P r o t e c t i n g F r e e d o mP r o m o t i n g P e r s o n a l r e s P o n s i b i l i t y

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

CURE SpoTlIgHT:

Marc little CURE’s PoliCy SUmmit RECaP

PRotECting lifE, not PUniShing WomEn

What WE lEaRn fRom BlaCk hiStoRy

a publication from the center for urban renewal and education

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* As of November 2016

Christians helping Christians with their health care

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CURE’s 2016 National Policy Summit was held in Washington, DC on September 19-21. The summit is an opportunity for pastors to come to Washington and learn and ask questions about the laws and policies affecting their communities.

Each year the panels are focused on welfare reform, education, culture and national security related issues. The panelists’ views are aligned with CURE’s mission and ideals. This year panelists came from the American Enterprise Institute, American Values, Foundation for Government Accountability, Ed Choice, the Institute for World Politics, Center for Security Policy, and the Charlotte Lozier Institute. The informational panel sessions bring in some of the brightest minds in the country to ensure that the clergy guests receive the most important information available on the topic.

The summit began with a reception on Monday night at the historic Washington Hilton hotel. This hotel is famously

known as the location of the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. After mingling and an interview with CURE President Star Parker and National Clergy Relations Director Rev. Derek McCoy, an actress performed a Harriet Tubman reenactment performance.

Tuesday began with keynote speaker Lt. Governor Jenean Hampton, the first African American elected to statewide office in Kentucky. Mrs. Hampton was elected with Governor Matt Bevin in an upset election in November 2015. Her speech focused on her story as a young girl growing up in inner-city Detroit. Mrs. Hampton came from a family of a single mother and four daughters. She talked about her childhood dream to be an astronaut and the importance of encouraging American children to dream big.

Chuck Donovan, President of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and Charmaine Yoest, a Fellow at American Values, spoke on the importance of spreading the pro-life message as part of the Culture and Communities panel.

2016 National Policy Summit: Hanging in the BalanceBy Angela Swinson

Continued on Next Page

As the doors swung open last week to the nation’s new Museum of African American History and Culture, my organization, CURE, was hosting another separate, but related event.

Fifty black pastors from around the nation convened in Washington, DC, for CURE’s annual Pastor Policy Summit. CURE focuses on market and faith-based solutions to issues of race and poverty.

What’s the connection between these two events? It is the connection between past and future.

We should recall the famous observation by philosopher George Santayana about the study of history.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We study history to learn and improve.

But where we part company so often on the question of race, not just differences between whites and blacks, but differences among blacks themselves, is what the lessons are that we need to learn.

President Obama was quite right in his remarks at the museum’s opening that African-American history is not “separate from” or “the underside of” American history, but rather it “is central to the American story.” It is central to the

American story because the American story is about, the president said, the struggle to realize our “highest ideals.”

But if the struggle of history is about the struggle to achieve “ideals,” this means that those ideals are not part of history. They are above history. They are eternal. They stand as the fixed measuring stick against which we judge ourselves.

How can we evaluate where we stand, how can we put our struggles of the past in perspective and resolve for change in the future, when we cannot agree on what those eternal principles are? Or even if they are eternal?

The pastors who arrived to Washington, DC, for the CURE Summit came because they know there is a problem regarding race in America and they are enlisting in the army struggling for making things better.

But they are clear that if we are to judge and be judged by eternal principles, those principles must come from an eternal source. And in this we have only one.

The Bible.

The pastors heard from the likes of Sen. Tim Scott, Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton of Kentucky, and the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Dr. Everett Piper, on this theme.

What We Learn from Black HistoryBy Star Parker

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Continued from Page 1

Fall 2016 | URbANCURE.org 3

Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) was an honored guest at the summit. His personal story is the essence of the American dream. He told the pastors that “only in America could a young man fail civics in high school and yet go on to be a United States Senator!”

Dr. Everett Piper was the second keynote speaker. He is the President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. He gave information on the liberal ideology prevalent in the media and spreading across college campuses. His speech encouraged clergy to consider sending their children to a Bible-based college in order to prevent their children from turning from their Scriptural upbringing.

Every year, Star Parker leads a tour around the Washington, DC monuments. The tour memorials include the Korean War Veterans, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Freedom Plaza and the new National Museum of African American History and Culture. The purpose of this tour is to remind guests that freedom isn’t free. Many have fought and died so that all would be free in this country and it is important that Americans do not forget the great sacrifices that were made in the past.

The Honorable Bob McEwen, a six-term Member of the United States Congress, was the final keynote speaker of the Summit. He helped to break down complex conservative ideals and answered questions on various current topics including Obamacare and the negative consequences of excessive government regulations in the free market.

The education panel featured Leslie Hiner of Ed Choice and Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute. The panelists discussed practical ways to fight for school choice in every community, as well as the positive results of school choice initiatives nationwide.

Dr. Paul Coyer of the Institute on World Politics and Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy, are international security experts. Their panel focused the importance of fighting Islamic terrorism, the spread worldwide of sharia law, and the challenges to national security due to modern technology.

The event ended with a call to action by Star Parker and CURE National Clergy Relations Director Rev. Derek McCoy.

CURE STAFF President: Star parkerVice President: robert borensCommunications Director: angela SwinsonDirector of Development: brandon pattersonnational Clergy Director: rev. derek mccoyadministrative assistant: dominique harrisonController: mary GoodchildEditor, BlackCommunitynews.com: laShawn barber

boARD oF DIRECToRSwilliam allen, ph.d.

John bedrosian

James Golden

marc t. little

angela minter

Star parker

t.w. Shannon

tana Sherwood

John Strauss

Virginia lamp thomas

boARD oF ADvISoRSJohn d. ashcroft

Judy bedrosian

J. Kenneth blackwell

G. marcus cole

nancy epperson

robert p. George

George Gilder

reverend rosey Grier

Kay coles James

michael medved

edwin meese iii

marvin n. olasky

mathew d. Staver

bishop frank Stewart

walter e. williams

Continued on Page 16

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Ordinarily, it is not a good idea to base how you vote on just one issue. But if black lives really matter, as they should matter like all other lives, then it is hard to see any racial issue that matters as much as education.

The government could double the amount of money it spends on food stamps or triple the amount it

spends on housing subsidies, and it will mean very little if the next generation of young blacks goes out into the world as adults without a decent education.

Many things that are supposed to help blacks actually have a track record of making things worse. Minimum wage laws have had a devastating effect in making black teenage unemployment several times higher than it once was.

In my own life, I was very fortunate when I left home in 1948, at age 17—a high school dropout with no skills or experience. At that time, the unemployment rate of black 16- and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. For white males

the same ages, it was 10.2 percent.

Why were these unemployment rates so much lower than we have become used to seeing in later times—and with very little difference between blacks and whites?

What was different about those times was that the minimum wage, established in 1938, had been rendered meaningless by a decade of high inflation. It was the same as if there were no minimum wage.

In later years, as the minimum wage was repeatedly raised to keep up with inflation, black teenage unemployment from 1971 through 1994 was never less than 3 times what it was in 1948, and ranged as high as more than 5 times the 1948 level. It also became far higher than the unemployment rate of whites the same age.

The relations between the police and the black community are another issue that has gotten a lot of attention, and produced counterproductive results. After all the rhetoric and all the efforts towards more tightly restraining the police, the net result has been that murder rates have

Black Lives Matter? Then Support Schools Like TheseBy Thomas SowellIt’s a rare day when the editorial pages of The Wall Street

Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post are of one mind.

But it just happened. Each of these newspapers, with the largest circulations in the country, and with views on the right and the left, weighed in with unanimity, criticizing the recent resolution of the NAACP calling for a moratorium on expansion of charter schools.

The NAACP wants to freeze expansion of charter schools until, according to the resolution, they meet the same “transparency and accountability standards as public schools,” no longer compete for the same public funds as public schools, don’t reject students that public schools accept, and that evidence of segregation is no longer evident.

It is disappointing that the NAACP, which defines itself as a civil rights organization, wants to deny a right as fundamental as parents determining how and where to

educate their children. But although disappointing, it not surprising.

It is not just charter schools that NAACP opposes, but all alternatives to public schools.

This new resolution notes that it is an extension of NAACP’s 2014 resolution “School Privatization Threat to Public Education,” in which NAACP opposes school choice and markets and competition in education.

NAACP has supported lawsuits challenging voucher programs that are funded via tax credits to businesses that contribute funding for vouchers. So NAACP’s opposition to charters is really not about, as

they claim, their concern about siphoning taxpayer funds from public schools.

It is about opposition to competition in education, to competition to public schools, and competition to teacher unions.

NAACP Denies Education Civil RightsBy Star Parker

Continued on Page 16 Continued on Page 12

The real discriminaTion Taking place is Taking educaTion choice away

from black parenTs and forcing black

children To remain in failing schools.

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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the most well-known civil rights organization in the U.S. It is also often and quite unfairly considered the ultimate arbitrator for black education. This was made evident by its resolution released last month at its national convention held in Cincinnati. The resolution calls for a moratorium on the federal charter schools program in general and privately managed charter schools in particular. Although the resolution will not become final until the national board meets later this year, its claims about charter schools have created quite a buzz in the school reform space. This includes responses from Democrats for Education Reform and the Black Alliance for Educational Options, to name a few.

The NAACP’s resolution is puzzling—not solely due to its advocacy of a moratorium on charter schools nor its persistent commitment to maintaining the “one best system” for delivering teaching and learning to children. Rather, it’s because of its fusion of the two.

In squaring the contradiction of the NAACP’s belief in public education as a means for improving the economic mobility of black schoolchildren—really all schoolchildren—and its historical opposition to public-school-based parental choice programs beyond magnet schools, let me unpack the resolution in three parts.

The NAACP is well-intentionedFor starters, the NAACP’s concern about the plight of black schoolchildren in public schools is

core to its mission. Long before school reform became a sexy

and profitable career choice, a theme for a Hollywood movie, or fodder for TV plots like “The West Wing” and “House of Cards,” the NAACP was in the business of reforming public education for students, families, and educators. Examplesinclude the NAACP’s campaign for better funding for public schools and a campaign for equal teacher salaries during the first half of the twentieth century. Currently, the NAACP is addressing disproportionate suspension rates, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the lack of black students in APcourses. Campaigns of this type remain important to supporting opportunity within public education.

But over time, the NAACP’s commitment to public education—which it sees as a good exclusively delivered through public schools—failed to keep pace with the development of the charter school movement that began in Minnesota in 1991 with support by Democratic Senator Ember Reichgott Junge. Why? The NAACP believes that charter schools undermine the mission of public education, which comes across clearly in its 2016 resolution. It affirmed a similar anti-charter resolution in 2014and 2010. The consistency of this position reveals that the NAACP believes that it can best champion its commitment to public education and black children by opposing charter schools.

The resolution is more a critique of governance structures than of charter schools

At the same time, the NAACP’s resolution is extremely nuanced. Thus, its critique has less to do specifically with charters and instead goes to the heart of governance model

Unpacking the NAACP Charter Resolution: Part IBy Gerard Robinson and Edwin Chang

challenges that plague public education in general. Take one statement from the resolution:

Weak oversight of charter schools puts students and communities at risk of harm, public funds at risk of being wasted, and further erodes local control of public education.

This statement is about bureaucracy, not freedom. “Oversight” of any public institution is important for fiscal and managerial purposes. But beyond that, any link between “oversight” and student achievement or teacher and parental satisfaction is weak. In fact, freedom from cumbersome “oversight” is a hallmark for innovation in the public sector as evidenced by the success of magnet schools, theme-based public high schools, and open enrollment policies that afford families choice within the public school system. “Oversight” is necessary though freedom is essential to the success of charter schools.

In case anyone forgot, it is an election yearFinally, the NAACP’s resolution must be seen

within the broader context of presidential year politics and the ongoing debate over whether charter schools should remain a central part of education reform. The 2008 election of Barack Obama brought about themes of hope and change. In President Obama’s inauguration speech, he said “our schools fail too many” and “and we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.”

Although President Obama’s speech did not outline a specific plan to help our schools, his selection of Arne

Duncan as Secretary of Education indicated that charter schools would be part of the solution. In fact, the increase in federal funding for charter schools during the Obama presidency helped spread the charter school movement in the U.S. Will this investment continue under a Clinton administration? Only time will tell. But what’s for sure is that two of Clinton’s biggest supporters—the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA)—will weigh in on this topic.

In 2007, AFT endorsed Secretary Clinton for president, while the NEA endorsed then Senator Obama after he won the democratic nomination. AFT and NEA both finally endorsed Obama in 2008, but neither group has been completely pleased with his eight-year, pro-charter school agenda. In this presidential election, AFT and NEA have both endorsed Clinton.

Given NAACP’s support of Clinton, its historical relationship with teacher unions, and each organization’s support for traditional public schools, only time will tell if this resolution is merely the first episode in a long fight for the soul of American education under a Clinton presidency. One thing seems clear: the NAACP does not believe the expansion of charter schools with the support of federal and state money is in the best interest of black and brown schoolchildren.

Why is this the case? Look for Part II that will dive into past practices of freedom of choice laws and how they have shaped the NAACP’s view of charters today.

To read more, go to aei.org.

Four Facts About Public Charter SchoolsFACT oNE Charter Schools Are Public: The state laws that allow for the creation of charter schools specify that these schools are public schools. They cannot teach religion nor charge tuition, for example. When the public nature of these schools has been challenged in court, state after state has ruled that charters are public schools.

FACT TWo Charter Schools Are Accountable: Charter schools operate within a multi-tiered accountability sys-tem—to parents, to authorizers via a performance-based contract, to the state, and to the federal government. If parents are unhappy with a charter school, they can enroll their children elsewhere. When authorizers (such as a local school district or a state university) find that charters fail to live up to the terms of their contract, they can close the school. Students in charter schools are required by law to take the same state standardized tests as traditional public school students. The provisions of the No Child Left

Behind Act and the Individuals With Disabilities in Educa-tion Act apply to charter schools.

FACT THREE Charter Schools Typically Enroll Stu-dents Who Are Struggling Academically: Public charter schools tend to enroll, on average, students who are aca-demically behind their peers in traditional public schools. Not only is there plenty of anecdotal evidence to back up this claim, but studies of three of the largest charter states included similar findings.

FACT FoUR The Public Overwhelmingly Supports Public Charter Schools: Seventeen years into the char-ter school movement, it is clear that public support for charters is growing while opposition is declining. In fact, between 2000 and 2007, support grew from 42 percent to 60 percent, while opposition declined from 47 percent to 35 percent.

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Marc Little is a pastor, lawyer, community activist, and the Vice Chairman of CURE’s board. His inspiring story is an example of facing obstacles in order to achieve your dreams. Mr. Little is the son of All-American football player Floyd Little. A nine-season running back in the NFL, Floyd Little was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 2010 and Marc was the presenter at his father’s enshrinement ceremony.

In that enshrinement speech, Mr. Little talked about the effect his father’s success had on he and his siblings. He told the crowd that “my sisters and I are all college graduates today. That’s success. That’s dad’s legacy.”

Little was an undergraduate student at University of Southern California. On July 31, 1987 a gang member shoved a gun in his face and demanded $100. When he explained that he had no money, the gunman knocked him down, cocked his gun and shot him in the leg. Little had to have his right leg amputated at his thigh. His attitude was now different, and he understood the importance of making every moment count. He refused to give up on his life, although he could have forgotten his dreams and accepted disability benefits.

Through a commitment to God and the support of his wife Tegra, Little was able to pick up the pieces. He said that a poem that he hung on his wall titled “Footprints” encouraged him. The poem’s message, that when you are lonely and think that God is not there, that is actually when God is there carrying you through the trials in your life.

He went to work at an airport, and was eventually accepted into USC’s law school program. It was during an externship with the United States District Court in 1993 that Little and his wife began to question their ideology. When discussing his ideological conversion Little said “my wife and I (married in 1994) began to think about what we believe

with respect to the social issues like abortion, the death penalty, immigration, and the like. We became familiar with liberal and conservative ideology. We asked ourselves about the role of government in our lives; we researched and identified what each political party says they stand for. At this time in my life, I was a Democrat but my views did not line up with the Democrat Party at this time. The party that I thought I belonged to didn’t align with my values and didn’t feel very godly to me.”

After graduating from law school, Little went on to start his own firm, which today is a highly successful entertainment law firm in Los Angeles, California. Soon after he became an elder at the Faithful Central Bible Church, And was previously the chair of the Elder board. After an experience with God during a visit to Willow Creek Community (Pastor Bill Hybel’s church), Little answered the call of God to draw closer by enrolling in Fuller Seminary. He graduated with a Master’s in Christian Leadership.

Little is active in his community sharing the Gospel. He believes the church should “be bold. Preach on the issues that are unpopular. Encourage political engagement by standing against anything that threatens Religious Liberty.”

CURE spotlight

Marc Little Pastor, Lawyer, Activist

He encourages pastors to live out the Great Commission, and to go beyond the pulpit. “If we do not extend ourselves in the community to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the widow and the orphan, then how can they see Christ in us?”

He started a website called FaithWatchOnline.com as a way to keep the church engaged with local legislation that would seek to threaten religious liberty and family related issues. Little tracks hundreds of bills being formed and voted on in California so that the legislators cannot vote against the church’s interests in private. Tegra Little started and runs an organization that cares for post-abortive adults called No Longer Bound. He believes that “it’s up to our church leaders to do something powerful for the Kingdom while we are preaching the gospel. Evangelism and politics are not mutually exclusive; I would argue they are twins. Get involved.” To read more on Marc Little, check out his book The Prodigal Republican: Faith and Politics wherever books are sold.

Footprintsas i was walking along the beach with my lord.

Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.

for each scene, i noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,

one belonging to me and one to my lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,

i looked back at the footprints in the sand.

i noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest

times, there was only one set of footprints.

this really troubled me, so i asked the lord about it. “lord, you said once i decided to follow

you, You’d walk with me all the way.

but i noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one

set of footprints.

i don’t understand why, when i needed You the most, You would leave me.”

he whispered, “my precious child, i love you and will never leave you.

never, ever, during your trials and testings.

when you saw only one set of footprints,

it was then that i carried you.”

The treatment of women seeking abortions has arisen several times during the ongoing election cycle. Some abortion advocates claim that pro-lifers want to punish women seeking abortion. They argue that women were punished for having abortions before Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1973, and that if Roe is repealed women will once again be subject to punishment.

Those leveling these charges may sincerely believe that the logical implications of the pro-life position—that each and every human being, at any stage of development and condition of dependency, possesses a right to life simply by virtue of being human and ought to be protected by law from having that life taken from it—entail that women seeking abortions should be punished for their cooperation in an act that ends an innocent human life.

Are they right? Accurate knowledge of the history of abortion law in this country before 1973, the legislative efforts of the pro-life movement to reduce and ultimately end abortion since Roe, and the rationale at the heart of the pro-life movement reveal that the answer is—emphatically—no.

Did the government punish women who procured abortions before Roe? Clarke Forsythe, Acting President of Americans United for Life, writes that there were zero prosecutions of pregnant women under any abortion law in the United States between 1922 and 1973. In fact, the only two documented cases in American law in which a woman was charged with participating in her own abortion occurred in 1911, in Pennsylvania, and 1922, in Texas. In neither of those cases was the woman convicted.

Justice Blackmun himself, in the majority opinion for the Court in Roe, noted the absence of punishment for women procuring abortions under prevailing abortion laws in America, writing that in “many States” a pregnant woman “could not be prosecuted for self-abortion or for cooperating in an abortion performed upon her by another.” Most states’ statutes did not allow for the prosecution of women seeking abortions, and in states that did have statutes prohibiting women from performing self-abortions or consenting to an abortion performed by another, no women were prosecuted.

The reason for this is simple enough. The record of

Fall 2016 | URbANCURE.org 1110 URbANCURE.org | Fall 2016

Protecting Life, Not Punishing WomenBy Tim Bradley

state abortion laws before Roe makes clear that the laws targeted for prosecution the abortionists themselves—the “principals” of the act—rather than the pregnant women—the “accomplices.” In fact, most states did not even regard the woman as an accomplice. Some classified the woman in law as a victim of the abortionist. The reason for this was partly practical: if the woman is considered an accomplice to the crime of abortion, she cannot testify against the principal—the abortionist, in this case—in court, thus weakening the state’s ability to effectively enforce the law against abortionists.

Forsythe captures the states’ rationale for enforcing abortion laws in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. “The states understood that the point of abortion law is effective enforcement against abortionists; that the woman is the second victim of the abortionist; and that prosecuting women is counterproductive to the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists,” he writes.

Given that women were not punished for seeking abortions before Roe, might abortion advocates nevertheless be correct that women will face penalties should Roe be repealed? There is no reason to answer in the affirmative.

To understand why, it is helpful to grasp that abortion will not automatically be re-criminalized should Roe be overturned. As Paul Linton writes, overturning Roe will neither make abortion illegal nationwide nor restore state abortion laws to what they were prior to 1973. Most state laws prohibiting abortion have either been repealed or overridden by state court decisions, and as such would not be effective to prohibit abortion at this point. A handful of states, however, have passed laws since 1973 that would be triggered by a repeal of Roe and would prohibit abortions in those states.

This is pertinent to the question at hand because it means that most states will have to enact new laws to prohibit abortion if Roe is repealed. The history of abortion law in this country—a history which legislators will surely be familiar with and influenced

by—gives no reason to suspect that new abortion prohibitions post-Roe will punish

women for procuring abortions.

Additionally, most pro-lifers and all major pro-life organizations oppose punishing women for procuring abortions. An examination of abortion restrictions that have been enacted at both the state and federal levels indicate that pro-life lawmakers have no interest in punishing women. For example, the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 explicitly states, “A woman upon whom a partial-birth abortion is performed may not be prosecuted under this section.”

This history affirms that women were not punished for procuring abortions under American law before Roe, and that they will not be punished under state abortion statutes after Roe is overturned. This position against punishing women, which the pro-life movement embraces, is coherent with its fundamental premises.

Abortion law before Roe showed a high level of sympathy for pregnant women facing difficult circumstances. It also recognized that these women’s testimonies were crucial in order for the state to be able to carry out its aim of protecting the unborn child by punishing those who perform abortions.

Robert P. George and Ramesh Ponnuru explain that the pro-life movement wants our laws today to accomplish the same thing that pre-Roe laws did for decades. Those laws “recognized that unborn children are living human beings with the same right not to be killed that the rest of us possess; they gave effect to this recognition by prohibiting abortion; and they imposed no legal penalty on the mothers.”

Saving babies, not punishing women, has been the purpose of the pro-life movement in this country from the start and continues unabated today.

Tim Bradley is a research associate at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Originally printed by the Charlotte Lozier Institute. For more information, please go to www.lozierinstitute.org.

The consequences of ROE V. WADE

58,586,256ToTal aborTions since 1973

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CURE is thankful for you! The leaves are falling off the trees, the weather is cooling off and Thanksgiving is around the corner.

We are thankful that you are partnering with us in the fight for freedom. CURE is thankful for the great opportunities God has given us this year including:

• President Star Parker received the CPAC 2016 Ronald Reagan Foot Soldier of the Year Award

• An increase in donors and President’s Circle Club members

• Increased media exposure for CURE’s Clergy Network

• Completion of the 10-city tour which brought trainings to California, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Maryland, Tennessee, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia

I will give thanks to You, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all Your wonderful deeds. (Psalms 9:1)

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for his mercy endures forever! (Psalm 107:1)

Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name! (Psalm 100:4)

I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. (Psalm 34:1)

Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon His name; make known His deeds among the peoples! (Psalm 105:1)

I will give to the LORD the thanks due to His righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High. (Psalm 7:17)

Give Thanks!

Events of this magnitude are never possible without the support of generous sponsors. We would like to thank these organizations for

their contribution and support of CURE’s 2016 Policy Summit.

Thank you!

Policy Summit Sponsors

Gold E xec ut ive Sponsors

Si lver Sponsors

Bron z e Sponsors

Fall 2016 | URbANCURE.org 15

There are now thousands of crisis pregnancy centers operating nationwide. More than 2,500 are affiliated with either Care Net or Heartbeat International.

These organizations work with pregnant women in trouble and provide them the services they need to raise healthy children. They provide ultrasounds, parental counseling, life-management counseling, help with the physical needs of the mother and child and, if need be, help with adoption services.

Unwanted pregnancies often are the result of loneliness, fear and a lack of information. Crisis pregnancy centers deal with all this.

The left and its abortion-rights activists promote a culture that detaches sex from love and responsibility, that minimizes the central importance of family, that justifies youth sex, promiscuity and the “hook-up” culture.

Then they want taxpayers, other people, to foot the bill.

Is it any wonder we are drowning in debt? It’s directly the result of this culture of entitlement.

Planned Parenthood rakes in hundreds of millions in the abortion business and actively discourages women from going to crisis pregnancy centers. On the Planned Parenthood website, they call these centers “fake clinics... (that) have a history of giving women wrong, biased information...”

These crisis pregnancy centers are financed and run by committed, altruistic Americans, where women, often for the first time in their lives, experience love and meaning. The information they get, which Planned Parenthood calls “wrong and biased,” is that life should be chosen over death and that responsibility is a community affair.

We should not settle for a country of promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies and abortion. We do have a choice.

We can reprogram the destructive culture that we have created and in which we now live.

Crisis PregnanCy CentersTo find a crisis pregnancy center in your area please

call 800-712-4357 or text “HELPLINE” to 313131

black lives Matter? Continued from Page 5

soared in cities where that policy has been followed—and most of the people killed have been black.

None of the most popular political panaceas for helping black communities has a track record of making things better, and some have made things much worse.

The one bright spot in black ghettos around the country are the schools that parents are free to choose for their own children. Some are Catholic schools, some are secular private schools and some are charter schools financed by public school systems but operating without the suffocating rules that apply to other public schools.

Not all of these kinds of schools are successes. But where there are academic successes in black ghettos, they come disproportionately from schools outside the iron grip of the education establishment and the teachers’ unions.

Some of these academic successes have been spectacular—especially among students in ghetto schools operated by the KIPP (Knowledge IS Power Program) chain of schools and the Success Academy schools.

Despite all the dire social problems in many black ghettos across the country—problems which are used to excuse

educwidespread academic failures in ghetto schools—somehow ghetto schools run by KIPP and Success Academy turn out students whose academic performances match or exceed the performances in suburban schools whose kids come from high-income families.

What is even more astonishing is that charter schools are being opposed, not only by teachers’ unions who think that schools exist to provide guaranteed jobs for their members, but also by politicians, including black politicians who loudly proclaim that “black lives matter.”

Apparently these black children’s futures do not matter enough for black politicians—including the President of the United States—to stand up to the teachers’ unions. The teachers’ unions produce big bucks in campaign contributions and big voter turnout on election day.

Any politician, of any race or party, who fights against charter schools that give many black youngsters their one shot at a decent life does not deserve the vote of anybody who really believes that black lives matter.

16 URbANCURE.org | Fall 2016

NAACp Denies Education Civil Rights Continued from Page 4

What We learn from black History Continued from Page 3

Piper’s words to students at his university, “This is not a daycare; it is a university,” have gone viral. And they can be applied to our whole nation.

The point is to learn that “life is not about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that is wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that is wrong with them.”

Sen. Scott, the first African-American senator from South Carolina, and Lt. Gov. Hampton, the first African-American to ever hold statewide office in Kentucky, shared a similar message to that of Dr. Piper.

We stand in the present and look to the past so that we

can move forward into the future. Our nation is so deeply divided—not only on race but on just about everything.

Many see religion as the problem. While many others see it is as the solution. Many see religion as the antithesis to freedom. While many others understand it as the enabler of freedom.

This is where the tension lies today.

In looking at the civil rights struggle, we cannot forget that this was a Christian movement led by a Christian pastor. And this is how we must continue this movement in the future, united in faith. Any other approach, I believe, leads to despair rather than hope.

Arguments that charters and other competitive alternatives to public schools siphon funds away from public schools that are critical for their success are simply bogus.

As Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute points out, “Since World War II, inflation-adjusted spending in American public schools has increased 663 percent.” Yet despite this, “public school national math scores have been flat (and national reading scores have declined slightly) since 1992.”

Where’s the money going?

According to Robinson, much of the money is going to hiring more teachers and bureaucracy. From 1950 to 2009, the number of teachers increased 2.5 times more than the increase in students, and the number of administrators and other staff increased seven times more than the increase in students.

So it comes as little surprise that teachers unions share NAACP’s distaste for competition in education. Or that the two major teachers unions, American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, have been generous contributors to both the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus.

One hundred and sixty black education leaders across the nation, including former education secretary Rod Paige,

wrote to the NAACP urging that they not approve this resolution.

The letter states that these leaders write on behalf of “nearly 700,000 Black families choosing to send their children to charter public schools, and the tens of thousands more who are still on waiting lists.”

The letter cites a recent study from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes that concluded that black students in charter schools gained the equivalent of 14 extra days in learning in both reading and math, compared to their peers in traditional public schools.

The real discrimination that is taking place is taking education choice away from black parents and forcing black children to remain in failing schools that are disproportionately populated by black children from poor families.

The Wall Street Journal just reported that despite an increase in earnings of black workers exceeding that of white and Latino workers since the recession ended in 2009,

median weekly pay for blacks still lags significantly, $685 compared to $854 for whites.

Education makes all the difference. Blacks need education freedom, and it is sad that the organization that claims to stand for civil rights opposes this.

black sTudenTs in charTer schools gained The

equivalenT of 14 exTra days in learning in boTh reading

and maTh, compared To Their peers in TradiTional

public schools.

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