Kids have been very much on my mind lately, and with good reason. My eighth grandchild has arrived. Her name is Lily.

She also will be a reminder of the miracle that is embedded in the physiology of our lives. She will bring great joy to her parents, and, in time, to her brother, not to mention the glow that her grandparents will have. She also will have, there for all to see, the courage to become, to progress to fullness, with a purity of will and innocence.

I know this will be. I have seen it so clearly with her brother and her six nieces and nephews. It is beautiful to observe.

Switch with me for a moment to a different place and time. It is in a courtroom in Auburn late last winter in which a young man is on trial for killing Morgan McDuffie. I was in the courtroom during the entire trial.

It was one of the most depressing experiences of my life -and there have been more than a few. Anger, hatred, alienation, the embracing of violence as evidence of achievement as well as other forms of antisocial behavior were widely displayed by the witnesses who shared their uneven recollections of what happened on that fateful night when a young man senselessly lost his life. So many young people clearly made the practice of violence a badge of honor, a rite of passage to becoming a “man” or a “woman.”

On one particularly harrowing day in court, I left late in the afternoon, too depressed to return to my office. Instead, I went to visit my year-old grandchild, James. As I entered the room, he unsteadily made his way to me with a big smile in search of a hug. And hugged he was-deeply-and I said a prayer right then that the anger, hatred and devotion to violence I had witnessed that day never invade his becoming, his progress to fullness.

What do we as a society do to our children? How does all that innocence, all that pure wonder at a life to be discovered turn to the anger, hate and alienation that was so painfully on display in that courtroom?

There are no easy answers to that question, unfortunately. But it has much to do with what we do to our kids as a society, and there are solutions.

As a society, we are long on the rhetoric of support for our kids, but, alas, the words too often are not translated into reality. Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and head of the Children’s Defense Fund for 30 years and an indefatigable advocate for children offers some evidence that as a society we do not walk the talk, we do not act to indicate that our kids are a priority.

Note these facts:

1. On average, a child is neglected or abused every 36 seconds

2. A baby is born into poverty every 41 seconds.

3. A baby is born without health insurance every 59 seconds.

4. A baby is born to a teen mother every minute.

5. A child is killed by gun fire every three minutes.

These data are not inevitable. They are the results of decisions we make-or do not make. Public policy can change this picture. We can restrict the availability and the kinds of guns in which our society, alone among the industrialized world, is awash if we wish.

We can address the growing poverty in this nation which is often correlated, albeit not exclusively, with desperation and the absence of hope which leads to abuse, neglect, teenage pregnancy, the lack of insurance.

We can chose not to alter Headstart to a block grant program, allowing some states to address revenue shortages at the expense of this stellar program and the kids who benefit from it. We can fund special education at the projected federal level of 45 percent. We can fund No Child Left Behind (highly flawed legislation with some good intentions) at the full, prescribed level, rather than reducing it by several billion dollars as proposed in the President’s budget. We can provide health care to every child in this country as a fundamental right. And we should do all of these now. It is much less expensive than the apparatus of our correctional system.

All of this and much more is possible. We are the richest nation in the world. We can do it if we have the will–if we can move beyond ourselves and think more broadly and imaginatively about others, about the common good, and especially about our children.

It is long past due time to put action behind the platitudinous rhetoric about the importance of children that tends to be very present around election times. We could and should, for example, chose to pursue a course of child-friendly and supportive public policy rather than give a tax break of enormous magnitude to the nation’s wealthiest citizens. What is our priority, really, kids or the wealthy? The answer to that question is important to me, Grace or Lily, Ella, Nate, Dan, Sam, Rachel, Liviah and James, my grandchildren, and all the grandchildren across this country for whom we are creating an unprecedented debt. We must provide the context in which the wonderful promise of their youthful innocence matures to productive, engaged citizens. The wealthiest and greatest democracy of all time on this earth can afford to do nothing less. In some measure, the alternative is what I witnessed in that courtroom in Auburn late last winter. Is that what we want?

P.S. She is here. She is Lily, full of wonder and promise!

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