Sunday Salute VIII

Marian 

Wright 

Edelman

 (1939 - )

Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and President of the Children's Defense Fund, was the first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi state bar. She has given her life for the defense of Children and is one of my heroes.

Quotes - 

• The inability to get health care because people lack insurance, kills, less traumatically, and less visibly than terrorism, but the result is the same. And poor housing and poor education and low wages kills the spirit and the capacity and the quality of life that all of us deserve. - 2001

• The legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says that no kid is going to be left alone or left unsafe.

• 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.

• Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.

• My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

• When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, "Let all children come unto me."

• Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.

• Education is a precondition to survival in America today.

• Question: Organization's like James Dobson's Focus on the Family tend to argue that child care, child welfare, is a family-first enterprise, whereas CDF wants to place child rearing in the hands of the government. How do you respond to those kinds of criticisms?

I wish they would do their homework. I wish they would read my book The Measure of Our Success. In these matters I believe in family above all. I believe in parents. I believe that most parents will do the best job they can. At CDF we always say that the most important thing we can do is support parenting and parents. But most of our public policies and private-sector policies make it harder rather than easier for parents to do their job. I favor parental choice. I was opposed to changes in the welfare system that would demand that mothers go out to work. --1998 interview, The Christian Century