(00:00:01) Good afternoon. I am Roxanne Givens president of Legacy Management and Development Corporation. It is a pleasure to welcome all of you to Minnesota meeting today. We also extend a welcome to the radio listening audience throughout the Upper Midwest who are hearing this broadcast on Minnesota public radio's midday program broadcast of Minnesota meeting are made possible by the law firm of Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly with offices in Minneapolis. St. Paul and other major cities throughout the United States and Europe. Minnesota meeting is a public affairs form which brings National and international speakers to Minnesota members of Minnesota meeting represent this communities leaders from corporations government Academia and the professions Minnesota meeting is pleased to present today's speaker Marian Wright Edelman founder president and highly effective and respected spokesperson of the children's defense fund a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta and Yale Law School Miss Edelman was the first woman of color to be admitted to the bar in the state of Mississippi. She was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1985, the defense fund since 1973 has successfully lobbied and supportive Health welfare and justice for all children and their families this afternoon, Miss Edelman will discuss why Federal lawmakers state governments and the private sector must collaboratively pay more attention to the issues of our children if indeed the United States is expected to compete globally in the Next Generation. Following my settlements presentations questions will be addressed from the audience Jane MRSA can can darling of Minnesota meeting will move among you and manage the question and answer session. Please be reminded to use the slips on your tables to jot down any questions that you may have for the discussion. It is now my extreme pleasure to present to you Marian Wright Edelman. Thank you. Thank you. delighted to be here a few days before he was assassinated. Dr. King called his mother to give her his sermon title for the next Sunday Bulletin. The name of that sermon was why America may go to hell unless a critical mass of American leaders and citizens open their eyes and ears and hearts and see and hear and respond to our children and families in need with a sense of urgency. We're going to get there sooner than we think every eight seconds of the school day as we sit here in American child drops out every 26 seconds an American child runs away from home every 47 seconds. An American child is abused or neglected every 67 seconds an American Teenager has a baby we produce the equivalent of the city of Seattle each year with children having children, every seven minutes in American child is arrested for a drug offense every 30 minutes. One of our children is arrested for drunken driving. Every 53 minutes in the richest land on Earth an American child dies because of poverty it is disgraceful that children are the poorest Americans love and I asked had American child dies of poverty. They die. Like eight months old shamal Jackson died recently from poverty Complicated by low birth weight poor nutrition viral infection and homelessness during his short life. He had never slept in an apartment a house, but in shelters with strangers and hospitals welfare hotels and in the Subways, which he and his mother Road late at night when there was no place else to go poverty not only kills children but Stacks the odds against him from birth thousands of one and a half two and three pound babies are fighting for their lives and neonatal intensive care Nursery is all over America. I went last week again to DC General and what's the 1 pound 9-ounce infant daughter of a 15 year old mother and Seeing your old father struggling for breath and life and a public Hospital overflowing with little tiny baby. Some of them drug and HIV addicted but many of them just low birth weight because we did not invest the look the small amount to give those mothers prenatal care this little baby lives because tubes connect her lungs and veins to machines needed to feed and keep her warm and help her take her next breath, even if she survived she faces a high risk of life with educational and physical handicaps. Two or three weeks ago, you might have read about it. I went to the United Nations and sat in the general assembly and it was an electric exciting time with 71 world leaders came together to pass and to begin to sign and vote and vote to implement a new convention on the rights of the child. I was embarrassed however as an American because we were not among the 129 Nations that have said we're going to live up to this convention that would give children first rather than last call a national resources. Only we at the moment Iran Iraq, Cambodia and South Africa among the holdout Nations, but I was embarrassed as well because as I talked to the international press I was embarrassed to say that children were the poorest Americans that on a recent study of poverty. We were last among eight industrialized nations studied that we were 49 that a time when UNICEF is trying to immunize third-world children against preventable diseases like Polio. I had to report that we ranked 49th behind al-bayt Albania and Botswana and humanizing our infants against Polio. I am not proud that our nation is not one of 70 Nations that provide a basic floor of Health decency unto every mother and child. I am not proud that we are not one of 7063 Nations. Provide a basic level of family allowance and support for our parents who are trying to raise children. I am not proud that we are not one of Seventeen Nations that have parental leave policies and until now it looks we may now come into the 20th century on childcare. I am also not proud that we were not then among the industrialized nations provides a safe affordable childcare system for our children and the children 1990 report which each of you has which was out on the table. You will see that we have done a look at how America performs compared to other countries and found that while we have an a capacity to protect and invest in our children. We have an F performance and we looked at many many states and the good news is that Minnesota was in the top 10 states and investing in his children on key child indicators. The bad news was though Minnesota like every state flocked and I hope therefore you will look at the additional report on the children and, Minnesota. Nani and see how your children are faring many ways you are beginning to make improvements but for a state like yours there's much much room to do more but we have got to begin to come to our senses about investing in our children. I cannot believe that the greatest nation on Earth does not have the capacity to rank first rather than 19th and keeping our infants alive in the first year of life. Our infant mortality rates are disgraced the failure of our nation to try to provide Healthy Mothers and children contributes to shamefully high infant deaths and low birthrate rates. But it also Rob's millions of children of the healthy early Foundation. They need to enter the school door ready to learn and we as a nation have been talking about education goals and the need for an educated Workforce. We had better begin to focus then on what happens to every child from before birth because when they arrived at the kindergarten door poor and minority youngsters already behind their peers, So I feel a great sense of urgency about getting them the health care and nutrition supports and the high quality childcare and Head Start programs. They need because the Gap accelerates rapidly as they progress through the grades by third grade black and Latino children are about six months behind by 6th grade. They are one year behind by eighth grade two years behind and by the time they reach 12th grade if they do so the average black latino senior is achieving 324 grades behind level in reading and math Black and Latino seventeen-year-olds perform at about the same level as white 13 year olds and signs. They perform at about the same level as white nine-year-olds and many don't graduate from high school at all and among those who do they unfortunately have too many of them have limited options because they don't have good enough grades to get into good four-year colleges and among those who do go on to college and adequate skill levels often lead to High Dropout rates now. Some folks will ask what has it got to do with me that these poor black and Latino kids aren't doing well and I say everything because almost all the growth in our child population are minority group children who are increasingly poor and secondly, we should be doubly disturbed because the achievement levels among white and non-poor American students are not anything to write home about our Average White child middle class child knows less geography than children in the ran less math and children in Japan and less science and children in Spain even many of our College youth of all Races and classes can identify the Emancipation Proclamation or the year Columbus landed in this hemisphere. We've got a problem as a nation if we're going to compete with the unifying European community and with growing Japanese economic strength now data such as these can be disturbing and can lead either to a sense of paralysis or to some people questioning whether poor and Artie children can really learn and I want to give a resounding li+ answer because we can see that they can learn in school after school Across. The Nation minority children are achieving poor children are achieving at the same high levels as anyone else when they are expected to achieve are taught at the highest levels and provided the help they need to achieve but far too few minority and poor children are getting this type of challenge instead. They often spend their days in boring classroom, circling M's and pees on Dittos ditto after ditto after ditto these children get less of everything. We believe makes a difference for our own children. They get less in the way of experienced and well-trained teachers less in the way of a rich and well balanced curriculum less actual instructional time Less in the way of well equipped and well stock Laboratories and libraries and less of what is in doubtedly. Most important of all, I believe that they can really learn in general we heard poor and minority children and two low track classes where we assign them the worst teachers the oldest book and expect essentially nothing from them. It should hardly surprised us then that they do less well than other students on tests of academic achievement. We teach them less and if this weren't enough their families neighborhoods and communities have less two less knowledge about how schools work less skills to help with homework less flexible time to visit schools fewer resources to pay for educational extras and hopes and dreams for children that are all too often overwhelmed by day-to-day business of survival and today's cities and rural areas the combination of these lessons in schools and families and communities or simply devastating for millions of poor and minority youngsters who will make up as much of our future. Our middle class and non-minority children do and these lessons will devastate America in the 1990s unless we reverse the misguided priorities of the 1980s. We must all began to work and speak to curb the desires of the overprivileged so that the survival needs of the less privileged may be met and we was all work to spend less on weapons of death and put more of those billions into light lines of constructive human development for our children and for our families, we must begin to change and reverse the growing Gulf between rich and poor in American society in the 1990s. I do believe in private initiative. I believe very much that people should be able to be rewarded for their creative instincts and efforts, but I also believe that there must be a concept of enough for both both of those at the top and those at the bottom in a decent sensible. It's Society. I don't really think that things are in Balance when corporate CEOs who are in 41 times with Factory workers made in 1960 earned 93 times, but back to her work is made by 19 1988. Meaning that almost twice a week the CEO got a check equal to the factory workers annual salary in the same period CEOs went from 38 to 72 times the salary of a schoolteacher. Something's a little bit out of balance when between 82 and 89 the number of American billionaires quintuple while the number of poor children increased by 1 million and child poverty is going back up again, after years after seven or eight years of what we thought was the economic recovery the prison population of our nation almost doubled in the 1980s and states have made prisons the fastest growing area of spending twice as fast as education in 1988. There's something unproductive and wrong about that the u.s. South Africa and the Soviet Union have the Art incarceration rates in the world the message. I want to hammer home. Is that the number one threat, I believe to American Security and competitiveness is neglect of our shrinking pool of children from which the American Workforce of the 1990s and New Century must come and upon which all of our standard of living will depend. I'm pleased that since the early 80s Business Leaders in a variety of others concerned about America's declining competitiveness have mounted a number of efforts to help overhaul the public school system and a number of your Minnesota Te'o's Honeywell and many others have been speaking out strongly for increased investment in education and for Early Childhood investment the trick as we talk about education reform, however, a new is to be sure that unlike past efforts this new education reform Drive does not stop short of reaching all schools and all children. For if we are both to recapture our Competitive Edge and restore some luster to the American dream. We must enable all of our children, even our neediest ones to achieve because we don't have a child to waste the task must begin at Birth with good prenatal care and nutrition and be continued through the Early Childhood years and school years. So what are you supposed to do to make it an American who just what my goal is. I want to make a non-american in the 1990s for any child to grow up without Health Care Child Care homeless poor ignorant and hopeless. I think we can do five things together first. We must stop federal and state governments from playing Shell Games with expenditures on children women who get maternity care Gap have strong baby strong babies and healthy children learn more readily families who don't have to scramble constantly for food housing and childcare provide more effective opportunities. Learning activities College really does begin before birth. If we want a nation full of achievers as we must have we're going to remain a world leader. We must make certain that increases in one Children Service and not made with funds from another the fight is not between desperately needed health and child care and education for poor children all of us must press together for the provision of prenatal care and nutrition supplements to all pregnant women with State funding as well as with national funding. We must all ensure preventive health care for poor children. We must all see that every child gets a head start and good quality childcare quickest and I want to knock on wood, but I am optimistic and want to announce some really good news. If the Congress would just hurry up and finish and go home. But within those packages all that budget discussion, there is the best Headstart reauthorized bill that we've ever had and we will have another six billion dollars in budget authority to give children a head start every child eligible for her. Art, it had started by 1994. We have tucked into the budget Summit a new childcare grams program, which we worked out a deal with the White House about the Senate was wonderful with the help White House. And we now have at least a bill that says two and a half billion dollars will go into new childcare grants program with quality improvements over the next three years and we hope to have much increased investment and years four and five plus depending on what they do today. There will be another 10 to 20 billion dollars in tax credits to give parents who are working a choice about whether to stay home or go into the labor force, but we've got a good child care package and I don't know at least when I left Washington last night, we had still some major new expansions and prenatal care and preventive health care for children. So we have some major new federal policy handles that will bring tens of millions of dollars and to Minnesota's coffers and give you the opportunity to implement quality programs for children, but they've got to be implemented well, and it's nice to have the Authority but each of us must speak strongly to make sure that that money is actually appropriated and states don't have to wait for the feds to sort of do things for her to start to do things for childcare. We've all got to speak for strong systematic Early Childhood investment and pay attention to quality of what children get the second thing we've got to do is abandon the myth the rising tide raises all boats the generalized education reform effort in 1983. And which continued through the decade did not narrow appreciably the achievement Gap that separates minority and poor students from other Young Americans if we're going to change these patterns, we must directly attack the factors that contribute to underachievement instead of watering down the curriculum for disadvantaged youngsters Beef It Up instead of assigning when I already and poor children the least prepared teachers and administrators give them the best instead of expecting less of them less demand more of them and provide the supports. They need they need Good parenting. They need good teachers and we must dramatically overhaul the schools that serve these children and we're too late now to fool around with small demonstration projects and Innovative programs. We have got to change whole schools that work force of the 90s is going through school right now, and we must remember that only two out of every 10 new labor force entrance in this decades are going to be white american-born males. We don't have time to fool around with spacing in school improvements. We need to make sure that those kids are getting everything that we can give them right now. Third. We've all got a dramatically increased public Consciousness about children's needs and some solutions to those needs beginning with these 1990 elections over 6,000 the state office holders 36 Governor's 34 senators. All the members of the House of Representatives are up for re-election including those here in Minnesota. It is so important That they hear from you about children and that you vote for children and hold them accountable. I am very pleased that we're beginning to make Headway even as I talk here. There is being unveiled in the Twin Cities a new public education campaign with Billboards that are going up all over the country 25 and they've been contributed including one by negative 25 here in the Twin Cities by mr. Negly are the naegele Outdoor Advertising companies where we've got the Statute of Liberty on the back of those Billboards asking is it possible that our lady of liberty has no maternal instincts and we simply point out how poorly we are faring competitively and all of our media campaign work has been done by your extraordinarily generous agency here Fallon McGillicuddy, but we are beginning to try to get children into the public Consciousness. But I do hope that you will play your role in holding your own leaders accountable. We must also forth let the American public know Got some things work and save money in the Long Haul and that they cannot afford not to invest in children that an investment of $1 in quality childcare saves almost $5 in later dependency cost that a dollar an immunization saves 10 dollars on the other end that every dollar we invest in prenatal care saves 3 on the other end. So either they don't like these poor and minority children. You should tell him it's in their self-interest invest in them upfront cheaper than invest in them a lot more expensively in prisons and in Dropout and in teenage pregnancy and Welfare, which all of us think may be undesirable. We also ought to break through this notion that most poor children are in an intractable underclass and these are problems. We can't do anything about we can save millions of children tomorrow if we go out there and decide to do it most poor children do not need 12 years of special education. They need a good Head Start program. They need quality childcare. They don't need an intensive care bed that need an immunization and a checkup. They don't need a whole lot of institutional. Placements they need good scholarships and good schooling. So why is it so hard in this wealthy purportedly compassionate Nations provide our children what they need, even when we know it makes a difference and even when it saves money, there's some things that work. The fifth thing we've got to do is to personalize child suffering and in Minnesota and throughout the country. We are now trying to encourage Business Leaders like you and Community leaders like you to go out and see child suffering you got to go into those neonatal intensive care nursery and see the American future lying. They're hooked up to these tubes one and two and three pounds and see that that cost a thousand dollars a day at least fourteen hundred dollars a day on the average now and then go across town and see another kind of program where mothers got prenatal care for $600 and see the chances of those children growing up ready to go to school and to achieve we've got to see you need to go into these housing projects and see the rats and smell the urine and see these children trying to navigate through the worst. Coming to school and maybe you'll understand why they may not perform. Well at school. We are going to be doing more visitation programs in Minnesota, but we're training people to launch these kinds of programs throughout the community and I hope you will strain to go out and see the children in your own Community who live on the other side of town and began to understand what you can do and in the context of these visits we're trying to do very careful briefings and let people understand what they can do by helping to change a local or a state or a national policy decision. And and the other thing that's important about these visitation programs and going to the good programs. It's a way for you to understand their a lot of wonderful people working in this community and in the state that need your help is board members as volunteers as contributors. So I hope that you will go out and see and participate in a visitation program in your communities and we're willing to work with other communities and other states to help them launch these things. We have got to get people to see kids because I'll tell you We don't yet have our political leaders. They don't get it yet and many of our community leaders. Don't get it yet about how serious this crisis is. And this is the crisis that's going to bring us all to our needs. Lastly. Let me just say that the thing that we're all going to have to do is to stop the distinction between our children and other people's children. We've got to begin to have a sense of community about our kids and let me therefore in with a Prayer by a school teacher which I think leads us to begin to think about our responsibility to all children, and she says that we pray and accept responsibility for children who like to be tickled you stomping puddles and run their new pants sneak popsicles before supper and can never find their shoes. But we will also pray and accept responsibility for children who can't bound down the street and a new pair of sneakers never got dessert. We don't have any rooms to clean up whose pitches aren't on anybody's dresser and whose mom's does a real Let's pray to accept responsibility for children who spend all their allowance before Tuesday pick at their food and squirmin church and Temple, but let's also pray and Advocate and speak for children whose Nightmares come in the daytime who lead anything who've never seen a dentist who aren't spoiled by anybody who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep that spray and accept responsibility for children who want to be carried and for those who must accept responsibility for children in America whom we never give up on our own and for those who don't ever get a second chance. Let's accept and speak up for and protect children whom we smother but also let's do that for children who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it. I hope that each of you today in Minnesota and st. Paul and Minneapolis are going to offer your hands to these needy children because our very future depends on it. Thank you very much. Thank you, missy. (00:26:51) Thank you. Mrs. Adelman. We will take questions now from the audience. You are listening to Marian Wright Edelman the president and founder of the children's defense fund on the Minnesota Public Radio Stations. First question from Patsy (00:27:04) ran. Thank you your comments were so very appropriate that I'd like to ask you to help us here in Minnesota consider some other strategies to help kids you talk a lot about early intervention and we find it extremely difficult to get lawmakers to recognize that a lot of what we need is simply more resources and its Financial but we're facing at least a billion dollars. We understand in a shortfall for our next biennium. So can you give us some suggestions and strategies for reallocation of resources how to make that happen? Well, I think there are a number of things that have to happen and I have someone here from our Minnesota office and one of the first things I think I would love to urge you to do is to read the children of Minnesota 19. Any report that our state office and mint and st. Paul has put out and they are available here and to talk with our local Minnesota office because they do have very specific strategies. Well how we get Minnesota to invest four more in children second. I hope that you will read and do your homework and I brought some of them here and I can hold them up. There's a new report we've just done as well on a hundred fifty seven thousand poor children who are on welfare in Minnesota, and I just hope you will read that and against take these things do your homework, which is where you first start and no clearly about the conditions of kids and each of our reports always say what you can do and then share these materials with leaders in your community with the church group with your sororities because one of the things we're going to have to do is to build an army for children a strong constituents of children. The only thing our political leaders care about is whether they're going to get reelected but they're not their campaign contributors are going to get upset or whether they're going to get bad publicity children don't vote and don't Lobby and don't make campaign contributions. So adults like us have to do those things for them and Building and political accountability is very important. I'm glad that we held forums in Minnesota to ask people about their positions on kids. It's very hard to get I know in the context of many elections discussions on substantive issues, but it still is very important to call them up and to make them aware that there are people out here who care about specific children's issues and they began to pay attention write letters to the editor really go visit your editorial boards after you do your homework and really to begin to sort of make people have to respond to the conditions of kids and there is going to be no long-term substitute for building an informed constituency. I often cite my role model Sojourner Truth who was an illiterate slave woman who in Hopeless time still spoke out against slavery and against second-class treatment of women in my favorite story came one day when she was speaking out against labor and she got heckled but no white man in the audience who said he didn't care anymore about her anti-slavery talking porno flea bite and she snapped back at him and said, that's alright the Lord willing. I'm going to keep You scratching what children need is a massively core of people who will scratch for them enough fleas biting strategically can make even the most callous politician responsive. And so there's no substitute for public education for keeping these issues alive for public Consciousness raising. I am confident that when the American public in the Minnesota public understands the cost of not investing in children the crisis of children the relationship of that crisis of their own standard of living to their own quality of life to Crime to to the fears of their own and I'll tell you something is going on people are beginning to realize that it's not just in it's not just poor children have these problems young families of all Races and incomes are having a heck of a hard time getting off the ground. I've had more middle-class parents told me how they used to cry when their children left home to go up to college who are now crime because their children never leaving home because he can't afford a house. And so I think that the problems of drugs and crime I'm and family disintegration and divorce are now becoming Universal and that combined with demographics. We don't have any children to ways and more of these kids are poor will begin to make the case of investment, but they don't get it yet about the crisis. And again, we've got to raise that Voice vote, please and make people understand that you're going to vote depending and many ways and their investment policies for children families. Go visit them as your political leaders to go out to Children's programs before this Christmas because take them out to a Head Start program and our prenatal Clinic let him see some success the recent poll we did in Minnesota shows that Minnesota voters are willing to invest in programs that work there. They really would like to see more investment in children's programs, even if it involves increasing taxes, and we've had these polls in Arizona and in other states have told us the same so go out there and take them by the hand and show them the successful programs and show what that is going to yield in the long term. We there's no Cut but I think the voters like success the taxpayers like success the politicians like success. So the visitation program is important, right? Letís all the time visit their offices. Let them hear from you work with them organizations together and I am optimistic about Minnesota Children's groups and others working together the United Way in many of your corporate leaders to come together and some concerted way around a consensus children's agenda because again to Coalition building and through a critical mass of powerful voices. I think you can begin to move we've made progress in the state and you're doing better. You've got a long way to go. However, but there's no shortcut to organization public education personalizing the suffering and voting and lobbying for kids. (00:32:36) Thank you very much. Mrs. Adelman. We now have a question from glorious Eagle a dfl state legislator from St. Louis Parker. Here you go. Thank you. First of all, I want to congratulate you on building the most effective children's lobbying organization. Not only In the country, but in this state and the Minnesota Children's defense fund has been extremely effective and I want to thank them and Luanne nyberg as well. Mention was made of I'm sorry. I didn't see the Minnesota report, but I'm really proud of what we've accomplished in Minnesota were the first State Banks to your group as well that has a children's health plan. We have invested heavily in childcare and Head Start in WIC and so forth but much much more remains to be done. My question is I've been very involved for example in trying to implement children's mental health programs. The difficulty is we are spending a lot of money. But it is in child protection. It is in Juvenile Justice. It is in education. It is in Social Services. and each of the areas and each of the budgets and spending a lot of money and do you have recommendations on how we can more effectively Channel the money to follow and be used for the child and are there states where this has been done so that there's interagency budgeting. That works on behalf of the child instead of stuffing the child into programs in various divisions of (00:34:34) government. Well, what are you getting at is two things that are critical we tend to respond to crisis in this country rather than prevent the problems in the first place and so so often we don't deal with kids until after they've been taken away from their families after they get pregnant after they drop out of school and therefore it becomes more difficult. And therefore when you look at Children's budgets, that means that most of that money is going to a remediation or Crisis Intervention rather than towards family preservation services or prevention. And so what we're trying to do is to say less prevent these problems up front. But secondly we have bar and neglect created these other problems and it is terribly important that we recognize that no single agency is going to be able to deal with these issues and there have to be coordinated comprehensive service approaches to many of the children in need. They need childcare teenage mothers. Do in order to get back in school. They need prenatal care to have a healthy child and nutrition they need Somebody to teach them how to be a good parent. They need a job. They need a lot of things and so you cannot continue with single interventions and expect this to work and there are a number of examples of effective comprehensive and coordinated programming and leasher in her book within our reach can tell you about some of those we ourselves in our teen pregnancy prevention Clearinghouse series have done model program descriptions of coordinated programs that are out there working but the point is we've got to invest in prevention and then secondly, we do have to talk about giving the full range of services and third though, we've got to watch out that we don't make the two kinds of children services compete with each other you got to deal with all of our kids in the fight is not between children who are already in trouble and children who we want to keep from getting in trouble. It's between that and many other Investments that are state and federal government make in far less important things and I say before we had a spectacle few weeks ago of people who are desperate and I don't agree disagree with them who wanted more AIDS But the only place I thought they could get that aids funding was about taking it out of Head Start and other children's health programs. I said what a spectacle to have three year olds who need 75 percent of whom don't get a head start trying to support and prevent little babies from getting Aid the debate is between us and the B-2 bombers. It's between us and the non-needy we have got to change the notion of what success is. We've got a reorder the national priorities, you know, it costs about 19 billion dollars little less. In fact to end all child poverty in this nation. That's about what it took that was about the transfer of income in one year between 88 and 89 to the top five percent of the country from the rest of the country. It's a few B-2 bombers. I mean, we have the capacity to save all of our kids but we are going to have to do business in a different way and redefine what we believe being Americans is all about and began to try to talk about saving our human infrastructure. It doesn't make any sense the talk about building more and higher and expensive fences to protect our children from the Them is without when it is the enemies within who are destroying them. And if your foundation is crumbling, you don't say you can't afford to fix it. You have to fix it. And that's what our message has to be but there are examples and we'll be glad to share them with you and Lou Ann nyberg and the Minnesota office really is terrific. (00:37:42) Thank you. Mrs. Delman a question here from Randy Stanton. I too would like to join the many persons who thank God that you continue to keep the United States and the world scratching for our children. I guess there were one thing would be a before the question. I guess I would just make a comment and that is that too often when we look at the priorities as far as budgeting and programs are concerned. We do miss some of the poorest of the least of these children among us and that we have to be sensitive at all times and I guess when I look at the book, for example, the children of Minnesota 1990, I find it in sense to do there's not a single child of color that's included in the pictures and I hope that we (00:38:27) will certainly be more sensitive to that in the future. There should be both Native American and monitor and black children in there. So I apologize if that is (00:38:34) so thank you. My question is that when you mentioned the budget for example, you mention a 10 to 20 billion dollar appropriation for programs that would allow parents to stay at home. Can you expand on that, please (00:38:49) child care package, which we have in the baiting for about three years attempts to give children parents real choices. I think that parents should have a choice and that's why I wish we had a family allowance system in this country that would allow mothers who were there to parents and they can afford that a parent can afford to stay at home that you give them the tax is much help through the tax system and through subsidies as you can and the most significant part of the new child care package will be in the form of tax credits under the earned income tax credit that allow working poor families to keep more of their income or to get subsidies. If a parent stays at home to take care of their own kids in addition if the Senate Provisions stay in in some part the dependent care tax credit that helps parents who are working with elderly and child relatives that will again increase in subsidy. And for the first time be refundable because there are many Poor parents working parents who don't have any tax liability. And therefore if it was not refundable didn't get any help. So we are hoping a game to help working poor families who have to go out and work get a little bit more help through the tax sent system. But the third piece of a child care package is a new childcare grams program because all the tax subsidies in the world and not enough if you know to pay for the $3,000 average cost of decent childcare and for infants, it can be more and so there is money now to sort of see if we can't create more affordable and quality Child Care programs using Family Day Care Providers childcare centers, there's money to encourage training and quality improvements to have information referral systems, which one of your private corporations do here in Minneapolis, but there's simply not enough options for parents to choose from and there's not enough money through tax credits to give them enough to choose. I don't think that many parents if they're given a few hundred dollars additional money each year. I got to be able to put that to a child care. They got to put that toward food. Shelter, and so the childcare grants programs designed to help parents be able to pay for good childcare and make sure that there's a good child care system from which they can choose and so it's all these pieces but there should be a little more money in the pockets of the poor that is not called welfare of the Working Poor where they have children hopefully starting next (00:41:10) year. Thank you very much. Mrs. Adelman. We now have a question from Rick Jackson. You are no doubt aware of the growing youth service movement in this country because you've helped provide leadership for that. Could you comment on how you view that movement as impacting Youth Empowerment and Youth Development as well as education reform and Civic renewal. Well, I just think that the whole Young people need to feel (00:41:39) important. They need to have something useful to do and to be and they need to have a sense of a future that's worth having and I think the underlying problem with much of what is going on in America right now is a loss of a sense of purpose a loss of a sense of community a loss of a sense of hope we've been involved as many of you have been on teenage pregnancy prevention because we think it's so important that we value parenting in the society and the single most important thing we can do for children to make sure that they have the best parents they can have when they are born and if you're 14 or 15 or 16 that's hard and if you're single parent that's hard and we really need to do something about it. But in looking at teenage pregnancy and how you would prevent it the two largest predictors of who was going to become a teen parent was basic skills levels and poverty and when you hold those two factors constant, you have a denticles teen pregnancy rates between white Black and Hispanic girl to the issue is hope hope is the best Perceptive we can put out there for young people teenage pregnancy and drug addiction and all the other problems that young people face are really a part of a broader drift and a lack of a family context and Community Values and that is what we are going to have to deal with the remedies are really trying to really get community to focus in on Youth Development. If you want to prevent teenage pregnancy and drug abuse and crime and school dropouts what the youth services movement which is wonderful in which is a lot of organizations and communities trying to come together children young people need to have a good strong early Foundation. They need a strong set of schooling but they need to have something to do in the afternoons and on the weekends and in the summer, you know, when you ask young people who've done something terrible, why do they do that? The most frequent answer you get back as I don't have nothing better to do. I think that's a terrible indictment of our society and we need to give them something better to do service opportunities plain old Recreation. I mean kit I am so grateful that is a middle class parent. My kids have baseball and football and hockey there so, Tired. I hope by the time they come home that they don't have any energy poor kids need the same kind of attention. They need somebody to be there for them. They need positive activities and ways to feel good about themselves for those who may not be academically successful. They can be successful in sports or an art of Whatever music so we need to open up our institutions and keep our kids busy through service opportunities through lots of activities through fun through high quality tutoring, but they need to have adults interacting with them making them feel good about themselves showing them a place in the world showing that there's a future and there's a reason for them to stay in school and to delay pregnancy and delay drug abuse and that's where the youth service movement is. So critical in trying to begin to provide that network of support in lots of different ways for the young people whose families may not be able to do that on their own but the Youth Services Network groups cannot do it without your help. I mean, they need funding they need the churches and synagogues to be out there to open up those facilities. They need to And big brothers and mentors but it has to reach it means the community has to begin to establish responsibility and say to all of our young people we care about you and to prove that by the kind of program and time and attention. They pay attention those youths I congratulate and thank all of you who are working with young people after school and one component of a visitation program is that I think we've been El Paso a young woman at a public Hospital began to take Girl Scout slumber parties up into the neonatal intensive care nurse was in the middle of the night and let him see these little babies lying there and I think that every young person interested in the welfare office for a day and see how miserable and awful it is but we really need to begin to sort of get our young people thinking about the implications of their conduct but more importantly we must put something better in place. You just can't say no to a kid you got to give them a positive alternative and that's what the youth services movement is about. (00:45:32) Thank you. You were listening to Marian Wright Edelman the president and founder of the children's defense. Funds into the Minnesota meeting have a question here from Don's dry. I'm interested in your Notions of how the public welfare programs should be changed. For example, it is said that the some states still require the factor of absence of one parent from the home to qualify for afdc. And that that is not one of the major reasons for the destruction of the American black family. Could you comment on (00:46:04) that? Well, I think that our welfare system is such that nobody likes it and either the welfare recipient or the taxpayers are the people who administer it and that's why I would like to see this country go towards a non stigmatic family allowance system. So that parenting and staying at home with children is not considered something that is is a second-class role in our society. But secondly, I think that the Epi to be put on work the problem of the black families that young black man are not don't have the skills to get the jobs that don't exist. We've had a major shift in our economy from manufacturing to service jobs and the way Base has declined over the years while housing costs and child care costs and many other things have gone up. And so you've had this new underground economy, but people who are now outside the mainstream of American society because if you don't have skills in our society and haven't had a good education and don't have higher education. You don't have a way of getting a foothold American economy. So basically I think our strategy should be to ensure that those make sure that everybody gets a good education. Okay, and an education that can prepare them for gainful employment. We should have some kind of Politics as if you work that you should be able to lift your family out of poverty. And if the jobs at the wages, they're going the service sector don't do that. Then there should be some kind of supplement in a non-stick Matic way, which is what the Earned Income Tax Credit in the dependent tax credits are designed to do that would pay make work pay. Okay, but to do it without making you feel shame and we have had a major decline in the wage base among young families under 30 over the last 15 years. That's one of the reasons why young families becoming poorer and poorer and since they are the parents of young children, it's a major major problem. Then third for those people who are already on welfare. We should really focus in I'm training with good childcare opportunities. So that those mothers can become self-sufficient and make work pay again, but not have make them choose between their kids and the quality of the care they get to their kids. One of the hardest things we've been able to do is to sort of with the biggest fight. We've had around the child care bill. It's whether we're going to have minimal health and safety and quality standards. We lost Federal standards, but we keep trying to tell our leaders that these are the same children whom we are paying far more for and Head Start and if you really want to prevent the next generation of welfare of sipan's you make sure that these kids get into the best quality Early Childhood Program to they're going to be ready for school because their mothers often can't do it at their High School dropouts or feeling hopeless or have a drug problem or anything else invest in those kids. So we really do have to have a self sufficient to strategy and we also Make sure the level of welfare benefits does not guarantee poverty. I mean we should encourage work with good support services and good health care and make work poor but Minnesota, like most of the state's really has not kept their afdc their aid to families with dependent Care Program levels Grant levels even with inflation so that you have now about a hundred and seventy 57,000 children, which Lou Ann nyberg says that's more than three metronomes full who are on welfare who suffer the deprivations of life because between 1970 and 1989 average afdc payments spell from one percent under poverty in Minnesota to 32% under the poverty level over the same period 25 other states managed to keep their Grant levels closer to inflation and the public seems to hate any idea of giving welfare mothers because we don't like them a level of payment that will allow them to live out of poverty so that you know, we've got to come to grips with that. But I think that the answer is really a through a negative income tax or through greater tax subsidies to working poor families with Support Services, like healthcare and childcare but bottom line in terms of long term. We just got to make sure that the next generation gets the skills. They need get the foot hole in the community get the supports that they need so that they don't have to go on welfare except in crisis. (00:50:01) Thank you. Mrs. Adelman. We now have a question from Holly suey. Like many people here. I feel very inspired and very motivated by what you've had to say. In fact my feelings today remind me of how I felt just over 20 years ago when I graduated from college, I was a speech and language therapist in Milwaukee and I volunteered to work in an inner-city school because I felt then like I do today I wanted to do something to help. After a year and a half I quit I was physically abused. I was physically attacked I was verbally abused. I worked in a federally funded trailer and head start school that was locked and had a special alarm system every day that I went to work. I was concerned for my safety. My question to you is even if you can provide children in these communities with good teachers, how will you keep them there? How will you keep the good teachers there? Well, that's a hard question. And I guess I am I obviously think that that gets back to having to deal with the entire problems with the entire Community because again you is unsafe as you feel those children live with that every day and their parents live with that every day. And I think that it's disgraceful that in a nation that professors would be concerned about security that children in Washington DC in the capital of the free were less likely to be safe than children growing up in Beirut Lebanon. And so we do have a (00:51:27) major problem of violence in this But violence is the way in which young people who don't have positive ways of expressing themselves who don't have a foothold in the economy don't have hope do do that. It's a very big problem. And again, I think that's why we've got to talk about how we do comprehensive programs of scale in communities that mobilize the residences of low-income neighborhoods and there are many (00:51:53) examples of that that are beginning to come about like Kimmy gray and Washington (00:51:58) DC where the community has banded together to run out the drug dealers and run out the bile and people and we're in cooperation with the police department and others are beginning to recapture their Community birthday Gilkey in St. Louis is again the tenants took over the housing project and they are tougher than the cops by far but you've got to have a scale of action on behalf of those Community residents, but with the kind of resources and backing from public agencies that allow them to put into place positive programs and its really is about a critical mass of involvement and third you got to get People sense of hope that they're not going to be let down people don't really they are not going to have the courage to take on the gangs and the drug lords and all the other if they think that private and public sector politicians investment is going to be here today and gone tomorrow. And so therefore we're going to have to make long-term commitments on a scale that will give those communities of sense of hate of hope. So it's going to require a massive effort on the part of the community residence and the part of churches and those communities on the part of all the kind of key leaders, but it's also going to take the kind of commitment from government and the private sector that gives kids jobs and we've got to create a new set of atmosphere but we are now dealing with it's just a whole sense of hopelessness and despair that I have not seen for a very long time. It's reflected in the crime. The violence is reflected in The Gangs, but for me, most poignantly, it is reflected in the despair of drug-addicted mothers who always through slavery and segregation. Hang on hang on and the fact that We are now giving up and numbers and this is happening among middle class mothers as well for different reasons is a sign that we do need to do something very fundamental but it's a hard issue of violence. But you know, I've seen principles and give you examples of schools who used to be violence written and with the kind of leadership of turn those schools around and we ourselves are involved now and beginning a very large-scale training program and by hooking up principles from tough violent schools with principals who used to have tough violin schools, but who turn them around and again the key is leadership and if you get enough principles and enough Community leaders to change the tone and change direction, it can create a new atmosphere that makes it (00:54:11) safe for people like you to work. Thank you. Mrs. Adelman we have time for one more question question here from Matthew little I understand that the children's defense fund rates members of Congress according to their support for child children's interests. My question is could you give us a kind of an idea where our members of Congress stand in that regard? (00:54:43) I have to say to you I have I don't have a copy of my little green book. You have the green book and that does have your voting record in it. And we are a nonpartisan organization. We cannot affect the outcome of any election. It is important that you look at these voting records and you make your own judgment about who is good and who is bad and in fact, I can't do it this close to the election without getting us into trouble. But I do hope you will turn to the pages where your own representatives of there and if they Done well and children you should thank them very much and if they have not done well on children, you should try to remind them to do better. You have a number who have done. Wonderfully. You have one 100. You have two people who have a hundred percent in our voting record. Let me just let me just congratulate the good ones and you can draw your own conclusions about the rest, but Mr. Missed event. Oh and mr. Oberstar or have perfect voting records on children. You also have 288 mr. Sabo and mr. Sikorsky and they have done very very well and the rest you need to work on and have in the house delegation. And in the Senate, my sense is in the Senate you need to do a whole lot of work. And so I really a whole lot of work. So I do hope you will look at these and see whether you think that Resents what you would like to see Minnesota represented. (00:56:22) Thank you. Thank you very much. Mrs. Adelman. Thank (00:56:24) you. Marian Wright Edelman president of the children's defense (00:56:30) fund speaking live at Minnesota meeting prior to the question-and-answer session. She spoke on the topic investing in children and agenda for public and private action.