|
On Advocacy (from the 1999 Gala video for the Massachusetts Advocacy Center)
"If you don't stay vigilant, no matter what victories you win, they will attempt to roll them back. So one of the things we've learned at MAC was that you never win. You may get a victory, you may get a concession, they may be put in place, but you'd better be there to monitor what is going on..." "If there is anything we've learned and done over 30 years is to keep on the case. There is nothing magical about being a good child advocacy group. It's just about being a long-distance runner..." "It's not only about getting change, but also about institutionalizing change. Locking change in. Advocacy is not about in one day out the next, in one month out the next. The issues we're concerned about mean having a lifetime commitment to children."
back to top
On Vulnerable Youth (from a presentation on the Citywide Strategy for Youth Development at the Boston Public Library, November 16, 1999)
"A community is best judged by how it treats youth with serious personal troubles and who are at risk. No child should be lost. No child, no young person should be marginalized. Every young person counts."
back to top
On Our Commitment to Youth (from the keynote address at the Boston Symposium on Youth Development, March 20, 2001, Bunker Hill Community College)
"We do not merely have a social responsibility to assure that our children and youth have decent life chances and prosper. We have a sacred obligation to do so."
back to top
On a Positive Program for Youth (from the keynote address at the Boston Symposium on Youth Development, March 20, 2001, Bunker Hill Community College)
"Our challenge is provide the physical, economic and social environments that help our children and young people develop and sustain positive life programs. Because if they do, then we will not have to worry about them becoming ensnared in any of the pernicious influences that abound in the city. What I am calling for is an approach that focuses on the assets and strengths of our young people and not on their deficits. How should this be accomplished? First, children and young people must have opportunities to gain mastery of their bodies and acquire physical skills through exercise and recreational programs. Mastery of the body and physical skills is a pre-requisite for mastery of the social world. This is the first building block for acquiring a sense of competence. Second, our children's cognitive and intellectual strengths must be constantly exercised in and out of school. There can be no downtime for learning during the summer or school vacations. The love of learning must be imbued in our kids so that they hunger for it. Success at learning is crucial to possessing a positive self-image. Consequently, our recreational, camping and group service programs should have vigorous educational components, if our children are to be served well. We cannot afford the slippage in reading and computational skills that occurs for many students over the summer. Third, from their earliest years, young people need to know how their bodies work and how to properly care for them. They must learn proper nutritional intake, eating habits, and sexual practices. This requires a consistent relationship with health care professionals and exposure to health education programs. We have in Boston a fabulous network of community health centers, so there is no good reason that our young people cannot have regular health care and learn how to care for their bodies. No longer should young people have their only health care encounters in the hospital emergency rooms, because even in the best hospitals emergency room care is lousy health care. Fourth, to have a positive life program, a young person, particularly an adolescent, must be connected to the organizational life of the community through participation in community centers, arts programs, churches, scouting, etc. There is nothing more dangerous for an adolescent than to be adrift from the organizations in the community. It is a prescription for serious trouble. Finally, a positive life program requires that our young people have commitments to important things beyond themselves - being concerned with more than self. Young people need to be involved in helping others - family, friends, neighbors and classmates - and contribute to the life of the community. This is an important way to build on their real strengths. If we do not provide opportunities for community service, then we will inadvertently feed unhealthy narcissism in our youths.
back to top
On Special Education Law (from speech at the 1999 Gala for the Massachusetts Advocacy Center)
"MAC?s first research report, The Way We Go to School ? The Exclusion of Children in Boston, led to passage of Chapter 766 ? the special education law, which became the model for the federal law. In my judgment, Chapter 766 is the greatest education reform in the history of public education in the Commonwealth. While some commentators and critics focus on the abuse of this entitlement, we should remember and never, never forget that thousands of our children previously consigned to custodial wastage in classes for the retarded have been brought into the mainstream of schooling and provided the support services that they desperately needed." (from speech at the 25th anniversary of Chapter 766 in Chelsea, March 2000)
"Just think back to the late 1960s and remember what was happening to children who possessed physical and emotional difficulties?.Students who received a cutoff score below 79 on a Stanford Binet Intelligence Test were deemed to be mentally retarded and consigned to a custodial existence in a class for the retarded. It made no difference if these students didn?t speak English, were recent arrivals from a miserable school system in the South or had unrecognized perceptual problems?.
As these students stayed in special classes, there were no periodic evaluations to determine if they were making academic gains that would warrant movement into a regular class. Therefore, many children with intellectual ability in the normal range were misdiagnosed and misplaced. Of course, they were also stigmatized? Social isolation was the cruel reality. Chapter 766 broke the back of these practices and moved school in Massachusetts in a progressive direction."
back to top
Personal History and Social Justice (from a commencement address at the University of Wisconsin Superior, May 1997)
"In my junior year in college, I decided that I wanted to become a professional social worker. My father, who wanted me to become a doctor or lawyer, was deeply disappointed by my decision. He feared that I was going to make $3,000 a year for the rest of my life. But I had to go where my talents, interests and passion were?.Forty-two years ago, I sat at my college graduation at the City College of New York and listened to Dr. Jonas Salk, our commencement speaker, who had just discovered the polio vaccine that changed health status across the world. I was so inspired by Dr. Salk that on my graduation day, I vowed to myself that I would go out into the world and make a difference? I was going to be a social worker who made a difference in the lives of people and communities." (from remarks for the National Conference for Community and Justice Awards Program, March 2000)
"I was called to the movement for social justice in Boston in June 1963, when the black community was confronted by the massive denial of the Boston School Committee ? denying that de facto segregation existing and that black students assigned to predominately black schools were being shortchanged by overcrowded classrooms, inferior facilities and inadequate equipment and supplies."
(from remarks for the National Conference for Community and Justice Awards Program, March 2000)
"Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children?s Defense Fund, often says: "Service is the rent that we pay for living." I have tried not to be a squatter on the land, but to pay my rent. The quest for social justice and racial equality in this great city and nation is not a 60 yard dash; it is a marathon. I intend to keep on being a long distance runner."
back to top
On Boston: race relations, urban development and the arts (from remarks for the National Conference for Community and Justice Awards Program, March 2000)
"Boston, the "cradle of liberty" is still crippled by its Achilles heel: pervasive racism. It is the city?s loud secret. Racial matters and problems in Boston are swept under the rug?. The working title for the book I am writing is Black in Boston: A Lover?s Quarrel. Despite my ambivalence, I love Boston. There is no other city in which I would choose to work or live out my civic life. I simply have a lover?s quarrel with Boston. I want it to be worthy of its articulated democratic principles, its revolutionary and abolitionist history and its matchless civic resources and assets." (from Boston Globe op-ed, "Creating Common Ground," May 6, 2002)
"Boston still struggles to achieve social integration of racial ethnic groups and social classes. The Artery surface and the build-out of the waterfront in South Boston provide an enormous opportunity to knit the city together. Few cities get such an opportunity through physical development to transform its social fabric. It is an opportunity that we dare not squander."
(from Boston Globe op-ed, "How the arts can help break down ethnic barriers", December 31, 2000)
"Bostonians do not know one another because they do not substantially share the cultural "property" that gives deep meaning to their respective lives. This condition is due to the profound isolation of racial and ethnic groups from one another. The social structures of the city, created by segregated housing and schooling patterns, work environments stratified by race, gender and class, religious compartmentalization, and psychological and economic barriers to recreational opportunities, have locked our racial divide into place. In recent years, the diversity of the city has dramatically increased? If we are to achieve a human community in Boston, where all residents are in a state of authentic connection and sharing, then our arts and cultural institutions must provide programs that allow us to experience and enjoy the culture of others?
Obviously, the entire burden of bridging the racial divide in Boston does not rest with our arts and cultural institutions. However, they are best positioned to get us to the Promised Land."
(from a presentation at the Boston College Citizen Seminar, panel on "Could Growth Kill Boston?s Boom," May 1987)
"When all is said and done, growth and development cannot be lifted up as demi-gods to be worshipped. Economic growth is important but not the be-all and end-all of our collective mission. It must be guided by a vision of the kind of city we want Boston to be, in both physical and human terms?. I want a city whose social and environmental context is distinctly Boston. Without a collective vision that we share and hold on to for dear life, development and growth will steal our city and our souls."
back to top
On Collaboration and Leadership (from speech at the installation of Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, September 2001)
"By virtue of holding an elected or appointed position, a person can gain authority, but this does not make him or her a leader. It is how power and authority are exercised that will determine leadership or the lack of it. One thing is certain: Viable leadership will be possessed by those people who practice collaborative or connective leadership. The ability to align the strategic intelligence and resources of your organization with that of others to achieve common goals is the critical need of the 21st century. The silo mentality of our institutions ? scrambling for one?s own narrow institutional interest in competitive mode ? is no longer functional. Few institutional leaders get it, but the light bulb is beginning to go in some silos." (from a commencement address at the University of Wisconsin Superior, May 1997)
"You have learned that collaborative learning with others is more productive and rewarding than solitary learning. You now know that today?s problems are too complex and interlocking to be solved by any one discipline or field of knowledge."
back to top
|
