Document 4azM7wMy4MEErkG6vEOp4K1zx

The News and Observer / advise and enjoin those who direct the paper in the tomorrows never to advocate any cause for personal profit or preferment. ! would wish.it always to be "the tocsin" and to devote itself to the policies ofequality andjustice to the underprivileged. Ifthe paper should at any time be the voice of self-interest or become the spokesman of privilege or selfishness it would- be untrue to its history. -- JOSEPHUS DANIELS. Editor and Publisher 1894-1948 This newspaper's opinion A mis v Wednesday, September 29,1982 Has it become obligatory for any one identified as a civil rights lead er to go to jail in Warren County? Judging from the arrest Monday of Congressional Delegate Walter E. Fauntroy of the District of Colum bia, it would appear so. Fauntroy was charged with impeding a truck headed for the state PCB landfill. Instead of interfering with this state's lawful resolution of a prob lem that has faced blacks and whites in 14 counties, Fauntroy might well be protesting actions of the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Ur ban Development. ; While Fauntroy was making his pilgrimage to North Carolina, the Justice Department was saying that it might asK the courts to dismantle court-ordered busing plans affect ing several major U.S. cities. The nation's chief law-enforcement agency has begun to side with the Opponents of tne use of busing as one of the permissible tools to bring school systems into compliance with the law. . f Instead of kneeling in front of a truck near Afton, Fauntroy could have been back in Washington rais ing his voice against HUD's propos al to distort the intent of community development block grants. Con gress intended these grants to cities to provide benefits for low- to mod erate-income people. But HUD wants to back off that requirement. tance. In the face of all this, the ac tivists center their attention on something in Warren County that essentially is. an environmental is sue -- and an issue on which state government has sought to act responsibly. ' Among the participants in the rit ual of protest and arrest have been leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Leon White, the Rev. Ben Chavis, Floyd McKissick, Fauntroy and other civil rights figures. But the larger, tougher demands of political leadership for the black and the poor wonr be won by brief personal or organizational publicity shots on the evening news,. . It's as if the activists had de spaired of getting a handhold on the slippery mass of Reagan rollbacks in social programs. So they were happy to find something in North Carolina -- or anywhere -- that they could devote their time and en ergies to. It's a pity. The activists had their priorities straight when they marched for and worked for the ex tension of the Voting Rights Act by Congress. But by turning to civil disobedience on an environmental issue in North Carolina, they have ventured far afield from gaining useful political results for their con stituents. The Reagan administration has provided plenty of issues for anyone who speaks for poor and black Americans. Look at reductions of general federal. assistance for the floor, cuts in student aid, school unches and other nutrition pro grams, day care and medical assis PCB-ARCH-EXT0378519