Okay . I usually come in after bad things have happened. And we were picking the jury and ill never forget it, it was about a 6 or 7week trial, 1992 or Something Like that, 91, and it was remarkable to me because we did a questionnaire because the case had a lot of publicity. And id say 99 percent of the people noted, the potential jurors noted they have daily and meaningful contact with a person of another race or religion. And then i had another trial after this was done in another jurisdiction that shall go unnamed, and i would say there were maybe 5 percent of the jurors, potential jurors, who had had meaningful contact with a person of a different race or ethnicity and thats really what this is about. One of my least favorite words is the word tolerance because, you know, i tolerate Brussel Sprouts but if you simply tolerate the diversity that is america, you are going to, you are aspiring for mediocrity. When we have, and this gets back to your question, when we have leaders that
Thank you. Now i want to tell you my fae vifrt very Favorite Department of justice official. Eric holder is my Favorite Department of justice official. Tom perez is my second Favorite Department of justice official. We are very honored today that tom perez has come from washington, dc, to give welcoming remarks here at this summit. Tom perez is the assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division in washington, dc, he was nominated for that position by president obama and sworn in in october of 2009 and we are all the lucky we are all very lucky that that happened in october of 2009. Tom has spent his entire career in Public Service and on protecting the civil rights of our most vulnerable people. Tom actually joined the Civil Rights Division as a young lawyer and while he was there he prosecuted some of the most significant cases in the country. Lawyers in the Civil Rights Division get fanned out to places in the country to handle cases in mississippi and alabama and california
Each others advocates. We are brothers and sisters in grief. We know what it feels like to have our children destroyed over things that we love and cherish about them. Right. You referenced again what i referred to often as the appalling silence of good people that, as you recall, were dr. Kings words from the birmingham jail. Ive seen that all the time, people who are i think in their core good people who dont know what to do who tend to send the paradigm that boys will be boys and girls will be girls and were trying to shift that paradigm. And thats why in okahenapen we have an accountability document that calls for. inaudible with the idea, like i said, there is not a state going that we dont have a parent that has a dead child. We are dragging everybody to the party because at what point do we say, we cant even say, kids are dying. Hundreds and hundreds of children have died when this should be the best times of their life and our most sensitive, compassionate, empathetic, our chil
Look the other way. So, again, its a hard question to answer in ways that are other than anecdote. There have been survey data and things of that nature, but i feel uncomfortable saying unequivocally this is what we know, these are the trends. I like to be evidence based and im not sure the evidence allows that. Roslyn, challenges to you and secretary duncan. For the first time you can see data for the first time about the discipline and students referred to Law Enforcement, suspensions more than once. On the bullying and harassment we are also collecting for the First Time Ever data on the number of incidents of students disciplined for bullying and harassment. They are not exactly reliable. Lots of folks arent collecting this. Our collection is at the school level so you could go and see all this data that pop out in nice graphs for the First Time Ever and look at schools in your community. There were in the sample, it covers about 85 percent of the nations schools this year were in
Saw, it was remarkable. And that is why we will continue to do that work. So i hope today as we move forward you will understand that we are in this together with you at the department of justice. This is an all hands on deck enterprise. There is so much to do. I hope at the end of this day we will indeed all follow the lead of that student, walk out and say what are one or two things im going to do differently and better . How are we going to improve this situation . I hope if you take one and only one thing from melinda and my and ruslyns remarks today, if you have an idea, please bring them to us. We want to learn from you. We are in this together and i want to say thank you because the most important thing we have is a recognition that you understand that this is indeed a National Issue for us to deal with. Im looking forward to the rest of the day, i appreciate your presence and i appreciate your leadership, melinda, and lets get on with it. applause . I have the honor of sbre due