Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990 TAG: 9006200198
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Jesse Jackson plans to accompany the African leader through much of the first half of the tour, and perhaps all the way across the country to Los Angeles and Oakland, according to Jackson aides.
Jackson, who is likely to make a third bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, planned to be among the welcoming committee meeting the 71-year-old Mandela on his arrival in New York this morning.
Jackson plans to attend Mandela's address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday and will introduce Mandela at a rally at the D.C. Convention Center that night.
In private, some of those involved in organizing the tour have said that keeping Jackson in check and making sure that Mandela and the fight against South African apartheid remain the focus of attention have been a constant concern.
But Roger Wilkins, who has overseen the arrangements for events during the tour, dismissed the private complaints and said, "Jesse was very helpful on many points and added to the project."
While Jackson appears to have landed a spot in center stage, civil-rights groups have been conducting a private lobbying campaign to use the Mandela tour as a lever to force action on the Civil Rights Act of 1990. The legislation would reverse a series of 1989 Supreme Court decisions weakening affirmative-action programs and making it more difficult for civil-rights plaintiffs to bring suit.
The goal of the civil-rights leaders is to persuade the Democratic Senate leadership to bring the civil-rights legislation to the Senate floor by the end of this week. They expect a Republican filibuster in an attempt to block consideration of the bill, setting up a possible vote to end the filibuster Tuesday, when Mandela will be in the Capitol to address the joint session.
"The Republicans will be filibustering against a civil-rights bill just when the world's most famous civil-rights leader speaks to the nation," one Democratic strategist said in describing the strategy.
In a separate move, a number of conservatives and Republicans are seeking to use the Mandela visit to focus attention on some of the more controversial stands he and the African National Congress have taken.
Two Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Reps. Dan Burton, Ind., and Toby Roth, Wis., both plan to raise similar issues. Roth is scheduled to be on a panel of questioners of Mandela for an ABC television show, and has already prepared questions on nationalization and ANC ties to communist governments. Burton plans to enter in the Congressional Record today a series of questions including: "Why have you embraced Yasser Arafat when the PLO continues to engage in terrorism?" and "Why did you call Moammar Gadhafi a `comrade in arms' when most world leaders consider him a terrorist?"
Massive struggles are taking place within cities just to get a chance to see and hear Mandela. In New York, for example, most of the planning was initially dominated by politicians with ties to Manhattan. Only after an intense lobbying effort by black leaders in Brooklyn did planners relent and make an appearance at Boys and Girls High in Brooklyn, Mandela's first event after his arrival at JFK airport.
In Miami, black civil-rights and civic leaders were not as successful. Mandela will speak there to a union group while local leaders will have to watch him on closed-circuit in another room in the Miami Beach convention center. "We've been invited to dinner but we have to eat in the kitchen," complained Johnnie McMillian, president of the Miami branch of the NAACP.
by CNB