CHICAGO (NNPA) – National Urban League President/CEO Marc Morial, in his State of the Urban League address Aug. 29, said the 99-year-old civil rights organization must reset its mission to include all Americans as it looks to the future.
”Today we stand on the doorstep of our second century … and our mission and our message has expanded,” said Morial before an estimated crowd of 5,500 at Apostolic Church of God. ”While the civil rights struggle is not over, we have to take our empowerment agenda to the next level.”
While citing the NUL’s history of seeking economic empowerment for African Americans, and acknowledging Black achievements that include the election of President Black Obama, Morial kicked off the organization’s annual conference by reminding conferees that the work of equality remains undone.
”As long as Black kids are denied the right to swim in a pool in Philadelphia; as long as our Equality Index continues to show big disparities in jobs, healthcare, housing and education that break down along the color line; as long as hate crimes are rising and falsely convicted Black men languish in our prisons …; as long as a Supreme Court nominee is vilified because of her gender or ethnicity; or as long as a Harvard professor … is arrested in his own house, this fight is not over,” he said.
”But even as we fight these persistent battles of the 20th century,” Morial added, ”we must now lead beyond the narrow confines of civil rights for African Americans to speak for every American – Black, White, Latino, Asian, Native American – who shares our vision of equality and justice for all.”
Morial’s vision for color-blind advocacy is not something that everyone may share, some members said. ”I think it’s going to be something that will be challenged,” said Nolan Rollins, president/CEO of the New Orleans Urban League and former head of the Baltimore affiliate. ”But if we’re honest about it, it’s a change that is necessary.”
Especially given the current economic environment, he added. ”We are Americans in this thing first,” Rollins said, ”so we have to look out for everyone.”
In the coming years, the Urban League will advocate for each American to achieve the path to power on several fronts, Morial said, ”empowerment goals” that the nation must achieve by 2025.
The first of those goals is to prepare every American child ”for college, for work and for life,” he said, and the first step is to hold lawmakers and officials responsible for its ”55 years of malignant neglect” since Brown v. Board of Education mandated equality in K-12 education.
”Too many schools in America are separate and unequal,” Morial said, adding that in failing to properly educate all children – by failing to upgrade school buildings or provide trained teachers – the nation would suffer.
”We are in danger in this nation of creating a permanent underclass … precisely at the time when the demands of our global economy tell us that we have not one person to waste,” he said.
Mirroring a constant theme of President Obama’s, Morial added that while government must tailor its policies to better educate American children, parents and young people, must also be accountable.
”We call on the parents to step up to the plate,” Morial said. ”Turn off the TV and hide the remote. Unplug the iPod and the computer games. Take out an old-fashioned book and read with your children … get involved in the schools, don’t be a spectator.”
And to the youth he said: ”Pull up your pants, stand up straight, stop trying to look like a thug. If you want [success] you have to act like it, you have to talk like it, you have to dress like it.”
Conferring after the speech, Chicago residents Versa Ballard, Barbara Hamilton and Joyce Marshall all agreed that the call for personal, parental and community responsibility resonated strongly with them. ”It all brought us back to a time when everyone was responsible for each other’s children, when good values, principles and the value of education were taught,” Marshall said of Morial’s admonishment.
In its second century, the Urban League must also push for every American to have a job with a fair wage, Morial said. Pointing to the 15 percent jobless rate in the Black community and the resulting poverty, the NUL chief said, ”The best anti-poverty program is a decent job…. We want less welfare and more work-fare in the 21st century.”
Saying President Obama’s stimulus plan was the ”right move” to stem the tide of unemployment, the former New Orleans mayor said officials must hold governors accountable for how that money is spent and ensure minority neighborhoods benefit from the new focus on renewable energy. ”We say ‘no’ to green apartheid,” he said. ”Our neighborhoods must be included in the green economy of the future.”
And they must also have access to energy-efficient homes on fair terms, Morial said. ”We must overturn the tables of the moneylenders,” he exclaimed, saying the financial system must be reformed to prevent the targeting of Black and Brown communities by predatory lenders.
By 2025, the government must also ensure that all Americans have access to quality healthcare, Morial said.
The NUL chief praised the president’s efforts to offer a universal health care plan and issued a challenge to his detractors. ”I say to those who oppose the president, put a better plan on the table,” he said, adding, ”The cost of doing nothing is far greater than the price of doing something.”
Such weighty goals can only be achieved by building multi-lateral coalitions with other civil and human rights organization, Morial said.
NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous agreed.
”Marc and I are very clear that the NAACP and the National Urban League are family,” he said at a plenary session today. Saying that reforming the criminal justice system is the civil rights frontier of this age, along with the continuing fight for quality education, healthcare and homes, Jealous added, ”We don’t win these battles unless we work together.”
Lisa Hasegawa of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development and Janet Murgía, president and CEO of La Raza, also vowed to forge stronger relationships with the Urban League. ”In much way the African-American community has led the way on civil rights and we have benefited and I want to say, thank you,” Murguía said.
Acknowledging continuing tensions between Black and Latino communities, Murguía said, however, that the similarities outweighed the differences and the two communities must work together to achieve common goals. ”Forging these partnerships across our communities have never been more important…. We know when we’re together we’ll be able to leverage better opportunities for everyone.”