Are you ready for the Year 2000?

You may be, with great justification, tired of the crescendo of publicity and hype about the turning of the millennium.

You may have, as some of us did, avoided the glitzy mass celebrations New Year�s night and celebrated rather quietly with a small group of friends, or just sat on the sidelines at home.

But when it comes to actually living and working in the year 2000 itself and the years thereafter, you�d better not be sitting on the sidelines. You�d better be in the thick of the action, or preparing to be there.

One doesn�t have to believe the millennial hype to understand that we�citizens of the United States and citizens of the world�have already crossed the threshold of a new environment, one ruled by powerful, market-driven economic forces that have no respect for tradition, national boundaries, or previous conditions of well-being.

Look back over the decade of the 1990s and recall what happened to once-powerful businesses, once-stable countries and societies.

The new constant that people all over the world must cope with is the fast-paced change that has the power to rapidly affect�boost or severely undermine, or even destroy�governments and multi-national companies.

Which means it can do the same to individuals and local communities, too.

The new "equipment" required of those of us who work and who want to prepare the next generation to work and do well in this new environment is to have and spread the entrepreneurial spirit.

By that I mean more than going into business for one�s self, as vital a route to economic prosperity for individuals and groups as that is.

I�m specifically referring to an attitude that is competitive and adventurous, and an aptitude for learning the things that are necessary to learn to do well in the new global marketplace.

This is something nations, ethnic groups and individuals must have. Without it, they�ll be pushed to the margins of the marketplace, which, more than ever, will be no place to be somebody.

The National Urban League�s historic mission for 99 years has been to prepare the mass of Black Americans for the modern world. It was so in 1910, when the League was formed to assist Black migrants from the American South then beginning to flood northern cities. It is so today.

We�re still at work supplying the needy and the ambitious with job skills and with job-related know-how so that they can get and hold a job that will provide them with a decent income�and a place in the world of tomorrow.

And we�re still at work, through such educational initiatives as our Campaign for African-American Achievement, helping children and teenagers bolster their natural ambitions to want to do well in school, to want to do good.

We, along with plenty of others, of course, have been vigorously pushing these ideas through our annual conferences�the last two of which have focused on gaining economic power; and through our publications: our scholarly volume, "The State of Black America," and our general-interest magazine, Opportunity Journal.

Indeed, the latter�s most recent issue, published this month, examined Black America�s preparedness to participate in the technological and information revolution now underway.

The question it posed on the cover was "Are You Wired?"

As in, plugged in to what�s happening now, and what�s about to happen.

As urgent as that question is for all of us, it is even more so for those Americans whose poverty has left them still standing outside the gates of opportunity.

The primary challenge facing the United States, the wealthiest nation on earth, is transforming the have-nots among us into haves.

That means finding a way to further reduce the unemployment rate among Blacks�which is still twice the record low overall rate of four percent.

That means finding a way to help those people still trapped on welfare�and to help those now off the welfare rolls and working, but whose wages leave them still subsisting in poverty.

Last August at our conference, we unveiled our Ten Opportunity Commandments, proposals for investing America�s financial and human capital so that all Americans will benefit. Unless that happens, America itself won�t be as strong at it needs to be.

They include such measures as offering quality, pre-school education to every child whose parents can�t afford it, providing affordable health care for the 41 million Americans now uninsured, eliminating the digital divide by ensuring that all have access to computers and the Internet, and eliminating discriminatory business-loan practices in order to equalize access to capital.

The need for such proposals makes it clear that "being Year 2000 ready" is a question not just individuals but American society itself must answer.