In 1990, when we started the Black Community Crusade for Children, we were always talking about all children, but we paid particular attention to children who were not white, who were poor, who were disabled, and who were the most vulnerable.Parents didn't think their children would live to adulthood, and the children didn't think they were going to live to adulthood. That's when we started our first gun-violence campaign. We've lost 17 times more young black people to gun violence since 1968 than we lost in all the lynching in slavery.

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.

Understand and be confident that each of us can make a difference by caring and acting in small as well as big ways.

Far less wealthy industrialized countries have committed to end child poverty, while the United States is sliding backwards. We can do better. We must demand that our leaders do better.

I try to act out of faith.

We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who will keep seeding and building transforming movements.

It is a spiritually impoverished nation that permits infants and children to be the poorest Americans.