Pry Open the Freedom Gates

Mary McLeod Bethune (right) with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Last Saturday, Liberty Hill's President/CEO Kafi D. Blumenfield was honored by NCNW (the National Council of Negro Women) with the presentation of its Distinguished Community Leader Award recognizing people in the community who make a difference in the quality of life for all people. NCNW was founded in 1935 by Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955). Following are excerpts from Kafi Blumenfield's remarks on accepting the award.  

"The Freedom Gates are half ajar. We must pry them fully open." —Mary McLeod Bethune

We are deeply appreciative of NCNW’s leadership and programs that provide critical services to women, children and families here in  Los Angeles and across the nation. In reflecting on NCNW’s visionary founder, I wonder what Mary McLeod Bethune would see were she alive today?  

Amid the great advances that allow all of us to be here today, she would see that the “Freedom Gates" are still half ajar. Because what do we see happening around us this very morning? 

• This morning, in the richest nation in history, a thousand people were lined up at the L.A. Sports Arena — retirees, housekeepers, mothers, students— all without health insurance and desperate to receive the free health care offered to a total of 5,000 people over four days to treat high blood pressure, diabetes and other medical ailments.   
• This morning, middle-class wealth continues to  fall as the richest people in the nation become richer.   
• Today there are 2.6 million more Americans living in poverty than there were last year. One in five of  America’s children live in poverty.
• Today, a person's zip code is an indicator of life expectancy.  Do you live in 90210, Beverly Hills?  Well, your life expectancy is 86 years!  Live in 90062? In South LA? Your life expectancy is 75 years!  A 10-mile difference in Los Angeles means an 11-year difference in life expectancy.  
• And today, Blacks have the highest rate of poverty in the nation.

But Mary McLeod Bethune, that great civil rights leader and advisor to presidents, would — if she were here today — also see hundreds of students, low-wage workers, underemployed and unemployed people of all ages, activists and organizers — the 99% — fed up and protesting at City Hall. She would hear them calling for jobs, fairness, and a democracy that works. 

She would see a new generation of talented community leaders organizing for change in a new era. 

When I was in law school, I got to meet some of these talented community leaders for the first time.  I took a class that was studying an environmental justice problem in L.A.  As part of the class, we observed the excellent work of residents in the Athens Park area.

The residents were extremely concerned about a toxic-waste facility. In its yard, huge drums were stacked too high, one on top of one another.  Many were leaking. Separating this huge yard of ugly, hazardous-waste drums from the neat bungalows, fruit trees and gardens of the residential neighborhood was nothing more than a chain link fence.   

We learned that this neighborhood had rates of cancer that seemed higher than in others.  Neighbors talked about serious incidents of asthma. They wanted their neighborhood to be healthier. They wanted a solution that did not simply move a dangerous waste handler to another neighborhood that would suffer. They wanted the toxic waste handler to clean up its act. 

So the Athens Park residents turned to community organizing to try to clean up their neighborhood. 

A few years later, I learned that this effort was supported by Liberty Hill Foundation. 

Community organizing identifies and solves problems and changes lives. 

When community residents win practical changes and get a glimpse of what it feels like to exercise the fullest extent of their human capabilities, they can only organize for more.  

At Liberty Hill, we support some of the best organizing in the country:

• Through our Fund for Change we’re supporting nonprofits such as Special Needs Network and Black Workers Center that are developing smart organizing and advocacy efforts.
• We’re training such groups as Black Women for Wellness through our Wally Marks Leadership Institute for Change to help them develop critical skills to increase their success in protecting the health and well-being of Black women around the state.
• We’re convening leaders from organizations including Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) and others to discuss how to develop a pipeline of talented black organizers.
• And we’re working to reinvigorate philanthropy by organizing African American donors and allies to invest in community based solutions for social change through our Uplifting Change Philanthropy Summit held every February.

In my work at Liberty Hill I’m called to action by the legacy of NCNW's fourth National President, Dorothy Height. Her story inspires me, with her life-long leadership in the struggle for equality and human rights for all people, with her vision for a just society and a better world.

And  Mary McLeod  Bethune’s essay, "My Last Will and Testament," guides me in my work: “Faith, courage, brotherhood, dignity, ambition, responsibility. These are needed today as never before. We must cultivate them and use them as tools for our task of completing the establishment of equality. We must sharpen these tools in the struggle that faces us and find new ways of using them.”

The Freedom Gates are half ajar. I, along with my colleagues at Liberty Hill, join you all in working to pry those gates fully open!

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