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 to be a fortunes 50 company, there s got to embrace diversity. similarly if we want to get down to the local level and address this issue, we ve got to teach our kids that the sooner that you embrace difference and understand that your muslim classmate or your seat classmate or your gay classmate or your limited english professor classmate might be tomorrow s ceo or today s best friend of yours, the better off we will be. you have a leg up, having done about 30 jury trials across this country and seen interactions between people of diverse backgrounds. and here we try to celebrate, not just embrace,
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 attorney to talk to the communities in our district to understand what the issues are and challenges are and to do what we can to help, to convene meetings, to do whatever we can to help on behalf of the administration. and as part of that i welcomed that request that the attorney general made of us and the president made of us and as a result i ve gone out into my community and my district goes from the oregon border to monteray, and i ve met with all kinds of different people. we have 33 indian tribes in the northern district of california, most people don t know, and i ve met with those people. i ve met with the muslim community, with the siekh american community, with the lgbq community, with the human rights commission i
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 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. i m looking forward to the rest of the day, i appreciate your presence and i appreciate your leadership, melinda, and let s get on with it. (applause). i have the honor of sbre duesing our moderator, tom 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 civ
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
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 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.