little more than two years ago to be united states attorney and it is my incredible honor to represent the president, the obama administration here in the northern district of california. welcome to the stop bullying summit. i m a federal prosecutor so it may seem odd that here we are talking about bullying and we asked all of you to be here and i want to explain the origin of that and why this happened. you people, everybody in this room, has been involved in this issue and is doing incredible work on this issue and we were so honored to be a part of it and to meet with all of you and to speak with you about it. the origin is that as the united states attorney, the administration wants me, wants all the united states attorneys, to go out into the community. it s actually a very different role for the united states attorney is envisioned by this administration. this administration, the president, attorney general holder, they want the u.s. attorneys to go out into the attorne
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 i m 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 ruslyn s remarks today, if you have an idea, please bring them to us. we want to learn from you. we are in this together an
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 that s 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, you ve got to embrace diversity. why does coca-cola write a brief to the united states supreme court and general motors and microsoft on issues of diversity and higher education? because they know if they want to get ahead, they ve got to embrace that diversity. if they want to continue
and we talk about all kinds of things. we talk about things that are more common to the u.s. attorney. we talk about fraud and identify theft and hate crimes and civil rights issue and there s one thing that comes up in absolutely every conversation that i have had with people in the district, and that was bullying. and it really, it was, it s not surprising to the people in this room, i know. it was not surprising to me but it was troubling to me that in every community that i was meeting with, this was an issue prrp violence, harassment, physical, cyber, social, children on children, this kind of behavior is so disturbing and so troubling and so heartbreaking to so many people. even in this place, even in san francisco, california and northern california, which has got to be if not the most tolerant place in the country certainly amuck the most tolerance and diverse places in the community, this is what i was hearing out in the community and it s something we wanted to get
perez has graciously agreed to stay and participate in our first panel, business creating a healthy safe and inclusive environment for all school students, the role of our federal government. tom perez, assistant secretary for civil rights, ruslyn lee. she was also nominated by president obama to serve in her role as assistant secretary of education for civil rights and she was confirmed by the senate in may of 2009. as assistant secretary, ruslyn is assistant secretary arnie s duncan s primary advisor. before she joined the department of education she was vice president of the education trust in washington, dc and was the founding executive of education trust west in oakland. in these positions she advocated for public school students in california, focusing on achievement and opportunity gaps, improving can urriculum and instructional quality and ensuring quality education for everybody. she served as an advisor on education issues on a number of private ipbs institutions,