Encourage young people not to stand by in silence. So much of this, if you are not the perpetrator, if you are the victim but you see it, empowering young people to do something about it when they spot it. Lastly, the partners recently announced a stop bullying video challenge where we are bringing together psas that highlight whats happening by young people and want to give awards and celebrate that. And, as i mentioned earlier, the grants, the money, the department of education has issued 11 grants to schools. We need more, we will see as budget proposals the president s and the secretarys real commitment to this to ensure that we have some resources for innovative programs that are happening across the country for those local programs that are really changing the way their schools function and their communities see their schools and promoting those and scaling them up. Very quickly because i know we want to move on, the attorney general launched a defending childhood initiative, i k
Stop bullying summit. Im 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. Its 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.
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 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
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 States Supreme Court and General Motors and microsoft on issues of diversity and Higher Education . Because they know if they want to get ahead, theyve got to embrace that diversity. If they want to continue to be a fortunes 50 company, theres got to embrace diversity. Similarly if we want to get down to the local level and address this issue, weve got to teach our kids that the sooner that you
Things in communities across this country. So we have to get to work and we are, in fact, getting to work and i am so impressed at the partnerships that have been out here. Im so impressed that we recognize that bullying is no longer simply the bullying of your fists but its the bullying that can come through the use of twitter, through the use of other social media. We did a case, again a hate crimes case involving an individual who called himself devilfish who over the internet was sending Death Threats to the heads of the National Council of irasa to other organizations that had the audacity to october on behalf 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 lo