On Saturday, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati hosted a Juneteenth celebration commemorating the jubilant day in 1865 when the last Black slaves got word they were free more than two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Labor, civil rights, education and community leaders, child advocates and citizens conducted a silent march Sunday in New York City to protest the New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” policing tactics. These two events, at very different places and times, are connected as part of the slow, hard and unfinished journey towards freedom and racial justice in our nation. Although we have come a very long way on the arduous road from slavery to freedom, we still have a long way to go.

The recent death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., and the brutal hateful murder of James Anderson by a gang of young, white men in Jackson, Miss., attest to this continuing reality.

So does the persistent mass incarceration of Black and Latino sons, fathers and potential leaders which is becoming the new American apartheid or the new Jim Crow as Michelle Alexander calls it in her important, bestselling book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” That we have the world’s largest incarcerated population — our incarceration rate exceeds China, Russia, and India combined — is the end result of a national Cradle to Prison Pipeline® crisis which is lodged at the intersection of continuing poverty and racial disparities in American life. A Black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime and a Latino boy a one in six chance of the same fate. Children of color, especially males, face an uphill battle in overcoming poverty (one in five Black children is poor) and continuing racial barriers and stereotyping.

An analysis of New York Police Department data by the New York Civil Liberties Union showed that more than 96 percent of the students arrested in the city school system in the first three months of 2012 were Black and Latino, and more than 73 percent were male. Police were 12 times more likely to arrest a Black student than a white one. It’s time to get the police out of the schools; to stop the massive suspension and arrest of children for nonviolent offenses; and to stop the criminalization of children at younger and younger ages. It makes no sense for unarmed six-, seven- and eight-year-olds to be handcuffed and arrested for nonviolent offenses. Sometimes I think many adults have lost our common and moral sense and forgotten the purpose of public education which is to educate and prepare children for the future not exclude or bar them in huge numbers every year. Some schools are initiating restorative justice practices which discipline children without excluding them from desperately needed education.

The June 17 march was a silent protest against the stop and frisk tactics that purport to stave off crime and get guns off New York City’s streets — a goal I certainly share. But in 99.9 percent of these searches guns were not found. In reality, stop and frisk may simply terrify and criminalize Black and Brown boys and young men and empower police to randomly stop, search and demand account from Black and Latino boys and men ostensibly born free. Black and Latino young men ages 14 to 24 are less than 5 percent of the city’s population but are 41.6 percent of the stops. The reality in New York City today shows we are still far from being a free and just land.

How far have we come on the road from slavery to freedom isn’t just a rhetorical question more than 150 years later. A people who don’t know their history are more likely to repeat it. The resurgence of hate crimes and emergence of mass incarceration of males of color remind us that freedom requires constant vigilance and justice needs a fire that burns in all of us.

I believe that we are in the second post-Reconstruction era — a view shared by distinguished historians David Levering Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W.E.B. Du Bois, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and author of “The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.” They and civil rights icons including Myrlie Evers-Williams, Andrew Young, James Lawson, Vincent Harding, Ruby Bridges and many others will join us at the Children’s Defense Fund’s national conference in Cincinnati, July 22–25, to examine the racial signs of our times, affirming our great progress, but ensuring we continue to move forward — and not backward — on the still incomplete road to freedom. Although some forms of continuing racial intolerance are overt, some forms are subtle, covert, technical, political and very polite. Wrapped up in new euphemisms, better etiquette and clever political rhetoric, it’s still, as Frederick Douglass warned, the same old snake. Let’s call it out systematically, oppose it nonviolently and move forward on becoming a free and just nation. — (NNAP)

Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund. For more information, go to www.childrensdefense.org.

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court in Miller v. Alabama banned mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole for juveniles. This is a major victory for children and for America. Until last week, America was the only country in the world to routinely condemn children as young as 13 and 14 to die in prison. Now about 2,000 people who were sentenced to die in prison as juveniles have hope for a new hearing and a new sentence. While we are disappointed the court did not ban the practice outright, we must keep working toward justice for children and end the devastating “Cradle to Prison Pipeline” crisis that leads to marginalized lives, imprisonment and premature death.

Bryan Stevenson, the brilliant founder and executive director of Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., argued this case and the companion case Jackson v. Hobbs before the Supreme Court. Last month, he told participants at the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools National Training session how he first became devoted to helping children in our adult justice system:

“I was working on a case when a grandmother called me, and this young boy had been arrested. This boy was living in a house where his mother had repeatedly been the victim of a lot of sexual assault, a lot of physical assault and domestic violence. And one day this boy’s stepfather came home, and he just punched this boy’s mother in the face. She fell on the floor unconscious, and the little boy tried to revive his mom and he couldn’t do it, and she was bleeding. And we think he thought his mom was dead.”

Bryan Stevenson continued with his harrowing true crime story: “And the man went into the bedroom and fell asleep, and after he did that, this little boy got up. He was about five feet tall, 14 years of age, under 100 pounds, and he waited until the man went into the bedroom and fell asleep . . . and he went over to the man’s dresser, and he pulled out this man’s handgun. And while the man was sleeping, this little boy walked over to him, and he pointed the gun at his head, and tragically at point-blank range, he pulled the trigger. The man was killed instantly.

“Now, this child had no prior criminal history. He had never been in trouble before. He was actually a good student, no juvenile adjudications and probably would have been tried as a juvenile but for the fact that this man was a deputy sheriff. And because he was a deputy sheriff, the prosecutor insisted that this child be tried as an adult, and the judge certified him to stand trial as an adult and put him in the adult jail.

“The grandmother called me three days later, and I went to the jail to see this little boy. I started asking him questions, and no matter what I asked him, this little boy just sat there. I tried to ask him some more questions; he just sat there. He wasn’t responding to anything I said, and finally after 20 minutes, I said, ‘Look, you got to talk to me. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.’

“I got up and I walked around the table, and I got my chair close to him . . . I started leaning on him a little bit and leaning on him, and finally, he leaned back. And when he leaned back into me, I put my arm around him and said, ‘Come on, tell me what’s going on.’ This boy started crying, and through his tears, he began talking to me not about what happened at his house with his mom or his stepdad, but he began talking to me about what had happened at the jail. He told me on the first night, he had been assaulted by several men. Then he told me on the next night, he had been sexually assaulted by several men, and then he told me on the night before I had gotten there, there were so many people who had assaulted him, he actually couldn’t remember how many there had been.

“I held this little boy while he cried hysterically for over an hour, and I left that jail thinking this is our system – our system – and so it became necessary for me to say something.”

So now, Bryan Stevenson said, “I represent these young people who have many times been horribly abused. We put them in adult prisons. There are 27 states that put children in adult facilities where they are 10 times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, 25 times more likely to commit suicide, and there is this silence.”

Once Stevenson saw the truth, he knew he could never be among those who stay silent. He also said: “Of all the problems that I’m talking about [with the treatment of juveniles in the adult justice system] —  and I’m talking about race and I’m talking about poverty and I’m talking about abuse of power and I’m talking about misconduct  —  the problem that we have got to confront is hopelessness, the profound absence of hope that is represented by the death penalty, by life imprisonment without parole for children, by mass incarceration, by the way in which we are dealing with people . . . I’ll tell you something about hope. Where there is hopelessness, there is always injustice, and you can never achieve justice without hopefulness.”

The Supreme Court’s historic decision to abolish mandatory life in prison without parole sentences for children reinforces the importance of never giving up hope as we all keep speaking out and fighting for justice for children. We still have so much work left to do to solve the crisis of children in adult prisons – but we now have a huge victory to spur us on and give us more hope. Bryan Stevenson helped changed the nation’s course by saying something and doing something, and so must we. — (NNPA)

Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.

On April 16, 2007, our nation suffered its deadliest shooting incident ever by a single gunman when a student killed 32 people and wounded 25 others at Virginia Tech University before committing suicide. Five years later, have we learned anything about controlling our national gun and gun violence epidemic? A look at just a few of the sad headlines across the country so far this year suggests we haven’t learned much, if anything at all.

In February of this year, a 17-year-old high school senior, who other students described as an outcast who’d been bullied, shot and killed three fellow students and injured two more at Chardon High School in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. Would this have happened without a gun?

In Washington state, three children were victims of gun violence during a three-week period at the end of February and at the end of March. A three-year-old died after shooting himself in the head with a gun left under the front seat of the car while his family stopped for gas. The 7-year-old daughter of a police officer was shot and killed by her younger brother after he found one of their father’s guns in the glove compartment of the family van. And an 8-year-old girl was critically wounded at school when her 9-year-old classmate brought in a gun he found at home that accidentally went off in his backpack. Would this have happened without a gun?

There already has been a rash of shootings in Chicago this year, including the especially violent weekend in mid-March when 49 people were shot and 10 were killed. One of the victims was a 6-year-old girl who was sitting on her front porch with her mother getting her hair brushed before a birthday party when she was killed by shots fired from a passing pickup truck. Would this have happened without a gun?

And in Florida, unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was shot and killed walking home from the store in February after being followed by self-appointed “neighborhood watch captain” George Zimmerman. Would Trayvon’s death have happened without a gun? Now that George Zimmerman has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder, Trayvon Martin’s family is finally moving forward in their quest for justice.

As a nation we can’t afford to keep waiting for common-sense gun control laws that would protect our children and all of us from indefensible gun violence. It’s time to repeal senseless gun laws such as the “Stand Your Ground” laws enacted by 21 states. The laws have grabbed so much attention in Trayvon’s case and allow people in Florida to defend themselves with deadly force anytime and anywhere if they feel threatened. More than 2 million people have signed online petitions saying they want to repeal these laws. It’s time to require consumer safety standards and childproof safety features for all guns and strengthen child access prevention laws that ensure guns are stored safely and securely to prevent unnecessary tragedies like those in Washington state. And in a political environment where the too secretive and powerful advocacy group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pushed “Stand Your Ground” laws in other states along with other “model bills” that benefit some corporate bottom lines or special interests such as the NRA, it’s time for all of ALEC’s corporate sponsors to walk away from enabling or acquiescing destructive laws that protect guns, not children.

It’s a tragedy that five years after Virginia Tech so little has changed. How many years must we wait until tragic headlines about school shootings, children dying, and people using the “shoot first and ask questions later” defense to take the law into their own hands go away? When will we finally get the courage to stand up as a nation and say enough to the deadly proliferation of guns and gun violence that endanger children’s and public safety? — (NNPA)

Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund.

It’s amazing how, sometimes, old words have new meaning.

Take, for example, a classic play or novel. Take, for example, a favorite poem that great-grandfather tucked away in a family Bible, a story set in another era, or a letter written by a long-gone ancestor.

The words inside it might seem quaint and stiff. The format may not be familiar to you at all. You might not have known the writer but though the times are different, verses and thoughts put to paper 100 years — or even three generations — ago still shout their meaning.

And in the re-released book “The Trumpet of Conscience” (Beacon Press/$22) by Martin Luther King Jr., foreword by Coretta Scott King, new foreword by Marian Wright Edelman, you can hear some of them all over again.

When, in 1967, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation asked Martin Luther King Jr. to present a series of Massey Lectures for their listeners, King was told that he could speak on any topic that interested him and that was relevant to anyone in the world who might be listening.

He, of course, chose topics that were closest to his heart: nonviolent protest, civil disobedience, human rights for people of all races, and his dismay over the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

In his lectures, Dr. King explained to his Canadian listeners what Canada meant to Black Americans. Spirituals, he said, so widely sung in American fields were made in code, and slaves sang of heaven.

“Heaven,” he said, “was the word for Canada …”

In thoughts that seem to reach out to protesters today, King explains youth as he saw it nearly forty years ago, lauding those who participate in nonviolent protest.

“… we must begin now to work, urgently, with all the peoples, to shape a new world,” he said prophetically.

On the Vietnam War, King spoke of travesty:

“And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.”

First released in 1968, “The Trumpet of Conscience” is moving and powerful, a nice reminder to an older generation who grew up with King’s words in their ears.

The thing to remember is that people of a younger generation will need guidance with this book, mostly because parts of it are barely relevant to them. King discusses youth of the 1960s, as well as the Vietnam War, which was five years from ending when he gave these lectures. That information is good, but it may be lost on youngsters.

Still, these words are almighty and it’s hard not to hear King’s voice behind them. The good news is that that voice is on the accompanying audio CD, which makes this a great package for reflection and teaching.

If you’re looking for something to mark Dr. King’s birthday, this is just about perfect. Despite its age, “The Trumpet of Conscience” is still laden with meaning.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s new poverty data for the states show millions of families struggling mightily to keep their heads above water in the wake of the Great Recession. Fourteen states saw statistically significant increases in their child poverty rates, 26 states saw small increases, and nine states and the District of Columbia saw small declines in child poverty rates last year. But the morally scandalous bottom line is clear: 16.1 million children are poor in our rich nation with more than seven million living in extreme poverty, too often scared, hungry and homeless.

Although there are more poor White than Black or Hispanic children, Black and Hispanic children suffer most. In 25 states and the District of Columbia, at least 40 percent of Black children were poor; in four states, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, 50 percent or more of Black children were poor. Thirty-three percent or more of Hispanic children were poor in 32 states.

In 2011, more than one in five children were poor in over half the states and the District of Columbia. In half of these states more than one in four children were poor. Children are the poorest age group in America, and the younger they are the poorer they are. More than one in four children under six were poor in 21 states and the District of Columbia during their years of greatest brain development. In 30 states and the District of Columbia, 10 percent or more of infants, toddlers, and kindergarteners lived in extreme poverty which means an annual family income of less than $11,511 for a family of four.

The 13 states and the nation’s capital with child poverty rates 25 percent or higher are:

Mississippi 31.8

New Mexico 30.7

District of Columbia 30.3

Louisiana 28.8

Arkansas 28.1

South Carolina 27.8

Alabama 27.6

Kentucky 27.4

Arizona 27.2

Texas 26.6

Georgia 26.3

Tennessee 26.3

West Virginia 25.8

North Carolina 25.6

These shameful child poverty levels call for urgent and persistent action. Citizens must demand that every political leader state what they will do now to invest in and protect vulnerable children from hunger, homelessness, and poor education and to prepare them to be competent future workers. It’s way past time to eliminate epidemic child poverty and the child suffering, stress, homelessness, and miseducation it spawns.

A number of leading economists and researchers agree that investing in children today is the best way to prepare and create a strong America tomorrow. As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told participants at the Children’s Defense Fund’s national conference in July:

“Economically speaking, early childhood programs are a good investment with inflation-adjusted annual rates of return on the funds dedicated to these programs estimated to reach 10 percent or higher. Very few alternative investments can promise that kind of return. Notably, a portion of these economic returns accrues to the children themselves and their families, but studies show that the rest of society enjoys the majority of the benefits, reflecting the many contributions that skills and productive workers make to the economy.”

Do most Americans really want our children to get poorer while the rich get richer and to allow our budget to be balanced on the backs of poor babies while millionaires and billionaires receive hundreds of billions in more huge tax cuts they do not need? If you do not, speak up and vote for a more just America for every child.

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 www.childrensdefense.org.

I’m often asked, what’s wrong with our children? Too often we focus on the negative without celebrating young people who, despite the odds unfairly stacked against them, overcome great adversity, demonstrate academic excellence, and give back to their community and country. Each year, the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) takes time to honor examples of these inspiring youths through our Beat the Odds® scholarship and leadership development program. Each student receives a $10,000 scholarship, a laptop computer, guidance through the college admissions process and an invitation to join CDF’s leadership training programs — putting them on the path to college, successful adulthood and sustained child advocacy. Beat the Odds celebrations are held annually across the country. On November 15, we will honor five high school students from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia; on December 1, five in Los Angeles; and on December 14, five in New York City. All are succeeding and moving on to college despite overwhelming challenges. This year, CDF’s state offices honored 19 resilient students in Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul and New Orleans. Since 1990 when CDF began Beat the Odds celebrations, about 700 youths have won scholarships, and I could not be prouder of them. They are lawyers and educators and college professors and teachers and Peace Corps volunteers, and outstanding citizens. They make clear that no one has a right to give up on any child and that all of us lose when we waste the fine minds and great potential of millions of children every year. Their lives also make clear what a difference one or a few caring adults can make.

Thurman Anderson’s mother, a high school dropout, rarely worked. To provide for his siblings, Thurman sold candy and then drugs while still in elementary school. When he was nine years old, Thurman and his siblings were removed from their home and separated by the foster care system. Four years and five foster home placements later, Thurman met Jon and Nia West-Bey, who became his adoptive parents. He described them as the first people who could “provide a home where I could finally find my place and where people wanted me.” Thurman is now a student at Washington Latin Public Charter School where he is passionate about being a leader and mentors fellow students. Thurman is excited that he will be the first in his biological family to attend and graduate from college.

Andrew Finein came into the world facing daunting odds. He was born mute, unable to utter a sound until he was two and a half years old. Diagnosed with a host of mental and physical problems, doctors told his mother he would never be able to care for himself. Andrew’s early years were spent in therapy learning to speak and to do basic tasks like tying his shoes. But years of hard work and therapy paid off, and today, 17-year-old Andrew is already taking several college level classes and excels academically. Adults who know Andrew marvel at his positive attitude and strong work ethic.

As a child, Leland Kraatz’s home life was filled with anger and despair. His alcoholic father terrorized the whole family. When Leland was 10, his father was arrested after Leland’s two sisters revealed he had been abusing them. Leland’s mother became severely depressed and struggled to make ends meet. Home-schooled for years, the children were left to educate themselves. By the time Child Protective Services intervened, Leland had never had formal schooling and was years behind academically. He and his sister, Chelsea, moved in with their aunt and uncle. “For the first time in my life I was truly part of a real, functioning family the way it should be,” said Leland. Since then, he has worked extremely hard to adjust academically and socially. Although he entered formal school for the first time in ninth grade, he has maintained a 3.82 grade point average, tutors other students, and is thriving in his new life despite his tumultuous childhood.

Anh Luong is the youngest of five children born to Vietnamese immigrants. She grew up in extreme poverty in an unstable home with parents who battled substance abuse. When Anh was nine years old, she was assaulted by a family friend. She stopped going to school and failed fourth grade. She and her two older brothers then bounced back and forth between foster care and their parents’ home for the next few years. She remembers vividly the fear and despair she felt during this time. Anh said she wanted to “give up on life. I began thinking that my life was cursed.” But she didn’t give up, and today, Anh is a hard working senior on the path to college. “I have learned that if I share my story and share the struggles that I’ve been through, then I can reach out to others and help them to overcome as well,” she said.

When Mustafaa Nuraldin’s teachers describe him, they paint the picture of an ideal student — thoughtful, serious and polite — but just a few years ago Mustafaa was failing most of his classes. A precocious child, Mustafaa learned to read early and excelled in elementary school but a hostile environment in a new middle school disturbed him. He described it as “rowdy and violent, so much so that metal detectors were necessary. In addition to the crazed student body, there were a number of teachers who didn’t do their job.” Mustafaa started skipping school, choosing to read at a local bookstore. After his mother and grandmother enrolled Mustafaa at Washington Latin Charter School where teachers have encouraged his love of reading and creative writing, his attitude toward school changed completely. He plans to study philosophy or creative writing in college and is described by one of his teachers as “an old soul, a wise young man, a student with perfect moral pitch.”

All of the stories over the years including this year’s Washington, D.C. Beat the Odds scholarship recipients described here show the remarkable resiliency of children and the power of determination and hard work. They also show how much a caring adult can make a difference. Beat the Odds celebrations send a clear message to young people that we see and care about their plight, and understand what it takes to succeed in school and life when faced with huge obstacles. Millions of children struggling against the odds can succeed if each of us reaches out to and celebrates them rather than write them off as failures. To learn more about how you can support young people at Beat the Odds events around the country, go to the Children’s Defense Fund website. In a Thanksgiving season when many Americans pause to count their blessings, it should also be a season of giving back and sharing with those less fortunate. You can also help by being a voice for voiceless children. Tell your Senators and Representatives that you want children protected from budget cuts and you want Congress to invest in their health, education, and well-being. Together as a community of caring adults we can and must change the odds for all children. — (NNPA)

Marian Wright Edelman is a lifelong advocate for disadvantaged Americans and is the president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). Under her leadership, the CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families.

In Pennsylvania, many children who had been getting excited about their first day of full-day kindergarten were disappointed when full-day kindergarten fell victim to state budget cuts. Massachusetts families in 80 school districts had to pay an average of $3,110 this year for their children to attend full-day kindergarten. Families in West Valley, Washington, got lucky. The original tuition for full-day kindergarten was reduced to $175–$280 a month, depending on the family’s income. Meanwhile, children living in a handful of states with publicly-funded full-day kindergarten like Louisiana, North Carolina and Mississippi enrolled at their schools the same way children in public schools across the country enroll in first grade — without parents having to pay for it.

Public education in America is supposed to be built on a foundation of equal access for all children. But access to full-day kindergarten is more like a game of chance in which the lottery of geography and income determine which children are the winners. While the American public generally thinks of public education as a kindergarten through grade 12 system and federal education reform says K-12, for many children full-day kindergarten is a missing half-step in the all important early learning continuum.

We know good full-day kindergarten works to help children achieve. Study after study has shown full-day kindergarten plays a vital role in children’s educational development, boosting cognitive learning, creative problem-solving, and social competence, and promoting positive school outcomes including higher academic achievement in later grades, faster gains on literacy and language measures, and better attendance through the primary grades. When offered in the context of an aligned, seamless continuum of early learning, expanding access to full-day kindergarten becomes a critical strategy for closing achievement gaps by third grade, the stage at which success in school depends upon a child’s ability to transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

Research comparing half-day and full-day kindergarten strongly suggests children benefit more from a full-day kindergarten. Full-day kindergartners are more prepared for school: They do better with the transition to first grade, show significant gains in school socialization and are equipped with stronger learning skills. These children have enhanced social, emotional, and behavior development, and equally important, reduced retention and remediation rates.

Only 10 states require by statute that school districts provide publicly-funded full-day kindergarten, 34 states require school districts to provide half-day kindergarten and six states don’t require districts to provide any kindergarten. District of Columbia public schools offer full-day kindergarten for all children at no cost although not required by law. As the budget crisis has advanced across the country, many local school districts are cutting funding for full-day kindergarten, making the inequality worse. And in some school districts with full-day kindergarten, children are able to enroll only if their parents pay tuition for the half day not publicly funded, if they qualify for tuition assistance based on family income, or if the child is at risk of failing in school.

Unequal access to full-day kindergarten means many young children lose a critical opportunity to develop and strengthen foundational skills necessary for success in school and lifelong learning. Full-day kindergarten can no longer be considered an optional add-on or intervention program especially now that students are being held to new and more rigorous academic standards with the adoption of the Common Core Standards in 43 states and the District of Columbia and grade-level assessments of student mastery scheduled to begin in 2014. While these standards are consistent across states, the number of instructional hours varies dramatically from state to state and even from district to district within a state. Whether a child receives two and a half hours or six hours of kindergarten instruction a day, the expectation of mastery of core standards remains the same. Unless we fix this, some children will pay the price of too much to learn and too little time in which to learn it because states and school systems don’t provide the time and resources children need to meet and surpass common core standards.

All students in America must have a fair chance to meet and surpass standards so we must make their true “first grade,” kindergarten, equal in importance to grades one through 12. The Children’s Defense Fund’s Full-Day Kindergarten Campaign aims to bridge the gaps by working with educators and advocates in targeted states to expand access to and funding for full-day kindergarten; publishing reports and disseminating informational resources to raise awareness and support reform; building a national coalition to promote full-day kindergarten policy reforms; and advocating for federal incentives to support state efforts to expand access to full-day kindergarten. Join us and learn more about what is being provided to children in your district and state. We can’t keep leaving millions of children a half-step behind in school before they even get started. — (NNPA)

For information on CDF’s Full-Day Kindergarten Campaign go to: http://www.childrensdefense.org/policy-priorities/early-childhood-education-care/full-day-kindergarten.html.

Marian Wright Edelman is a lifelong advocate for disadvantaged Americans and is the president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families.

I am often asked, “what’s wrong with our children?” Children having children. Children killing themselves or others. Children dropping out of school and roaming streets alone or in gangs. Children addicted to tobacco and alcohol, drinking and drugging themselves to escape reality. Children being locked up in jails with adult criminal mentors, bubbling with rage and crushed by depression.

Adults are what’s wrong with children. Parents letting children raise themselves or be raised by television or the internet. Children being shaped by peers instead of parents, grandparents and kin. Children seeing adults be violent to each other and marketing, glorifying and tolerating violence to them and preaching what we don’t practice. Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating and to be healthy while selling them junk food that undermines their health.

I believe it is time for adults of every race and income group to break our silence about the pervasive breakdown of moral, family and community values, to place our children first in our lives, and to struggle to model the behavior we want our children to learn. We don’t have a child and youth problem in America; we have a profound adult problem as children do what they see adults doing in our personal, professional and public lives. What must our children think as they see the craven greed of too many corporate leaders pillaging their corporations and the homes, pensions and life blood of workers, seniors and stockholders? What must they think as they see too many political leaders repeatedly say one thing and do another? And what dare they believe when they see some religious leaders enjoined by faith to protect them abuse them instead? It’s time to close the adult hypocrisy gap.

I urge every parent and adult to conduct a personal audit to examine whether we are contributing to the crisis so many of our children face or to the solutions they urgently need. And if we are not a part of the solution, we are a part of the problem and need to do better. Our children don’t need or expect us to be perfect but they do need and expect us to be honest, to admit and correct our mistakes, and to share our struggles about the meanings and responsibilities of faith, parenthood, citizenship, and life. Before we can pull up the moral weeds of violence, materialism and greed in our society that are strangling our children, we must pull up the moral weeds in our own backyards. So many children are confused about what is right and wrong because so many adults talk right and do wrong in our personal, professional and public lives.

• If we are not supporting a child we brought into the world as a father or mother with attention, time, love, discipline, money and the teaching of values, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the family breakdown today leaving so many children at risk.
• If we are abusing tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, or other drugs while telling our children not to, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution in our overly addicted society.
• If we have guns in our home and rely on them to feel safe and powerful, and don’t stand up to those who market guns to our children, or glamorize violence as fun, entertaining and normal, then we are part of the problem rather than the solution to the escalating war of American against American, family member against family member, that is tearing us apart.
• If we tell our daughters not to engage in premature and irresponsible sex, and not to have children before they are prepared to parent and support them, and do not tell our sons the same thing, we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock births so many decry.
• If we profess to be people of faith but send rather than take our children to religious services, and believe that the gospels, prophets, Koran, or whatever religious beliefs we hold, pertain only to one-day worship but not to Monday through Sunday home, professional and political life, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the moral famine in our land today.
• If we tell, snicker, or wink at racial, gender, religious, or ethnic jokes or engage in or acquiesce in any practices intended to diminish rather than enhance other human beings, then we are contributing to the proliferating voices of racial and ethnic division and intolerance staining our land again.
• If we think being American is about how much we can get rather than about how much we can give and share to help all our children get a healthy, fair and safe start in life, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution.
• If we think it’s somebody else’s responsibility to teach our children values, respect, good manners, work and health habits, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to bullying and incivility rife today.
• If we or our organizations are spending more money on alcohol and entertainment than on scholarships, books, tutoring, rites of passage and mentoring programs for youths, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to ensuring positive alternatives and hope for children.
• If we’d rather complain about politicians than walk to the voting booths, school board meetings, political and community meetings to demand support for our children, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to voter apathy today.
• If our children of any color think that being smart and studying hard is acting white rather than acting Black or Brown and don’t know about the many great Black and Brown, as well as white achievers, who overcame every obstacle to succeed, then we are a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution to racial stereotyping.
• If we are not voting and holding political leaders accountable for investing relative pennies in quality early Head Start and pounds in the military budget, and for cutting effective child and family nutrition programs while protecting government welfare for rich farmers and corporate executives, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the growing gap between rich and poor.
• If we think corrupt and unaccountable Black and Brown leaders who neglect our children and communities are better than corrupt and unaccountable white leaders who neglect our children and communities or vice versa, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to voter cynicism and apathy.
• And if we think we have ours and don’t owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans and the very dream that is America. — (NNPA)

Marian Wright Edelman is a lifelong advocate for disadvantaged Americans and is the president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families.

I’m often asked, what’s wrong with our children? Too often we focus on the negative without celebrating young people who, despite the odds unfairly stacked against them, overcome great adversity, demonstrate academic excellence and give back to their community and country.

Each year, the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) takes time to honor examples of these inspiring youths through our Beat the Odds scholarship and leadership development program. Each student receives a $10,000 scholarship, a laptop computer, guidance through the college admissions process, and an invitation to join CDF’s leadership training programs — putting them on the path to college, successful adulthood and sustained child advocacy. Beat the Odds celebrations are held annually across the country. On Nov. 15 we honored five high school students from Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. on Dec. 1 we will honor five in Los Angeles; and on Dec. 14 five in New York City. All are succeeding and moving on to college despite overwhelming challenges.

This year, CDF’s state offices honored 19 resilient students in Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul and New Orleans. Since 1990 when CDF began Beat the Odds celebrations, about 700 youths have won scholarships and I could not be prouder of them. They are lawyers and educators and college professors and teachers and Peace Corps volunteers — and outstanding citizens. They make clear that no one has a right to give up on any child and that all of us lose when we waste the fine minds and great potential of millions of children every year. Their lives also make clear what a difference one or a few caring adults can make.

Thurman Anderson’s mother, a high school dropout, rarely worked. To provide for his siblings, Thurman sold candy and then drugs while still in elementary school. When he was nine years old, Thurman and his siblings were removed from their home and separated by the foster care system. Four years and five foster home placements later, Thurman met Jon and Nia West-Bey, who became his adoptive parents. He described them as the first people who could “provide a home where I could finally find my place and where people wanted me.” Thurman is now a student at Washington Latin Public Charter School where he is passionate about being a leader and mentors fellow students. Thurman is excited that he will be the first in his biological family to attend and graduate from college.

Andrew Finein came into the world facing daunting odds. He was born mute, unable to utter a sound until he was two and a half years old. Diagnosed with a host of mental and physical problems, doctors told his mother he would never be able to care for himself. Andrew’s early years were spent in therapy learning to speak and to do basic tasks like tying his shoes. But years of hard work and therapy paid off, and today, 17-year-old Andrew is already taking several college level classes and excels academically. Adults who know Andrew marvel at his positive attitude and strong work ethic.

As a child, Leland Kraatz’s home life was filled with anger and despair. His alcoholic father terrorized the whole family. When Leland was 10, his father was arrested after Leland’s two sisters revealed he had been abusing them. Leland’s mother became severely depressed and struggled to make ends meet. Home-schooled for years, the children were left to educate themselves. By the time Child Protective Services intervened, Leland had never had formal schooling and was years behind academically. He and his sister Chelsea moved in with their aunt and uncle. “For the first time in my life I was truly part of a real, functioning family the way it should be,” said Leland. Since then, he has worked extremely hard to adjust academically and socially. Although he entered formal school for the first time in ninth grade, he has maintained a 3.82 grade point average, tutors other students, and is thriving in his new life despite his tumultuous childhood.

Anh Luong is the youngest of five children born to Vietnamese immigrants. She grew up in extreme poverty in an unstable home with parents who battled substance abuse. When Anh was nine years old, she was assaulted by a family friend. She stopped going to school and failed fourth grade. She and her two older brothers then bounced back and forth between foster care and their parents’ home for the next few years. She remembers vividly the fear and despair she felt during this time. Anh said she wanted to “give up on life. I began thinking that my life was cursed.” But she didn’t give up, and today, Anh is a hard working senior on the path to college. “I have learned that if I share my story and share the struggles that I’ve been through, then I can reach out to others and help them to overcome as well,” she said.

When Mustafaa Nuraldin’s teachers describe him, they paint the picture of an ideal student — thoughtful, serious, and polite — but just a few years ago Mustafaa was failing most of his classes. A precocious child, Mustafaa learned to read early and excelled in elementary school but a hostile environment in a new middle school disturbed him. He described it as “rowdy and violent, so much so that metal detectors were necessary. In addition to the crazed student body, there were a number of teachers who didn’t do their job.” Mustafaa started skipping school, choosing to read at a local bookstore. After his mother and grandmother enrolled Mustafaa at Washington Latin Charter School where teachers have encouraged his love of reading and creative writing, his attitude toward school changed completely. He plans to study philosophy or creative writing in college and is described by one of his teachers as “an old soul, a wise young man, a student with perfect moral pitch.”

All of the stories over the years including this year’s Washington, D.C. Beat the Odds scholarship recipients described here show the remarkable resiliency of children and the power of determination and hard work. They also show how much a caring adult can make a difference. Beat the Odds celebrations send a clear message to young people that we see and care about their plight, and understand what it takes to succeed in school and life when faced with huge obstacles. Millions of children struggling against the odds can succeed if each of us reaches out to and celebrates them rather than write them off as failures. To learn more about how you can support young people at Beat the Odds events around the country, go to the Children’s Defense Fund web site. In a Thanksgiving season when many Americans pause to count their blessings, it should also be a season of giving back and sharing with those less fortunate. You can also help by being a voice for voiceless children. Tell your Senators and Representatives that you want children protected from budget cuts and you want Congress to invest in their health, education, and well-being. Together as a community of caring adults we can and must change the odds for all children.
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Repatriation. It’s a word many schoolchildren probably haven’t yet learned to define or even seen very often outside of spelling bees. But when it comes to corporate taxes, repatriation is the cornerstone of an idea that has the potential to severely hurt millions of children and parents and widen the already historic and unconscionable gap between the rich and the poor.

In its simplest definition, repatriation is bringing something back to its country of origin — returning it back home. One of the solutions to the jobs crisis being proposed by some of our Congressional leaders and lobbied for aggressively by some of the country’s richest corporations is a rehash of an old experiment: enacting a repatriation tax holiday that would temporarily allow U.S.-based multinational companies to bring home profits they currently hold overseas at a 5.25 percent tax rate, instead of the usual 35 percent corporate tax rate. Under current tax law, multinational companies generally pay no U.S. corporate taxes on foreign income until those profits are brought back to the U.S. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) explains, “This effectively allows such firms to defer payment of the U.S. corporate income tax on their overseas profits indefinitely, even though they may obtain an immediate tax deduction for many expenses incurred in supporting the same overseas investments. This can produce a negative U.S. corporate income tax — that is, a net government subsidy — for overseas operations. In addition to causing the federal government to lose tax revenue, this structure gives multinationals a significant incentive to shift economic activity — as well as their reported profits — overseas.”

The argument for the repatriation holiday is that giving corporations a huge incentive to bring profits back right now — in the form of an enormous tax break — would bring billions of dollars back to the U.S. economy that would be reinvested and provide a big stimulus to our economy. Corporate proponents and their Congressional allies argue this will create desperately needed jobs.

But the last time this was tried, under a 2004 Bush Administration plan, it didn’t work out that way. Instead, as CBPP points out, “The evidence shows that firms mostly used the repatriated earnings not to invest in U.S. jobs or growth but for purposes that Congress sought to prohibit, such as repurchasing their own stock and paying bigger dividends to their shareholders. Moreover, many firms actually laid off large numbers of U.S. workers even as they reaped multi-billion-dollar benefits from the tax holiday and passed them on to shareholders.” Many economists and scholars believe that if corporations get their way and get another repatriation holiday, history will repeat itself — and once again the corporations and their shareholders, not American workers, families, and children, will be the only winners.

The nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated the holiday would cost the federal government about $80 billion over ten years in lost revenue. The Economic Policy Institute’s Andrew Fieldhouse puts it this way: “While there are numerous job creation proposals that would meaningfully lower unemployment, some lawmakers are pushing counterproductive policies disguised as job creation packages. The proposed repeat of the corporate tax repatriation holiday is one such wolf in sheep’s clothing.” When the nation is already facing a jobs crisis and many Congressional leaders are threatening to slash nutrition, child care and other safety net programs, children and families rely on as a means of balancing the budget, revisiting a failed idea instead of coming up with real solutions and real jobs is a threat children and families and our country cannot afford. As the Occupy Wall Street protestors are shouting, let’s “just say no to corporate greed” and to Congresspeople who continue to raid the poor and children to curry favor and campaign contributions from the rich. — (NNPA)

Marian Wright Edelman is a lifelong advocate for disadvantaged Americans and is the president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families.