Jena Six Students to Lead Panel at Summit in Washington, DC

    WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Singer Angie Stone and
 "Jena Six" students will participate in the Tuesday, September 25, evening
 session of the Children's Defense Fund's (CDF) national Cradle to Prison
 Pipeline Summit at Howard University.
     Stone will take part in a panel discussion on "Transforming Popular
 Culture into a Positive Force to help Dismantle the Cradle to Prison
 Pipeline." Following that, students Robert Bailey and Theo Shaw, two of the
 "Jena Six" will join others involved in the case for a panel discussion on
 "Endangered Black Males: Racial Injustice and the Pipeline". Bailey, Shaw
 and four other Black high school students in Jena, Louisiana, known widely
 as the "Jena Six," have been unjustly charged with adult felony charges for
 allegedly participating in a school fight. Both events will take place in
 Howard University's Cramton Auditorium.
     The panel will be part of a larger Summit to address America's Cradle
 to Prison Pipeline crisis and its devastating impact on children, youth and
 their families, particularly within the Black and Latino communities. A
 full Summit agenda is attached. For more information on CDF's Cradle to
 Prison Pipeline Initiative visit
 http://www.childrensdefense.org/cradletoprison.
     WHO:        Children's Defense Fund
                 Singer Angie Stone
                 "Jena Six" students Robert Bailey and Theo Shaw
 
     WHAT:       Cradle to Prison Pipeline Summit Tuesday Evening Session
 
     WHEN:       September 25th, 2007
 
     7:30 PM     Panel: Transforming Popular Culture into a Positive Force to
                 help Dismantle the Cradle to Prison Pipeline.
 
     9:00 PM     Panel: Endangered Black Males: Racial Injustice and the
                 Pipeline
 
     WHERE       Cramton Auditorium
                 Howard University Campus
                 2455 Sixth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20059
                 Media check-in begins at 6:30 PM
 
     RSVP:       Media wishing to attend this event must RSVP to Nayyera Haqat
                 nayyera@childrensdefense.org or 202-662-3592.  A mult box will
                 be provided.
 
 
        National Summit on America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline(R) Crisis
 
                       The Children's Defense Fund (CDF)
                             September 25-26, 2007
                               Howard University
                                 Washington, DC
 
                            TENTATIVE AGENDA 9-18-07
 
     Tuesday, September 25
     8:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.              Registration
     Blackburn Auditorium
     Second floor lobby
 
     8:30 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.              Continental Breakfast
     Blackburn Auditorium
     Second floor lobby
 
     Morning Session:
     Rankin Chapel
 
     10:00 a.m. -- 10:05 a.m.           Welcome to Howard University
 
     Dr. H. Patrick Swygert, President, Howard University
 
     10:05 a.m. - 10:20 a.m.            Meditation on Why We Are Here
 
     Reverend Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr., Senior Minister Emeritus Riverside
 Church, CDF Board Member
 
     10:20 a.m. - 10:35 a.m.            Welcome, Introduction and Overview of
                                        Summit's Goals
 
     Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund
     This session will introduce the honorary co-chairs of the Summit, Dr.
 Dorothy Height, Dr. John Hope Franklin, and Dr. Dolores Huerta and set the
 stage for activating the action phase of a broad-based National Community
 Crusade for Children, the social movement needed to dismantle the Pipeline
 that CDF seeks to catalyze at this Summit. It also will provide an overall
 framework for the Summit itself. Special emphasis will be placed on the
 exceptionally high personal, family and societal toll the Pipeline exacts,
 the striking failure of our nation to recognize its existence, and to take
 the urgent and sustained actions needed on the policy, programmatic and
 investment fronts to redress the multiple, convergent factors that fuel it.
 (This session will announce the official release of America's Cradle to
 Prison Pipeline(R) Report that all participants will receive.)
     Dismantling America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline: What Will It Take?
 
     Part I.  "Mobilizing Public Demand and Political Will"
     Moderator: Angela Glover Blackwell, Overall Summit Moderator and
 Synthesizer, Founder and CEO Policy Link and CDF Board Member
     10:35 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Angela Glover Blackwell
     Overview of Summit agenda, schedule and plan of action
     10:45 a.m. - 10:55 a.m. "What About the Children?" Yolanda Adams song
 with Slide Presentation of Photographs of Children in the Pipeline by
 Veteran Time Magazine Photographer Steve Liss
     10:55 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Introduction: Robert F. Vagt, President
 Emeritus, Davidson College and Chair, CDF Board of Directors
     11:00 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. Dr. John Hope Franklin, James B. Duke Professor
 Emeritus of History, Duke University
     11:15 a.m. - 11:20 a.m. Introduction: Carol Biondi, California's State
 Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency, CDF Board Member
     11:20 a.m. - 11:35 a.m. Dr. Dolores Huerta, President, Dolores Huerta
 Foundation and co-founder and First Vice President Emeritus, United Farm
 Workers of America
     11:35 a.m. - 12:05 p.m. Interaction between Speakers and Summit
 Participants (Angela Glover Blackwell presiding)
     The opening addresses seek to provide a historical context for the
 Summit by highlighting key past achievements, the serious continuing
 challenges and unfinished agenda, through the lens of the Black and Latino
 communities, and to build the requisite power base to prevent and dismantle
 the Pipeline. They will be followed by an interactive dialogue with Summit
 participants including Theodore Shaw, Director-Counsel and President, NAACP
 Legal Defense and Educational Fund commenting on the role of race in the
 Pipeline.
     12:05 p.m. - 12:30 p.m.         Participants transit to Blackburn East
 Ballroom
 
     12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.          Buffet Luncheon served
     Blackburn East Ballroom
     Invocation
 
     1:30 p.m. - 1:50 p.m.           Participants transit to Cramton Auditorium
 
     Part II.  Reweaving the Fabric of Family and Community:  Challenges and
 Opportunities
 
     Interactive Dialogues
 
     1:50 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.           The Need for Personal and Community
     Cramton Auditorium              Responsibility to Dismantle the Cradle to
                                     Prison Pipeline
 
     Moderator: Juan Williams, Senior Correspondent, National Public Radio
     Dr. Bill Cosby, Educator, Entertainer, and Author, including Come On
 People: On the Path from Victims to Victors, with Alivin F. Poussaint
     Dr. Robert Michael Franklin Jr., President, Morehouse College, author
 of Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities
     2:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.           Perspectives of Youth and Parents
     Cramton Auditorium              Moderator: Maya Harris, Executive
                                     Director, ACLU of Northern California
 
     Discussants:
     Donnie Belcher Boyd, Youth Advocate, Chicago, Ill.
     Michelle "Mickey" McKinney, Youth Advocate, Los Angeles, Calif.
     Lupe Ortiz-Tovar, Youth Advocate, Tucson, Ariz.
     Hun Pham, Youth, New York, N.Y.
     Jasbir Singh, Youth Advocate, New York, N.Y.
     Ms. Lorna Hogan, Parent Advocate, Washington, D.C.
     Mrs. Wanda Taylor, Parent Advocate, Minneapolis, Minn.
     This session will be an honest and provocative dialogue with parents
 and youth, some of whom have been caught in one or more of the key feeder
 points into the Pipeline, and all of whom are now working to help keep from
 entering or being trapped in the Pipeline. Mothers and fathers, many of
 whom have confronted the Pipeline themselves, know all too intimately the
 struggles and perils faced in fulfilling care-giving roles for children and
 youth amid often profound personal and family challenges and unsupportive
 environments and systems. Through this intimate sharing of experiences, the
 session hopes to illuminate the very real but often insidious factors that
 funnel children and youth into the Pipeline and how this affects their
 lives and that of their families. It also seeks to provide valuable
 insights from those who have faced the Pipeline head-on about the most
 urgently needed preventive and other interventions and escape paths.
     3:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.           Break
 
     4:00 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.           Interactive Dialogue
     Cramton Auditorium              Promising Approaches to End Violence and
                                     Strengthen Communities in Dismantling the
                                     Pipeline
     Moderator: J. Michael Solar, Esq., Solar & Padilla LLP, Houston, Texas
 and CDF Board Member
     Discussants:
     Reverend Dr. Ray Hammond, Chair, Boston Foundation and Chairman and Co-
 Founder, Boston Ten Point Coalition
     Dr. Carl C. Bell, Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health, University
 of Illinois in Chicago
     David Kennedy, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and founder of
 Operation CeaseFire
     David Valladolid, President and CEO of the Parent Institute For Quality
 Education (PIQE)
     In the past, parents, neighbors, faith-based and educational
 institutions and communities were expected to and did assume major
 responsibilities for keeping children and youth safe, within their families
 and out of child welfare, and juvenile and criminal justice systems by
 providing positive adult role models and helping to guide them along paths
 to success in school and beyond. Today, pervasive poverty, unemployment,
 rampant substance abuse, widespread crime and violence fuel already high
 and increasing rates of incarceration of children, youth, and their
 parents. Popular culture frequently demeans academic achievement and
 glorifies violence and disrespect of others, including women. Together,
 these forces have seriously eroded traditional values and undermined family
 and community stability. This session will explore successful multi-pronged
 strategies to create new community norms to quell violence and to engage
 key community stakeholders to buffer children and youth from entering the
 Pipeline and facilitate the sustained exit of those who already have
 entered it. Within this interactive format, each discussant will provide a
 brief overview of his/her respective initiative to be followed by a
 discussion of the key lessons learned from these experiences and their
 replicability, to illuminate how to staunch violence within communities on
 a large scale.
     5:15 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.           Summit Participants Transit to Dinner
 
     5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.           Dinner for Summit Participants
     Blackburn East Ballroom
     Presider: Katie McGrath, Child Advocate, Los Angeles, CA and CDF Board
     Member
 
     Invocation
     Howard University Jazz Ensemble performs during dinner
     7:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Summit Participants Transit to Cramton
     Auditorium for Evening Panel (Note: this evening session will be open
 to a wide audience, in addition to the Summit participants)
     7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.           Part III.
     Cramton Auditorium
     Transforming Popular Culture into a Positive Force to help Dismantle
 the Cradle to Prison Pipeline
     Moderator:  Confirmation pending
 
     Discussants:
     Geoff Canada, President and CEO, Harlem Children's Zone and CDF Board
     Member
     Dr. Edward Cornwell, Chief of Adult Trauma and Professor, Johns Hopkins
     Hospital
     Christy Hauberger, Founder, Latina Magazine
     Angie Stone, Singer and Composer
     Others pending confirmation
     Prominent community leaders and positive role models for children and
 youth are needed from the entertainment world to share their views on what
 it will take to transform the negative influences that permeate much of
 today's national and youth culture into more positive forces to affect the
 family, community and societal changes required to foster healthy, safe
 children. They will help formulate a call to action for promoting positive
 and productive lifestyles for children and youth, and helping change
 community and cultural norms about violence, underachievement and prison.
     9:00 p.m. - 9:45 p.m.           Endangered Black Males: Racial Injustice
     Cramton Auditorium              and the Pipeline
                                     The Jena Six
 
     Moderator: Confirmation pending
     Robert Bailey, Student
     Casiphla Bailey, Mother
     Theo Shaw, Student
     Tracie Washington, Esq., Louisiana Justice Project
 
     9:45 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.          Closing:  Marian Wright Edelman
     Cramton Auditorium
 
     Wednesday, September 26
     8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.           Continental Breakfast
     Blackburn East Ballroom
 
     9:30 a.m. - 9:40 a.m.           Meditation: Rev. Dr. Bernard Richardson,
     Blackburn East Ballroom         Dean of Rankin Chapel, Howard University
 
     Part IV.  Priority Systemic Reforms to Dismantle the Pipeline:
               Interactive Dialogues
 
     9:40 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.          Current Challenges in Major Feeder
     Blackburn East Ballroom         Systems' Treatment of Children and Youth
     Major reforms in key contributing factors and feeder systems are
 urgently needed to halt the Pipeline. This session will focus on
 interventions and systems which can and must play powerful roles in
 protecting children from rather than feeding them into and trapping them in
 the Pipeline. These include the health and mental health care, education,
 child welfare, and juvenile justice systems. Discussants will share
 promising strategies from selected communities and states to ameliorate
 these risks, and provide three major recommendations to redress the
 Pipeline from the perspective of his/her respective system. Special
 importance will be assigned to the need for scaling up and linking these
 strategies to achieve the greatest impact for children and youth and help
 inform the larger action plan to reroute children to successful adulthood.
     Advancing Child Health, Mental Health, Early Childhood Development,
 Education and Poverty Reduction
     Moderator: Confirmation pending
     Discussants:
     Jane Knitzer, Executive Director, National Center on Children in
 Poverty
     Bill McNeal, Executive Director, North Carolina Association of School
 Administrators and former School Superintendent of Wake County, Raleigh,
 N.C.
     Peter Edelman, Co-Director, Task Force on Poverty, Center For American
 Progress
     Others pending confirmation
 
     11:15 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.         Break
 
     11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.         Improving the Child Welfare, Alcohol and
     Blackburn East Ballroom         Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment and
                                     Juvenile Justice Systems
 
     Moderator: Charles Ogletree, Professor, Harvard Law School
 
     Discussants:
     Honorable Judith Kaye, Chief Judge of the State of New York
     William Bell, President and CEO, Casey Family Programs
     Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
     James Forman, Jr.  Associate Professor, Georgetown Law School, Co-founder
     of Maya Angelou Charter School, Washington, DC, and CDF Board Member
 
     1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.           Luncheon Buffet
     Blackburn East Ballroom
 
                                     Invocation - Rev. Gordon Cosby, Church of
                                     the Saviour, Washington, DC
 
     2:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.           Participants Transit to Rankin Chapel
 
     Part V.   Bringing Us All Together to Dismantle the Cradle to Prison
     Pipeline
 
     2:15 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.           Leaders Needed at the Table of Change
     Rankin Chapel
 
     Moderator:  Confirmation pending
     Discussants:
     Ralph F. Boyd, Jr., Executive Vice President, Community Relations, Freddie
     Mac and Chairman, Freddie Mac Foundation
     Iva Carruthers, General Secretary Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference
     Honorable Donald Cravins, Mayor, Opelousas, LA
     George Flaggs, Representative, Mississippi State Legislature and Judiciary
     Committee Chair and Member, Dellums Commission
     Others pending confirmation
     Representatives from selected fields that also must serve as important
 allies in any initiative to successfully dismantle the Pipeline will
 discuss how best to mobilize and engage their respective colleagues in our
 social movement. These key stakeholders include: elected officials, the
 corporate world, faith community, foundations, juvenile judges and law
 enforcement officers.
     3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.           Building the Will to Do What We Know Works
     Rankin Chapel                   to Reroute Children to Successful
                                     Adulthood
 
                                     Interactive Session with All Summit
                                     Participants
 
     Moderator: Angela Glover Blackwell
     Summit participants will be encouraged to share insights gleaned from
     their own leadership roles within initiatives to dismantle the Pipeline.
 
     4:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.           A Call to Action
     Rankin Chapel                   Next Steps to Dismantle the Cradle to
                                     Prison Pipeline
 
     Marian Wright Edelman
     This is to be an inspirational and motivational closing session,
 underscoring priority steps needed to dismantle the Pipeline, already
 identified and discussed, and mobilizing each and every one at the Summit
 to commit fully to work within their own families, communities and networks
 to this end.
     Thursday, September 27
     9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.          Town Hall hosted by Congressional Black
                                     Caucus
     Washington Convention           "Unleashing our Power to Dismantle the
     Center, 801 Mt. Vernon Place NW Prison Pipeline"
     Washington, DC 20001
 
 

SOURCE Children's Defense Fund