c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-Jane and Philip Hall will climb aboard a bus at midnight on June 1 in Florence, Mass., for a nine-hour trip to be part of a rally billed as an “historic stand for children.”

The Halls say they have three aims-none of them political, at least not in the partisan sense.

They want to show the nation’s leaders “that the little Florences around the country are concerned about children and will take this time to go and show our support,” said Jane Hall.

They want children to know that people care profoundly about their futures.

And they want to take the energy and inspiration they expect to find at the march and recommit themselves to helping children back home.

The Halls-he’s a retired United Church of Christ minister-are joining child advocates, educators, parents, religious leaders and children from California to New York who are chartering buses, trains and planes to march for the rights of children at the June 1 rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

The Halls and many other participants may not think it’s political. But conservative critics complain that the event is nothing more than a rally for the liberal welfare agenda.

The brainchild of Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, the rally has drawn more than 2,300 endorsements. Backers include junior leagues, labor unions, YMCAs and YWCAs, national children’s medical associations and dozens of churches, interfaith groups and educational organizations.

Rally sponsors say they want the “Stand for Children” march to serve as an inspiration for child advocates, who often feel isolated when working on their own specific issues.

“There are so many issues that children’s advocates work on, and it’s very easy to be focused on the issue that’s most important to you,” said Barbara Reisman, director of the New York-based Child Care Action Campaign. “This has helped people build bridges.”

Advocates also say they want to send a message to politicians, who they fear are bent on dismantling protections for society’s most vulnerable children, whether it be welfare subsidies, school lunches or health care.

“If you’ve had enough of political leaders from all parties using children as political props and pawns and talking about family values while not supporting what families need to raise healthy, safe, moral and educated children, come stand with us,” Edelman said in an early call for participation.

But conservative critics-who complain that they weren’t even invited to join the rally-say the Children’s Defense Fund and other liberal advocacy groups are the ones guilty of using children as political props.

“They’re using children as a shield for defending the welfare state and big government programs,” said Ken Weinstein, director of the Government Reform Project at the Heritage Foundation here, a conservative think tank.

Weinstein has written a paper attacking many of the rally’s participants, at least a hundred of which he claims are federal grant recipients, to the tune of about $392 million a year.

In fact, many of the endorsing agencies do receive federal, state or local money because they have contracts to run various health, education, child care and other programs for children.

Wade Horn, director of the National Fatherhood Institute in Lancaster, Pa., who served as the commissioner for children, youth and families in the Bush Administration, said he would have been happy to attend, despite some political differences he has with Edelman. (The two served together for three years on the National Commission on Children.)

Horn believes Edelman and her colleagues have every right to have a rally and only invite those who agree with their agenda.

“But to call it `Stand for Children’ suggests that if you’re not there, you don’t support children. I find that, at a minimum, audacious, and at a maximum, insulting.”

Such debates are of little consequence to people outside the Washington Beltway, who simply see the march as one way to signal their growing concern over the state of children’s lives in this country.

“We really need some steam,” said Judy Watts, with the Agenda for Children, a New Orleans group that is sending a busload of marchers. “This should provide some renewed vigor for our efforts.”

Lorna Miller, director of the community outreach program at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif., agrees. Her church has coordinated the trip for some 200 Pasadena residents, most of whom are flying the Friday night before the march.

“I do not see this as a political thing. I see the Children’s Defense Fund as raising the consciousness of America,” Miller said.

MJP END FRERKING