A strong call to action for kids

We're usually pretty timid in the child advocacy world. Because most of us work for 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations, we shy away from "politics" or advocacy.
But you know as well as I do that the conservative politics of the last 25 years, starting with the "Reagan revolution," have been devastating for children and families.
Now a longtime advocate for children has written a call to action--a short book that provides facts and figures on how shockingly the U.S. neglects its children and calls on us to mobilize to make children's issues central to the 2008 presidential election.
The author is Michael Petit, who left management positions at organizations like the Child Welfare League of America to launch a new organization, called (this is important) Every Child Matters. (www.everychildmatters.org, obviously).
His book is called Homeland Insecurity: American Children at Risk. Here's a short quote from the first chapter:
"Federal programs have failed to keep pace with the growing needs of children. . . . Thanks in large part to the erosion of real federal spending on children and families, mostly engineered by conservatives, the child poverty rate is rising again even as the stock market has climbed. Further, more people are uninsured, real wages are declining, prisons are overflowing, and millions of children live in distressed families facing their struggles alone, thanks in large measure to conservative policy."
The book goes on to compare the U.S. to other rich democracies on measures like child poverty, paid maternity leave, health insurance, child care, child abuse, rates of imprisonment--if you have been paying attention to children's issues you already know that the U.S. is miserably behind in all these areas. But some of these facts and figures will shock you--or at least give you great ammunition for arguments.
What do we need? The first thing, Petit says, is public financing of elections. Why? Because if we, the public, don't finance campaigns, big corporations and wealthy individuals will keep doing it--and they will keep wielding the power to push children's issues off the table. As they have been doing. As you well know.
What else? Well, single-payer health care. (Let's take the 30% of every health care dollar that now goes to insurance companies and spend it on health care! That would be enough to give everybody high-quality, comprehensive care.) Universal high-quality preschool and child care, obviously. Greatly expanded housing, nutrition, and income support programs, family support programs -- everything that you know we need. We know these things work. It's not rocket science. Our society has just not been willing to pay for it.
But doesn't all this cost money, you will ask? YES! How will we pay for it? With TAXES, duh! Tax breaks for the wealthy have crippled our society's ability to take care of children (and other people). The rich are getting richer and the rest are getting poorer because of these goverment policies. They have undone the progressive tax system. Let's get it back!
Maybe I am expressing myself too forcefully here, but I just heard Petit speak and I was inspired! He came right out and said these things that we all know but are too polite to mention in public.
And he has a plan to make things change--a strategy for putting these issues at the center of the 2008 presidential campaign--without blowing our precious 501(c)3s. This post is already too long, you should just read the book. But one of his plans is to work through child-serving organizations to get parents, child care providers, and other children's service workers to vote -- voting rates are very low in these groups. If they all voted, it would shift the political balance, especially on these issues. He also has plans for mobilizing to make sure all the presidential candidates address these issues as they run in the primaries.
You should really read this book. It's very short, to the point, and explosive. You can download it free at http://www.everychildmatters.org/homelandinsecurity/index.html. Then you should tell everybody you know all about it, and we should all get to work.
How can we tolerate what's happening to children and families any longer?