SPEAKERS DECRY SCHOOL CUTS, DRUG LAWS

MONTGOMERY - Prisons crowded because of harsh drug laws and public
schools short on funding are among the social concerns the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. would take up if he were alive today, activists and
elected officials said Monday.

Speaking at the annual King Day rally on the State Capitol steps, U.S.
District Judge Myron Thompson criticized "draconian" federal
sentencing guidelines that send first-time drug and weapons offenders
to prison for decades at a time.

But Thompson added that community leaders should help prevent young
people from entering the drug culture in the first place.

"The violence of drugs ... is leveling our homes and businesses,
spreading deadly diseases throughout our communities, splitting and
separating our families, and rendering our communities nothing more
than war zones," Thompson said.

Education is a solution

That violence, Thompson suggested, can be solved in part with
discipline and education. But other leaders said the state is not
providing its young people with educational opportunities.

Joe Reed, a top official with the Alabama Education Association, said
black and white children alike are suffering because of severe cuts to
the state's education budget.

"You don't have to be segregated to be denied an education," Reed
said. "We have been denied an education because of a lack of funding.
If Dr. King were alive today, this is one of the drumbeats I'm sure he
would march to."

Gov. Bob Riley, who spoke after Reed, made no mention of education
funding. But march organizer Rep. Alvin Holmes praised Riley's attempt
to raise money for education and other state programs with a $1
billion tax package, which failed in a September referendum.

"You took a stand on principles and not on politics," Holmes,
D-Montgomery, told the governor. "And we are very thankful for that."

Riley's remarks instead focused on King's theme of
unity.

"As Americans, we cannot allow ourselves to be divided because our
destinies are ultimately tied together," he said.

Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright also called for unity - specifically at
churches. Pointing a block away to the small Baptist church where King
preached during the infancy of the civil-rights movement, Bright
called the traditional 11 a.m. Christian church hour "the most
segregated hour of our nation and our state."

"We can be such a great, great community, we can be such a great
state, but we can't continue to travel separate directions on separate
avenues."