Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), the nation’s leading voice for children and families. She is also a longtime friend and partner of 1199SEIU.

Before founding the CDF in 1973, Mrs. Edelman was the first Black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar and served as counsel for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign. She has dedicated her life to social justice and ensuring opportunity for all children, safe communities and healthy, secure families.

Mrs. Edelman spoke recently with 1199SEIU’s magazine, Our Life And Times about the scourge of poverty in the U.S. and the toll it is taking on our children. This is an expanded version of that interview, which appears in the current edition of the magazine.

OLAT: In your weekly column, you tasked today’s leaders with preparing our children of color – and all children – for the future. How do we help our children in today’s society when they face vast income inequality, healthcare disparities, violence and so many other societal inequities?

Marian Wright Edelman: The toxic cocktail of poverty, racial disparities in child- serving systems, poor education, and zero tolerance school-discipline policies is creating a Cradle to Prison Pipeline® crisis in our nation, which funnels millions of children, especially children of color, into dead-end unproductive lives. But this is not an act of God. This is something we can change. It will take all of us -- parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, young people, and national, faith, and other community leaders, together with policymakers. This means reaching out to confront the structural inequalities of opportunity and outcomes that contribute to more than 16 million children, one in five, living in poverty; and to end the Cradle to Prison Pipeline® crisis. We must level the playing field so all children can develop to their full potential.

We must first reach out to children in our own families, neighborhoods, congregations, and communities to help get children what they need to move ahead to successful futures. We must never underestimate the impact of one caring adult or give up on any child. But families and community members cannot do this alone. We must also make our voices heard with policymakers at all levels. By investing now in early childhood development and learning, for example, the federal government, states and cities can combat child poverty, help all children succeed in school and in life, and strengthen our nation’s future. To learn more about ways that you can step up and take action, go to www.childrensdefense.org.