Tens of Thousands Rally in Defense of Aid to Children

Tens of thousands of people from across the nation gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday to march, sing, clap and cheer in support of a simple but powerful cause--the welfare of children.

Organizers of the “Stand for Children” rally said they hoped the outpouring would remind politicians here and across the nation that, popular as it may be to cut spending on welfare, medical care and other social programs for the poor, the impact may ultimately fall upon millions of politically voiceless children.

The idealism of the message drew not only hordes of Head Start teachers and child-welfare workers, but also masses of parents, grandparents and community volunteers. The U.S. Park Police estimated the crowd at 200,000.

At significantly smaller rallies throughout Los Angeles, residents gathered in support of the Washington event. At Los Angeles City Hall, about 3,000 participants took part in a demonstration whose theme was ending violence against children. In Sylmar, about 250 people, including 125 children, challenged both the federal government and their own communities to increase support for programs that help children.

And in Pasadena, an estimated 600 people gathered at All Saints Episcopal Church to lend moral support to the effort.

The sea of faces in the nation’s capital was dotted with flags, banners and posters reflecting the conviction that victory over the federal budget deficit should not be achieved at the expense of poor children.

“The true measure of a nation’s greatness is how we care for our most vulnerable children. That’s the message we want to deliver,” said Marty E. Coleman, a member of the All Saints congregation, which also sent nearly 300 people to the rally. The church members raised money to fly the group to Washington, sending along 14 boys from their area who play basketball in the church’s Tuesday night league.

“This is not about politics, but about neighborhoods and communities,” she said.

A purely nonpolitical event in the nation’s capital is something of a contradiction in terms, however, and rally organizer Marian Wright Edelman capped off the event with a rip-roaring and decidedly partisan speech.

She denounced government spending for new military weapons and larger prisons and repeatedly attacked the idea of giving tax cuts “to the few who have so much.”

“We do not stand here advocating big government. We stand here advocating just government,” said Edelman, the longtime president of the Children’s Defense Fund and a friend of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“We question the family values of anyone who is willing to spend $20,000 to lock up our children, but not $3,500 to send him to Head Start.”

Conservative advocates on so-called family issues have said they were excluded from the rally, and Republican leaders criticized it Saturday as a “thinly veiled” attack on the GOP-controlled Congress.

“Regrettably, this event is more about election-year politics than about standing for children,” said Rep. Bill Baker (R-Danville). He noted that the GOP’s tax-cut proposal would give a $500-per-child tax credit to families and offer a tax credit of up to $5,000 for adoptions.

These proposals would do more to “strengthen the family” than the “government-knows-best social agenda [favored] by Hillary Clinton’s close friend Marian Wright Edelman,” he said.

President Clinton seized the opportunity Saturday to tout his record on issues affecting children. In his weekly radio address, he noted his proposals to restrict tobacco advertising directed at youths and his support for the V-chip, which would allow parents to screen out TV shows they considered inappropriate for their children to watch.

During his term, he noted, the government has increased spending for vaccinating children and for Head Start classes for preschoolers. Seven youngsters, including two in wheelchairs, were invited to attend the radio broadcast from the Oval Office.

The president also traded shots with the Republicans on welfare. To the dismay of liberal advocates such as Edelman, he has said he will sign a bill that would end the 61-year-old federal guarantee to provide benefits to all who qualify.

However, in his address the president repeated his pledge to veto a welfare reform bill if Republican leaders insist on adding a Medicaid measure that he said would limit health care protection to children and the disabled.

He said the GOP proposal would leave it up to states to provide such care. “It says to people with disabilities, ‘If you don’t have insurance, I’m sorry if you don’t happen to be able to get care from your state anymore.’ ”

“I will never accept the repeal of guaranteed health care for poor children,” Clinton said. “I don’t care what bill they attach to, I will not accept it.”

But despite the political rhetoric in the background, many in the huge throng that gathered Saturday said they were not interested in partisan sniping.

“We want to talk about our responsibility to children. We want to say no child should be hungry in this country. No child should feel unsafe,” said Debbie Harrison, a Head Start teacher from Napa, Calif.

The momentum from the rally will be felt in the states even more than in Washington, said some organizers.

“We want to create an army of child advocates. And we want to elect politicians who will put children first,” said Jetta Bernier, executive director of the Massachusetts Committee for Children and Youth.

Under a brilliantly clear sky, people of all ages lined both sides of the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial and stretched toward the Washington Monument. Carrying state flags and clapping their hands, thousands of children and adults began the rally by marching shoulder-to-shoulder across the Memorial Bridge, which spans the Potomac River.

They carried signs that said “Politicians Were Children Once Too” and “Kids Rule” and “Education Is Not a Privilege, It’s a Right.”

Celebrities, including “Stand and Deliver” star Edward James Olmos, “NYPD Blue’s” Kim Delaney, actress Rosie O’Donnell and fashion model Iman, also joined the rally.

Edelman said she organized the rally, co-sponsored by 3,700 organizations, after spending another year watching children suffer from neglect, abuse and the breakdown of moral, family and community values.

Edelman came to national prominence in 1968 as a leader of the Poor People’s March on Washington, an event that had been planned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the months before his assassination.

In the years following, she has been lauded as a brilliant political strategist because she focused on children to gain support for increased federal aid for the poor.

In recent years, conservative critics, including GOP leaders, have contended that guaranteed welfare payments may make the poverty problem worse. The number of out-of-wedlock births has soared since the 1960s and a culture of dependency has deepened, they say.

Edelman shied away from that debate Saturday and emphasized the need to “do right by our children.”

“The world’s richest nation lets 2,600 children be born every day into poverty,” she said. “We have the biggest wallet in the industrialized world, but we have a much smaller will to share it with our children.”

Times staff writers Henry Weinstein, Larry B. Stammer, Frank B. Williams and wire services contributed to this story.

* CITY HALL RALLY: Thousands in L.A. gather for their own ‘stand.’ B1