Word: edelman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...youngest daughter of a Baptist minister, Edelman inherited her sense of mission at an early age. "Helping other people, I did it as a kid like other kids go to the movies," she says. "It is what I was raised to be." When segregation laws prevented blacks in her hometown of Bennettsville, S.C., from entering public parks, her father opened a park behind his church. "That taught me, if you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it, one step at a time...
That approach has sustained a lifelong struggle for social change. In her senior year at all-black Spelman College in Atlanta, Edelman became active in the 1960s civil rights movement. While volunteering in the local office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she became aware that there were no attorneys to represent poor blacks. She went off to Yale Law School, then became the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar. As a staff attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, she met her husband Peter, a fellow attorney and an adviser...
...many Washington lobbyists promote their cause with cash, Edelman's currency is facts, mountains of data that tell the story of what is happening to children. The C.D.F. annually turns out more than 2,000 pages of reports, which she uses to put pressure on Congress -- apparently with great success. Senator Edward Kennedy described Edelman as the "101st Senator on children's issues." Said Kennedy: "She has real power in Congress and uses it brilliantly...
Even while the Reagan Administration was trimming social spending, Edelman managed to score some victories. Last year nine federal programs known as the "children's initiative" received a $500 million increase in its $36 billion budget for families and children's health care, nutrition and early education. Meanwhile, under prodding from Edelman, Medicaid coverage for expectant mothers and their children was boosted in 1984, and last year Congress gave states the option of expanding Medicaid eligibility...
...Edelman is not without her detractors, who accuse her of trying to solve social problems merely by throwing money at them. She responds -- how else? -- with statistics. According to the C.D.F., for every dollar spent on the nutrition programs for women, infants and children, three are saved by avoiding more expensive hospital care for underweight and malnourished children. Says Edelman: "People ought to be able to distinguish between throwing money at problems and investing in success...