Clinton, Barak And Arafat Essay, Research Paper

Barak had called an emergency late-night meeting of his Cabinet even as the initial Monday night time limit wound on his ultimatum to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity, President Clinton spoke to Barak and Arafat by phone trying to cobble together a summit.

Shai said Israel was ready to go to a summit if Washington convened one.

hen Cory A. Booker talks about fixing America’s school system, he invokes the words of Malcolm X: by any means necessary.

To Mr. Booker, 31, an African- American Democrat elected to the Newark City Council in 1998, that means lobbying state lawmakers for smaller classes and teacher testing. It means organizing book drives for the schools in his impoverished neighborhood, and arranging for an insurance company to create a community health clinic at one of them.

And it also means the unbridled backing of the contentious notion of giving parents vouchers financed by taxpayers to send their children to private schools.

Mr. Booker, a Rhodes scholar who quotes Frederick Douglass and Langston Hughes in his speeches, is part of a growing cadre of young blacks who have embraced vouchers, and school choice more broadly, as a central civil rights issue for their generation.

While established African-American organizations have been among the leaders of the opposition to school vouchers, arguing that they would decimate the public school system, maverick black politicians and community organizers are increasingly the public face of the pro-voucher movement financed largely by white Republican businessmen.

Omar Wasow, 29, the executive director of blackplanet.com, a Web site for African-Americans, said he sees school choice as a direct outgrowth of Brown v. the Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools.

Mr. Wasow sees the enemy in subtler racism and believes the savior resides in the private sector.

Vouchers, first proffered by the economist Milton Friedman in a 1955 essay, are among the most divisive issues in education, a critical point of dissension between this year’s two major presidential candidates.

“I just believe you can’t have a financial incentive in public education ? it’s scary,” said Mr. Baine, 37.

Along the way he has made some disturbing compromises, while maintaining a centrist policy orientation that is healthy for the G.O.P.

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blic education ? it’s scary,” said Mr. Baine, 37.

Along the way he has made some disturbing compromises, while maintaining a centrist policy orientation that is healthy for the G.O.P.