Sixteen thousand. That is the number of children killed with guns since I became Secretary of Education, and the focus of my final speech as Secretary. I gave the speech in the basement of the St. Sabina Church in Chicago, coming full circle to a career that in many ways began in a church basement in Chicago. I invite you to watch it, and have excerpted parts of it.
I was introduced by Christina Waters, an extraordinary young woman who against the odds survived being shot in the head during a church picnic, and has gone on to college and success. She was one of the lucky ones.
Between 2009 and 2014, 15,933 children (ages 0–19) were shot to death in America — that’s about seven mothers burying their children every day. That’s more children than died from cancer in that time. It’s about twice the number of U.S. soldiers who have died since 2001 in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. It’s many times more deaths than in all the mass school shootings that have made national news.
Despite the expressed desire of the nation, and the concerted leadership of the President, Congress has done nothing to make our children safer from gun violence. You can drive a truck through the gap between the will of the people and the inaction on Capitol Hill.
Given that failure, schools take desperate measures. Many have regular active shooter drills. Some train elementary-school-aged children to hide under bulletproof blankets. Imagine how a child tries to make sense of that. I’m not questioning what principals and teachers do to keep their kids safe. I’m upset that they have to.
LLike the President, I am enraged at Congress’s willingness to defy the vast majority of Americans who support common sense gun control measures, and instead do the well-funded bidding of the gun lobby.
But I believe we must look not just at the easy availability of guns, but also at the reasons why so many young people pull a trigger. And I believe that number is related to another number: five million — that’s the number of young people who dropped out of high school over the past six–seven years, across the country.
That’s even with high school graduation rates at all-time highs and dropout rates at all-time lows. Five million young people, ages 15–25, today, who are out there who walked away from our schools, on the streets, with very little hope.
To me, these two populations — those we have lost and those we are losing — they’re so similar. They are losing hope and facing similar challenges. These issues are absolutely interrelated; they’re absolutely connected.
Too many of these kids, we have lost them almost from the very start. They are behind at birth. You never catch them up. They got passed along too easily through schools, through grades, through communities, through foster care systems. But their needs for love, support, opportunity, physical and psychological safety — their needs were rarely met.
Years ago, in Chicago, a child drew me a picture of a fireman. The caption read, “If I grow up, I want to be a fireman.”
Not when I grow up. If I grow up.
AAnd we should be clear about the impact of violence on their lives. Studies have made clear that children who have been exposed to violence often struggle to form strong attachments, and struggle with anxiety, depression, and with learning . They also often come to think badly about themselves.
We owe our kids so much more. It’s time for us, as adults, to reclaim those kids as our own, and reconnect them to school, to church, to family, to jobs, to their future.
For employers, that means a renewed notion of civic responsibility, creating internships and jobs genuinely accessible to the kids who need them. For schools and social service organizations, that means putting concerted energy into figuring out which kids are most likely to become part of the cycle of violence. There’s been real success in some places doing that with teenagers and young adults — but we need to do so much earlier. For all the organizations that serve kids, including schools and adult volunteers, it means flooding the kids we’re rightly worried about with supports, with connections, with love.
LLast week, I spent time with Ifetayo Kitwala, a junior at the Baltimore School for the Arts. I asked her how many of her black male friends expected to live to adulthood.
Her answer? Less than half.
I asked her why more of her black male classmates weren’t going to college.
“Because they believe they’ll be dead by the time they turn 23.”
We have to change that. We have to provide our kids with support and hope.
AAnd I don’t want to just talk about the physical and psychological safety related to guns. It’s just the reality we have to talk about — we have to address the issue of police training and conduct, as well.
Whether it’s right here in Chicago; whether it’s Ferguson, or it’s Baltimore, or it’s Cleveland, or countless other communities, these issues are real. And to turn a blind eye, to not address them, I think would be much less than honest.
Today, we have good cops who feel they do not have a chance. When cops unnecessarily use deadly force and aren’t held accountable, and when other cops witness that behavior and lie about it and they aren’t held accountable, then the system loses its most precious resource — and that’s the public’s trust. Policemen have the hardest job. It’s unimaginable how hard their jobs are. And, most police do more good in a week than many of us do in a year. We have to support the ones who are doing the right thing.
I talked to a cop I have tremendous respect for on Monday. He said the change he feels they need in the culture isn’t incremental. The word he used was seismic, they need seismic change. I think he’s right. I think gaining the public’s trust is never easy, but it can be done. In situations like this, actions always speak much louder than words. It’s not just training that they need. There has to be a commitment to truth and transparency, and not protecting the bad apples.
But the truth is this: if we were to fix every police department today in need of help, in need of change — if we were able to do that — that would be great.
But if we don’t fix the communities where so many of our children are dying, if we don’t address the underlying causes why so many children are dying and so many are dropping out, then we cannot begin to declare victory.
My plea, as I leave this office, is for adults — my generation — to do more to save the lives of the next generation, by addressing the root causes of this epidemic.
The truth is that in virtually every community plagued by devastating levels of violence, you will also find a perfect storm of high unemployment, under-resourced schools, little economic development, high percentage of people returning from prison, and few — if any — positive options for the children we care so much about. What’s harming our children is not just gun violence. It’s the hopelessness. It’s the lack of hope and the disconnectedness that leads children to pick up those guns when they have challenges.
And simply put, if we want to change kids’ lives and not just keep them alive, we must put in place what I’m going to call a “new deal.” A new deal for children and a new vision for the communities in which they live. Our children need hope and hope not in the unseen or the distance, but in what they can see every day on their block and in their schools and in their communities.
That new deal breaks down as four main ideas that I’m convinced would both transform our children’s opportunity structure and, just as importantly, help them believe that they have a future — that there is a reason to work hard and do the right thing, to think long-term and not just try and survive.
First, I’m huge believe in the power of early childhood education. And in those communities that have — in those communities plagued by devastating levels of violence, we have to make sure that every baby has a chance to get off to school and be prepared to enter kindergarten and be successful. And the fact is that today, the average child coming from a poor community starts kindergarten at five-years-old 14 to 16 months behind. And the honest truth is that we as adults rarely do a good job of catching them back up. Those students that start behind, you can draw direct line from starting behind to future dropping out to future incarceration. If we were to address it at the front end, we could do so much to give children a chance.
Second, we as a nation have failed to recognize and reward the degree of difficulty that goes into teaching in the most challenged schools. I presented an idea a couple of months ago to attack the school-to-prison pipeline. If we simply stop locking up 50 percent of our nonviolent offenders, that would free $15 billion each year, $15 billion dollars could give a 50 percent bonus to every teacher, principal, social worker and counselor who work in our highest poverty schools.
Third, not every child, but so many of our kids need a mentor. They need a role model, and I can’t overstate the power of relationships. Every single one of us is in this room because we had someone, a teacher, a counselor, a coach, a parent or grandparent, someone who saw something in us that we didn’t see in ourselves and helped to move us forward. Not every child needs that, some child is lucky enough to have a strong mom or a strong dad or both or a grand-mom.
And then finally, we have to talk about the economic situation — the economic injustice, and jobs, and job creation, and support of ownership, and support of minority businesses. And if we don’t have real jobs and real opportunities for young people, then far too many have no choice but to go to the streets.
I’ve yet to hear of a gang that says that they’re not hiring. Rain, shine, sleet, snow, they’re out there.
And when we’re going about our business and we’re home comfortably in our homes at night, those children who are desperate — those children who are falling through the cracks — they have one choice. They have one choice, and we have to provide other options. I want to talk about not just jobs and job creation, but the importance of minority entrepreneurs and ownership, and what that can mean in our communities.
That’s the new deal I believe we owe our kids, if we want to save their lives. And I want to say how hopeful I am and how optimistic I am. We can turn the pain and the fear and the anger and the heartbreak into unprecedented action. Not talk, not sound bites, but action. Here in Chicago and across the nation, amazing things can happen.
The most dangerous force in our children’s lives is hopelessness. Shame on our generation if we can’t do more to change the odds.
