A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES : Today’s Agenda

Do the kids who are wearing Xs on their heads and chests understand the real Malcolm X? Is he more than a movie figure? He is, emphatically, at Century High School in Santa Ana, where a class of juniors has read Alex Haley’s “Malcolm X” for American Lit. “I think in the world today, peaceful protest won’t work. What the world does need is more leaders like Malcolm X,” says Dan Hoang, 16, among several members of the class interviewed for the Youth column. Many of his classmates feel similarly militant, but one notes that “for white people, Malcolm X meant fear,” and wonders if Malcolm would have softened if he’d lived longer.

Youthful rage may be understandable. But community leaders who grapple on a daily basis with cultural and ethnic clashes are certain of one thing: There are no easy answers to the tensions that abound in Southern California. But they do have ideas, in Platform, about where to start--with coalition-building, with leadership by example, with politicians more willing to take chances. Are the politicians listening?

The fight over panhandlers seems endless. One side says that we, the housed and fed, must give to people who are neither. Another side says our cash merely feeds street people’s addictions to drugs or alcohol. Last week, residents of Studio City even asked police to start arresting aggressive street people. In today’s In Dispute, Maxene Johnston of L.A.’s Weingart Center offers another path: Greatly broaden the availability of voucher slips for food and shelter. Sell them wherever lottery tickets are sold and give them to panhandlers instead of cash. A cynic might say that the vouchers merely allow an addict to eat without using up drug money. But frustrated elected officials might still welcome a plan that costs nothing, taps private charitable impulses and shows promise.

The problems of schools are no simpler, and there may be no issue more urgent. Many educators believe that rote memorization does not develop the critical, analytic thinking necessary for making informed choices or holding down a good job. In Making a Difference, a public-school program that began in Reseda offers average kids, not just the gifted or elite, a concept-rich humanities education that combines art, history, philosophy and science in thematic packages. The cost? Just $60 per student per year. The result? More kids stay in school, more go to college.

H ospitality. It’s a word that seems soft, polite, inviting. Far from it, says the Rev. Nicole-Melissa Reilley in Sermons. At its historic root, hospitality meant food and shelter for friend, foe and stranger alike. It was an unsentimental glue that held societies together.

The Rev. Richard Horton takes another word, manhood, and describes a fulfilling role for men in family and society.