Truemors
Edelman
I write for Associated Content.com, this morning I recieved a message from another producer.William Edward Thomas. William sent me this link "Incarceration of Black Men is New Slavery". He is the National Community Outreach Facilitator for the National Public Service Council To Abolish Private Prisons. (NPSCTAPP) a very small but determined San Francisco, California “Bay Area” based group. This group has written and is currently sponsoring a very important petition which urgently needs your support. The Single Voice Project is the name of a petition, which seeks to have the United States Congress respond to an initiative that demands Congress act to abolish private “for profit” prisons in the United States. Please join us in solidarity by adding your voice to ours: Sign The Petition! Put the link on your website, on your blog. Tell everyone you know. http://www.petitiononline.com/gufree2/petition.html INCARCERATING PEOPLE FOR PROFIT IS IN A WORD WRONG! They also extend an open invitation to visit thier blog site. There’s plenty of information from various sources to help you learn more about this important issue. http://www.npsctapp.blogspot.com “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. It’s the only thing that ever has” -Margaret Mead NPSCTAPP P.O. Box 156423 San Francisco, CA 94115 415.420.3891 williamthomas@exconciliation.com
Marian Wright Edelman has been a foot soldier in the battle to save black children for more than four decades. At age 70, you would think she’d be ready to hang up her boots. But no solider worth her salt would retreat when defeat would mean annihilation.
Are things really that bad? Edelman is emphatic.
“Black children are in a more perilous condition than ever before,” she said during an Oct. 13 visit to the College. “This is the worst condition since slavery. A third of black children won’t do better than the current generation.”
The founder of the Children’s Defense Fund has taken her battle cry on the road, mostly to college campuses as she did at the Leadership Center promoting her latest book, The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small. The book began as a report to Morehouse alumnus Martin Luther King Jr. ‘48 to update him on how well we have heeded his message to conquer the evils of militarism, materialism and racism.
“He would not be pleased,” Edelman said.
As the head of the CDF for 35 years, where she has been a staunch advocate for minority, poor and handicapped children, Edelman has witnessed some improvements, such as accommodations for disabled children in public schools, Head Start, Job Care and expanded health care.
But there is a litany of things Edelman believes are desperately worse, such as the achievement gap. Eighty-four percent of black children cannot read at grade level, and a full 90 percent do not perform math at grade level, she said.
The gravest of all: one in three 7-year-old black boys is in a cradle-to-prison pipeline, Edelman said. And, she added, their removal from society will lead to the demise of the black community.
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