
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 8, 1994                   TAG: 9401080158
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

YOUNG BLACKS QUESTION STRATEGY, DOUBT LEADERS AT CRIME SEMINAR

Throughout the jeremiads on the costs of black-on-black violence, Tyrene Wilson sat stone-faced Friday, apparently bored.

She did not react when the nation's new drug czar promised to make the streets safe with more cops. She did not react when Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., promised to make the streets safe with more drug treatment.

Then Wilson, a 20-year-old community volunteer who said she has lost 30 friends and relatives to violence since she turned 15, took the microphone herself.

"Please excuse me if I get emotional," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks, "but I've heard all this before."

For her trouble, those gathered for the National Rainbow Coalition's summit on crime gave Wilson a thunderous ovation, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson gave her a hug. But they couldn't give her a solution to the raging violence that wracks black neighborhoods, from D.C. to Detroit to L.A.

The summit is the first attempt by Jackson's coalition to confront the problem of black-on-black crime, an issue he has lately made his focus.

Since it began Wednesday, the gathering at a Washington hotel has attracted such prominent figures as Attorney General Janet Reno, U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, the Rev. Al Sharpton and comedian Bill Cosby.

But the summit has drawn critics who believe Jackson and the rest of the old-line, civil-rights crusaders no longer reach young people who must be part of the solution.

"We can gather together in rooms like this, but none of you don't call no shots on the streets of this country," said Rahime Jenkins, a prison guard and a member of the Righteous Men's Commission.

"Young people have given up on many of their leaders because they feel we've given up and failed to realize the situation that they're in," Conyers said.

But Conyers said he's still fighting to change priorities so the nation will focus on eradicating poverty, improving education and creating jobs rather than letting people get killed and simply locking up their killers.

"Welfare reform but no budget for training or jobs for the trained is not the answer," Jackson said.

by CNB