The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Welcome Remarks: LCCREF Rebuilding the Gulf Coast Forum

Speech by Karen McGill Lawson on October 28, 2005.

Good morning and welcome to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund's inaugural forum on the civil and human rights impact of Hurricane Katrina. I am Karen McGill Lawson, Executive Director of the Education Fund, and I want to thank all of you for joining us this morning. LCCREF is the education and research arm of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. I invite you to learn more about both organizations at www.civilrights.org.

One of our organizational goals is to promote an understanding of the need for national policies that support civil rights and social and economic justice. Nowhere has that need been more evident than in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The tragedy of Katrina has provided us with an opportunity to re-examine policies that helped create the racial, ethnic and class inequities that we saw so graphically on our television screens. We have the chance to address these issues of poverty and racial isolation through the rebuilding process. But that opportunity exists only if we work to take advantage of it. We cannot let the history of Katrina be .... that for a few days America seemed to care about poor people but that we lacked the staying power to make a difference in their lives and the lives of their children.

This forum and the ones to follow are being held to help amplify the voices of people directly affected by the Gulf Coast hurricanes. By listening to those voices and to individuals and organizations working closely with evacuees and local officials, LCCREF will help frame public policies to address poverty and racial isolation as part of the rebuilding effort.
Before we begin, I want to thank everyone on our staff who worked hard to put this event together on short notice--in particular, Andrea Martin, Lisa Haywood, Virginia Blandford, Tyler Lewis and Catherine LeRoy. I would also like to thank Mary Frances Berry for her vision and leadership in bringing about this event, and Gwen McKinney and Associates for their communications support. New Media Mill will be videotaping the forum, for streaming to the civilrights.org web site.

I now have the pleasure of introducing a friend and colleague -- Wade Henderson, the Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and counselor to LCCREF. Under his leadership, the LCCR has become one of the nation's most effective defenders of civil and human rights. We're very pleased he's able to join us this morning. Wade . . .