Marian Wright Edelman: Call to Action for our Youth

>> Dean Collins: Good afternoon everybody. We're going to go ahead and get started. I, I think that perhaps there's still people
joining us but we do want to make sure that we have time for both the lecture, but
also a very nice question and answer period. So I would like to welcome everybody. I am Susan Collins, the gentleman Sanford
Wild, Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and I'm really delighted to
see all of you here with us this afternoon.

It's an honor and a personal pleasure for us
to welcome Marian Wright Edelman to campus and to the Ford School, for our 2009
Citigroup Foundation Lecture Series. This lecture series was established
several years by a gift in honor of President Gerald R. Ford,
from the Citigroup Foundation. We're very grateful to the foundation for
their generous gift, which is enabled us to bring distinguished policy
leaders and thinkers to campus and we're particularly honored to have Marine
White Edelman as part of that series here today. This event is co-sponsored by
the National Poverty Center and by the Students of Color and Public Policy. And I want to thank both of those organizations,
we're very thankful for their help and support. Today's lecture represents the Ford
School's contribution to the University of Michigan's 2009 Symposium in honor
of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As you know, or as you may know, the theme for the 2009 University
Symposium is a dreamer but not the only one.

This theme was selected to highlight
the critical importance of acting for positive change, which King did and which
so many of his follows have continued to do in the fight for civil rights
and social justice. It's a particularly theme
given the historic election of this nation's first African
American President Barack Obama. And the unusual challenging
times that we currently face. We are all called upon to
act, roll up our sleeves and do what we can do create
positive change for our community. And Mrs. Edelman's latest book, which
we have distributed here this afternoon, she recounts advice that [inaudible] Gandhi
remembers hearing from her grandfather. He told her that there were two kinds of people, those who do the work, and
those who take the credit. But I must say that was one of my,
one of many favorite passages I had when I had the pleasure of
reading the book recently.

He recommended that she try to be in the first
group, because there was much less competition. [ Laughter ] >> Well Marian Wright Edelman's life has
exemplified a willingness to do the work. The Children's Defense Fund,
which she founded in 1973, sprang directly from the Civil Rights
Movement, and represented her commitment to extending the principles of
that movement to children's issues. Some of you might know that it was Marian
Wright Edelman and her colleagues at the CDF who first popularized the phrase, or I
should say the mission Leave No Child Behind.

They've worked tirelessly for that cause through
education, prenatal healthcare and nutrition, high quality affordable daycare, tax relief
for working families with young children, adolescent pregnancy prevention, and much more. And all of these policy areas have been shaped
and sharpened over the decades by the hard work of Mrs. Edelman and the Children's Defense Fund. Mrs. Edelman is a graduate of Spellman College
and Yale Law School, and she began her career in the mid 1960's as the first black
woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar.

She directed the NAACP Legal Defense and
Education Fund Office in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1968 she moved to Washington D.C. as
counsel for the Poor People's Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
began organizing before his death. She founded the Washington Research
Project, a public interest law firm that was the parent body of
the Children's Defense Fund. She's received many honorary degrees and awards, including one from the University
of Michigan's Law School. And in 2000 received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award and the Robert F. Kennedy
Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings, which include eight books. Like King, and Obama, Marian Wright Edelman
is an inspiration who through decade, who for decades through her words and
her actions, has articulated and fought as a champion for justice, and a
committed activist for positive change.

Her work continues to remind us that individuals
matter and that we each have a role to play. And her work continues to remind
us how important public policy is for setting the stage in
which dreams can be realized. With this 2009 theme, A Dreamer But Not the
Only One, I can think of no one more appropriate or inspiring to deliver the Ford
School's Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Address this year. Please join me in welcoming
Marian Wright Edelman. [ Clapping ] >> Marian Wright Edelman: Thank you.

Thank you very much. I love being here at this
transformative time in American history. I'm proud America as I've always
said, more proud than I've ever been. And now I want us to be even prouder,
as we together come together as citizens to build a movement to make our new
great leader realize what we've got to do and which Dr. King hoped for. That is an effort to put the social and
economic underpinnings beneath every human being in America and every child. So what a moment this is to be alive. I thank Dean Collins for
that bit of introduction. I've worked for years with Sheldon Dansinger
and really happy to reconnect with that center, and I've met some of your young people from your
students of color and so I'm glad to see all of you here at this incredible
time of challenge and hope.

And I know Dr. King is smiling,
I've been wearing my Harriet Tugman and [inaudible] truth medals with me, they've been having the best time
since the Democratic Convention. And I often think, what would
they be doing today. And I know that they would be speaking
up to make sure that all the inequalities that have grown and grown would be closing, and
that we'd be about the business of freeing all of our children from poor health and
illiteracy and the prison pipeline, and that's what we must be doing.

The day he died, Dr. King
called his mother from Memphis to give her his next sermon's
title for the next Sunday. And it was Why America May Go to Hell. And he said, America is going to hell if we
don't use her vast resources to end poverty, and to make it possible for all of God's
children to have the basic necessities of life. And I don't have any doubt that if Dr. King
were present today that he would be calling for poor people's campaign,
for poor children's campaign. When he died there were 11 million poor children
and today there are 13.3 million poor children. Our GDP is three times bigger
than it was when he died. The gap between rich and poor is higher
than it's ever been in our recorded history and I know what he would be doing and
that's what I think we should be doing, because so many of us love to celebrate Dr.
King, but it is really now time to follow him, and to hear him, and that is the
chore for the next eight to ten years and with this wonderful new
moment in American history, with this wonderful new leader
this is our opportunity.

And Dr. King from the beginning
realized that movements make leaders, citizens make great leaders, not
leaders the other way around. And so we have got to make sure that we start
that hard work of movement building and carry over the enthusiasm and the organizing efforts
and the, the call and respond to the call, community and unity that
will enable our president to be the great president he wants to be. But, but we must help him. I tell the story a lot. There are no friends in politics and I tell
the story about A. Philip Randolph going to the White House to visit President
Franklin Roosevelt, and he was telling him about racial discrimination and the need
to have federal action against that. And early on before the '63 march on Washington,
he was talking about a march on Washington to deal with the education inequities
and to deal with job discrimination and job needs of the black community.

And President Roosevelt was alleged to have
said, and listened very sympathetically and then to have said at the end of the conversation
that, Phil I agree with absolutely everything that you just told me, now
you go out and make me do it. So our job over the next four to eight years is
to make our political leaders do what they need to do for the least amount of [inaudible] and
to invest in our human capital which is going to be the key to America's
global competitiveness, because there's so many things on the table. There's two wars to solve with an economic
debacle that we're trying to solve, with global warming, with
pollution and all the big things, we've got to make sure the children
and the poor stay at the table.

And that we build a mighty noise to make
sure that we create a level playing field. That's what Dr. King would be doing today and
that's what I'm going to be doing forever. The day after Dr. King died there was
rioting and looting all across the nation, and I went out into the District of Columbia of
public schools to tell young people not to riot and not to loot because I didn't
want them to ruin their futures.

And a little boy, about 12, looked me straight
in the eye and said, Lady what future? I ain't got no future. I ain't got nothing to lose. And I have spent the last 40 years
trying to prove that boy's truth wrong. I never realized how hard it would be. And the richest nation on the earth professes
to have a creative equality for everybody and a democracy, but we've got
to answer that boy's truth, and that's what I want to talk about today. Imagine God visiting our very wealthy
family blessed with six children, five of them have enough to eat and
comfortable warm rooms in which to sleep. One doesn't. She's often hungry and cold and on some nights
she has to sleep on the streets or in a shelter and may even be taken away from
her neglectful family and placed in a foster care or a group home with strangers.

Imagine this rich family giving five of their
children nourishing meals three times a day and snacks to fuel boundless energy. But sending the sixth child from the table
and school hungry with only one or two meals and never the dessert the other children enjoy. Imagine this very wealthy family making sure
five of its children get all of their shots, regular health checkups before they get
sick and immediate access to healthcare when illness strikes but ignoring
the sixth child who is plagued by chronic respiratory infections and painful
toothaches which sometimes abscess and kill for lack of a doctor or a dentist. Imagine this family sending five of their
children to good stimulating preschools and making sure they have music and swimming
lessons after school, sending the sixth child to unsafe daycare with untrained caregivers
responsible for too many children, or leaving her occasionally with an accommodating relative
or a neighbor or even all alone. Imagine five the children living at
home with books and families able to read most of their children every night.

But the other child is left
unread to, untalked and unsung to, unhugged or propped before a television screen
or video game that feeds him violence and sex and racial and gender charged messages,
intellectual [inaudible] interrupted only by ceaseless ads for material things
that are beyond the child's grasp. Imagine this family sending
some of their children to high quality schools in safe neighborhoods.

With enough books and computers and
laboratories and science equipment and well prepared teachers, and sending the
sixth child to a crumbling school building with peeling ceilings and leaks and
lead in the paint, and asbestos. No known books or not enough of them, and
teachers untrained in the subjects they teach, and with low expectations that all children
can learn, especially the sixth child. Imagine most of the family's children being
excited about learning and looking forward to finishing high school, going to the
University of Michigan and getting a job.

And the sixth child pulling further and further
behind grade level, not being able to read, wanting to drop out of school
and being suspended and expelled at younger and younger ages. Because no one has taught
him to read and compute or diagnose his attention deficit disorder or
treated his health and mental health problems, and helped him keep up with his peers. Imagine five of the children engaged in
sports, in music and arts and after school and summer camps, and in enrichment programs. And the sixth child hanging out with
peers, or going home alone because mom and dad are working, or are in prison or have
run away from their parenting responsibilities and escaped in drugs and
alcohol, leaving him alone or on the streets during the non-school hours and weeks long non-school
hours and weeks and months.

At risk of being sucked into illegal
activities and the prison pipeline or killed in our gun saturated nation. Well this is our American family today
where one in six of our children lives in poverty in the richest nation on earth. More than 40% live in extreme
poverty and the numbers of 13.3 and 5.6 in extreme poverty they're going
to get worse in this period of down turn. Our data is old. And it is not a stable or healthy or
economically sensible or just family. Our failure to invest in all of our children
before they get sick or drop out of school, get pregnant or get into trouble, is
morally defensible and extremely costly. Every year we let 13 million children live
in poverty caused by a half trillion dollars in lost productivity and the cost of
crime and health and other dependency.

And I've heard others, especially
children without consequences. And contrary to popular stereotypes, America's
sixth child is more than twice as likely to live in a working family that to be on welfare is
more likely to be white than black or Latino. And is more likely to live in a rural
or suburban area than in an inner city. However, black and Hispanic children
are at far greater risk of being poor and of entering the cradle
to [inaudible] pipeline. The most dangerous place for a
child to grow up in America today is at the intersection of poverty and race. Racial disparity still permeate
all the major America institutions that shape the life chances
of millions of children. On the [inaudible] by poverty, these disparities
are putting countless children at risk of incarceration and funneling hundreds of
thousands of them every year into a pipeline to prison, derailing their chances
for reaching successful adulthood.

Incarceration has been coming
the new American partied. And poor children of color are the product. All of us must see and understand and sound
the alarm about this threat to American unity and community, act to stop the growing
criminalization of children at younger and younger ages and tackle the unjust treatment
of minority youths and adults in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems
with urgency and persistence. The failure to act now will reverse the hard
earned racial and social progress Dr. King and so many others have died and sacrificed for. And weaken our future capacity to lead. All leaders in all sectors must call for
investment in all children from birth through their successful
transition to adulthood. Remembering Frederick Douglas'
direct observation that it is easier to build strong children
than to repair broken men. So many poor babies in rich America in a
world with multiple strikes against them, born without prenatal care at
low birth rate and to a team poor and poorly educated single mother, and
absent father, though I do hope that the, the signal of our new president says you can
make it even if your daddy did leave home when you were two and even if your
mother was on food stamps and even if you did have an unstable mobile childhood.

But we can't just say, children you go do it,
you've got to put into place the building blocks so that they can actually succeed. And I love, I told the story
earlier this morning being in a juvenile detention center a few weeks ago, and I asked a young man what
this election meant. And one young man, about 15, who had, was
in there for very serious things said, you know a week ago I couldn't
even imagine getting my GED, and now I'm going to hang
in there and get my PhD. So hope has been around, and we've
got to make sure he has the tools and the means to get that G, PhD. And so let's put the building blocks and
meet on the hope that will allow our children to succeed now that their expectations
and sense of themselves has been lifted. At crucial points in their development after
birth until adulthood, more risks pile on, making a successful transition to productive
adulthood significantly less likely and involvement in the criminal justice
system significantly more likely.

Since children of color are always and
have been always disproportionately poor, their odds of incarceration as adults
greatly exceed that of white children. Black children are three times as likely as
white children to be poor and almost six times as likely as white children to be incarcerated. A poor black boy born in 2001 has a one in
three chance in going to prison in his lifetime. A Latino boy a one in six chance. A black girl and a white boy a one in 17 chance. A Latino girl one in 45 chance. A white girl a one in 111 chance. The past continues to strangle
the present and the future. Children with incarcerated parent are
more likely to become incarcerated. Black children are nearly nine times and
Latino children three times as likely as white children to have
an incarcerated parent. Black that comes to one third, Latinos
one-fifth of our imprisoned population. One in three black men, 20 to 29 years old,
father s of children that need them at home and are able to provide the nurturing care
is under correctional supervision or control. Of the 2.3 million people in
jail or prison, 64% are minority and the 4.2 million people on
probation, 45% are minority.

And of the 800,000 people on parole, 59 percent. We're not in a post-racial society
yet, but we're about to get there. And for any of us who thought the
change of the top is so crucial is going to solve all the problems for those at
the bottom, and which have been deepening and downward mobility has been increasing
over the last decades, need to address this. And this is the time to take this new era
and this new leadership to really make sure that we lift the bottom and create a level
playing field for all of our children. Unjust drug sentencing policies
have greatly escalated, incarceration of minority adults and youths. Now these numbers that I just shared
are black and Latino community tragedy. But they are an unfolding national
catastrophe that we've got to address.

They are ripping apart billions of families,
stripping away the right to vote for many, and blocking the chance to
get a job to support a family. They decrease public security as more and more
prisoners reenter society without the means to legally support themselves,
and they drain taxpayer dollars as increasing billions are spent on
massive incarceration and beyond and old. We need to change course. Our states are spending on average three times
more per prisoner than for public school pupil. I can't think of a dumber investment policy. And I am delighted that your new
government is trying to begin your governor. She's not new anymore, but is trying to
begin to change and reorder these priorities. Please support her. And speak up against the growing
power of the prison unions and of the prison industrial complex. Prisons are big business. We're spending $200 billion
a year we have more people.

They're, they employ more people
than our three largest employers, Wal-Mart, GM, recently GM, and Ford. This is big, big business. And I tell you as I get older,
I want to make sure that they are we are producing enough productive
workers to support us and our older ages, and, and infrastructure we need to be strong
in the infrastructure we need to be strong and the new centers and us supporting them. And prison and, and at greatly increased cost. We can redevelop. We have a paradigm change, and
we all need to sort of call more, and we need to stop incarcerations
as a first resort and really begin to invest preventably and, and, and early, and
trying to divert our children into a pipeline for successful adulthood through
college and through productive work.

I think that is the gender for us, Children's
Defense Fund for the next decade for all of us. We need to create that level playing field. Now child poverty and neglect and the cradle
to prison pipeline and the racial disparities and the systems that serve our
children are not acts of God. They are America's immoral, political and
economic choices that can and must be changed with strong political, corporate,
community leadership. No single sector or group can solve these child and nation threatening crises
alone, but all of us can together. As leaders we must all begin to come to the
table and use our pulpits and our skills to replace our current paradigm with again
a paradigm of prevention and investment in children before they get sick and
drop out of school and get into trouble. It'll save lives, it'll save
families, it'll save taxpayer money, it'll save our nation's aspirations to be in
a fair society and it'll allow us to compete in the global arena where our children are
going to have to have the skills and the means to maintain our economic [inaudible]
with competition from China and India and Europe and everywhere.

We can no longer afford to waste our children. And it is time for us to live up to our
creed and that is in the goal of this time. Ending child poverty is not only an urgent
moral necessity, it's economically beneficial, as Dr. Solo and my team [inaudible] and
economics wrote in Wasting America's Future. I think Sheldon [inaudible]
was a member of that epic.

And he said ending child poverty is
at the very least highly affordable. More likely it is a gain to the economy and to
the business as taxpayers and citizens within. A healthy social security and
that ends Dr. Solo's quote. For I say a health social
security and Medicare system for our increasing elderly population needs
as many productive workers as possible. And we can ill afford to let millions
of our people and children grow up poor in poor health uneducated, under educated and
dependent rather than productive citizens. So what can we all do today as community
and other leaders to build our spiritual and political will to help our nation
pass, pass the test of the God of history and better prepare for America's futures. What steps can we take together
to heed Dr. King's warning, not to let our wealth become our
destruction, but our salvation.

By helping the poor Nazareth
says languishing at our gates. How can we cease the enormous opportunity today. To use our great blessings to bless
all the children entrusted to our care and rekindle America's dimming dream. Other first is for all of us. To be leaders in our community and in our
networks and in our disciplines that call all of us to our [inaudible] and to heed president's
who call all of us, to create new epic of caring and sacrifice and service. And we must begin at every level to try to
overcome the deep divides between rich and poor and white and non-white and men
and women and imprisoned and free. And but despite the huge strides over the past
decades we really are seeing our social economic process stalling again the
top has been wonderful.

And threatening to reverse. And we've got to get ourselves
on the right track again. We've got to move forward and not backwards. We've got to reset our nation's priority
but have created that greatest gap between rich and poor in our history. And between our rich and poor in the globe. Because we really are one big human house. And everything is interconnected as
Dr. King told us over and over again. And we've got to step up, go away from the
false either ors and the present mission, there's a number of them, but I say the
false either ors between personal, family, community and societal responsibility
for children. And for simplistic solutions that don't
address these complex but solvable problems. Since all of us are responsible for ensuring our
nation's future, all of us need to come together to work together across discipline,
across race, across [inaudible] and to put our children's healthy development
at the center of our decision making.

Because if the child is safe, everybody is safe. And the child doesn't come in pieces, the
child comes in families, families are affected by communities, communities are affected
by the policies and investment priorities of their state and local and national
governments, and all of us are affected by the culture, that seems to glorify violence
and excessive materialism and militarism, that Dr. King warned us about and
these have to be seen in context because they are all affecting our
children's healthy development. The second is that I just hope we will
all come together and really envision that we can eliminate poverty and
eliminate child poverty in this country, starting with extreme child poverty. And wouldn't it be nice if
we set a goal for 2015, which is the day that the United Nations
millennial goals for lifting many, many millions out of poverty, and in
developing nations around the world and what an example we might show. I remember how heartbroken I was at a UNICEF
meeting some years ago when I was sharing with them the, the facts of child poverty and
mortality and were [inaudible] in our country and the developing nations were absolutely
crushed because they thought my goodness in we could just become like the United States.

If we could just become a developed
nation these problems would disappear. I really want us to be a good
role model, I mean it's just, we need to show that democratic
capitalism is not an oxymoron. And so it would be so wonderful
if while we're losing ground with these [inaudible] developing countries,
if we could set a goal that says we're going to eliminate child poverty
and I, I'm always in a hurry because children are growing up,
they have only one childhood. I think we've lost two generations of
many of our poor and minority children. By 2015 and we all made a commitment,
got our leaders to make a commitment to doing what we have to do to end the racial
disparity suffered by millions of black, Latino, Native American children, who are disproportionately poor
in the richest nation on earth. No other rich industrialized western
nation permits the high rates of child poverty than we do. No other nation let's children be
the poorest group among its citizens. We can do better. Benjamin Franklin said a long time,
the best family policy is a good job.

Every American family should have an
adequate income based primarily on work and a decent safety net for anyone
unable to work and everyone must be able to live a healthy safe job rich
communities with affordable housing. And I don't want to hear anybody tell
us we don't have the money to do it even in this period of economic downturn. Every child could be lifted out of poverty
for less than nine months of the tax cuts of the top one percent, in
four months of Iraq war. I was trying to convince the Congress that
we really could afford $700 billion last year to cover all of our children rather than
four of the nine million uninsured children, and to provide that national safety net, and they said we couldn't find the money we
were too poor and look how quickly they found that $700 billion, and what
are we talking about now? We don't have a money problem,
we have a [inaudible] and a priorities problem and
again the job is citizens.

Is to make a mighty noise for a
change in our investment priorities and I hope that you will join me in that. We can begin to stop the irresponsible giveaways
to our richest 300,000 Americans and reinvest that in saving the futures
of 13 million poor children. And I hope we will do that and
fight hard for the tax relief, below and moderate income families
including a fully refundable child tax credit which in the House stimulus bill and I hope
you will pay attention to what's in that bill, because the first thing we can do is to make
sure that the investments in low income people at this time and middle income people at this
time really get put into that stimulus package which gives us something to build on when the
temporary period [inaudible] But making the tax, child tax credit fully refundable will
benefit millions of children and lift hundreds of thousands of them out of poverty now.

Getting earned income tax credit
expanded for larger families, with three or more children would begin to have
an enormous anti-poverty impact. Investing in childcare and food stamps and
for all of our folk, they're going to spend that money quickly, they've got to
stimulate the economy and they are going to hopefully keep themselves together. But there are a lot of strong
safety net programs spent on Medicaid assistance, but pay attention to it. The House package I think on the whole is very
good, now keeping it in the Senate is going to be a challenge, but let's work
on that because this is the time when we have a chance to move forward. If we lifted, if we expand the federal
childcare support to families earning 200% or below the federal level we could lift
over two million children out of poverty.

To raise food stamp participation,
increase the benefits 85 percent, we could again have an impact on millions. So here is a moment that we must cease and I
do hope that you will call up your senators now and call up your congressmen now and really support the provisions
that are in the house package. I hope we'll all take responsibility
to educate ourselves and to educate others about who the poor are. And maybe in this period of economic downturn
the many people never thought they'd be in a food stamp line, never thought they'd lose
their home, never thought they'd be wondering where they're going to be able
to pay their utilities bill.

But this is a moment when we might be
open and that the poor may well be us. We must help our nation remove their, our
psychological cataracts and dispel many of the myths that we saw up in here and about
the causes and consequences of child poverty, one of which I've already talked about. It cost too much to eliminate poverty. I think we need to change
the trims of the debate because it costs too much
to maintain child poverty. We need to produce productive
citizens, not dependent ones. We hear a lot about it's not the right
time, it's always the right time to be just and to be fair and to make sure that children
are able to get the very basic things they need to grow up and to learn and to be healthy. We hear still that nothing works. Well we know a lot about work. Things that do work. We know how to immunize children, we should not
have so many children that are immunized today. We know how to provide good
health services for children and there should not be nine million children
unable to find a dentist or a doctor.

We know a lot about what
works and we need to move them to scale and to maintain their quality. We know that we could overcome
some of the myths like, you know, we fought a war on poverty and poverty won. Well we didn't fight a war on poverty, we
fought a scrimmage on poverty and the war in Vietnam and the military budget won. Dr. King was calling for a poor
people's campaign at the times when we were investing 40 times less, in the
office of economic opportunity to fight the war on poverty than the war in Vietnam
and other military spending.

He knew this was an unequal contest. And we need to go back again. And he would not be pleased today to see that
we're in two wars, and that trillions have gone into wars rather than to
investing in our people. These are about making hard choices,
and we need to answer them back. We often here that it is parents' responsibility
to take care of their own children. They're not my children,
they're other people's children.

Well of course it's the parents
responsibility, but what are parents to do if, if their jobs are down, are
eliminated or are sent abroad. Our wages are there, they're working as hard
as they can but they cannot lift themselves out of poverty or if they're
not able to get healthcare. The majority, 90% of, of the children are
without health insurance living in families, playing by the rules, but
again can't get healthcare. And so while parents certainly should
be the first line of responsibility, no child should be punished for
parents they did not choose. And if you look at the book that you've
been handed, you will find I'm pretty tough on parents, but we need to also
support parents and being good parents. And nobody raises a child alone. They said a portion should not
have babies, they cannot support. Nobody should have babies they can't
support either financially or emotionally, but again you don't punish
children for the problems of the parents that they did not choose.

And we need to help rather than
judge or blame or punish the poor or non-poor who neglect their children. And I hear a lot about class warfare even from
dear friends who are concerned about children but don't really want to talk
about changing our tax policies. And I don't hear anybody
talk about the class warfare. I think we have seen how we've had this
massive redistribution of income from the poor to the rich over the last decades, and, and corporate welfare has been
extraordinary, something is wrong. And unfair when 46 companies in a recent
year paid no federal income taxes, while reporting combined profits
of $40, almost $43 billion and collectively receiving tax
rebates total $5.4 billion. We need to have a little tax fairness here. And we've always tended to have
socialism for the rich as we're seeing now in the bailout, and capitalism for the poor.

We need to have better balance
as we move forward. So that three in terms of public policy
opportunities this year which require voice. And we do know what to do is that
I hope we can all come together and see health insurance
coverage for every American. But we if we can't get it for every
American, and I hope we will and we work hard, I hope we can get it for every
child and every pregnant mother. The Senate today is considering shift,
I haven't been informed about whether in fact they ended up passing it. The House had passed the state
children's health insurance bill that was Mr. Bush had vetoed
several times last year. But that is not child health reform. It's a step forward. That's last year's unfinished business. It covers only four if the
Senate does end up including as the House did not, legal immigrant children. But it's about four million children. But we are nine million uninsured children and
we want them all having a health safety net. I said to them until I'm blue in the face,
I have three sons, and I wouldn't dream of giving them one of them health coverage
and two of them no health coverage.

We can do better. And there God did not make
two classes of children and this country can afford
to cover all children. We can afford to give them all
the same guaranteed package of comprehensive coverage which
include mental and dental. We have children dying of tooth
abscesses in this country. We shouldn't have that happen. I don't want to hear those Katrina
children's problems over the next years that we've left them out there
three years after this great trauma without the mental healthcare needs. I don't want to see children sitting out by the
thousands in our juvenile detention facilities so many because they couldn't get mental health
coverage in their community and parents having to judge themselves neglectful and abusive
parents in order to get mental health coverage.

We need to put in place a comprehensive benefits
and we cannot have a two tier system of children who are eligible for Medicaid
guaranteed comprehensive benefits. In fact we can, and children for Chip
who don't have guaranteed benefits which is what we are trying
to do is to make sure that we upgrade all children
with the same set of benefits. You can have two children in
the same family, different ages, depending on how the states structure
this child health delivery systems, one is eligible for comprehensive benefit and
guaranteed it throughout this economic downturn, the other child may be eligible for Chip. And not guaranteed anything
and not have mental or dental.

And as children are being cut back now
in this economic down turn in the states, this two tier system must be corrected. Every child should have what
they need to grow up healthy and to have the full range
of comprehensive benefits. The third thing that we're trying to do and
we've drafted a bill that was in last year and which will be reintroduced for them this
month it's called the all healthy children's act is that we would make sure that we
simplify the child health bureaucracies. I don't want to see national health insurance
with seniors having Medicare and the, I don't know what we'll end up with for all
the rest of us, but the children cannot be left out there in two programs in 50 states. The lottery of geography of the [inaudible]
Mississippi's child's life is no less valuable than a Massachusetts's child's life, or
even a child's chance to live and thrive, cannot depend on the goodness
of their government or the politics or wealth of their state.

So we want a national safety net that says every
child within a family with 300% poverty income or less would be given a guaranteed
these services, and anybody with income above that can be able to
buy in at affordable cost. And should make it simple. There should be one system. So we don't have the current problems with
six million children of the nine million who are uninsured are eligible
for either Chip or Medicaid. But they fall through the bureaucratic cracks
and we need to make enrollment automatic at birth of any child that is in a mean [inaudible] program
they are automatically enrolled. They are starting school but we
should make sure we're getting them. We don't need to do all this outreach
we just need to get them in the system. And the [inaudible] here
is to serve children well. To tear down all these bureaucratic
barriers that the states have put up to serve as few children as they can rather
than serve as many children. So one of the things I do hope you
will do is to have a robust engagement and this new debate is going on in
national health insurance for everybody.

But please pay particular attention
to the children's health piece and to the pregnant women's piece. We want to cover every pregnant woman. It is disgraceful that our low birth rate
rates are those of an underdeveloped nation that our infant mortality rates
are those of undeveloped nation. And we know how to move this well. But we are going to need
your help and your voice. And so the [inaudible] the finance committee
they're going to have jurisdiction over much of what we need to do, whether
it's poverty, a stimulus package or whether children's health coverage. But I do hope you will pay attention. I hope you will check into our website and look at the [inaudible] health insurance debates
provisions and see how you can support it and encourage other people to support it. We must cover our children. We must close off that first big entry
point in the prison pipeline by making sure that those children who are born with three or
four strikes against them and low birth weight, didn't identify that they had a substance
or alcohol abusing mother, a mother at risk, let's get them on there with
a fair chance to run.

And then let's put in place
the second building block and that's a strong early childhood foundation. We know about early brain development
and the first three years of life, yet early head start serves
only 3% of the eligibles. And this stimulus package there is 2.1 billion
increase in head start and I hope a lot of that will go into early head start. We know how to give good parent support programs
and child/parent interaction is so important, but you can't teach what you don't know. And so this is another set of programs and
policies that we need to move to scale. Parents need support. They're eager to be and hungry to do a
better job, but they need help and we need to spend the chances for our children to
have very strong early childhood experiences. We need to have a universal high quality early
childhood system with head start and child care and preschool, and we need to sort of break
down the silos between the child care people and the preschool people and the head
start people and the after school people and see if we can't develop a high quality early
childhood system that's got a help children get ready for school and be ready
to get and learn in school.

But also be safe at school. Children spend only 17% of their time in school. We need to get these congregations
and you will see a very strong set of letters in the book you got. Please look at it, debate it and then go and
confront your religious leaders and yourselves, our neighbors, for how we can begin
to reweave the fact of this community. And open up our congregations to provide
safe havens to the streets for our children. The gangs and the drug dealers are
open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And the television sets are always on. How do we begin to compete with them
and to provide positive role models and, and programming for our children? So having a high quality early
childhood and family support system. Very, very important and
there will be legislation that will be introduced to try to do this. I think we need to ensure child and economic
family security and I hope again you will plug in and look and I am sure that your, your leaders here in this school will
have a lot to say as we move forward. I hope we can dramatically decrease the number
of children coming into the child welfare system and again I keep going back to poverty.

A poor child is 22 times more likely to be
neglected and abused than a non-poor child and we've got to deal with the core
causes and not just with the symptoms and you know we've got 345,000
[inaudible] abortion. I have been saying to all and I come from
a family of Baptist preachers, if just ten% or 13% of them decided they
were going to find one or two adoptive parents we could
clean out the child welfare system. Or if we provided adequate support systems
for families and kin, we could keep a lot of children out of the child welfare system. Because we know once children go into foster
care they're going to be at risk of dropping out of school at much higher rates than children
who have not been in the foster care system.

They're much more at risk of, of
going into juvenile detention. So we've got, again, to close all of that
feeder system but it's going to take family and community and neighbors
and, and good public policies. And again an attack on poverty. And I hope that we can begin
to deal with our overburdened and underfinanced child welfare
system which is a major feeder system into the cradle to prison pipeline. And I want to give a great
shout out to granny parents. I've really been radicalized by
becoming a grandma, and I am not going to leave this messy world to our grandchildren,
and I think that when I look at the struggles of grandparents and they're about
four/five million children living in grandparent headed households, and
I try to put myself in their place, and I've got every support I need.

My husband and I can manage and we have
our grandchildren for one whole weekend and we are so worn out when they leave. I just cannot imagine what it's like for these
70, 75 and 80 year old grandparents trying to deal with children from and the loss of
their own children which are many things. And many of them have special needs. Don't have the transportation, don't have
the support, don't have the education, don't have the safer communities.

I don't know how they manage. And we've been making some progress. There's new legislation to try
to begin to bolster grandparents. But again, they need community supports. They need better public houses. They need to try to keep family together
for children as much as we can, as we can. We need to figure out how
to educate our children. I mean I can't figure out how in this wealthy
nation that has managed to send spaceships to Mars and men and men and women to the moon,
and cracked the genetic code and mind trillions of dollars and I, from a tiny microchip. We can't figure out how to teach our
children to read by fourth grade, or even eighth grade, or 12th grade. The majority of all of our children of all races
and income groups are not reading at grade level and fourth and eighth grade or 12th grade, if
they are able, haven't been dropped out by then.

And among our minority young people, 80%,
over 80% of our young people are not computing at grade level in fourth or eighth or
12th grade if they haven't dropped out. Over 90% are not doing their
math at grade level. What is a child to do in this
globalized and postindustrial economy, information based economy
if they can't read or write? They're headed off to prison. They're headed off to death. There's no place for them in this
American place which is why we've got to make our public schools function,
have high expectations for every child. Hold ourselves accountable for
ensuring equal education and opportunity to tackle the growing re-segregation
in our schools and the, the gaps between the quality we're able
to give our children rich, and between, and I bring children in flat,
but we've got to begin to deal with these basic problems of inequity. Have high expectations for all children. I've been so proud that I kept all
three of my sons out of law school, and while I think that we,
and I try to say that teaching and education is the civil rights
issue of the, of this, of this era.

And I applaud those young people
who are going into Teach America. I'm so glad that two of my
children are invested in education. But we've got to begin to
get a hold of these children. We've got to begin to re-conceptualize
our schools to have high expectations, to have high teaching equality,
to reward teachers and then to hold teachers and principals accountable. And I tell everybody to go into teaching, but
don't go into teaching if you don't see it as a mission, if you don't
love and respect all children because you can have the fanciest classrooms,
and you can have the best laboratories, but children know you don't love
them and expect them to learn, please get out and do something else.

But I think that the community needs an,
we need to have community accountability. We need, when we see, as we are seeing
the cradle of the prison pipeline, the transference of zero tolerance drug policies into zero tolerance discipline
policies in our schools. And we see five and six and seven year old
children being expelled for behaviors that used to be handled in the school
principal's office or in the community. And when we see school systems bringing police
in to school premises to arrest six and seven, eight year old children,
handcuffing them at the ankles and at, I think we adults have lost our minds. And I just was listening the
ACLU in New York recently about school security problems in that city. And the school security force in New York City
constitutes the sixth largest police system in our country.

I taught Boston public school. We have got to stop. We've got to look back and say
what is the purpose of schools? And if we're engaging children and if
we're giving them the supports they need. And if we are collaborating with
parents, real parent collaboration, and are trying to make sure that we're
building those bridges between early childhood and public schools and after schools and there's
some school systems that are getting it right and there are a lot of wonderful innovation
schools, a lot of places, there are not a lot of wonderful school systems that
are lifting whole sets of children. But we know, we can look at
Raleigh, we can look at Long Beach, and there are other places,
but we've got to get it right. We've got to figure out in this wealthy great
democracy how to teach all of our children to read and how to have high
expectations, but that's going to come from citizens demand and we must begin to do it.

We've got to reform the juvenile justice
system and I just invite you to go and sit with juvenile judges for a day in
court and see the breakdown of the systems and what the children who are coming in there. And then to go sit in adult criminal court
and see the results of our failures to invest and to reweave the fabric
of family and community. And lastly, the least popular political issue
I could mention is gun violence, violence. And all of these are related, inner related. I mean we lose a child to gun
violence every three hours. Eight a day. We made progress when we
began to do our annual child and gun violence reports, we're losing 15 a day.

But and we were going down steadily. We now have an uptick in, in gun violence. Went back up about 3,000, 3006. Since Dr. King died we lost 104,000
children to gunfire and three times as many have been injured by gun violence. We have the equivalent to Virginia
Tech's massacre every four days in this quiet chronic problem of gun violence. And Dr. King and Robert Kennedy warned us
about gun violence and we haven't listened. And so many thousands of our children are living
in war zones, living traumatized every day. The stories are just horrendous. And I don't know what it's going to take
to get us to stand up and say we're going to stop the killing of children in our country. And to stop the violence against
children in our homes as well as in our streets and neighborhoods.

It's very hard to focus in class if you're
walking through streets and dodging bullets and, and, and are constantly afraid as so many
of children are living in constant fear. And if you go into your juvenile
dentition facilities you'll find that most of your young people are obsessed
with not whether they're going to die but when they're going to die. And they feel hopeless. Children should not be growing up assuming
they're not going to reach adulthood. We can do better. And these challenges are challenges we must make and we must somehow raise a stronger counter
voice to the NRA and say we're going to stop with the killing of children, but
all of these are interrelated. And how we respect and try to create for
every child a reasonable and just chance to succeed in our rich democratic nation. I know we can do it. We have seen extraordinary revelation,
revolutions over our lifetime. I've always felt very blessed as I say in almost
every speech, to have been born who I was, what I was, at the convergence of
great events and great leaders.

I mean to have the role models of not
just the Dr. King's and I loved Dr. King who never always knew, seldom always,
seldom always, good gracious Mary, who seldom knew what the whole
staircase was going to look like. And the first speech I heard
him make at Spellman College in my senior year was how we
should all take the first step even if you couldn't see the whole
stairway and leave the rest to God. And I was always impressed by him because
of his doubts, and because of his ability to fight and move on despite his fears. He taught me that courage was not not
being afraid, it was going ahead and trying to find the means to act
even when you were afraid. And that first speech I remember he
talked about importance of continuing to move forward despite the political weather,
importance of having thermostat leaders rather than thermometer leaders who
stuck their hands up in the air when we needed thermostat leaders
who could change the climate. And the need to speak right. If you couldn't fly you should
all, you should drive.

If you couldn't drive you should run. If you couldn't run you should walk. If you couldn't walk you should crawl. But you should keep moving. And there's been a lot of people who
kept moving over the last 40 years. It's been a very tough wilderness period. And we're coming out now and I do hope
that we're going to now stand up and build that transforming movement that
Dr.

King lived and died for. Let me end with a, a poem by Ann
Weaves, called The Green Less Child, because a lot of our problem in America is the
distinction we make between our own people, our own children and other people's children. I think all children are sacred. I think all children are children of God and
that our civil creed as well as our creed from all great faiths say
that the priorities should go to the most vulnerable, to
the orphans, to the widow. And I hope that this is a
time we might be visited. But I was very moved by Ann Weaves'
poem about the green less child. She said, I watched her go and celebrated
into the second grade, a green less child. Gray among the orange and yellow, attached too
much to corners and to other people's sunshine. She colors the rainbow brown and leaves
balloons unopened in their packages.

Oh who will touch this green less child? Who will plant halleluiah's in her heart and
send her dancing into all the colors of God? Or will she be left like an unwrapped
package on the kitchen table? Too dull for anyone to take the trouble. Does God think that we are her keeper? Well I think so. And I think at this moment that we
all have an enormous opportunity to turn this green less child
into a green child, full of life, by putting into place the kind of community
and family supports that every child needs.

The role modeling and the mentoring that every
child needs, and putting into place the kind of public policies and new investment
policies and new sense of community and unity that makes this child feel welcome at
the table of plenty in our rich land. Thank you so. [ Clapping ] >> Dean Collins: Thank you so
much for that inspiring call to action on behalf of our children. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Thank you. >> Dean Collins: Marian Wright Edelman
has agreed to take some questions. We have maybe 25 minutes. What I will ask is if people
could come to the microphones, there's one here and there's one there.

We have a large audience, which is
wonderful, but it means that I will ask people to introduce themselves very briefly and to try
to, to be brief with their question as well. So I will come back at 5:30
p.m. to shift to a reception. But if people would approach
the microphones, thank you. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Yes. >> Audrey: Good after, can you hear me? >> Marian Wright Edelman: Yes I can. >> Audrey: Okay. Good afternoon and welcome to
the University of Michigan. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Thank you. >> Audrey: My name is Audrey, I'm a two time
grad of U of M. I looked through your book, and one of the things that impressed me was the
mandate that you mention for teachers, you know, to treat each child with a sense of
equity, regardless of their background. I would like to hear your
thoughts on an individual that I've come to admire in this community. Her name is Ruth Swiffer [assumed spelling]
She is a woman who, she's of Jewish background and she adopted children who
were of a different race.

And I personally feel that one of the most
concrete ways that we can have an impact on poverty is to do hands on activities
or hands on intervention to bring people who are different than we
are into our personal lives, and to begin to understand
what their barriers are. And to be a support to them
to get through those barriers. So I'd like to hear your, your thoughts on, on
what is required or what is the value of those of us who want to help in this area of reaching
out and, and bringing in folks who are different than we are, in a very personal
way into our lives. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Oh I, I encourage it. I mean I think that we've, we are one nation. I think that's the, the poll and the appeal now. We are all equal under our Constitution,
at least in theory, even though those of us who are women and those of us who
are three fifths of everybody else. But look at the progress we've
made over the last 100 years.

We are living in a world, and in a nation,
that is already becoming more and more like California, and in a world that is
two thirds non-white and two thirds poor. And one of the great important
things about this election is that we are joining the world
in a very real way. I had wondered so much about how whether in 100 years we could restore our
sense of respect in the world. But somehow I think that this man who seems to
represent the DNA of every piece of the globe, everybody's able to see something of themselves
in him, both, if you're biracial child or if you're, you're, it's, it's, it's a
wonderful thing to see it all come together.

And there was a big dispute for many years about whether there should be white
families adopting black children. And I said well, you know, the good
loving family and that really cares and respects children is better than
any old institution you can find. They need caring adults, they need to be
culturally sensitive, but I think we need to clean out our foster care system. We can't find enough adoptive families,
you know, we need to do something, we need to get these children
out and we need not just to be adopting children from around the world.

So I, we're trying to find all the kinds
of ways in which we can begin to get to know each other and work together. 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning as you know is
still the most segregated hour in America, but we've got to find ways of building
relationships in the faith community, and we need to have freedom schools,
which is a model that CDF is pushing. We have a 150 of them, and black
churches, and all around the country. But you know many of them
have no money in rural areas. And they can begin to pair up with white
churches, and all of us need to figure out how we can pool our resources and
find ways of supporting each other to reach the children most in need.

Just trying to see how you can begin to
get churches of all colors, or synagogues or sort of take responsibility of the churches
and children within five block radius. And wouldn't it be nice if they just knew
the children around them, and begin to figure out how they could begin to open up their doors
and provide services of all these opportunities to be a personal witness, and I hope you
will look at some of the messages to families and neighbors, neighbors, and to
congregations and to all of us. But while we're making this personal witness we
also have to make a civic commitment and we have to be aware of the need of good, just policies
and charity is not a substitute for justice. And personal caring is crucially important and
is stuff that we should all do because we care and we serve and we're part of a common
community and we should also be part of a movement that's going to change
the investment origins of the nation.

So it's a both and again, but I don't
know the person you have mentioned, but I applaud what she's doing. Hi. Thank you. I can't see very well, the light. Yes. Okay. Thank you. >> Sally Radford: Hello, Ms. Edelman. My name is Sally Radford and we met this
summer during the Joshua Generation Conference in Tennessee. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Good. >> Sally Radford: I was a
representative of Foster Club. And I guess I think it's fitting to know that
since we're on a college campus I wanted to know if you could talk about what the, what the
children of this fund does across the country to engage young people on college campuses? >> Marian Wright Edelman: Well I think that
the most important thing all of us can do is to mentor and prepare a critical mass
of the next generation to engage in, in on-going advocacy and
to sustain this movement. And the Children's Defense Fund
invests an enormous portion of its resources in training young people. We are trying to create not just opportunities
to have them meet but we are trying to also create structures
for advocacy and service.

They need to have a way of moving
up the ladder of leadership and having on-going ways of staying involved. And so we bought, we bought Alex
Haley's farm about 15 years ago. Most of us, most people think of CDF as
a national policy group in Washington, and we do do that, but it's about a
third of what we do, two-thirds of us is out in the states and local counties,
and try and engage in community building.

And we've been trying to create new models based
some on the '60s, but preparing in the context of the 21st Century movement
that we need to build. And so one example is that we created, we
took the Mississippi Freedom Schools of '64, put a real curriculum under it, and have created
150 freedom schools which we now want to move to scale where we teach young
children how, five to 15 year olds, but with color student teacher mentors,
and a third of them in churches, a third of them in schools, and a third of
them are in the mix of community institutions and some partners with higher education, Davison
College has one, the University of Maryland. At any rate, but then we try to
make sure that the young people, five to 16, become engaged in service. We talk, the theme of freedom schools is, I can
make a difference in myself, in my community, in my family, in my nation and my world. And they have wonderful books
that are designed to empower them. They look and study what children did to
create, help the role that they played in overcoming legal apartide [phonetic] in
this country in the Civil Rights Movement.

They learn about little [inaudible] Bridges. They learn about the little Rock Nine. They learn about the children in Birmingham who without them Dr. King would never have
been able to move Birmingham to fruition. And I can't recommend too strongly a look
at the Birmingham children's movement. And to look at that, the southern
poverty law centered at that piece. And now I'm going to make
all the adults look at it because we adults, we tend
to be very a-historical. And we don't know our history. And so it's really important that children and
young see what they did to create a new America. But we have a range of children,
of youth development programs. We have internship programs
for all kinds of folk. We have beat the odds celebration
for young people who are making it and who are my favorite pool of young leaders. And it just says what a difference
one person can make. I mean these are young people who've
gone through violence and homelessness and seen parents kill each other, and somehow
a teacher or a counselor or a grandparent or a caring neighbor, has been their
lifeline to reaffirm that they can make it and they are now wonderful, productive citizens.

And there are about 700 of them. And they've gone into the Peace Corps and
they're teaching and they are social workers, and they are doctors and lawyers. But then we're really trying to make a very
big [inaudible] to draw from different networks and they are particularly
interested in the faith networks so that we can help faith communities
rediscover what it is they say they believe in. And so we've been having the
greatest preachers in America. We have what we call the
Moses/Miriam generation. That is hopefully transforming and working
with the Joshua/Deborah generation to see if we can't affect the curriculum
of the divinity schools. But we are having a mass transformation
of leadership from Moses to Joshua. And from Miriam to Deborah in many
of our major faith institutions in the black community are going now to
30 year olds and 40 year old preachers, and they need to rediscover
their prophetic voice. And so Alex Haley farms where we're building
movement and building a critical mass of leaders across generation discipline.

I'm so sorry, I'm so glad you were engaged,
and I hope you're bring more of them. We have programming year round. We're trying to put everybody through organizing
training, but with a context of history and of movement building, which is
what I think everybody needs to do. And all of us at the Children's Defense Fund
are going to go through organizing training now to the policy people who will
understand they need to know how to organize at the community level.

So we're so glad that you are there and bring
some folks next time and get the message out. But look at our website and see the
different youth development programs and hopefully you will join us. Yes sir. >> Peter Eckstein: My name is Peter Eckstein. I wanted to ask you to speculate a bit about
the potential impact of a Obama presidency over let's say the next eight
years, laws, executive orders aside, what kind of an impact do you think it can have
or will have on the African American community, in terms of redefinition
of possibilities in itself.

You made some illusion to that,
but maybe you can speculate. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Well I think
that already he's had an enormous impact. I mean the yes we can and to see this family
in the White House, to see that this young man, and I say to everybody who is
in other opposing camps some of whom said this was affirmative action,
I said it wasn't affirmative action, he out organized you, he out visioned
you, visioned you, he out strategized you, he in every, he just beat you, everybody
fair and square because he was smarter and he had move vision and [inaudible] money. And so he was an extraordinary moment,
person sent, and stepped up to the plate and I don't know anybody
else could have, you know, been the right kind of role model and image. I think he sends an extraordinarily
powerful message about that we're going to breakdown the stereotypes
about who black families are.

Because we are a diverse community,
and I think that that family image in the White House has been, is
extraordinary for all Americans as well a for young black Americans and for all of us. I think it's given a new sense of possibilities
and sense of my example of a young felon in the civil detention facility you might
actually be able to get a PhD instead of a GED. And so I think it's, it sends a message to
children that I can, and that I, you know, that, that even if I am bi-racial, or
even if I am, have an absent father, or even if I had a mother who's on
food stamps and I can make it too with hard work and good old core values. And I think he has been using, already in
his campaign, his bully pull pit to talk about how we all need to be paying much more
attention to parenting, to turn off the TV set, and to turn off the video games,
to pay attention to homework and to really focus in on
helping children learn.

Now there's some dangers. I heard a story the other day, because
everybody's parent is saying yes you can, don't use any excuses for telling me
why you bring home these bad grades. But then I heard somebody tell,
calling me up and saying there's a man with a very seriously autistic child
who was telling this child no excuses. And I said, you know we can't
carry this to the extreme. But the, the important things is that
we need to have these high expectations. We should use this incredible positive
example for all of us, and I think it breaks down a whole lot of racial stereotypes as well.

But I hope that we can also be clear about
what we all have to do to enable him, enable our country to put into place the
policies that children need in order to succeed. Because there's nothing worse than having these
expectations up here and have them down here in schools with skills and
education levels that are down here. So we've got to use this as a moment. We all have a sense of what is possible to
put into place the building blocks of success. But I think it's an enormous transformation. It's an enormous generational transformation and I have loved watching
the young people get engaged. I hope we can keep them engaged. And hope that all that energy that
went into electing him now will go into building the movement to, to, to have a
harvest for the policies that we need to have. Yes. >> Good afternoon, thank you for your talk. Before I came back to work
for my PhD in social work, I did a fair amount of work in child welfare.

And one of the things that led me to come back
and study is the fact that we talk about kids but we, we don't well enough
with parents either. There's definitely culpability. We all that language in child
welfare policy and law. But there's also the balance because many of
these parents themselves were also victims. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Yes. >> So how then as a future policy maker, as
a future practitioner, as a future educator, do I not only for myself help
to navigate that balance, but also to teach others to navigate it as well? >> Marian Wright Edelman: Well
I think that I keep saying over and over again the children don't
come in pieces, they come in families. We need to break the cycle, but we need
to work with families and with parents.

We need to prepare parenting, we need
to deal with teen pregnancy prevention, and we need to try to help children,
help parents do the decent job that most of them really do want to do and don't know how. And I think some of the most agonizing
decisions that anybody can make is, is when to remove a child from a family. I mean how do you balance all of that off? And certainly you should, though not having
children, have children removed from families, because parents don't have the income
to keep them out of a homeless shelter.

And so much of what we can do I think is again
by making sure that parents have those supports that enable them to do the better
job that most parents want. They need to be able to make
a living with a decent wage. They need to have childcare if they are working. And so are not leaving children at home
alone because they can't find shelter, and therefore risking their children
being put in the child welfare system. But we must try to keep them both together. Make every effort to try to build and,
and invest in the extended family network until parents can get themselves
back on their, on their feet. But then we must, when children are at risk,
and that's always a very hard thing to make sure that you're protecting children but
the main thing is to break the cycle. I mean that's going forward. How do we put into place the
building blocks for success for children before they reach these stages? How do we make sure that we're identifying
children who are potentially at risk in the prenatal stages, and with good
family support systems at the beginning? And so I think we should do everything we can
to work with parents and with children and then to see what we can do to save the children if
we are not able to keep the family together.

But it's a very hard set of choices but
I think we must bear them both in mind. Children need their parents and need their,
need one reliable adult that they can count on. And that is certainly better than
what we often have as options in foster care and in other homes. So but it's a hard set of questions,
and I appreciate the sensitivity and you just have to keep struggling. And we're trying to find a
better balance in the law. But more importantly building in the support
services that could prevent removal and then to see how we can foster
reunification, but if not, how do we find the best kind
of adoptive families.

But these are very hard questions. But there's so much we could do if we had
systems we've been talking about in place. Yes. >> Eric Geisham: My name's Eric Geisham, I'm
a first year MPB student at the Ford School. First of all thank you for coming. I've had a chance to listen to
you a couple different times and I am just thrilled at every chance I get. A couple times you mentioned extreme poverty. And some people would argue that in the
United States we only have relative poverty and that we don't actually have extreme poverty.

And furthermore some people say that poor people
in the United States really aren't that bad off. So I have two questions. First of all, what were the,
was the threshold that you used for the extreme poverty for the 40%? And then the second question is, what can
you say to kind of argue against that, that mentality that we only have
relative poverty in America? >> Marian Wright Edelman: Well Sheldon is here, and you've got organized
poverty know these things.

But we're talking about a basic way to, from
$10,000 poor income, $10,000 for a family of four, half that is what we talk about as
extreme poverty, $20,000 for a family of four. And it's in the book correctly. I have so many numbers running
around in my head very often. And about half of that is extreme poverty. I mean I think we all know that the
minimum wage hasn't been index inflation until this past year for a lot of people.

And, and but we need to look more at how we can
redefine what the poverty's threshold should be in America, because I think a lot of people who
are living at the poverty level are not able to make ends meet and how there are big fights about whether you are including
other benefits into this. But the fact is that we've got millions of
people who have been working hard every day with wages that have not kept pace
with inflation and who not able to afford a decent place to live, who
are not able to meet the most basic needs of their families if they are working because
we don't have adequate childcare support, who are not able to afford healthcare. The average family, assuming that you know
their employed, the dependency costs of trying to cover your dependents is about $12,000. Well that's about what a minimum wage job pays.

And most people cannot afford that. And then most of our, our states, the fair
market value of, of rent exceeds the wages of many low income, minimum wage workers. And so I think we need to look hard at,
at how we redefine the poverty threshold and how we provide a range of
self sufficient work supports. But it's very clear that
we've got food lines growing. We've got shelters growing. And shelters have become
institutionalized, even though I don't think that they are places for children. But we've gotten used to it and we are now
setting up schools for homeless children as, as if this is something that's
going to stay with us. But within the context of America I think that
we can do much better and I think that we need to continue to have these debates, and I hope
that this is a debate that we will continue to have with the kind of leadership
[inaudible] national poverty center here. But that is at least a debate that we are
beginning to have in a more robust fashion. But what is poverty here.

The fact is children are hungry
increasingly in numbers of them are there, and those of us who work in soup kitchens
or in homeless shelters see what is there. I watch children who have no homes,
and something is not computing here. So I think we need to look at the poverty
threshold, but I also think we need to put into place the kind of work supports and
then talk about how we can create jobs at living wages that will allow
people to be able to make the, meet the most basic necessities of their lives. But that's a conversation
that must be continued. >> Dean Collins: Let me make a suggestion,
since we're running out of time, but just two more speakers,
perhaps I could ask you both to give your questions and
then do a combined response? >> Marian Wright Edelman: Good.

>> Laura Sanders: Thank you. Thank you for being here and your
good work and, and inspiration. My name is Laura Sanders and I am representing
the [inaudible] Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights. Just in our community alone in the last ten
months we've had, we, it's come to our attention that 26 of our families have been raided
by immigration customs enforcement, families have been separated, children
have been torn away from their parents, violent things have happened
in front of these children. We have three children in
foster care who have been, because their mother was taken
right off the street and deported.

And this is happening, we know
this is the tip of the iceberg. What's coming to our attention, we
know it's happening across the nation. And I'm wondering if you could
comment on immigration reform that might help meet the needs of our, our particularly our Latino
children who many, many who are here. >> Marian Wright Edelman: The raids must stop. They are inhumane. They are cruel. They are ripping children away from
their parents, they should stop. And we should be speaking up against them, and I
felt the same way when we used to look to be one of our earlier studies was the
children of women prisoners and you would watch the police
come in and rip parents away. And children didn't understand it. And leave children there
without any supervision. I mean this is traumatic, and just un-American. And we should stop them, and
we should sort of raise that.

And we should begin to have a thoughtful
debate about immigration policy. And the first thing we can do though is to
begin with legal immigrants to see that, I hope that they did include IKEA, and that we
get health coverage for legal immigrant children and we are in our all healthy children's
bill trying to get healthcare for everybody. But I do hope that immigration reform
will be something that we continue to, that we do something about
and don't continue to avoid. Because as you know, we have a paradoxical
policy of encouraging as many to come in, to provide cheap labor for employees,
and then we punish those who do come in for these kinds of activities. So I hope that immigration reform will
be early on the agenda, that somebody, that some of our leaders, but it will come
because of the pressure from citizens.

So but the raids must stop. They're absolutely cruel and they're
traumatizing students, children and parents and we should not permit it in America. >> Laura Sanders: Thank you. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Yes. >> Prior to getting the PhD and coming
here to teach at University of Michigan, I worked with your son Jonah
with Stand For Children. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Oh good. >> And I just wondered if there's still plans
for June 1st to be an annual day for things to happen, and wondered if there's some
plans this year for something to happen? >> Marian Wright Edelman: Oh Jonah and I
have a big debate about, he's into state and local organizing and he is really
trying to focus, he's at home tonight, so I hope I can get home tonight in Washington,
on how he can build grass roots interest and they are making a real difference in
filling up the city halls and county councils and really doing state initiatives to
invest in successful children's programs.

And I think that he doesn't think that our
usual kind of demonstrations on June 1st. But you know after the 1st June Stand For
Children in 1996, we did a June 1st in 1997, and that provided the 700
local Stand For Children days. That was the grass roots
momentum that enabled us to draft and get an act, the Chip legislation. So I think that maybe we'll have to negotiate it as to whether we can resuscitate June
1st as a day to Stand For Children. But I suspect he is going to want
to do it in states and localities, and I'm going to want to do it nationally. So maybe we'll meet somewhere in the middle
as we try to bridge our either/or strategies. But I'm very proud of the grass
roots stuff that he's creating. And I hope that will continue. Thank you though for what you did. >> Thank you. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Yes ma'am. >> I want to [inaudible] All
right U of M undergraduate student and also a foster care alumni of the system. So everything that you pretty
much said I've gone through.

But one of my questions is I'm graduating this
year and I'm trying to work with the University and higher level institutions on actually
being involved in creating increasing numbers for foster care alumni and
matriculate to colleges. And I wanted to know some of your
recommendations on how to actually make that happen as an undergraduate student
and previous foster care alumni. >> Marian Wright Edelman: Well I want to
make sure I, I understood the [inaudible] of what you were trying to say in terms of
you're trying to get the university to do what? I got the beginning and I got the end. >> Be involved in helping foster care kids
in the communities matriculate to college and higher level institutions
such as University of Michigan.

>> Marian Wright Edelman:
Well it's very important. And I've been in, and one of
the things that we're focusing on in the cradle is how do we just figure out
how to get the schools to, because in looking at children who are leaving foster
care, how do we get the schools and how do we get the community to provide
the support so that they can stay in school and do well in school and be prepared to apply
for places like the University of Michigan. But right now, and I think that that's one of
those sub-pieces of things as we're trying to, to, to break out the cradle and to management
pieces for action, while seeing the whole, that we really have got to focus on is
the support systems for children coming out of juvenile detention, and the
support systems for children who have been in foster care and multiple foster
care systems, and I've watched, I have 12 foster sisters and
brothers after I left home. And the supports that they need in
order to succeed have to be there, either from their previous foster
care families and as you know many of them are in multiple placements.

From other mentors in the community, and
I'm so pleased about the growing voice of organized foster care young people. But we need to find ways of bridging that
gap and, and making sure that they are able to graduate from school, and get
the kind of tutoring they need, and are able to find a welcome
set of helps in our universities so that they can get on tragectory
towards success. And I'd love to have you hook up with Marilee
Allen and with our foster care network so that we can try to work with you. Thank you so much. [ Clapping ] >> Dean Collins: On behalf of all of
us, our thanks to Marine Wright Edelman for a wonderful afternoon of provocative thought
and a call to action in such an important area. I'd like to thank all of you for
joining us here this afternoon. We do have a short reception, so please stay
and interact with us for a little while. There'll be drinks I guess on either side. Again thank you very much for joining us for the Ford School's 2009 Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Memorial Lecture. [Inaudible] [ Background sounds ].

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