Rallying Support for Children’s Movement

Organizers and participants in the Stand for Children rally that drew 200,000 people to the nation’s capital June 1 say the demonstration is only the beginning of an effort to forge a movement aimed at aiding young people.

“It was a tremendous success,” said J. Christoph Arnold of Rifton, N.Y., a senior elder of the Bruderhof movement, a sect similar to the Amish or Mennonites. “People came hungry for a message on how do we help our children. Now the task begins.”

That task is to get the message and momentum of the rally down to the grass-roots level.

“We are just beginning . . . the next phase of our movement,” said Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, the Washington-based advocacy group that sponsored the rally.

Edelman’s group supports public and private programs for children and has long called for increased federal spending for education, health and welfare programs for poor children and families.

The next step for rally organizers, she said, is to create a database of the names and addresses collected at the rally and to try to organize local groups through churches and other organizations to work for change in their communities.

“Everybody whose name we got . . . will hear from us within 30 days so that they can begin to take the next step,” Edelman said.

The Rev. Paul Gehris, policy advocate of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches in Harrisburg, Pa., one of the 3,700 organizations that endorsed the march, agrees that taking the movement to the grass-roots level is the next step.

“What we’re going to do next is to work with our 44 member bodies and help them get involved in more things--summer feeding programs, programs that keep kids busy, things like that,” he said.

The rally had a strong religious overtone and was endorsed by hundreds of religious groups, from small local congregations to national agencies, including the National Council of Churches, Catholic Charities USA, the Council of Islamic Schools in North America, the American Jewish Committee, and the Congress of National Black Churches.

*

As Edelman addressed the crowd, 50 religious leaders, each with a child from his or her congregation, sat behind her, symbolizing a mosaic of faiths and their commitment to children. They represented Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Baha’i faiths, among others.

“We stand today at the Lincoln Memorial as American families and as an American community to commit ourselves to putting our children first,” Edelman told the rally. “We commit ourselves to building a just America that leaves no child behind, and . . . to ensuring all our children have a healthy and a safe passage to adulthood.”

The rally, billed as nonpolitical and nonpartisan--no elected politicians were invited to speak--had more of the flavor of a religious revival or a small-town community picnic than of the typical cause-oriented Washington demonstration. No federal program or proposed legislation was either endorsed or denounced.

During the festive, three-hour rally, families sprawled on the grounds near the Washington Monument and enjoyed picnic lunches, teenagers waded in the reflecting pool, and hundreds of children romped in the grass.

From the opening invocation to the final hymn by a 2,000-member chorus of young people, religious themes threaded through the event.

There was as much singing as speaking and, except for Edelman’s 30-minute keynote address, most of the talks were brief and anecdotal--stories that spoke of the importance of the individual, the family and the community in overcoming the adversities of childhood.

Edelman sought to paint the effort in broad, noncontroversial strokes.

“This is a day about unity and community, and not about controversy,” Edelman said. “This is a day about rekindling our children’s hopes and renewing our faith in each other and in our great nation’s future. It is not about partisan politics.”

*

But no demonstration in Washington is without a political dimension, and the Stand for Children rally was no exception.

Gehris, of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, suggested as much.

“I think this [rally] is going to give momentum to the movement,” he said. “Each political candidate is going to have to outdo the other in making clear their commitment to children or suffer the consequences.”

However, even before the event began, conservative groups were criticizing the rally as a misguided effort to rally support for failed government programs.

Gary Bauer, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council, noted that the Children’s Defense Fund has supported increased spending for federal anti-poverty programs for children and called the march “the last stand for big government.”

And Kenneth Weinstein, director of the Government Reform Project for the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said the rally “should actually be called ‘the march of the social services administrators’ ” because many of the marchers deliver social services--some government-funded--to the young.

In her speech, however, Edelman dismissed the critics.

“We do not stand here advocating big government,” she said. “We stand here advocating just government, a government that does not give more to those who have and less to those who have not.”