The event was held at the Newseum in Washington D.C. Introducing Hillary, Marian Wright Edelman noted her overwhelming lead in the popular vote and called her “the People’s President.” Hillary admitted that making this appearance was not the easiest thing for her. She said she wanted to curl up with a good book and her dogs and never leave the house again. But she said she got up and dusted herself off because Marian exemplified that for her. She reminisced about Marian’s leadership and service, and her work with RFK and MLK.
Hillary quoted Marian, “Service is the rent we pay for living.” She spoke of service and said she did not get into public service to hold high office. She called child poverty America’s problem. She said there is a lot of work to do and asked us not to lose heart or give up on the values we share and to stay engaged. She told us America is worth it. Our children are worth it. She quoted 1st Corinthians, “Love never fails.”
Hillary told the story of her mother, Dorothy, who had a difficult childhood. She dreams of going back to her mom’s childhood to tell her that she would grow up to have a family and her daughter would become a U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, and win more than 62 million votes for President of the United States.
We are not yet a week past the closing of CGI 2013 where Hillary Clinton announced new initiatives and projects: Beijing+20 to examine progress in women’s rights since her 1996 Beijing speech (deliverable 2016) and an initiative to join the battle against wildlife trafficking and elephant poaching. On the heels of that closing she assumed the chairof the leadership council at the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a partnership she helped establish in 2010.
Yet, if you put the following terms into a Google search [Hillary Clinton + projects] it yields page after page of articles about the scrapping of proposed movies about Hillary and not a single piece about the prodigious work she continues to do in her post-official world. Appalling!
Just prior the this year’s CGI she announced and met with a leadership and advisory boardfor Too Small to Fail. Here is their latest post. Do not let anyone tell you that the only Hillary Clinton projects are movies that have been jettisoned. Our Hillary is a very busy and productive private citizen who continues to work for the well-being of all.
Some precocious toddlers use many different words when communicating early on in their lives, while others appear to struggle through a few small words or phrases. While sometimes a limited vocabulary in a child’s early years may be due to a developmental problem, most often children with fewer words have simply not heard as many words as they needed to in order to effectively express themselves.
Put simply, children learn words that they hear spoken directly to them, and if they hear too few words and have too few conversational interactions while they are learning to speak, their vocabularies suffer. But so may their ability to succeed in school later on.
Researchers have found that children in low-income households often have less language stimulation than children in high-income households, resulting in a marked word gap that affects their early learning and preparation for school. In fact, the seminal research of Drs. Betty Hart and Todd Risley found that children in low-income homes hear 30 million fewer words by age four than children in high-income homes. Unfortunately, children who struggle with a limited vocabulary in kindergarten continue to struggle in seventh grade, in high school and even into adulthood.
Several pilot studies in communities across the country – including the Thirty Million Words Project in Chicago and Providence Talks in Providence, Rhode Island – are showing that parents who talk directly to their babies and toddlers often and in an engaging way can help their children develop their vocabulary more fully and positively impact their brain development. As parents and caregivers point out objects in a room, or sing songs, or read books, very young children begin to understand the words being used and their context. This word recognition is critical to building their knowledge base for future learning.
All of this is good news for kids and parents, because with some support and a few simple tools, parents and caregivers can help their babies express themselves meaningfully for life.
As you know, Hillary Clinton was honored last night at a Kennedy Center gala celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Children’s Defense Fund. If you were watching the Hillary news feeds, however, you might have thought the only headlines were about CNN and NBC dropping plans for movies and documentaries. To honor Hillary, CDF made their own video about her.
Hillary never slows down. She has embarked on several wonderful initiatives, including Too Small to Fail, as she mentions in the video and below. Americans and the world do not need scripted movies, documentary or otherwise, to tell us about her work. We have the real Hillary herself – her actions and her words.
Here is her tweet from last night’s event followed by the video and transcript of her remarks (thanks to CDF and Digital Journal), a rare treat since she left DOS!
What a great evening! Oh. I tell you, my only regret about tonight and this remarkable 40th anniversary is that I wish we could have held it at the Capitol and shared the enthusiasm, the stories, the resolve, the commitment and mission with those Members of our Congress, so that they understand why we can never give up. As Marian has said, this is the work of a lifetime. We’ve made progress. We’ve seen changes. We have watched the results of these young people who have been on the stage with us, and we know that that’s what America is really all about, the kind of values and commitment that we’ve seen.
I am one of the many people whose life was changed by Marian, and I was very lucky that I tracked her down one day when she was at the law school we both attended and asked her if I could have a job. She said she had no jobs because she had no money to pay anybody. I said, “Well, that’s a problem because I need to make money to go to law school,” and she said, “Well, if you can figure out how to get yourself paid, I’ll give you a job.” So I looked everywhere I could possibly look and found a paid stipend for the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council internship, and off I went for my first experience working for Marian.
And we’ve heard a lot about the example that Marian has set, the passion that she brings to her work and inspires in so many of us, but I want to add that she also really looked at the evidence. She never was unprepared. She knew that if we were to make a case on behalf of the children of our country, we had to have our facts straight. We had to know exactly what was going on in order to be advocates and agents of change.
One of my first experiences was when Marian intuited by sort of talking to people and then analyzed Census data and school enrollment and came to us and said, “I don’t understand it. I mean, there are so many more children in our country than we have in school who are of school age. We have to figure out what’s going on.” So I was one of the many people recruited to go door to door in some select Census districts and literally knocking on the door and, when someone answered the door, saying, “Do you have any children in the home who are not in school?” It was that hard daily work of gathering the facts, and what did I find? I found some children weren’t in school because they had to work to help support the family or they had to take care of their siblings, but I mostly found children with disabilities who in those days were not really welcome in our schools, children whose families couldn’t afford the wheelchair or the hearing aid or the other intervention that might have made it possible for them to attend school, and I was one of many who reported back the data. And as a result of all the work by so many of us, the Children’s Defense Fund published its very first report called “Children Out of School in America.”
And then Marian took the data and used it to convince lawmakers in Washington that more needed to be done to make sure that all of our children, including our children with disabilities, have the chance for an education, and in 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. And for me, that was transformative.
Marian was equal parts passion and compassion, toughness and tenderness, and relentless on behalf of children, justice, and progress.
And then in the 1980s, CDF successfully pushed to expand Medicaid to cover more pregnant women and children under 5 and children with disabilities. In the 1990s, we worked together to create the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, to improve the foster care and adoption systems, to expand Early Head Start, and then after 2000, CDF kept fighting for kids in foster care, in the juvenile justice system, in Head Start, working with both Republicans and Democrats, and of course, the work goes on.
There are dozens of laws on the books of the United States protecting children and supporting families that would not be there were it not for the Children’s Defense Fund. And I for one am very happy that even though now 90 percent of our children have access to health care, when the Affordable Care Act actually goes into implementation tomorrow, we will raise that number.
One of the many things that I love about Marian is that no matter how depressing the headlines, she keeps her eye on the trend lines. What’s happening with our kids? What can we do to improve the chances that more kids will be able to achieve educational success? And the Freedom Schools is a brilliant intervention in children’s lives in places where for too long, there wasn’t that kind of opportunity to learn, to collaborate, to think and dream as big as possible.
So although we are celebrating 40 years, which seems like a really long time, in the history of a country, it’s not that long. It’s just that our mission is so precious and urgent because, after all, today in America, more than 16 million children live in poverty, the highest percentage since the 1990s, and despite all the advances we’ve made, our babies are still more likely to be born underweight and undernourished in the last year than they were in 1990. And the prevalence of chronic health conditions in American children, including obesity, asthma, behavior and learning problems, and other conditions have more than doubled in the past two decades. And yes, nearly half of all the recipients of food stamps are children, 22 million who rely on that program to get the food they need to be healthy, to be able to pay attention in school, to thrive for the future.
So why on earth would some want to be tearing down the support structure that keeps our children healthy?
So, yes, there’s a lot of work to be done. I for one am looking forward to continuing that work, both as a partner with CDF and at the Clinton Foundation working with my husband and my daughter, trying to make sure that we all do what we can to help more kids beat the odds, and I could not be prouder or happier to have sat in the audience and heard the stories of just a few of the young people, to see the performances of just a few of the young people whose lives have been touched, even transformed by the Children’s Defense Fund.
So I know I was sitting next to Marian when we heard that extraordinary speech from our young City Councilmember in Stockton, and, you know, I do have an eye for political talent.
So I kind of expect that we’ll be hearing more from him, but he had this great cadence going about how in the next 40 years, the next 40 years. And Marian is going, “We can’t wait that long.”
Well, we can’t. We can’t. We want the next generation and the generation after that to have many more opportunities to realize the American dream, however they define it, to be able to live up to their own God-given potential, and we want to keep making progress every year, year by year, to make it clear that every child is our child. And we will not rest until every single child has the same chance to beat the odds as the ones you saw tonight.
I have loved this jacket, which she wears only rarely and exclusively to evening events, since the first time she wore it to a function during a NATO summit in April 2009. It looks every bit as lovely on her now as it did then.
2009 NATO Summit
Hillary’s work for children will be further recognized this evening when Save the Children honors her with their National Legacy Award. Seeing her so honored trumps a movie any day of the week. Our best congratulations, Mme. Secretary on two such accolades in two days!
With CGI 2013in the archives, and its participants energetically diving into new and continuing commitments, initiatives, and projects, Hillary Clinton is not one to let the grass grow under her kitten heels. She, too, launched headlong into another busy week today.
Congratulations, Madame Secretary, on the well-deserved recognition of your work, and thank you for the words of wisdom you never fail to impart. We are always right here watching with admiration and pride!
WASHINGTON, DC – On Monday, September 30, 2013, the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) will host its 40th Anniversary Celebration at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. At the event, CDF will honor former Secretary of State and Children’s Defense Fund Alumna Hillary Rodham Clinton for her dedication and contributions to child advocacy.
SNIP
WHAT: Children’s Defense Fund 40th Anniversary CelebrationWHEN: Monday, September 30, 2013
VIP Reception: 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Program: 8:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.WHERE: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
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"... ratify the Law of the Sea Convention, which has provided the international framework for exploring these new opportunities in the Arctic. We abide by the international law that undergirds the convention, but we think the United States should be a member, because the convention sets down the rules of the road that protect freedom of navigation, provide maritime security, serve the interests of every nation that relies on sea lanes for commerce and trade, and also sets the framework for exploration for the natural resources that may be present in the Arctic." -HRC, 06-03-12, Tromso Norway
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"...whether it’s here, in the absolute best embassy in the world, or whether it’s in Washington, or whether it’s elsewhere, what a difference one woman can make. And that woman is right here, the woman who needs no introduction, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton." 07.05.10 - Unidentified speaker, Embassy Yerevan
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