NEWS STORY: Backers of children’s rally say more efforts to come

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-Organizers and participants in the Stand for Children rally that drew 200,000 people to the nation’s capital Saturday (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., […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-Organizers and participants in the Stand for Children rally that drew 200,000 people to the nation’s capital Saturday (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., senior elder of the Bruderhof movement, a sect similar to the Amish or Mennonites but that lives communally.”People came hungry for a message on how do we help our children. Now the task begins.” That task, according to Arnold and others, is to get the message and momentum of the rally down to the grassroots level.”We are just beginning … the next phase of our movement,”Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, the Washington-based liberal advocacy group that sponsored the rally, said on Sunday. Edelman’s group supports public and private programs for children and has long called for increased federal spending for education, health and welfare program for poor children and families.”We have a lot of local action menus (action kits), and nobody should have any excuse not to stand for children.” Arnold said Bruderhof volunteers had collected more than 7,000 names and addresses at the rally that will help form a data base for the Children’s Defense Fund and the next stage of the movement. Other volunteers collected thousands more.”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, agreed that taking the movement to the grassroots 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 local congregations such as the Abysinnian Baptist Church in New York to the Winnetka (Ill.) Congregational Church and such national agencies as 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.”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 throng on Saturday.”We commit ourselves to building a just America that leaves no child behind, and we commit ourselves to insuring all our children have a healthy and a safe passage to adulthood.” As Edelman spoke, 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 the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Baha’i faiths, among others.

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 ate picnic lunches spread on the grounds near the Washington Monument, teen-agers 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, the community, in overcoming the adversities of childhood.

Edelman sought to paint the effort in broad, non-controversial 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.” Even before the event began, conservative groups criticized the rally as a misguided effort to rally support for failed big-government programs.


Gary Bauer, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council, noting the Children’s Defense Fund’s support over the years for increased spending for federal anti-poverty programs for children, called the march”the last stand for big government.” 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.”

MJP END ANDERSON

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