Time/CNN Election 2000Special Debate
Monday February 21, 2000 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, NY.  9:00-10:30 p.m. (EST)
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The Questions

Reverend Al Sharpton: "...We are asking you what concrete steps would you make if you were elected president to deal with police brutality and racial profiling without increasing crime?  How would you keep crime down but at the same time confront the problem of police brutality and racial profiling?"

audience: "...African-Americans, since American slavery, still remain at the bottom of economic opportunity.  Do you think that reparations should be considered?  If yes, what would you do to implement such a policy?"

audience: "...What specific social, educational, legislative and economic policies will you implement that will ensure historically marginalized communities, such as Harlem where we are at, will gain access to technology and resources essential to survival in this new information age?"

Internet: "...What will you do to redefine affirmative action goals as an assurance against present and future discrimination?"

audience: "...if you're elected what would you do to help combat the AIDS epidemic in the minority community?"

audience: "...how would you address affordability of prescription Medicare when the salaries of our elderly patients is limited?  And it is a problem for those to afford health care in general, but specifically prescription medicine..."

Internet: "...can we limit the number of guns an individual can buy and allow only guns used for hunting?"

Jeff Greenfield, panelist: "...Policy differences aside, and knowing that the voters will make the ultimate choice, is it your opinion that the vice president has the character, the trustworthiness, the intellectual honesty to make a good president...?

Karen Tumulty, panelist: "...clearly in delving ten and sometimes twenty years back into the vice president's record, you are trying to raise questions of his leadership and questions of his character.  If you feel the need to raise those questions, don't you feel you have the responsibility to tell us what you think the answer it?

Tamala Edwards, panelist: "...Is there not a public or charter school in DC good enough for your child?  And if not...why should the parents here have to keep their kids in public schools because they don't have the financial resources that you do?

Commercial Break

audience: "...like to know what your criteria would be for selecting your vice president.  And will we see the first black vice president or minority president?

audience: "The Confederate flag has been flying over the state house in South Carolina for as long a I can remember.  What would you do... to have this racist symbol removed?"

audience: "...what will be your policy regarding a national moratorium on the death penalty in light of the fact that new DNA evidence has released an overwhelming amount of convicted criminals--quote, unquote 'minority individuals'--and in view of the disproportionate amount of minorities convicted by our so-called injustice system?"

audience: "...would you initiate new policies or expand upon President Clinton's executive order on environmental justice to better protect communities of color like the Harlems of the world that are disproportionately impacted by pollution sited in our communities, by growing health disparities and by an asthma epidemic?...

Internet: "With all of the talk about tax reductions, why won't the candidates just keep the tax rates the same and pay off the national debt?"

Tamala Edwards, panelist: "...you tend to do very well among middle class and upper class blacks, in places like Montclair and New Rochelle, but where you're lagging behind are in working and lower class communities like Harlem and Brooklyn...  [W]hy is it that you have been able to reach the bourgeoisie, but not rock the boulevard?"

Karen Tumulty, panelist: "...At a time when crime rates are falling, the prison population is swelling to the point where two million Americans are incarcerated; two-thirds of federal inmates are either black or Hispanic.  Is this something the Clinton administration anticipated when President Clinton signed tougher crime laws and why is this happening?"

Jeff Greenfield, panelist: "...There are tens of thousands of parents, disproportionately black and brown, who do not have that choice [of pulling their kids out of failing public schools].  And I would put on the table one of the staunchest opponents of that choice are the two major teachers unions that happen to supply one in nine of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The question is after 35 years and $100 billion in Title I money, with SAT scores that gap no narrower, why shouldn't these parents conclude that the Democratic Party's opposition to choice is an example of supporting a special interest rather than their interest?"

commercial break

closing statements


 

Copyright 1999, 2000  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.