Children Need Emergency Help in this Deep Recession Now!
Children have only one childhood and it is right now. Millions of children in our nation require emergency attention in our recession ravaged economy as poverty, including extreme child poverty, hunger, and homelessness have increased, if irreparable harm is not to be inflicted on them and on our nation’s future.
The greatest threat to America’s national security comes from no enemy without but from our failure to protect, invest in, and educate all of our children who make up all of our futures. Every 11 seconds of every school day a high school student drops out of school; every 32 seconds a baby is born into poverty; every 41 seconds a child is confirmed abused or neglected; every 42 seconds a baby is born without health insurance; every minute a baby is born to a teen mother; every minute a baby is born at low birthweight; every three hours a child or teen is killed by a firearm. A majority of children in all racial and income groups cannot read or do math at grade level in 4th, 8th or 12th grade. Over 80 percent of Black and Hispanic children cannot read or compute at grade level. These numbers are a moral travesty and an impending national disaster requiring priority attention at the highest level of decision making.
If the foundation of your house is crumbling, you don’t say you cannot afford to fix it. Children are the foundation of America’s future. We need to invest now in their health, early childhood development, and education. Today is tomorrow.
God has blessed America with great material wealth but we have not shared it fairly with our children and our poor. Although we lead the nations of the world in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in billionaires, and in military technology, defense expenditures, and military exports, our money and our military might have not translated into moral might, adequate child safety and wellbeing, and a concept of enough for those at the top and at the bottom.
Children are the poorest age group and the younger children are, the poorer they are. We rank highest among industrialized nations in relative child poverty and in the gap between rich and poor, which is the highest ever recorded in America. In the 1960’s, when the economy was expanding, about two-thirds of the nation’s income gains went to the bottom 90 percent of U.S. households. In the first half of this decade, it was just the opposite: the wealthiest one percent reaped two-thirds of income gains. In 2007, the income share for the wealthiest 10 percent of households, 49.74 percent, was the highest ever recorded. It is obscene for anyone to advocate for continuing of the unjust Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans at a time of economic downturn and escalating child poverty and budget deficits.
Where is our anti-poverty movement at a time when one in 50 Americans, according to a New York Times front page story, has no cash income? “Almost six million Americans receiving Food Stamps report they have no income. They described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash and no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a recorded income that consists of nothing but a Food Stamp card,” the New York Times’ Jason DeParle reported.
This shocking New York Times article provoked no public outcry, action or shame. It did not stop most Republican political leaders from trying to block or resist extension of unemployment insurance, investing more federal dollars in creating jobs, expanding tax credits for working families desperately trying to feed, house and clothe their children, or investing more in stimulating an economy slowly struggling to recover with 14.6 million workers still unemployed and massive state deficits which will cause more job loss. How morally obscene it is that a nation with a GDP exceeding $14 trillion cannot find the will, common sense and decency to provide a safety net to protect its over 14 million poor children—the number before the recession, which is expected to push millions more children into poverty and extreme poverty, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Brookings Institution. This is a time when America can and must turn economic downturn into an opportunity to step forward to correct the gross imbalance of government subsidization of the wealthiest and most powerful among us and provide a safety net for all children from growing hunger, homelessness and stress. Now is the time to correct the laissez-faire federal policies that enabled the few to run roughshod over the life savings of many hard working Americans and wreck the lives and dreams of millions of children.
The Children’s Defense Fund’s new report The State of America’s Children 2010 describes the status of children in a range of areas—what has improved, worsened or stagnated; the continuing racial and income disparities faced by children of color who will make up a majority of our workforce which must support our increasingly aging population by 2025; and the higher costs of child poverty and neglect and the savings from preventive investment. I hope the facts in the report will wake us up and provoke us to speak out and stand up and demand our leaders act now to alleviate today the massive child suffering around the nation. The catastrophic BP oil spill’s assault on our environment is an urgent national emergency. But so is the catastrophic impact of this recession and the chronic plight and suffering of millions of children left adrift in a sea of poverty, hunger and homelessness, and political neglect. If we could bail out bankers to steady the economy, we can bail out babies who without our help will see their hopes and dreams for a better life wiped out. It should be a no brainer.
Visit our website to learn more and read our report, The State of America’s Children 2010.
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to http://www.childrensdefense.org
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On Ninetieth Anniversary of Women’s Right to Vote, Democrats Continue Working to Ensure Equality
America was founded on a promise of equality—a promise that we now recognize applies not only to all men, but to all women. This past week, we marked the ninetieth anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. As we honored and remembered this landmark day in our nation’s history, we also commemorated the efforts of a fearless group of women, who worked tirelessly to ensure that all women would have the most fundamental expression of equality in our democracy and the same fundamental rights as men.
However, despite the passage of ninety years, there is still work to be done in the fight for full equality for all of our citizens. Today, women still receive only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. That is one of the reasons why in the 111th Congress, we remain committed to supporting efforts to ensure equal rights, including passing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which will help ensure that women receive the same pay for equal work; passing the Paycheck Fairness Act, to help address the wage disparity between men and women; and enacting health reform into law, to ensure that women have equal access to quality, affordable health care.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first piece of legislation President Obama signed into law upon taking office, and aimed to protect workers who are subjected to pay discrimination. The Paycheck Fairness Act built upon those efforts by amending the Equal Pay Act to outlaw retaliation against employees who share or ask about pay information. It strengthens sanctions against discriminatory employers, clarifies the definition of discrimination, and it authorizes additional training for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission staff to better identify and handle wage disputes. Especially during difficult economic times, with woman working to support their families, it is unjust that a hard-working member of a family may not earn equal pay for equal work. The passage of these important bills addressed that problem and marked additional steps forward in the fight for full equality for women in the workplace.
In addition, Congress sent to the President health reform legislation that would help fix and create a health care system that is worthy of America’s most valued ideals: equality and opportunity for all of its citizens. Women have been poorly served by a system that allows less than half of them to get health coverage through their work – coverage that is available to 57% of men but just 48% of women. Women often pay higher premiums, as well. As a result of restricted access and higher costs, more than half of women said that they put off the medical care they needed because it was too expensive, compared to 39% of men. The new health reform law is already working to ensure that women have equal access to quality affordable health care, and guarantees that being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition.
The struggle for equality may change from decade to decade, but since ensuring a woman’s right to vote ninety years ago, the ideal has remained the same: that the future belongs to all Americans, regardless of gender, race or age. As we move into the next decade, I hope that we will continue to work together to ensure that all Americans enjoy the right to participate in our democracy on a fair and equal basis. And I hope all Americans will exercise their right to vote, remembering all of the women and men that fought before them to ensure this basic right.
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Dr. Laura Resigns
Here we go again. One more time, a clueless commentator with a microphone and an audience of millions, has brazenly insulted Black America and reacted as if we were the perpetrators.
The latest incident involves Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the host of the Dr. Laura radio show. On August 10th, Dr. Laura made racially insensitive statements and repeatedly used the "n-word" in responding to Jade, a black woman caller, who complained that her white husband's friends and relatives use racial slurs and make racially demeaning comments in front of her.
Instead of offering helpful advice, Dr. Laura scoffed, "some people are hypersensitive." She noted that "black guys" use the n-word "all the time," and repeated the word 11 times during the call for emphasis.
But her most revealing comment was, "I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing, but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing." As she admitted, Dr. Schlessinger most emphatically doesn't get it and she is very confused about what constitutes racism.
It is beyond comprehension that she would consider Jade "hypersensitive" for being offended by the n-word.
Dr. Schlessinger's comments, which can be heard in their entirety at
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008120045, created a national uproar.
Millions of people of all races were offended by her insensitive and highly offensive on-air rant. Her resignation on August 18th came just five days after the National Urban League urged the Talk Radio Network to drop the Dr. Laura Show from syndication; and it demonstrates the impact people of good conscience can have when they speak out against intolerance. Several days after the incident, Dr. Schlessinger did issue a written apology which said in part, "I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the "n" word all the way out - more than one time. And that was wrong. I'll say it again - that was wrong." That is an understatement.
We cannot help but wonder, as did Nita Hanson (Jade's real name), how Dr. Schlessinger, who grew up during the height of the civil rights movement, and who once was a practicing marriage and family counselor, could not understand how hurtful the n-word is to most Americans.
It is also disturbing that former vice presidential candidate, Sara Palin would publicly say to Dr. Schlessinger, "Don't retreat…reload." That kind of pandering to the basest element of the American electorate is highly offensive, inflammatory and counterproductive.
Dr. Schlessinger claims she resigned to "regain her Constitutional right to free speech." That is ludicrous on its face. Nobody has prevented her or her supporters from speaking their minds. But nobody is also preventing the public from reacting. It should be noted that following her remarks, several of her affiliates and major sponsors dropped her show. That was their Constitutional right.
As the nation works toward racial reconciliation and a celebration of diversity, we find it necessary to make it clear once again that this kind of divisiveness and casual use of racial slurs have no place among the public discourse.
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