In Black America; The Rev. Cecil Williams, Part 3 & World Summit For Children

You From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is In Black America. In fact, it's now over 70 heads of states and heads of government who are coming together for the sole purpose of discussing the survival protection and development of children.

40,000 children die every day unnecessarily from preventable causes and the idea is to get the world leaders together to try and see what they can do to stamp that unnecessary loss of future generations. Jibril Giallo, senior advisor with the United Nations Children Fund. The weekend of September 29th and 30th, the first world summit for children was convened at the United Nations in New York City. Over 70 heads of state, including President Bush, were in attendance. The world summit for children constituted one of the largest meeting of heads of state to focus world attention on the health and development of children. The agency for International Development has committed over $1 billion since 1985 to a variety of programs to improve the lives of children in the developing world. I'm Johnny O'Hanston, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America.

This week, the Rev. Cecil Williams passed up Glybomoro United Methodist Church in San Francisco and the world summit for children in Black America. This country can do a lot and has been doing a lot both officially and privately. The United States government has contributed financial resources towards the preparation of the world summit. President Jufe has confirmed President Bush, that is, has confirmed attendance at the summit and also we have the United States Committee for UNICEF, which has been working with the communities across this country to try and mobilize support for child survival and development in developing countries. Children represent the most vulnerable segment of every society and they are our present and future.

Good health, especially for children, promotes personal and national development. The progress matched with improved capacities of all countries to immunize their children provide an unparalleled opportunity to save additional lives and prevent additional millions of disabilities annually through a goal children's vaccine and initiative. This and many other initiatives were the topic of conversation 70 world leaders discuss when they met in New York City the weekend of September 29th and 30th after United Nation. The Declaration of World Summit for Children committed to 70 world leaders to a pledge to work together in an effort to save the lives of at least one third of the 14 million infants who now die each year before the age of five. The participants also agreed to try to cut malnutrition among children in half by the year 2000, reduced the number of women dying in childbirth and provide clean water and primary education. I recently spoke with Dr. Brio Giallo, Senior Advisor with United Nations Children Fund.

In fact it's now over 70 heads of states and heads of government coming together for the sole purpose of discussing the survival, protection and development of children. 40,000 children die every day unnecessarily from preventable causes and the idea is to get the world's leaders together to try and see what they can do to stem that unnecessary loss of future generations. Okay, when did you all first realize that there was an epidemic affecting our young people and the second part of that question are these children mostly in third world countries? Yes, but we have been, I would say over the past few years, UNICEF has been working very hard with all sorts of partners from journalists to artists and intellectuals to religious leaders

to try and focus on universal problems affecting children, including protection of their health from daily preventable diseases, adequate nutrition, education, homelessness and abandonment, drugs, the impact of AIDS, child labor and exploitation and basic community services. So what this world summit for children is doing is to try and crystallize attention on these issues not only in developing countries which you have got obviously the largest need but also in industrialized countries like the United States of America. Okay, when the world leaders come together I'm quite sure there are certain areas and I would assume certain agencies within these countries who will have a direct impact on

delivering the services in which you all want delivered, correct? That's right. The idea is that the summit itself is very, very short and crispy because the leaders are extremely busy personalities and it's very difficult to keep them in one room for an extended period. And therefore the summit proper will be on Sunday, 30th of September and will end with the signature of a world declaration committing the leaders to doing everything possible to save children as much as possible before the end of this century that is before the year 2000. And then it will be up to every country to take that declaration home and translate it into a national plan of action in line with its own national reality, its own constraints and so on and so forth. I'm quite sure UNICEF will probably be working in constant with all the other countries but specifically here in the United States.

What are you looking for this country to do to stem the problem and the crisis of children in the world? This country can do a lot and has been doing a lot both officially and privately. The United States government has contributed financial resources towards the preparation of the world summit. President Jufe has confirmed, President Bush that is, has confirmed attendance at the summit and also we have the United States Committee for UNICEF which has been working with the communities across this country to try and mobilize support for child survival and development in developing countries. What type of monies are we speaking of? Well, I think that in terms of requirements, it will take about $2.5 billion annually to cover the needs of children globally and that figure sounds high for people like

yourself and myself but I think that it will pay a very low if we compare it with the figures spent on the armament or advertising for tobacco or even the amount of money spent in the U.S. or the Soviet Union to buy vodka or other alcoholic drinks. Okay. I'm quite sure there are agencies that are already set up while delivering some sort of services. How will this commitment be different from the current set of programs and agencies already in existence? Well, I think that the idea behind the summit is not to reinvent the wheel. We have to go from agencies which are effective, which have got credibility in the community and try and support them to do more and with what they're doing already.

And the question is not to reinvent any new bureaucratic arrangements but rather to try and help those who are doing something to do even more. I also understand there's going to be a world summit for children, Canada, like visual, to focus more attention on a local level. What is we as individual citizens of this country and of the world community to do, to focus more attention or to get our leaders to really take this particular action serious? I think that as individuals, we should all find out about the communities in our respective areas which are involved in work, supporting child survival and development. And with information given by those organizations, we should work with our local elective officers to make sure that we have priority on children in any policy, from any state, from any region.

And our position at UNICEF, at the United Nations in general, is that all that being considered, what we are talking about is a question of a humanitarian dimension which should have a first call on allocation of any resources internationally. Seeing an international traveler, are other countries as sincere and concerned about the devastation that are happening in third world countries and two children of the world? I think that there is more and more awareness internationally about the need to do something to stop the large scale loss of life in developing countries. Because after all, today's world has become a big village and when there are problems in one part of the village, there are bound to be repercussions in the other part of the village. No country can leave or close up onto itself and think that it will be self-sufficient

and it doesn't need other countries. This is why now we have this global village concept. To put the world's summit on a personal turn where people can understand and actually visualize the devastation which is taking place, how has the infant mortality rate increased over the last four or five years? I think that the problem that we are faced with is that we have got more than a quarter of a million children who are still dying every week of easily preventable illness and malnutrition. Every day measles, whooping cough and tetanus, all of which can be prevented by an inexpensive course of vaccines. These diseases kill almost 8,000 children. Every day, there will dehydration which can be prevented at almost no cost, kills almost

7,000 children so that this is among the greatest condemnation of our times and this is something which has got to be stopped and that is why a world summit for children has been called at the United Nations this month. The science world governments are a private industry of becoming a part of solution, are they contributing manpower, financial resources or materials to this effort? What we are talking about is and a grand alliance of all sectors of society, government and non-governmental, so that there is a contribution by business leaders, by foundations, by religious leaders, the churches, the imams for the modeling world, the Jewish community, any religious denomination, artists, writers, filmmakers, communicators, everybody has got a contribution

to make and I think that one of the successes of the summit is that it has been able to strike the imagination of all these sectors of communities. Okay, the summit will be the latter part of this month, correct? That's right. And then Saturday and Sunday, what are some of the schedules of the two-day summit meetings? Well, the summit will start on Saturday evening with a private dinner for the 70 or so attending leaders and then it will open officially on Sunday, 30th of September, by an official ceremony in the General Assembly Hall. It will move to a chamber where the leaders will sit around a table and spend four hours discussing issues that I mentioned earlier concerning survival protection development. And then the final issue being where do we go from here?

What can we do to implement these decisions that we're taken here? How has UNICEF geared itself up to want to plan the summit and wants the summit to take in place to actually oversee the coordination of activities and events to make sure that the monies that are being contributed actually goes towards the specific programs and services that are actually needed? Well, that has been done through close coordination with all those who are working in the field of child survival and development. Not only other United Nations agencies such as the World Health Organization, the UN Development Program, the High Commissioner for Refugees and other agencies, but also private voluntary organizations like Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, the Catholic Relief Services, you name them. I'm sure that it's a wide network of coordination that makes sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing at any one point in this work.

Could you give us an idea? I know you can't name all 70 nations, but some of the world's powers who have committed themselves to a ten this summit. Yes, I have mentioned the United States of America and there are six governments which called this summit, those governments, those of Canada, Pakistan, Egypt, Mali, Mexico, and Sweden. Therefore, the President and Prime Minister of those countries will be attending. We will also have the President of Bangladesh, of Benin in Africa, Brazil, of Colombia, Czechoslovakia, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Jordan, Mexico, Namibia, Senegal, and so on.

Okay. Gabriel, one final question. We here in America is an incumbent upon us to write our congressmen or senators to make sure that they are aware of our concern for this world summit. I very much so because I think learned internationally that the power of the public is such that it makes a tremendous difference for your listeners to again try and work with the local elected officials to make sure that the children do not die unnecessarily in this day and age. Gabriel Jalo, Senior Advisor with the United Nations Children Fund. In addition, the Declaration resolves to reduce child mortality below age 5 by 1-3 or to a level of 70 per 1,000 birth, whichever is the greater reduction, cut mortality rate of mothers and child birth by half, reduce malnutrition among children under the age of 5 by half, assure universal access to safe drinking water and septic systems, and provide

universal access to basic education and have at least 80 percent of primary school children finish their education. For the past 25 years, the Reverend Cecil Williams has been a Minister of Liberation at Guide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. From that position, he has been on the forefront of change, as Minister, TV personality, author, lecturer, community leader, and spokesperson for the poor and those recovering from drug and or alcohol abuse. In February of 1990, Reverend Williams began an experiment that may become one of the most significant models in a war not against drugs but against addiction. Reverend Cecil Williams is a native of San Angelo, Texas, and is a graduate of Southern Methodist

University in Dallas, Texas. As part of his defense in the war on poverty, teen pregnancy and drugs, Reverend Williams has set up a program at Guide Memorial to provide services for children, single parents, and the poor and homeless. Recently, Reverend Williams opened Southwestern's University Religious Lecture Series. Reverend Williams' topic focused on the diversity a revolutionary force in America. I spoke with Reverend Williams following his lecture. The diversity is the wave of the future, and that what we must confront is if we're going to be in touch with where the cutting edge may be. It means that in the next decade, this decade, the 1990s, through the entrance of a new century, that what we must confront is the fact that third world, fourth world, any other kind of world, the undeveloped, what may be commonly called the undeveloped countries,

the oppressed people, the people who are on the bottom end of the economic, social, class, spiritual, every other realm, that there's going to be an upheaval, and the upheaval is going to have to deal with diversity. That diversity means that there must be more mutuality, there must be more authenticity on the part of those who are in power to accept the fact that the powerless will not remain powerless the rest of their lives, that they're coming from the bottom up, and if we don't understand that, then we're going to confront probably without any doubt, revolutions that will surprise us and shake us up. Just the walls crumbling, the bulb early in the wall that crumbled, the wall that crumbles, many walls that crumbled in Eastern Europe, indicate something to us, the fact that there

have been upheavals occurring in South America and Central America, and in Africa, there's all of that tension that's going on, people are dissatisfied with their lot in life, and so what we must do is make sure that people are empowered, because that's what people are looking for, freedom and power, and they're not going to stand by and say, we are going to put up with this, we're going to not come into our own, but when people come into their own, they're coming in, they're on their own terms, it won't be because somebody's dictating to them, it won't be because somebody's controlling them, it won't be because those who in power have the power to make them even more powerless, it will be because they're coming into their own because they've discerned something, and what we are discerning is that when we come together around those issues that we're confronting, like for instance, what

is commonly called the war on drugs, which I call a war on addiction, when we come together then we can expose that issue for what it really is, and it may in fact be a conspiracy to do away with poor folks or black folks or whatever the case might be. So what I'm saying is, it won't be long before we begin to see the gyrations of events that will bring us together so that we won't be powerless for long periods of time. How would our colleges and universities come into play with realizing this diversity that you speak of? Why is there already on university campuses and college campuses, the rowing of the line? Why is there a rupture already occurring? It is because, in many ways, colleges and universities, which are supposed to help people not

only learn, but the learning process should be impowing them, that in many ways those colleges and universities are somewhat like the community itself, the broader community, the town, they reflect the same problems that the town, the city have, and that is racism, and ageism, and classism, and sexism, et cetera. Now, what must occur, it seems to me, is we've got to recognize that there's racism on these campuses, there's classism on these campuses, and what we've got to do is, if diversity means anything, it means that there is a just community, just society, on campus, that all people enjoy justice and equity and mutuality and opportunity and freedom. Now, they may sound like I'm just using jargon at this time, but I'm really talking about

what's going to, how are we going to deal with the rupture that's on campuses? A lot of campuses are very, very much in disarray, and they're those who write at the point of becoming in disarray, and again it has to do with, how are we treating our students and our faculty who are third world or who have been powerless or whatever the case might be? That's the bottom line. We saw a lot of newspaper and television reports on the devastation of the earthquake, but very few reports of stories deal with the effect it had on black Americans and in the Bay Area. Could you set the record straight or give us an assessment of how black Americans are joined by checking in San Francisco and Oakland, half of the earthquake? We were tragically, tragically, horrified, and San Francisco and the Bay Area, we always say, all this is a community that will get things worked out.

Well, I want to tell you what happened. The Pua, the homeless, black folks, in my area where we have 4,000 homeless folks, many of their buildings were not torn a Sunday, but they had to have repairs before the people could move back into them. They were sent out to the Marina district. They were sent out to the Pacidio. And do you know that the folks didn't want them out there? I'm saying that what they said, we don't want these folks out here. Do you know that they had to come back down the way I'm located? Homeless folks had to come back and stand in the midst of all of that rubble and try to make it. We and other groups like us had to bear extra work and programs and so forth to try to make sure that people at least until their places were fixed and their places were rehabilitated,

they had many of them had to sleep out. It was a good thing that it was not too cold and rainy for a period of time. And it didn't begin to happen, of course, in the latter part of November. But what I'm just significantly saying is, we're beginning to put the pieces together again. We have not put all the pieces together. We're still suffering. I want you to know, I served up until a month and a half ago, 3,500 people, I'm now serving 3,800 people every day food, I've had a 300 increase in the people I'm serving just in the last month and a half. So that indicate that when the earthquake occurred, I was doing 2,900 people. I had an increase of some 600 people after the earthquake. I'm saying to you that it's tragic that there's still those lines and those barriers that

are put up and especially if you pull and don't be poor and people of color because you are even in a worse condition. We're going to make it though. So many people helped us throughout the nation and I'm so glad that the press helped us to get the word out. So I want to thank you and it's good to see you again and I want to say to the people of the Austin area, to this entire area that what we must do is find ways now and this is not just words but what we must do is find ways to really work not just together but to work to empower. The Reverend Cecil Williams, Pastor of Glide Memorial, United Methodist Church and San Francisco. I would like to thank Lemurio Smith for her assistance and the production of the Cecil Williams segment.

If you have any questions or comments about this program, write us. Remember views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin until we have the opportunity again for in Black America's technical producer, Dana Whitehair, I'm John L. Hansen, Jr., please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building V, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712, that's in Black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building V, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this is

the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John Hansen, join me this week on in Black America. We have been, I would say over the past few years, UNICEF has been working very hard with all sorts of partners from journalists to artists and intellectuals to religious leaders. The world summit for children and the Rev. Cecil Williams this week on in Black America.