The night was all about youth and children. It started with a dramatic praise dance set to gospel recording artist Yolanda Adam’s What About the Children, performed by a troupe of teens and young adults.
Then when the petite Marian Wright Edelman, 68, took to the dais at St. Sabina Church’s Speakers Series Feb. 15, her big message illustrated her passion as an advocate for children. Edelman’s message of adults failing the nation’s children came a day after 6 young adults were gunned down on the campus of Northern Illinois University in western DeKalb.
She said the incident “is not something unusual à This country has always had a romance with violence.” “It is time for us to stand up and say ‘enough’” and work to get guns out of the hands of those who seek to kill. She began her speech at the South Side parish with a story of survival and community triumph among a herd of wildlife.
Recalling a brief episode of a nature show she had seen online, Edelman told the audience about how a herd of adult water buffaloes joined forces to rescue a baby water buffalo from the throes of a contingent of hungry lions. “I thought about our children,” she said. “Where is the herd” to save the millions of children affected by drug abuse, poverty, gangs and other detriments, she questioned. Edelman is the creator of the Children’s Defense Fund and its Action Council.
The non-profit organization advocates for children’s rights and social wellbeing. Her Cradle to Prison Pipeline initiative draws a correlation between some situations experienced in childhood that go unchecked or unresolved – poverty, violence, poor health care and abuse – and how they carry over into adulthood, making children (especially Black boys) affected by those ills feeders for the nation’s prison system.
For the outspoken children’s ambassador, breaking the cycle of poverty and cultural destruction – for children’s sake – is not an easy task, but one that is not without simplicity. “The real question is whether we have the will” to get rid of things like poverty, she told the audience. Giving alarming statistics compiled by her CDF, Edelman said that more that 9.4 million children are without health insurance in this country. For her, that is unacceptable.
“We do not have money problems in this country, we have a profound moral problem,” she said. Edelman’s crusade as an advocate for children spans more than three decades. She started the CDF in 1973 and has lobbied Congress on poor children’s behalf. Recalling an experience in her early days of advocacy, even before the CDF, Edelman told of a young man who was drawn to looting during the civil unrest that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
She said she tried to encourage the young Black man not to engage in the mass stealing and rioting, not destroy his future. But she said, his response to her was salient and sobering: he said he had no hope for a future. “I will spend the rest of my life” trying to prove that there is hope for our children, Edelman said. St. Sabina’s African-American Speaking Series continues with Susan L. Taylor March 7.
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