TWO CITIES, TWO ELECTIONS AND TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS

NEWARK - After studying the riots that erupted in 1967 here and in other
urban centers, a commission appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson warned
that the nation was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white -
separate and unequal."

Today young people still inhabit vastly different worlds, even if that
difference is not defined solely by race. Consider two cities - Tulsa,
Okla., and Newark - that are among several participating in an effort by
the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania to
involve high school students in municipal elections. The idea is that if
the program can whet their appetites now, these students are more likely to
be involved in the civic process once they become adults.

In both Tulsa and Newark, high school classes have toured neighborhoods to
define what they think the campaign issues should be. Students have posed
questions to mayoral candidates on the Internet (at
www.student-voices.org), and the candidates have responded.

In Tulsa, students are roughly half white and half black, and mostly middle
class. During the campaign for the city's mayoral election, held in March,
their main concerns were potholes and a lower-income area that they wanted
beautified. The city's budget shortfall was also an issue. But the Tulsa
youths expressed little personal fear of violence from gangs or drug dealers.

In Newark, where a mayor will be elected next week, students live in a much
poorer and more violent community. Here young people tell a very different
story. At Technology High School, for example, Tariq Raheem teaches history
to seniors who have concluded that the chief election issues should be gang
violence, police corruption and the presence of drug dealers on the street.

In a walk around the city, Mr. Raheem's students observed strewn crack
vials. In class discussions, they complained of living in fear that they
would be shot if they wore clothing that by chance matched a gang's color,
or if they merely went outside in the evening. Those fears were palpable
during a student panel's recent interviewing of the candidates, to be
broadcast at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow by NJN, New Jersey's public television
service. (A student discussion of the issues will be broadcast on WBGO-FM
[88.3], Newark public radio, at 8 p.m. on Monday.)

One of Mr. Raheem's students, Tiffany Williams, said she would support a
candidate who favored creating more jobs and raising the minimum wage, now
$5.15 an hour. Ms. Williams reasoned that if young people could live on
their earnings, they would be less drawn to gangs and crime. Although the
minimum wage is beyond the mayor's power to set, she argued that a mayor
should be expected to advocate a higher one to other officials.

Some students disagreed with Ms. Williams. Toaine Johnson said that once
youths joined gangs, they could not be induced to leave simply by providing
them regular employment and slightly higher wages.

Mr. Raheem's students debated other election issues, but most of those
topics also concerned, directly or indirectly, the effects of crime and
gangs. Mr. Raheem described how community policing might work, and asked if
students thought it would help. Some deemed it reasonable, but one young
woman objected to having police officers live in neighborhoods they patrol;
she said a policeman who lived in her community was its biggest drug dealer.

In a city with an exceptionally high dropout rate - 40 percent is a good
estimate - that Mr. Raheem's students have reached senior year defines them
as among those with the most perseverance and talent. Even so, he has had
to spend one class period a week, all year, trying to convince them their
future would brighten if they attended college; most never before
considered the idea.

Mr. Raheem says roughly half his students are going on to college in the
fall. Still, attrition rates there are high among students who come from
communities characterized by violence, unemployment and poverty.

In a number of cities, the Annenberg Center's two-year-old project, Student
Voices, has improved teenagers' civic awareness and attitudes toward
political involvement, and sharpened the desire of many to participate in
public affairs as adults. These are hopeful signs, though there is no hard
evidence that such student attitudes actually lead to political
participation later in life.

In any event, it will take more than civic awareness, of course, to make
those two societies one.