The Conversation: Marian Wright Edelman

[Smiley and West]

		Civil rights legend Marian Wright Edelman talks about her lifetime crusade for children.   Learn more about Marian Wright Edelman at childrensdefense.org.

[Candace McCarty]

  "Our neglect and abuse of children is a profound spiritural crisis requiring transformation of the heart."

 I salute you Mrs. Marian Wright Edelman for all that you do!

 

"American is going to hell if we don't use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic neccessities of life. - Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Thank you Mr. Smiley & Dr. West for this interview.

 

Is anybody out there listening. . . When will we put our children, ALL children first, especially the lest of thee?

[Bennetta]

I echo Candace's sentiments....  I felt so much pride, inspiration and historical legendary as I listened to the wisdom and grandness of Mrs. Marian Wright Edelman as she passionately spoke TRUTH after TRUTH of the precarious plight of our nation's children today.  Her obvious love and concern for ALL of our kids were very inspiring, motivating and overwhelming to hear as a mother.  Wow! 40 years of progressive heart-felt service to our kids, country and communities through the strategic building and nurturing of CDF.  Mrs. Marian Wright Edelman is a real HERO!  And to think she did it all WITHOUT accepting any government funds.  Like I said, a real HERO!

 

As Mrs. Edelman stated, we must demand more, invest more, mentor more and lead more in order to mitigate the negative social/economic risks and vulnerabilities that threaten our kids' futures if we remain complacent, and in some cases, silent and do nothing.  I say lets start by mobilizing and demanding more realistic and long-term strategic Education Funding from our elected officials starting with President Obama's proposed budget (although glad Obama wants to add to education-related innovations but rather disappointed he proposed decreasing Pell Grant funding which to me contradicts his stated goal to overall improve education).  I also personally believe such funding must take into consideration ALL areas of education for ALL of our MOST VULNERABLE CHILDREN which should include Special Education long-term programs & services - particularly considering the recent rise of Autism, ADHD and other developmental & learning disabilities that have plagued our kids in recent years severely affecting their diverse ways of learning.  

 

Thanks Smiley & West as this was such a wonderful and important discussion!

[Carol D. Durante-Spinner]

Our children are vulnerable and they are watching us and if we do not speak up for them it will come a time when will need them to speak up for us and I am sorry to say, but if we don't start showing them more love and attention to their needs, we are going to be in trouble.  The same people you meet going up are the same people you meet coming down.  So many of them are not receiving a proper education, poor living conditions, no food, etc., and they have to make it however they can, but we sit around like everything is okay and show little or no love to them, because we are so caught up in driving the fanciest car and living in the most expensive house that we ignore our youth.   It is so very sad because they do not have a voice and the only way they can be heard is that we listen and we won't even take the time to do just that.  It will be a sad day when we are no longer able to run this country and our youth take over knowing that the very people dependent on them are the ones that never took the time to address the issues that made their lives a living hell.

[Penguin Board of Directors]

I salute the courage and sacrifice of all men and women of goodwill who have contributed (or continue to contribute) over the ages to uplifting children the world over. I single out the American child for special mention because there is a mistaken notion that all American children are privileged and benefit enough from the vast resources of America such that no one else (beside the U. S. government) need worry to offer additional hands of help. Not quite. There is ample room for supplementing.  

Yes, America has vast resources. Yes, America takes the welfare of its children seriously; it also tackles  the challenges of children beyond American borders. Here is a piece of news not so commonly known to the rest of humanity. There are malnourished American children. There are American children who go to bed every night in half-filled or near-empty, churning stomachs. There are American children who are not sure of the next day's meal or the warmth of a place they can call home. There are American children whose breadwinner-fathers or mothers have made the ultimate sacrifice for America. There are many American children, ill-educated, inadequately educated or not educated at all, due to no fault of theirs. If young and old adults are not well-situated, their children are invariably impacted. Helping the needy adult constituency is an indirect but effective way to helping millions of American children. 

The Smiley and West forum affords me the opportunity to invite interested and competent parties to consider volunteering their services to needy others in their communities. I already do. Please join in. It will not disrupt your well-organized life; rather, joining in will enrich your life by divine recompense. Think about it. God bless.

[Penguin Board of Directors]

Thank you Carol for speaking the truth so forcefully and convincingly. I hope enough adults are listening. This is not a call to duty for politicians, regardless of whether they are Republicans, Tea-Partiers, Democrats or Independents. This is a call to duty for all Americans! 

Carol D. Durante-Spinner said:

Our children are vulnerable and they are watching us and if we do not speak up for them it will come a time when will need them to speak up for us and I am sorry to say, but if we don't start showing them more love and attention to their needs, we are going to be in trouble.  The same people you meet going up are the same people you meet coming down.  So many of them are not receiving a proper education, poor living conditions, no food, etc., and they have to make it however they can, but we sit around like everything is okay and show little or no love to them, because we are so caught up in driving the fanciest car and living in the most expensive house that we ignore our youth.   It is so very sad because they do not have a voice and the only way they can be heard is that we listen and we won't even take the time to do just that.  It will be a sad day when we are no longer able to run this country and our youth take over knowing that the very people dependent on them are the ones that never took the time to address the issues that made their lives a living hell.

[RazzHyman]

Mrs.Marian Wright Edelman it is a pleasure to hear you are still in the struggle.Of course I know your a busy woman.This plight of racial tension & oppression my family is dealing with some major challenges.My question is how does someone get and appointment not continue the social destruction that is at our front door?Can you please respond via email.Thank You Smiley & West for having this honorable sucessful story because she is really touching the subject of my family losing thier inheritance.My e-mail is [e-mail]

[rick meiresonne]

will there be a transcript available for this discussion?

[Shelia D. Owie]

I just finished listening to the interview, and Ms. Edelman hit the nail on the head: we've GOT to LOVE our children. The Bible says that, "what you do to the least of my little ones, you do it unto Me..." (Me meaning God Himself). If people could even fathom the depth of that statement when it comes to children, the poor, and "the least" among us. Cutting programs, and then stating they love God in the same breath...they don't even realize he hypocrisy.  I work with children, and there have been times when I had to fight for them to merely be taken seriously. This conversation has definitely inspired me to do a better job with not only the children I work with, but my own. We must, as a people, get our priorities straight. This conversation was so profound, yet so on time. It should be common sense to invest in our children because, and not to be redundant, they ARE our future. If we don't start taking care of "our future", there won't be much of a present for up the road.  Thank you so much for having Ms. Edelman on. God Bless her work and your work as well. Peace.

[Penguin Board of Directors]

Hi Smiley, Dr. West and other forum members,

 

Again, I salute the efforts and doggedness of forces such as our revered Marian Wright Edelman (MWE).

The emphasis on children is well placed, but the approach to realizing the lofty goal needs updating. At the very least, some aspects of the strategy for uplifting children need be urgently reworked. Children do not exist in vacuo. They are products of families. In families, parents are on the drivers' seats. If parents are compromised, there is a 90% chance the children will be. Some children may manage to escape the ravages of their forced legacy, but the likes of Oprah, Maya Angelou, Michael Jackson, Tyler Perry, Sydney Poitier and others are rare. These are exceptions rather than the rule.

Action-points for solution:

1) We need a holistic approach to uplifting children in their natural habitats-their homes. Parents are an essential component of any meaningful strategy to doing this. We cannot effectively protect the snail without addressing the shell. In her testimony before a Committee of the House on Children and Families on November 18, 2010, our revered MWE painted a poignant image of how American children and families are being increasingly decimated by a plummeting economy. You can read the transcript and/or watch the video by following the link

http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/da...

MWE says many teenagers are leaving home to ease the burden of family upkeep on their unemployed parents. True. Also true is the unsavory realization that many are leaving because they have no choice. Some of these teenagers end up with Good-Samaritan shepherds and have their lives turned around; many others invariably fall prey to rampaging wolves. America must be better than that. We are that America; we must be better than that!   

2) Children are the foci of attention; they must be involved in designing what works for them. Too often, many policy designers and activists operate much like some firms on Wall Street. We think we know all that is good for our children and therefore proceed to make decisions for them. The mentality runs like 'if it worked for us, it must work for them.' Or we are older, we must know better. Not quite. Times change. Values evolve. Configurations and solution paradigms need change alongside. We need a joint effort, a shift to value co-creation. We need to market our ideas to our customers-the children. Marketing is not all about razzmatazz advertising. Marketing is customer-driven; sales is product-driven. A good coin must have good head and tail. A good business or social strategy must integrate marketing and sales.

3) We do not need to simply keep appealing to policy makers in DC to do right by the people. We do not need to simply keep begging our elected representatives to abandon vested corporate interests that pay their bills. Why? Because they will not listen. Where they listen, they will not yield. Why? Because the pull of patronage and the allure of the lucre are too strong for them to ignore. It is easier for them to ignore the electorate as long as the electorate is sufficiently disorganized to be ignored. Abraham Lincoln has a prescription for "we, the people" to recover our power, where democratic safety-valves are compromised.

A supplementary panacea is empowerment through continued education and re-education. We must do this one man or woman at a time. How do people exercise a power they do not even know they possess?

Take the small cue from the residents of the cities of Brea and Bell in California. They decided it was time to stop the horse from continuing to ride the rider. Review the experience of our respected MWE with mentoring, the impact this had on what she became, and how what she became snowballed into what hundreds of thousands of other Americans turned out to be through her influence. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" (UNCF, n. d.). More of that later.

[Bri'on]

BRAVO!

Yomi Ace said:

Hi Smiley, Dr. West and other forum members,

 

Again, I salute the efforts and doggedness of forces such as our revered Marian Wright Edelman (MWE).

The emphasis on children is well placed, but the approach to realizing the lofty goal needs updating. At the very least, some aspects of the strategy for uplifting children need be urgently reworked. Children do not exist in vacuo. They are products of families. In families, parents are on the drivers' seats. If parents are compromised, there is a 90% chance the children will be. Some children may manage to escape the ravages of their forced legacy, but the likes of Oprah, Maya Angelou, Michael Jackson, Tyler Perry, Sydney Poitier and others are rare. These are exceptions rather than the rule.

Action-points for solution:

1) We need a holistic approach to uplifting children in their natural habitats-their homes. Parents are an essential component of any meaningful strategy to doing this. We cannot effectively protect the snail without addressing the shell. In her testimony before a Committee of the House on Children and Families on November 18, 2010, our revered MWE painted a poignant image of how American children and families are being increasingly decimated by a plummeting economy. You can read the transcript and/or watch the video by following the link

http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/da...

MWE says many teenagers are leaving home to ease the burden of family upkeep on their unemployed parents. True. Also true is the unsavory realization that many are leaving because they have no choice. Some of these teenagers end up with Good-Samaritan shepherds and have their lives turned around; many others invariably fall prey to rampaging wolves. America must be better than that. We are that America; we must be better than that!   

2) Children are the foci of attention; they must be involved in designing what works for them. Too often, many policy designers and activists operate much like some firms on Wall Street. We think we know all that is good for our children and therefore proceed to make decisions for them. The mentality runs like 'if it worked for us, it must work for them.' Or we are older, we must know better. Not quite. Times change. Values evolve. Configurations and solution paradigms need change alongside. We need a joint effort, a shift to value co-creation. We need to market our ideas to our customers-the children. Marketing is not all about razzmatazz advertising. Marketing is customer-driven; sales is product-driven. A good coin must have good head and tail. A good business or social strategy must integrate marketing and sales.

3) We do not need to simply keep appealing to policy makers in DC to do right by the people. We do not need to simply keep begging our elected representatives to abandon vested corporate interests that pay their bills. Why? Because they will not listen. Where they listen, they will not yield. Why? Because the pull of patronage and the allure of the lucre are too strong for them to ignore. It is easier for them to ignore the electorate as long as the electorate is sufficiently disorganized to be ignored. Abraham Lincoln has a prescription for "we, the people" to recover our power, where democratic safety-valves are compromised.

A supplementary panacea is empowerment through continued education and re-education. We must do this one man or woman at a time. How do people exercise a power they do not even know they possess?

Take the small cue from the residents of the cities of Brea and Bell in California. They decided it was time to stop the horse from continuing to ride the rider. Review the experience of our respected MWE with mentoring, the impact this had on what she became, and how what she became snowballed into what hundreds of thousands of other Americans turned out to be through her influence. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" (UNCF, n. d.). More of that later.

[Summer]

Marian Wright Edelman is a Champion.

 

[1992bandb]

I'm screaming..but no ones listening..