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The Children's Defense Fund works to fix this disconnect between what Americans say they want for children and what they actually do for them. With offices just a few blocks from Capitol Hill, the Defense Fund stands out among youth advocacy groups for its Washington-based organization and strategic coalitions, its many alliances with state and local groups, and its many service-oriented programs. In the District of Columbia, the Defense Fund has established City Lights, which works with severely troubled adolescents. At what was once the Tennessee farm of Roots author Alex Haley, the Fund conducts leadership training sessions. And, often in partnership with Junior Leagues, it runs public-education programs throughout the country, exposing business and community leaders to the problems of the young. In the mid-1980s, the Children's Defense Fund helped focus national attention on the problem of teen pregnancy. In the late '80s, it put together a coalition that was instrumental in the 1990 passage of a multibillion-dollar child-care bill for low-income working parents.
Edelman learned early that you have to play politics to change lives. When Head Start funds were made available to the states in 1965, for example, Mississippi did not sign up. But a group of public, private and church organizations, with Edelman on its board, applied for the money and saw Head Start become a powerful catalyst in the state's black community. When then Senator John Stennis tried to get Congress to cut off its funding, Edelman, at that point 25, went to Washington to fight back--and won. "This was my first big lesson about government," she says. "There was no one in Washington for these folks, like General Motors had. That was seed No. 1 for the Children's Defense Fund." In the 1970s, Edelman helped defeat a proposal to turn Head Start funding over to the states. Today, with devolution again the coin of the realm, Edelman, a child of the segregated South, remains deeply skeptical that all states will voluntarily care for their neediest citizens. "Where you can see a general need everywhere," she contends, "you try to have a national solution."
As she travels around the country stirring up support for the march in Washington, Edelman talks about "the silence of good people about the injustice of it all." By this she means, in large part, her old friend the President. Marian and her husband, Peter Edelman, a lawyer whom she met when he was an adviser to Bobby Kennedy, have known the Clintons for many years. Mrs. Clinton worked as a lawyer for the Children's Defense Fund, resigning from the board when she became First Lady. In August 1995, the President almost nominated Peter, who currently works for the Department of Health and Human Services, to the federal district court in Washington, changing his mind at the last minute, fearing he was too liberal. Last fall, as Edelman watched the welfare battle take shape, she privately implored the President not to compromise federal standards. When Clinton nevertheless signaled his support for a Senate bill that would transform federal welfare spending into a system of smaller, block grants to the states--thereby eliminating the safety net of protections that children have, regardless of which state they live in--Edelman spoke out.