MS.
HUFFINGTON: It now gives me great pleasure to
introduce Robert Woodson, who is the founder and
President of the National Center for Neighborhood
Enterprise. He is a hero of mine, a mentor of mine,
who was instrumental in my founding, together with
Marvin Olasky, the Center for Effective Compassion,
who has introduced me to some of the most remarkable
people around this country who are actually in the
trenches, solving problems day in, day out. And who
has been challenging Republicans throughout the last
two years not just to talk about what they're against
but to talk about what they are for and to illustrate
it.
And
he has even been quoting the Bible, Matthew, about
what happens when we talk about removing an evil but
do not fill that vacuum with what is good.
So,
it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you, Bob
Woodson.
[Applause.]
MR.
WOODSON: I also want to thank Congressman Kasich and
Dan Coats. It's been a long time we've been
struggling with this, right, Dan? And, also, my
friend, Ray Shamie. I met Ray back in 1981 when he
was challenging a Kennedy in Massachusetts in the
Senate race. And just delighted to see him again and
have him sponsor this event, and to co-sponsor it. I
am just delighted to be here.
Let
me just say that Senator Danforth, before he left the
Senate, I had the pleasure of being with him at a
private dinner following the nomination of Clarence
Thomas and that was successful. And he said something
to a group of conservatives that stays riveted in my
mind and in my heart.
He
said, that if we are ever in a position to do to the
left what they have done to Clarence Thomas we must
all take a pledge not to do it. But we have got to
live by a principle that is different than people
like that. And I would say that that same proposition
is true when it comes to public policy.That we must
be morally consistent. But what I'm witnessing, and
as a civil rights activist in the '60s, I left the
movement when I saw that many people wanted to take
arrogant, exploitative whites feeding at the trough
and replace them with arrogant blacks who were
feeding at the trough. And I said that what I fought
for was removal of pigs from the trough, not to
replace one color of pig with another.
And
I am faced with this same dilemma right now that if
this movement is to truly serve the kind of people
that we are trying to reach, to recover this nation,
to engage in a kind of civic renewal, we have got to
be morally consistent. And engage in a kind of
self-criticism that prevents us from exhibiting the
kind of arrogance when it comes to poor people. There
are some people in the conservative movement who are
beginning to challenge the charitable tax credit. It
didn't come from them and they have no right to
dismiss it.
A
few years ago, Congressman Newt Gingrich, Speaker
Gingrich asked some of us to convene grassroots
leaders from all over the nation and ask them what
they would like to see in place? The first
recommendation that these 50 grassroots
leaders--coming from the barrios of San Antonio,
Texas, from Appalachian whites, Native Americans from
reservations, blacks from the ghettos--all of them
said, charitable tax credits. We have got to empower
individuals. We have got to begin to empower the
people and we've got to make customers. We got to
take the principles that operate in our market place
and make them operate in our social economy.
And,
so, I say today that the charitable tax credit issue
is to poor people what Brown v. Board of Education
and the Voting Rights Act was to blacks. It is a
fundamental issue of liberation. It is a fundamental
civil rights that we must see it become law in order
for us to change the strangle-hold that the poverty
industry has over programs to aid the poor.
The
poverty industry has no proprietary interest in
removing poverty. Sometimes you're known, Ray, by the
enemies that you make. And this bill is making the
right enemies, Congressman and Senator.
All
of the major charities are opposed to it. I even had
the head of the Orchestras Association and the
Federation of Zoos come up and tell me why it should
not be law and I knew I was in the right struggle.
[Laughter.]
MR.
WOODSON: So, you maintain because low-income people
are doing their best and you're right, the issue
isn't, Arianna, Government, what level of government.
The issue is that we have got to take responsibility
beyond all levels of government. That's why the
debate over the devolution of authority to the states
is important but an inadequate argument.
The
issue isn't should we devolve authority down to lower
levels of government; we should devolve it down to
civic institutions, put it back where it belongs, in
the homes and in the neighborhoods and in the
churches and in the nonprofit organizations where
people live, so, that they can make the best
judgments--low-income people that the National Center
supports all over this nation, in 38 States.
These
are the people that have demonstrated that they can
reach the Avis, that they can reach the people who
the social service agencies have failed, the prisons
have failed.
Victory
Fellowship, in San Antonio, Texas, has over the past
27 years salvaged and transformed the lives of 13,500
hard-core drug addicts, prostitutes and thieves;
people that a psychiatrist, the jails, everyone had
given up on, but they were able to transform their
lives because they don't believe in rehabilitation.
They believe in transformation.
What
they need is a new life, not to be recovered back to
the state of confusion that existed before they
became an alcoholic.
And
if you have any doubt that the Book of Matthew is
correct, that if you remove an evil through
rehabilitation and don't replace it with something of
value that an evil seven times worse will take it's
place, check out what is happening to the
off-springs: the son and daughter of the ambassadors
who came and killed their mother, or the kids who
have joined these cults and become vampires and
actually conspired to kill the parents of the
children. These are upper-income white kids from the
best high schools, two-parent households. So, their
problems are not economic and social or lack of
government. It is a lack of values. We are in a moral
and spiritual free-fall that destroys more people in
low-income neighborhoods because they are not
buffeted with the kind of benefits that those who are
not there have.
But
trust me, the struggle in suburbia is the same
struggle that is taking place on the streets of our
communities and many of the people in low-income
neighborhoods that have demonstrated that they can
transform people in the worst circumstance where
there is high crime and violence, if they can
transform the lives of people in those environments
and bring them back to fully complete lives, what can
they do for suburban white kids who are suffering the
same moral and spiritual malaise?
So,
therefore, the charitable tax credit is an important
vehicle. It is the most important vehicle for
transforming those communities because they are
desperate for money, they are desperate for
assistance. But the conditions that are attached to
the kind of programs that the government imposes is
antithetical to their interests.
The
left continues to press poor people to accept
government programs and government says religion and
faith cannot be a part of your remedy.
One
woman who was a bureaucrat sat for a day at Rickety
Fellowship and said, you all do it better than anyone
that I've ever seen anywhere in the state but the
only problem is you do it the wrong way. You don't
have people with master's degrees.
And,
therefore, I say to you in conclusion that it is
important for us to join in common community with
these low-income healers because they and charitable
tax credit will enable them to receive the kind of
money that they need. And the real fear that the
providers have is not just that money will be
diverted from their coffers to low-income people, but
they are afraid, Ray, of the competition. Because if
the faith-based drug and alcohol treatment program
can transform the life of a drug addict who's been on
heroin for 15 years at a cost of $50 a day, when a
conventional program costs $600 a day; when the
conventional program has a 6 to 10 percent success
rate and a faith-based program has an 80 percent
success rate at a cost of $50 a day, what would it do
to the poverty industry if taxpayers ever found that
out?
And,
so, therefore, let me conclude by saying there are a
number of organizations all over this nation that the
National Center has documented and they are here for
you to receive. But let me say that it is important
for us to have the proper attitude. The very fact
that Congressman Kasich and Dan Coats and come and
sit and listen and learn, themselves, means that they
understood what it takes to be leaders in this
movement.
I
was listening to Chuck Swindell the other day, he
said, love that reaches up is adoration, love that
reaches out is affection, but love that bows down is
grace. And what we must do, as leaders in this
movement, is bow down in the presence of these
neighborhood healers and learn at their feet as to
how they have been able to transform the lives of
people and take what they do and make it the center
of public policy.
In
order to do that, it means that we're going to have
to overcome the imperialism that education causes us
to adapt and listen to these neighborhood healers,
learn from them and join with them.
And
that's why I believe that the charitable tax credit
is the most important issue of this decade.
Thank
you.
[Applause.]
