I CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Join us for a very special afternoon as Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, discusses CDF’s mission to ensure that every child has a healthy start, a head start, a safe start, and a moral start in life.

For half a century, Edelman and the Children’s Defense Fund have been the driving forces behind most of the laws and programs that have improved education and health care for children in the United States. Drawing on her own experience, Edelman insists that nurturing children is not the responsibility solely of either families or of government agencies but of everyone. This notion, summed up in the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child”—which was popularized by early CDF staffer Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was First Lady—reminds us how important it is to protect the integrity and security of all communities. In a moving lecture profoundly informed by decades of experience, Edelman will convey what it means to live by her motto: “Service is the rent we pay for living.”

Marian Wright Edelman has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life. She was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar and directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. She served as counsel for Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign; founded the Washington Research Project, a public-interest law firm; and in 1973 began CDF.

This event is presented as part of the Medical Humanities, Arts, and Ethics Series, which engages core issues facing the health of individuals and society. The 2017–18 series focuses on issues of race and health in America.Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by Pamela Schaff (Family Medicine and Pediatrics), Alexander Capron (Law and Medicine), Lyn Boyd-Judson (Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics), Ron Ben-Ari (Internal Medicine), and Lynn Kysh (USC Libraries). Co-sponsored by the Keck School of Medicine’s HEAL Program (Humanities, Ethics/Economics, Art, and the Law), the USC Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics, and the Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics.

Reception to follow.

ADMISSION: Admission is free. Reservations requested. RSVP at the links below beginning Monday, March 5, at 9 a.m.