National Urban League's Legislative Conference: Thoughts from Marc Morial and the Opening Plenary

As the National Legislative Conference of the National Urban League begins, I think back 43 years to the first edition of the NUL's NUL's important book, The State of Black America, the 2019 edition of which is here. It introduced the concept of parity between African-Americans and others, as measured in the NUL's Equality Index, issued every other year. This report, along with the Children's Defense Funds's State of America's Children, help gauge what progress we have made as a nation but sadly show how much more is to be done. In this conference, the important legislative and policy issues facing the nation are being debated and discussed. I just heard Marc Morial, National Urban League President speak. What a pleasure, as I first met Marc when I was organizer of Health and Human Services workers for Dutch Morial, when he ran for re-election as New Orleans Mayor in the early 1980s. Sheldon Granger, MSW (Columbia U., 1941) was Executive Director of both the Cleveland and Minneapolis Urban League, Whitney Young (MSW) was a long-term Executive Director. Social workers need to support the NUL Agenda today. We have an important window of opportunity to develop progressive and pragmatic solutions that can reduce the impact of structural racism, male supremacy, gender discrimination and other forms of oppression, of a system of economic exploitation which denies a decent living even to full-time workers, and dehumanizing technologies and bureaucracies, which together produce systematic inequality of our ability to access satisfiers of our physical and psychological needs for health and autonomy. Absent primary, secondary and tertiary prevention and the enforcement of human rights, this produces the suffering and serious harm we see all around us. I join with NUL in supporting the Jobs and Justice Act of 2018, the Justice in Policing Act, and the many other important pieces of legislation which must be passed this year or on in the first 100 days of the next Congress. In South Africa, which has one of the world's most advanced constitutions, and in the United States, whose Bill of Rights still needs important amendments, such as the ERA, the right to a job at a living wage, the right to equitable and adequate education, and the right to effective essential health care, the legacies of apartheid and slavery, respectively, demand fundamental transformation of how we address the multiple crises we face: (1) Ensuring Black Lives Matter in every realm of our nations' lives, (2) addressing how racism remains a public health crisis which affects everything from infant mortality and maternal mortality to nursing home care, (3) the threat of Covid-19 given health care systems which have failed to adequately implement an infrastructure for primary prevention of preventable illness, (4) the overarching impact of global climate change, which demands we re-focus social policy on addressing human needs in an ecologically sound manner which is sustainable for future generations. Marc ended one session by calling on the commitment to social justice, economic empowerment to turn this moment into a longstanding movement. He cited some of the lyrics of John Legend's Glory, including one of the following: Here is another lyric: "Justice for all just ain't specific enough. Resistance is us...The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful. ...Now we right the wrongs in history...It takes the wisdom of the elders and young people's energy." Looking forward to a great conference!