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 cas in mississippi and alabama and california and all over and tom was one of those people. He was sent to texas to handle a very significan
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 store for a universal sample, youre looking at over 60,000 students that were reported, records, right, these arent the anecdotes, these arent the things in the hallway that dont get reported, sex, over 35,000, on the basis of National Origin and
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 children are not surviving their childhood. One thing ive learned in my line of work, and again i want to thank you for your remarks and your doggedness, civil rights is about persistence. You exude persistence. I have attemp
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 embrace diversity and that build a culture that says, you know what, if you want to compete in the Global Economy tomorrow, pal, youve got to embrace diversity. Why does cocacola write a brief to the United State
Of immigrants. And we prosecuted him. You described one just now, that is not an isolated incident. You know that old addage, sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me, i categorically reject that. We have seen kids quite literally take their own lives as a result of Cyber Bullying and that is why i did a Remarkable Partnership in south florida with local Law Enforcement who had gone into schools talking about bullying, including Cyber Bullying and giving people concrete examples of things of situations they 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 si