A day without violence

EVERY DAY should be a day of nonviolence. But a nation that records 20,000 homicides a year cannot expect to achieve such an impossible goal. Within our reach, perhaps, is one day of nonviolence -- a day on which homicide detectives will not have to open a new file.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People deserves support for its National Day of Nonviolence on April 4, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and Easter Sunday.

NAACP leaders hope no homicides occur that day, and no acts of "physical, verbal or emotional violence."

That doesn't mean things should return to the status quo on April 5. The goal is to use the day as a starting point to change the culture of all-too-frequent violence -- urban crime, racial hatred, domestic violence.

Baltimore and the nation have become desensitized to crime for too long. We need to harbor enough outrage to condemn intolerable acts of violence, whether they occur in Jasper, Texas, or on the streets of East Baltimore.

Not just for insomniacs

IT'S NOT just insomniacs who have come to appreciate C-SPAN. Its audience includes millions of viewers who like their public-affairs viewing comprehensive and uninterrupted by commercials or mindless chatter.

On Friday, C-SPAN will celebrate its 20th anniversary.

When it began, it was on the air 9 hours a day, Monday through Friday. Programming was mostly sessions of the U.S. House -- just opened to television cameras. The target audience was about 3.5 households.

Today, a range of round-the-clock, public-affairs programming on C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 is watched by many times the original number of households. Yet the emphasis remains on gavel-to-gavel coverage of events that are important to this democracy.

Pub Date: 3/13/99