 |  April 25, 2002 |
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by Yvette Moore
Twelve years ago, when Children's Defense Fund founder and president Marian Wright Edelman addressed the 1990 Assembly in Kansas City, Mo., she was on a mission to get the U.S. Congress to fund quality child care for low-income children. This time around, she wants that -- and more.
"It's time to build a massive movement with the same power and spirit and sweeping changes as the civil rights, women's rights, anti-war and environmental movements," she said.
The Child Care and Community Development Block Grant -- which Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed into law not long after Ms. Edelman's Assembly speech and United Methodist Women's postcard campaign supporting it -- is up for reauthorization later this year. The Children's Defense Fund and the Women's Division are both urging Congress and the current Bush Administration to add $20 billion to the $4.7 billion allocated for the grant over a five-year period so that another 2 million children can be served.
But this is just a part of what Ms. Edelman is pushing for now. She's trying to build a ground swell of support for a Movement to Leave No Child Behind. Among other things, it lays out a plan of action for the U.S. President, Congress, state and local officials, and all U.S. residents to lift every child from poverty -- half by 2004, all by 2010.
"Federal, state, county and city budgets are not just economic documents, they are moral documents," said Ms. Edelman, an attorney, the daughter of a Baptist minister and a mother. "They are a values tests of what the United States of America stands for. Follow the money and you will find what we truly care about."
She is certain the United States has enough money to do justice by its children. A tireless advocate for the disadvantaged throughout her life, Ms. Edelman founded the Children's Defense Fund in 1973 after serving as director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and as director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund office in Jackson Miss. Since then, Ms. Edelman has fashioned the Children's Defense Fund into the nation's strongest voice for children and families.
The organization is known for its work and motto to Leave No Child Behind, which means ensuring that every child has a "Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, A Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and a successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities," say organizational materials. The Children's Defense Fund is also known, however, for its statistical studies documenting the status of child poverty, hunger, health care and more in the United States.
"These facts are not acts of God," Ms. Edelman said of the troubling statistics. "They are our moral and political choices as Americans. We can change them. We have the money. We have the power."
Ms. Edelman does not believe the well being of low-income children should be left to charity. Ms. Edelman believes children have a human right to food, health care, education and safety regardless of political and economical forecasts.
The current political mood and climate of the country may seem a challenge to her call for justice, but Ms. Edelman has faith. She is encouraged by Jesus' parable about the widow who finally gets justice from the unjust judge because of her persistence.
"So we must wear our leaders out with our voices and votes until they provide just treatment for our children," she said. "So have your lamps lit and full of oil. Do not let anything or anybody discourage us from our mission to Leave No Child Behind."
Adapted for the web from Response Daily.
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