The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 9

OPINION B-4 Section MONDAY April 25 1994 THE KANSAS JL CITY STAR Symbols of hope KC staff unhappy at work Promotions are viewed as unfair Discrimination occurs survey finds By MARY SANCHEZ Staff Writer A 1993 sample survey of Kansas City employees confirms the findings of a similar study the previous year: Many City Hall workers are unhappy City employees both minority and non-minorities feel that promotions are given unfairly and that discrimination arid harassment occur in their departments the study found are significant numbers of persons who are dissatisfied with their said Michael Bates director of the Human Relations Department which conducted the study last August The 1993 study which was released last week concluded: continued widespread perceptions of favoritism and unfair promotions pose serious problems which warrant immediate See KC WORKERS B-2 Col 3 Trolley run draws 8200 participants I MHUb JOE LEDFORDThe Star To observe National Rights Week in Kansas City Mike Storm wrote a message on a balloon which he later released in memory of his murdered son Victims of crime gather to remember the hurt By ERIC ADLER Staff Writer What may be the largest annual road race in the Kansas City area became even larger Sunday as nearly 8200 runners joggers and walkers took to the streets for the Sixth Annual Michael Forbes Trolley run Each year the four-mile run which goes from Michael Forbes Grill at 75th Street and Womall Road to The Parkway 600 on the Country Club Plaza raises money for Kansas Center for the Visually Impaired About 5700 people participated last See RUNNERS B-2 Col 4 the public the plight of the he said the crime is over news But what about the victim? What about the victim and how the grief goes on He took out a two fliers One sought support for Missouri Senate Bill 604 which requires violent offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences rather than only one-third The other was about a remembrance vigil to be held at 7:30 See FAMILIES B-2 Col 1 been beaten On Sunday afternoon at least two dozen victims of violent crime in the Kansas City area stood on the windy steps of the Jackson County Courthouse with police officers lawmakers and supporters of victims and their rights to begin the local observance of National Rights Week April 24 to April 30 need more people to hold A1 Smith of Kansas City called to those gathered before the start of the event Seven years ago A1 and Harriet 23-year-old daughter Terri was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Now the Smiths are heading the area chapter of Parents of Murdered Children with 1 50 to 200 members The balloons he said would be released as a remembrance a reminder a symbol of hope joined with other victim support groups to bring to the attention of Families and friends observe Rights Week at gathering in KC By ERIC ADLER Staff Writer Their sons and brothers had been murdered Or maybe it was their daughters Or their sisters Some had been raped Others had Exhibit provides a glimpse into Kansas early days By PHILLIP Staff Writer Kansas much happened down at this little town site that had such an impact on national she continued settlement slavery the Civil War History was being made An exhibit on early Kansas City that opened Saturday at the University of Kansas Museum of Anthropology in Lawrence features archival photographs narratives and about 175 artifacts unearthed during See MUSEUM B-2 Col 3 Associate museum curator Mary Adair pointed to a muddy brown photograph of the early Kansas City riverfront a cluster of low nondescript buildings at the bottom of a sheer bluff dry goods store The Daily Western Journal of Commerce the Gilliss House Adair said ticking off names along the fledgling main street of what then was known as the Town of Earth Day Nancy Leo a volunteer for Operation Wildlife displayed an opossum Sunday during Earth Day activities in Shawnee Mission Park The critter was licking the back of neck The warm and windy Earth Day included many exhibits and presentations as well as free hot dogs and soft drinks DAVIb PULLIAM The Star Former looks back on Nixon By MIKE RICE Staff Writer with one fatal flaw needed to control everything around him from ambassadorship appointments to dinner Schorr said at a 100th anniversary dinner of the Mattie Rhodes Counseling and Art Center at the Ritz-Carlton Kansas City hotel As a CBS reporter covering the Watergate hearings Schorr said he learned he had made list of top 20 enemies The FBI he said also was checking See FORMER B-2CoM As a journalist once blacklisted by Richard Nixon Daniel Schorr described the late president to a Kansas City audience Sunday as a Those who would save Africa should have a reliable plan CW GUSEWELLE In their quest for the prize of power opposing tribal factions have turned upon one another in mob assaults of such horrific brutality as to eclipse in numbers of victims the tragedy at Sharpeville The violence was stilled by a temporary agreement to let the election go forward What will happen after the ballots are counted is guess Maybe the hopes of the world will be vindicated But if not we could be witness to a crisis of dramatically different scale than the one in Rwanda or Somalia And it will be useful to have thought through beforehand the limits on our ability to save the people of South Africa from their guns on participants in a mass political demonstration and 67 people died That event which came to be known as the Sharpeville Massacre galvanized world opposition to the system of racial separation known as apartheid and the monopoly of power and privilege held by the ruling white minority After Sharpeville accepted catechism held that if only South Africa could be delivered to the rule of its African majority a future of justice and promise would lie clear before it But in the months and weeks leading up to the first-ever all-race election that assumption has been shaken and the definition of has had to be revised the continent is of societies devouring themselves in what look like convulsions of terminal collapse What has become obvious in Africa and is underscored by tragedy in the former Yugoslavia is the inability of the international community to act effectively to prevent or halt what are essentially fratricidal conflicts The UN was conceived as an instrument to prevent aggression of nation against nation When for instance a Saddam Hussein sends his tanks rumbling across a neighbor's frontier there are no ambiguities It is an assault on international order and concerted response is possible But when groups within a country turn on one another where does the wrong lie? Which side has unqualified right on its side and what if none does? Who exactly is the enemy? What use of force is permissible? Since territory rarely is the only issue in these calamities what precisely is the objective? And is it feasible? If lives are to be risked in such actions the questions must be asked And the answers need be clear It would be well to keep these limitations in mind as South Africa tries to make its way through a political evolution that everyone hopes will end successfully but which based on events of recent months very well may not On March 21 1960 in a black township outside Johannesburg white South African police turned I first went to Africa 30 years half my lifetime ago Independence had swept like a wildfire across the continent and the optimism of those days seduced nearly all of us who traveled and wrote from there then Precious little of that optimism remains For anyone who has loved Africa so long the temptation is to simply turn away in horror and despair from spectacles like the one in Rwanda Tens of thousands as many as 1 00000 by one estimate massacred in tribal conflict UN intervention a failure and the peacekeepers scrambling to get out No semblance of a nation remaining No knowing when the butchery might end And before Rwanda there was Somalia And before Somalia Ethiopia And before that Mozambique And Angola And Uganda And what used to be the Congo And civil war in Nigeria And through it all the vicious but little-noticed conflict in southern Sudan The impression across much of.