it just tasted real salty. And I didn't try to be particularly careful with it and clean up or anything, because they told us that there was nothing in it that would hurt you. Smith was working with a toxic substance called barium nitrate. Well, if we weren't issued protective equipment, except for safety glasses, you pretty well assume that there can't be anything wrong. It's just messy, kind of like working with flour. You can't make a pie without getting flour on you. Smith began having medical problems a few months later, and she went to a specialist at the hospital who discovered her spleen had virtually disappeared. Smith went back to Pan Text to tell the plant doctor.

He tells me that it doesn't really matter that you can live without a spleen, and I was very angry at this setting when he told me that, and I said, that's very true, Dr. Lang. But if you woke up one day and your hand was gone, wouldn't you wonder why, when you wonder what else was going to disappear? John Bell went to the plant doctor on the night he inhaled uranium. And he said, John, I heard that you got in a little poison. He said, don't worry, there's no radiation there. Not either, hurt she. Bell's private doctor says the uranium has affected his brain. Bell is losing the feeling in his hands and his legs. He quit last October. I was getting where I couldn't walk and hold my balance properly around machinery. I almost fell into a machine and when I did that, I decided I either would kill somebody or kill

myself and so I quit and retired. John Bell and Susan Smith want Pan Text to pay their medical bills. Plant officials, however, say lab tests prove that their injuries are not work related. The Department of Energy's health physicist at Pan Text is Anthony Ladino. Has anyone in the history of this plant gotten cancer because of an exposure of all the thousands of people who have worked here since the 1950s? Not to our knowledge has worked here directly to cancer related health problems. Not a single one. That would be an American industrial record, wouldn't it? Well, I'm not saying that cancers aren't prevalent or don't occur among the workforce here, but studies have been done to compare the rates of occurrence of cancer in our workforce compared to other similar workforces into the population in general and we have been found to be below the expected average.

Ladino says that trend holds true for all diseases. This text began to build the bomb in 1952 in this converted World War II munitions plant. It was high tech on the high plains of Texas. In the 1960s, the plant celebrated 6 million work hours without a major injury. A general told workers that they are safer inside the plant than they are inside their homes. The safety streak ended in 1977. Three men died while machining plastic explosives. Pantex stopped this type of machining after the blast. At Union Means, the concern these days is over chemical and radiation exposure. For the most part, I do feel safe. Pantex has a pretty good record. However, there's still a lot of uncertainty, especially concerning low level doses to radiation.

Twenty years down the road, they're going to say, hey, it's hazardous, but that's not going to happen. We're not going to be buried and gone. We have had a safety department on paper only because they have not been putting safety first over the years. Lowell Krantfeld is president of the Trade Union Council at Pantex. He wants the plant to give the unions more control over safety issues. It's all been so secret. And this is what the Department of Energy has hit behind for years is secrecy. The need to know, you know, the public doesn't need to know what's going on out there. Don't tell them. I don't feel that's true. We are under mandate and under clear guidance and orders that confidentiality is not an adequate reason to withhold information on environment safety and health issues. Only what it precisely needs to be kept out for classification reasons

should be removed and all other information in this area should be and is being made available. That's not what Susan Smith says happened when she requested safety sheets on barium nitrate. She's been working with the chemical for years despite her developing health problems. She says Pantex gave her the safety sheet 18 months after she asked for it. I don't see why the need to know secrecy should involve the health. I mean, these people are working with it. They should have the need to know. I needed to know. To me, I should have known before exposure not five years after. They denied that I was poisoned. I know in my own heart I was. If they had not denied that I had breathed this stuff and gave me the proper care, I wouldn't be in the condition I am now.

If they had accurate records and kept records on the employees, then I feel like that we wouldn't have had the problems of trying to prove that this person was exposed to certain chemicals at times of this nature. Are you saying they had a vested interest in not keeping those records so that they couldn't be used against them? I would say so. Medical, for an example, the medical department, the medical director, very poor records. He was looking out for the company's protection. Do you know the lifetime exposure for every worker in this plant, for everything they've been exposed to? I can't really say how complete the historical records are back to that time. We weren't always required to keep those records and under federal policies and guidelines, record dispositions after so many years, records can be filed or destroyed. Helen Cruz learned about Pantex record keeping after her husband became ill.

This is a picture of him inside the plant. On the day Cruz worked in a dreaded part of Pantex, the warehouse vault for radioactive material. There was a different type of feeling that he had when he went in this vault. Of course, he wore a napkin that covered what the plant called vital organs, which was the chest to below the knee. But his mouth, his eyes, his ears, all of this was not covered. All of this was not protected. On his 45th birthday, Andalus Cruz received some bad news during his annual Pantex physical. Well, he came home and I think that was one of the two times that he used the word leukemia. He said, he was sitting at the table like this looking through the mail. And he said, I have leukemia. And of course, I said, what? And he said, you need to call the doctor.

And of course, I did. And the other time that he used that word was the last week before he died. Andalus Cruz was buried in July of 1985. He was the third person who had worked in the warehouse to die of cancer that year. His family sued but couldn't prove the case. Pantex settled out of court for $5,000 and defended its radiation standards. I'm convinced that the standards are adequate to protect the workers here at the plant. They don't feel that way. Many of them don't feel that way. I know that as anyone prudent person would be concerned about radiation and they should be. It's an area that requires a lot of knowledge and understanding of how things interact, how they operate. But not us, but world, national and international experts have set these

standards. Pantex allows its employees to receive up to one REM of radioactivity every year. That's the equivalent of 25 chest X rays. It's much lower than the current legal maximum allowed by the Department of Energy. There are operations that pose some more risk, a greater degree of risk than others. And in those areas, more monitoring, more precautions are taken, such as rotating people in and out. The problem that we find is that we don't believe that there is adequate confidence to deal with a day-to-day operation of the plant. Last November, special inspection teams from the Department of Energy Headquarters announced at a public meeting that they had found hundreds of safety problems at Pantex. For example, in their environmental safety and health division, there's 57 professionals, but out of 57 professionals, only two are certified safety professionals.

And of seven health physicists, only three hold degrees in health physics. What we're told is that technically competent employees are not attractive to Pantex. Now, what we find in is that in many cases, employees who are already on a staff are promoted to positions where they may not have the best qualifications to fill those positions. As a management philosophy, Mason and Hanger has the objective of continual improvement. Plant officials explained at this meeting that much of their problem is money, not enough money to attract enough qualified doctors, not enough money to replace all the old buildings at this 16,000-acre plant. Despite the criticism from the special inspection teams, Pantex officials say that their workers are safe. Whether in the World War II facility, which is a minimal type facility all the way through

the most current facility, the same level of protections provided to everyone. We have recently accepted approximately $25 million worth of new assembly buildings from our construction contractors. The Department of Energy is building some new facilities at Pantex. Global bots are now doing some of the high-risk work that people used to do inside the bomb bays. These spacious, well-rided assembly bays are also provided with a bridge crane for necessary heavy-duty lifting operations. While other weapons plants have been closed for safety and environmental reasons, the Department of Energy says the problems at Pantex aren't bad enough to close it down too. We found that there were numerous areas that needed correction at Pantex, but the plant currently proposes no immediate threat to public and worker health and safety or to the environment. Consultants have been hired to assist the medical staff at Pantex, but it's little consolation

to workers who claim that they've been injured because of the way things used to be. In the morning, when you drive in, is it hard to do that every day? It was at first, and then you had to do kind of like you do when you go to bed at night and you're afraid you won't wake up. You just try to push it out of your mind, because if you didn't, you'd go crazy. Susan Smith was taken off high-explosive machining at the plant. Workers in that area now wear special suits. John Bell has filed a lawsuit claiming Pantex is guilty of negligence in his case. I hope to help correct some of the things that's going on like this, so other people won't get hurt. So things won't be swept under the rug. People who've lost relatives at Pantex have asked Helen Cruz to form a support group. It would be a clearinghouse for people who want to sue. I feel though that I couldn't prove it, but maybe down the road somebody else can. Helen Cruz's oldest son, Mark, works inside the plant.

Before her husband's death, Cruz made a promise. He made me promise that I would get my son to quit. You haven't done that. Why won't he quit? Because I guess he needs a job. People, you know, he's got a family, he needs a job. He needs a job. The Fort Worth City Council has put it around for over five years debating whether to privatize

its city golf courses. That means contract out the courses to a private golf leasing company. The man whose department runs the facilities now says no way. If we look at our golf courses, the only thing that they can provide improve for us is poor shops and snack shops because they are in need of repair and enlargement. The golfers really go to golf course for playing conditions and with the best greens and the best fairways and tee boxes in the mental play for a municipal course. They're really not doing a good job. A city cannot do a job that a private enterprise does. Jim Diffin owns international golf of Texas, the company hoping to manage the city's rock wood golf course. He says a golf course is an artistic form that needs to be maintained by professional artists, not a city park and recreation department.

But the city golf courses have improved steadily over the last three years. They look and play better and for the first time they're making money. Emerson's department predicts a profit of at least $1.4 million over the next five years if it continues to manage the city's five golf courses. The private companies say they will pay the city $4 million over the next eight years if they are allowed to manage rock wood and Zbo's golf courses. Both plan major capital improvements but the city would have to finance its plan with $4.9 million in revenue bonds. They got one of your shanks in the water. In spite of the impressive financial package the private companies bring to the table, most golfers aren't buying the concept. If they do that they're going to have to raise the green fees, you know that and the cart fees. They got to. This course makes money every year. Look on the record.

And so why privatize it? It's fine what it is. Us seniors like it. But I think you should have other amenities here that you don't have. You should be able to sit down and have a cup of coffee in the coffee shop. Even when given the chance to personally sell the private concept, Jim Diffin ran into difficulty. I meant it for exercise and enjoyment. You're not going to change your mind. I realize that. But I think we can operate it like it is now and the city will have more money to build another golf course. Council members are split on the issue. Once I heard their proposals and once I saw what it was that they were presenting to us and once we got over there and saw what we saw then at that time I said, maybe this is something we really need to look at. Louis Zapata was once firmly opposed to privatization. He changed his mind after the Council's golf committee members took a trip to the West Coast to look at privately managed courses. Zapata and Council member Eugene McCray formed totally different impressions. I wouldn't impress at all, at all, because we had golf courses here.

It was just as good. At this time, privatization is not for the city of Fort Worth. Now why do we have to make a profit? The golf course is making the money to take care of itself. The city council has been considering this issue for over five years. As time passed it became more and more emotional. Louis Zapata blames Ralph Emerson for that. He has done everything in his prior to undermining that program. And I think that is not a position for his staff person to take. And I'm very disappointed and I'm surprised something had been done about it. Like what? Certainly disciplined. As for Ralph Emerson, he says he doesn't understand how the situation evolved into such a volatile one. Golfing public says we want the leasing companies and that's what our department is for. If the golfing public says we want parts to work to do it, then that's what we're for. As director parts directoration, I feel that we can provide what the golfing public wants.

And that's good public service and good maintain courses. Emarillo residents are well acquainted with the moral arguments about building atomic weapons. Protesters from around the world have gathered here for years because these silver domes are the final assembly point for all American warheads.

There must be a more sane nuclear policy for this country and for the world's survival. The theme of these demonstrations has begun to change. As news of major environmental problems has begun to surface. The environmental aspect really touches people a lot closer. If you're dealing with moral aspects of nuclear weapons production, that's something that's pretty much intellectual or moral and you can, some people relate to it, some people don't. But if there's some chance that the pollution from one of these plants is going to come into your life, affect your children, hurt your children, hurt yourself, then that's going to touch you no matter where you are on the political spectrum or where you are on in the spiritual area. Last and Cindy breeding bought land beside the Pantex plant four years ago. They moved here to protest the arms race but found they had an environmental fight on their hands as well. I was very ignorant of the land and the environment when I did come here.

I believed what they said about the plant's good safety record and I didn't question very much in that area. For decades, Pantex environmental reports had been quietly filed at the public library. Nobody but the librarian paid much attention because the report said that chemical and radioactive releases at the plant were not dangerous. Cindy breeding began to read these reports and noticed their tone changed dramatically in September of 1988. Just a few days after I found out I was pregnant, we read the report that ranked Pantex high on the list of potential groundwater contaminators. And it really was a shock whenever we discovered that as far as the Department of Energy is concerned that water is the main threat that Pantex has towards the people living in this area. And since we hadn't considered the water, it really shocked us.

The 1988 report listed the dumping grounds at Pantex as the second greatest threat to the public of all weapons plants nationwide. There were more revelations too. Test firing sites are contaminated with radioactive uranium. The drainage lakes called Plyas are contaminated with toxic chemicals. Many of the plant's underground chemical tanks and even the sewer system are cracked and leaking. You can see all along this line that the roof is pitted and parts of it have fallen out. We have in the neighborhood of about 100 identified locations on Pantex that we need to go in and investigate. And then on the basis of those investigations, we will determine what needs to be cleaned up and to what level. Skip Harrell is in charge of the environmental cleanup at Pantex. Regulations have changed over the years and things that were perfectly acceptable in the 50s, 60s and 70s are not acceptable today and changes have been made continually in the way the plant has been operated to reflect the new laws and regulations that have come

into effect. Plya 1 is the main plyon Pantex that received. Chemical leaks at Pantex have seeped more than 250 feet into the ground. That's more than halfway down to the underground aquifer that supplies the Texas panhandle with water for drinking and irrigation. We decided we'd get our water tested and we have well water here and we found that no lab in town. In fact, we got to the point of taking our water to a lab and they kept it overnight and then told us they refused to test it. And other farmers in the area had the same problem. And one of the labs told us that nobody wanted to go out on them and possibly have to be an expert witness against Pantex in a court case. The breeding's got the water tested by a lab in New Hampshire. The water was safe but they need to keep testing every six months. The breeding aren't the only people critical of the plant's environmental record. The problem is that they don't seem to have enough time to look ahead and make judgements as to what needs to be done.

The reacting to things that are in the past are not looking at the future. Inspection teams who swept through the plant last fall announced that workers at Pantex don't seem to care about the environment. When you talk to them about the environment, the need for environmental protection, need what do you do with a bottle of some organic solvent, well, that's somebody else's responsibility. At this meeting last November, details of a major radiation release were unveiled. It happened in May of 1989, inside one of the heavily guarded assembly cells, a valve slipped on a nuclear bomb, releasing a radioactive gas called tritium. The statement from the operators involved in the incident said that they heard a hissing, a portable monitor immediately alarmed and then the monitor on the wall immediately alarmed. The plant was evacuated, experts decided it would be too expensive and too dangerous

to recover the tritium gas from the building, so they decided to let the tritium escape and be diluted by the wind. We took a pneumatic fan inside with a ductwork and stuck it inside to try to blow the air out the equipment airlock and across the ramp and out outside door to the atmosphere. Pantex released more tritium during this single accident than during its entire history. We do have our environmental sampling from the onsite, the show that we did have some detectable tritium inside. We had a couple of hot spots and we could relate that to the known wind direction at the time. The Pantex Radiation Response Team had never been trained for a tritium accident. The tritium monitors were inadequate and records show the plant didn't notify local emergency agencies for five and a half hours. Despite the problems, Pantex officials say no one was hurt.

There have been no significant adverse impacts on the workers, the public or the environment due to the tritium release we had in May of this year. Pantex is spending millions of dollars to improve its environmental monitoring and to clean up the damage here. There's concern that the plant is poisoned nearby grazing lands. In fact, farmers rent land on the Pantex site to grow cattle feed. It's a good use of the land and there isn't any reason that we've uncovered any vegetation sampling or annual monitoring that would cause that to be a problem. We don't know the whole story at Pantex. I don't know if anybody will ever know the whole story at Pantex because there were 30 years of complete non-documentation of the incidents that were happening out of the plant. Because of the plant is a major employer. The breeding say there's no local pressure on Pantex to improve. So I think the fact that we are sparsely populated generally that we are seen as a small resistance movement here and that we are in a southern area perceived as backward are three factors

that are very important in that consideration. At a public hearing on the plant last November, there was plenty of support for Pantex. Nation in Hangar occupies a very special place in the city of Emerilow. It is what we consider in public terms a very responsible corporate citizen. I don't speak atomic energy language, but I have complete faith in those who do. There had never been a forum like this in the history of the plant. Public officials unanimously supported Pantex, religious leaders spoke against it. The breeding were among the voices of dissent. Social security has a lot to do with environmental security. We can't have one at the expense of the other, it just doesn't work. The breeding have placed a statue of Mother Earth on their land beside the Pantex plant.

But they've recently moved away, in part, out of concern for the health of their newborn daughter. There's a class at LBJ High School in Austin that teaches students something that can't be learned in a classroom. How can differences of opinion be helpful? These students are learning through personal experience that caring about other people

brings its own reward. The class is part of a district-wide program called PAL. PAL stands for peer assistance leadership. Twice a week, the PAL class from LBJ High goes to Pierce Middle School to meet with kids who could benefit from the influence of an older friend. Sandy Martin, an LBJ senior, says that PALs aren't supposed to be counselors, but that supportive listening is just as good. You know, we, as PALs, can never force our morals on another person. We're not there to give advice, either. We're just there. We're not there to counsel. We're just there to be friends. And to talk to them, as a friend, we'll talk to another friend. And you have to be caring, you have to be a caring person, you have to care about others and be friendly. Just be yourself. That's one of the most important things. It shouldn't be anything superficial or something that's an effort for you to do. It should come naturally and should be proud of that.

Peer helping programs have been set up in school districts throughout the state. At retreats like this one in Athens, Ken Serrano and his staff train students in the art of helping people help themselves. Like I know Ward, my man, he's not going, man, I can't wait till I'm like 14, 15 addicted to alcohol. It's going to be bad. And he's not doing that in the sixth grade. And I know, none of you girls are going, God, I can't wait till I'm like 13, 14, have my second kid. It's going to be bad. But real life is different because we have different pressures because we don't have some support because we think and we think that might be the right thing to do or we have different experiences that might make us turn in the right direction. So one of the biggest things that you can do is peer helpers is listen and give people to think about what they're doing. At this retreat, Ken organized an activity to demonstrate the power of positive peer pressure.

A student was sent outside while the others decided on what they wanted to get him to do. The trick was they could influence him only by clapping. What he's going to do, he's going to walk in there, he's going to have to walk through these chairs. All right, that's it. Through here and go right here. Step on the... And he's going to have to sit on his lap. You just depend on us, the group, to get you there. Think, and listen for the claps. Okay, come here.

Back in Austin, pal trainer Steve Medell and Greg Aguilar are trying to be a positive influence on a kid named Rico. Rico got into trouble and was suspended from his home school. Today, the three talked about what things were like at that school. Me and my friend John, who come to school, right, and he said, Rico, John, come here. He called us over there and he said, look guys, I got a gun, my friend didn't believe him. I know I believe him, because that guy, he's just, oh my daddy. He's tripping on. He opened his bag man, it was a gun, and I said, is that real man? He goes, yeah.

Look, I don't want to touch you, because I don't want to be a father in this. I don't want to be a father in this. It's weird man, the relationship, it's what's important to us, the relationship between us and him. Even if he does, we might say something that we might not agree with, we'll let him know how we feel, we can be real with him, we can be ourselves, but it doesn't change anything because what's important is the relationship, the friendship that we've already made. It's really hard to even explain to you or to anybody, it's something that just happens between individuals, people, just this friendship thing that's born, it kind of just starts to grow in. It's something that's hard to film on camera, it's something that's hard to explain in words. It's just there, and you know it's there, and you know it's real, and that's just something that every person's, I guess, experience, because then they would know what we're talking

about. It's a bit of power. The Texas School for the Deaf in Austin has a PAL program which has been especially successful. Mabel Brandenberg is the program's faculty sponsor. The first time we went to East Campus and that's the elementary school. We went into the cafeteria, all the little kids are looking up, and one little boy says to me, he says, oh, hearing kids, and I said, oh no, no, no, no, they're deaf. I said, oh yes, these are deaf kids, he said, he looked at one boy that had on a football jacket, he said, but look, that's a football jacket, can't be deaf. Well it was real obvious from that one example, these kids needed a teenager to look up to, someone that can say, you know, I remember when I was little, you know, I know how you feel, I'm deaf, just like you.

One day we went with the class to East Campus and saw what peer-helping is all about. Right now. T Like a lot of the kids in this room, Andrea Scott has known the kind of pain that can ruin a young life.

Andrea has never had a real family, she's had foster, she's had adopted, she's been in various homes, but she's never had a real family. Several years ago she got involved with some drugs, she got involved with some hot check, writing, a lot of it were things that she was trying and she didn't know. Luckily she got involved with Powell and I really believe that it has changed her life. First of all it has built her self esteem, she now believes in herself, before she had a real negative attitude of I can't and you know people don't like me and but now that has really changed, she has come to really value herself, Powell has given her a family.

Andrea says that reaching out to others taught her something she never dreamed she would know. That was just my habit to be angry and I decided to be in Powell. I need to release that anger. So instead of being angry I wanted to start to accept that, to be able to discuss it when problems popped up, popped up if I got angry, I just needed to accept instead of my habit of with my attitude and I learned that word except I can sympathize with your point of view but you're going home tonight at midnight to San Francisco and I'm going home

tonight in Dallas, Texas. I think it's very important to fight it all the way, I think we can lick it but now we can lick it, you know, it's so weird disease. I'm going home tonight at midnight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight

to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight at midnight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight at midnight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight at midnight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight at midnight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight

to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight at midnight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight at midnight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight to San Francisco and I'm going home tonight I'm going home tonight at midnight to San

Francisco. We are not enemies to people. We are to make friends with people. Racism and Islam are two opposites. There is no racism in Islam. This conception comes from ignorance. When people don't understand something, they begin to speculate. Many of the speculations worldwide about Muslims have developed from news reports out of the Middle East. Stories about the Ayatollah Khomeini, about the Islamic jihad, stories about terrorists who hijacked planes and blow up buildings, reportedly in the name of Islam. But while these stories focus attention on the Muslim world, many who share the faith of Islam say the attention often results in negative misconceptions. They call Mr. Muhammad a black supremacist, because he teaches you and me not only that

we're as good as the white man, but better than the white man. Furthermore, many Americans remember the so-called black Muslims of the 50s and 60s. At that time, they were considered a separatist group whose fiery rhetoric was often considered racist. In growing numbers, African-Americans in Dallas and Fort Worth are turning to Islam, not only as a religion, but as a way of life. They are trying to dispel today's misconceptions and the images of the past. Muslims believe in one God and his angels and in life after death.

They believe God's word has been revealed to man through a series of prophets, including Abraham, Moses, and even Jesus. But Muslims believe God's final message to man was revealed to the prophet Muhammad in the 5th century. Islam is the fastest growing religion across the globe. One-fifth of the world's population is Muslim. To stand up in an environment that is totally psychologically, ideologically, against what you believe in is to be a strong man. It's to be a strong woman. Once their arrival in this country, African-Americans have historically followed the Christian faith. What is it that draws many of them now to Islam? Almighty God, Allah has not painted faith a particular color. Almighty God, Allah has not painted the belief in a person's heart a particular color. Almighty God, Allah has not painted human nature.

A particular color. Human nature is one nation. One of the reasons that African-Americans are attracted to Islam is because of the lack of racism of the religion. Islam is the true universal religion. Many African-Americans upon researching our roots find that our forefathers, those that were religions that had a religion when they came over here where Muslims and to many of our people means returning to their own roots. I guess I would look upon it as a challenge to get to know other people and other races, not to feel superior or inferior to a different race or a different nationality. Do you think that's something that the kids pick up on? Definitely. Yes. Okay, listen up. As the son went down, the little bird flew to his tree. All right, okay, listen, and saying his evening song. Community leaders are often invited to interact with the Muslim community.

Councilwoman Diane Ragsdale recently spent a morning reading to preschoolers at the Sister Claire Muhammad School where some of the city's African-American Muslim children attend classes. In the setting of a small private school, students get the basics of education and much more. Reading this book repeats after me, Suratun Homasi. Mekkiye. Mekkiye. What does mean Mekkiye? We believe that. We believe that. Here, students learn Arabic and the lessons of the Holy Qur'an. What does Milyumah read? What's your right? What does Milyumah read? What's your right? What does Milyumah read? What does Milyumah read? What's your right? What does Milyumah read? What does Milyumah read? What is Milyumah reading today? What does Milyumah read? What is your right? What is your right? What does Milyumah read? What does Milyumah read? We believe that. To begin with. With them, the lectures and wasn't received. On the background. Behind?

Behind? Children in a Thai. That Islam is a way of life. You are, some of them are not only teachers of course, the three words. You are reading, writing, and arithmetic. But it also teaches them of the religion. If you want to call it that. It lets them know that they are part of an international, it's a global way of life. A central part of a Muslim's life is prayer. Prayers are obligatory five times a day. The noon prayer is a regular part of the student's school day. The prayer is a regular part of the student's school day is a regular part of the student's school day. In spite of the religious climate, kids are still allowed to be kids, but in this environment it is impossible to forget one's faith.

What do you like the most about it? Being Muslim extends beyond the place of worship. For African-American Muslims in Dallas it includes a responsibility to once people, whether it be to help fight the war on drugs or to help rebuild the community. The Muslims are joining hands with a national remodeling group to convert this old abandoned

building into a resource center in the heart of the impoverished South Dallas community. When complete, the center will address social, educational, and health needs of the community. These people down here have lost hope and we want this to be like an inspirational thing, a thing that they can see that people can come in and will come in and help them without asking anything of them other than we want to help them and help them help themselves. The role of women is one of the most talked about aspects of Islam by outsiders. Many see the women who are forced to worship behind the men as virtual second class citizens. These women would disagree. The purpose of the women being in the back of the room has nothing to do with us as second class citizens. It's simply an act of protection and respect for the woman because of our style of worship, the prostrating and all.

How would you feel if you had to turn up in front of another man? Although women are highly revered and respected in Islam, emphasis is placed on the woman's role in the home. Muslim men are seen as leaders, as bearers of responsibility, especially when it comes to family. The family is the foundation of Islamic society. Many believe the revival of traditional roles is the key in strengthening bonds in the African-American family. If we are living the life of a Muslim, which means cleanliness in our conduct, in our actions, striving for excellence, in our work, in our home life, in the way we care for our children, care for our community, then that is the best example. Most of their parents are converts, but this generation of children is being born into the life of Islam, a religious life that is so much more than just a religion, a religion that unites them as African-American children with the world.

Youth have organizations and leaders looking out for their concerns, whites have organizations, and leaders looking out for their concerns, as a black person, I reserve the right to look out for the concerns of my own people.

And if we all look out for the concerns of our people and do justice by our people and by one another, then possibly America might be conditionally what you think it ought to be, but I really don't think you got that amount of time. The theme is the idea of Spanish language-based artists remembering incidents and environments

from their childhood and recreating that memory in a piece of artwork. So you see in the exhibition a sort of stream of things that have highly charged emotional value rather than monetary value, being used to express that idea of remembering things from their childhood. One of the difficulties that the established Anglo community has in looking at things

that come from a Latin source is the difference in the cultures between the and acceptance almost on an equal basis of good and evil, life and death, sex, all of those kind of things accepted on an equal basis in a Latin culture. But in white America, we have a culture of denial in which death doesn't exist. By and large, we use euphemisms for it. So it's difficult for people from that point of view, coming from a culture of denial to look at an exhibition in which all of those things have an equal emotional value. One is best not focusing on the religious aspects, as much as focusing on the idea of artists remembering things that were precious to them in their childhood, and everyone can

relate to that.