Verse

...The major institutions of society are back doing business as usual, and we can predict with a high degree of certainty what the various national and local commissions studying the civil disorders of the 1980s will be saying about the significance of job discrimination to urban violence...

...Third, we must continue to monitor the activities of federal agencies charged with equal employment responsibilities...

...No matter how adverse the circumstance, we must continue the fight and develop the necessary programmatic responses...

...First, we must vigorously battle against the current retreat in the courts...

...The campaign against affirmative action is legitimizing new racist attacks and is stimulating anti-black attitudes...

...AMES FINN COTTER TRAILWAYS TO JERSEY SHORE My mind, my window, let me wipe clean, make cattails welcome, let marsh grass in: shine, scimitar beaches, north savannahs, comem plains of cloud cotton, sky the shimmer of water, salt, sand, and sun...

...Each of these commissions was charged to examine the causes of the various riots and to make recommendations to prevent such occurrences in the future...

...555...

...It is potentially most dangerous and must be effectively countered by all groups committed to advancing civil rights...

...Those who are committed to the future of black Americans know that the stakes are much too high for us to lose the battle...

...A coalition that can only exist on the basis of sacrificing the most vital interests of the black community is not worth preserving...

...The campaign to weaken affirmative action requirements must be offset by our campaign to demonstrate the non-enforcement of these requirements...

...But white America prefers not to remember the grim warnings of these reports...

...To do this effectively, it may be necessary to file an extensive series of lawsuits against the Labor Department and HEW, among others...

...And finally, we must at all costs wage a counterattack against those who seek to subordinate the interests of black workers to the interests of other groups who have long benefited from oppressing minorities...

...While pursuing Title VII remedies wherever possible, we should file lawsuits against employers and labor unions and government agencies under the relevant sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1966 and under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution...

...Secondly, we must defend the principle of affirmative action even if it means that our fair-weather friends depart...

...The performance of these agencies, especially those charged with contract compliance responsibilities, has been derelict in the extreme...

...Commonweal...

...The opponents of affirmative action are ahead in presenting their ease to the public, and we must be prepared to answer effectively all the lies about "quotas" and "reverse discrimination...

...Spin, pinwheels, milkweed, in parks of the mind, come, feathers of bracken: make sedges welcome, weeds, reeds, and rushes, blow dandelion puffballs, breathe pollen i n - here clams and cockles, sand dollars swim...

...Bend, wind, tall poplars, willow catkins wave: make scrub pine enter, let wildwood in, buttonbush in blossom, spruce, maple, and alder-fade, fall of far waters heard in pine forests from mountain shelters...

...TOM MCKEOWN OTBER LIVES Whenever the white figures of myself appear in the branches, the lives I have not lived, I sing to them for strength and mercy, sing that they may forget themselves and their solemn purposes...

...In each and every city, continuing discrimination in employment was found to be a major contributing factor in causing the riots...

...We should attempt to salvage Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for present and future generations and continue such activity with a combination of social action and litigation...