Remarks by Marc H. Morial, President and CEO, National Urban League:
Good Evening, Urban Leaguers!
We gather in sunny, steamy, balmy Fort Lauderdale for our 2015 Conference, “Save our Cities: Education, Jobs & Justice.”
We gather on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the 50th anniversary of the President Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and year 105 of the Urban League Movement.
We gather in the sunshine state, one of our Urban League strongholds, with seven active and effective affiliates:
- The Urban League of Palm Beach, led by Patrick J. Franklin
- The Central Florida Urban League, led by Interim President Shellie Ann Minnis
- The Urban League of Greater Miami, Inc., led by T. Willard Fair
- The Jacksonville Urban League, led by Dr. Richard Danforth
- The Tallahassee Urban League, led by the Rev. Ernest Ferrell.
- The Pinellas County Urban League, led by Watson l. Haynes II
But I especially want to thank our incredible hosts the Urban League of Broward County, and their exceptional leader, Dr. Germaine Smith-Baugh.
In Germaine Smith-Baugh, we have one of the brightest new leaders in the Urban League movement. She is precise, hard-working, and she has built a model affiliate here in Broward County.
I’d like to thank Al Tucker and the Broward County Hospitality Community, who made an irresistible case for bringing this year’s conference here, and made us some offers we couldn’t refuse.
This is our first conference under the leadership of our new national board chair, Michael F. Neidorff. Chairman Neidorff is the Chairman, President and CEO of Centene Corporation, a Fortune 500 health care company that operates health plans serving 2.9 million people in 21 states and health insurance solutions to other health care and commercial organizations. We welcome Chairman Neidorff and thank him for his service.
Welcome, Affiliate leaders, CEO’s, Young Professionals, Affiliate board members, volunteers and supporters, all the speakers and workshop participants that will make the Urban League conference the biggest and most important civil rights, social justice and urban advocacy gatherings anywhere in America.
Welcome also to our Youth Summit participants – teenagers from across the nation. They are future, and they are our hope.
Five years ago this week, we gathered at the First Baptist Church of Glenarden, just outside Washington, D.C., and we launched the I am EMPOWERED campaign in celebration of our 100th anniversary.
Since then, the Urban League movement has served about 10 million people as economic first responders.
In the last 24 months, we’ve seen an acceleration of high profile incidents that have brought the issue of racial justice to the forefront of the American conversation.
We mourn the loss of Michael Brown. We mourn the loss of Tamir Rice. We mourn the loss of New York City Police Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. We mourn the loss of Walter Scott. We mourn the loss of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin, Clementa Pinckney and the Mother Emanuel Nine.
If police tactics were the spark that set off the explosion in Ferguson, we know that poverty, hopelessness and joblessness were the tinder.
As the discussion about racial justice has been elevated in America, the Urban League movement must be and will be part of the response and the solutions.
We must save our cities.
At the national level, our 10-point Plan for Justice and Police Accountability was presented to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. We successfully advocated for key provisions that were included in the workforce innovation and opportunity act. The “Put Our Children First” multi-media campaign strengthened our support for Common Core Standards with an emphasis on equity.
But it has been our Affiliate leaders, under the leadership of Valerie Thompson, who have truly led the way: Michael McMillan in St. Louis breaking ground on a new community center on the site of a convenience store destroyed in Ferguson’s unrest … Marsha Mockabee in Cleveland, working together with a coalition of civil rights and human rights organizations to rebuild community trust in the wake of officer Michael Brelo’s acquittal … our Affiliate leaders in South Carolina including J.T. McLawhorne, Jil Littlejohn and Otha Meadows, who have been involved in the now-successful effort for the last 15 years to remove that symbol of hate, the confederate flag, from the state capitol grounds …. Not to mention our Trustee Jabar Shumate who’s become Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Oklahoma in response to an ugly incident of racial hostility involving a fraternity chant …. Our chairman Michael Neidorff who’s building a facility and putting people to work in Ferguson … and the countless number of Urban Leaguers, Young Professionals and GUILDers who’ve been involved in the streets, on social media, in boardrooms and in their community relationships.
We must save our cities
Some may ask if the Urban League is needed now, after more than 100 years. I would answer emphatically, unequivocally, forcefully and unapologetically, that not only is the Urban League still needed, the Urban League is needed now more than ever. If the Urban League didn’t exist today, there would be a National Task Force working with an army of economic experts trying to invent us.
Not all great men and women are Urban Leaguers. But all Urban Leaguers are great men and women. If one is willing to serve, then one is great. If one is willing to lead on difficult issues of racial justice and economic opportunity, then one is great. If one is willing to work beyond the headlines, then one is great.
We must save our cities.
What is the Urban League in the 21st Century? The landscape of the 21st Century is made up of think tanks. Think tanks have powerful thoughts and write excellent, well-worded position papers. They even sometimes produce model legislation. The 21st Century landscape is populated by talk tanks. They are erudite and articulate, and sometimes even clever and funny.
We in the Urban League can think, and we can talk. But at our core and in our DNAwe are a do-tank.
The do-tank must lead the effort to save our cities. The do-tank is about solutions.
In city after city that I visit, I see a recurring theme of a tale of two cities. I see glistening downtowns, I see beautiful hotels and office buildings. I see coffee shops and condos. But in city after city I need only ride another three blocks or 13 blocks or 30 blocks and I see stifling poverty. Rambling, ramshackle, substandard housing where people are paying exorbitant rents. I see men and women standing at bus stops, heading for work in the dark, to a job that does not pay a living wage. I see small-business entrepreneurs struggling to find capital to grow their enterprises and ideas.
You and I don’t read about this. You and I don’t study it. You and I see it ourselves, because you’ve given me the opportunity to travel to your affiliates – 15 cities in the last year alone, and over 90 in the last several years - and I see a tale of two cities in every one of them.
If we are to save our cities, there are three main fronts on which we need to find long-term solutions: education, jobs and justice.
On education, we have been working on solutions with congress as part of an interesting alliance between other civil rights groups and business leaders, to reauthorize the elementary and secondary education act during this 50th Anniversary Year of President Johnson’s edict for educational equity.
Our affiliates have been on the ground, working on solutions, supporting our efforts for common core state standards, because strong standards are the only way we can be economically competitive in a changing world - and standards without equitable and adequate funding will not succeed.
We must save our cities.
When it comes to jobs, the do-tank of the Urban League movement helped 16 thousand people find jobs last year and thousands more access high-quality job training, and we’ll match that record with anyone. With expanded support, I truly believe we could go from 16 thousand to 160,000 to 1.6 million. That’s how good our programs and our people are.
We must close the growing income and wealth gaps that threaten our economic progress.
We must save our cities.
When it comes to justice, we must fix the damage to democracy by the Supreme Court in the Shelby v. Holder decision. We are working for passage of the Voting Rights Amendment Act, a flexible and forward-looking set of protections against voter suppression and voter dilution. We can claim to be a free democracy only if everyone has a chance to choose our leaders. The pursuit of democracy is not a partisan issue. The diversity of this great nation must be reflected in our elected leadership and we must protect our greatest freedom, the freedom to vote, and freedom from sophisticated schemes to suppress or dilute the vote.
Further on the issue of justice, we must work for sensible gun safety laws. In 2015 alone, there have been more than 200 mass-shooting incidents in the United States, killing more than 250 people. Among those who died were the Emanuel 9 in Charleston, South Carolina, four marines and a sailor at military installations in Chattanooga Tennessee, and the two women killed at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, just last week.
Gun safety measures like criminal background checks for every gun purchase won’t prevent every gun death, but they might have kept guns out of the hands of Dylann Roof and john Russell Howard – people who have hate running through their veins and clouding their minds.
We must fix a broken criminal justice system, where non-violent offenders face unduly harsh sentences that defy common sense and logic, and a prison system which destructively drains $80 billion from schools, health clinics, community centers, transportation infrastructure.
Here in south Florida we will hear from five presidential candidates. We extended invitations to all candidates who appeared in a reputable public opinion poll such as Gallup, Rasmussen or Zogby, or who contacted us before July 1. We want them to come, we want to hear from them. We’ve invited them here not for a feigned reality show, not for a political sideshow, and not to entertain us. If you want to be entertained, there’s always Bravo or ESPN. We want to hear the presidential candidates’ plans to save our cities. We want to know where they stand on the issues of education, jobs and justice. We want solutions and ideas, not rhetoric or slogans.
As a do-tank, we reaffirm our passion for non-partisan activism. We are not a democratic organization. We are not a republican organization. We’re not aligned with any political party, but we are passionate about our mission and our ideas. That means we have no permanent friends, we have no permanent enemies; we have only permanent interests.
We will work in coalition with the NAACP, the National Action Network, Black Lives Matter, the Black Women’s Roundtable, the National Council of La Raza, LULAC, Asian Americans Advancing Justice - other friends and allies in the civil rights and social justice community – wherever we have a commonality of interest, be it with business leaders or faith leaders, or labor leaders, we will solicit ideas and work toward solutions.
We refuse to be place in a mold, or a box, or a straight jacket. We will dare, when necessary, to be different … to go our own course … to set the pace. We will not be driven by ego or personal gain. We will remember there are tree-shakers and jelly-makers. There are workhorses and showhorses. There are think tanks and talk tanks and do-tanks.
We are jelly-makers and workhorses who run the most effective do-tank devised in American history.
We will not rest on our history or coast on our reputation. We must – and will – embrace the new generation represented by our young professionals and our youth summit. And we do say black lives matter, because your life matters, and all lives matter. Go ahead and turn to your neighbor and say “your life matters.”
When you are a do-tank, in communities, when you’re on the front lines, you know that jobs are not only about legislation or policy papers; it’s about connecting a single mom with two children to a GED program and skills training so she can get a job with a living wage and support her family.
Housing is not only about financial regulations and rules – it’s about connecting a young couple with a new baby to their first homeownership opportunity with a fair mortgage.
Education is not only about advocacy for more affordable college loans, but providing a scholarship to a financially struggling college freshman so she can continue to her sophomore year and providing a safe, healthy after-school youth development program.
The Urban League is nearly as old as the light bulb but as vital as the internet. We started right after teddy left the white house and we’ll still be here long after Barack goes back to Chicago. We’ve been around as long as the Model T but we move as fast as a 787 Dreamliner.
We are the Urban League of today. We are the Urban League of tomorrow. We are the urban of history and we are the Urban League of a new generation. We will save our cities. We can save our cities. We must save our cities
Save our cities: education, jobs and justice today.
Save our cities: education, jobs and justice tomorrow.
Save our cities: education, jobs and justice forever.
Don’t believe me? Just watch.
