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BUILDING A SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AMERICA’S CHILDREN Doug Imig Americans are concerned with the conditions of children and young people, and this concern has proven to be pervasive, intense, and enduring. But it has also largely proven to be politically anemic. Beyond the consensus that children’s well-being is threatened, there is little public agreement over who bears responsibility for these problems or what we should do about them. As a result, public unease has failed to translate into a coherent and widespread demand for political change. What explains this gap between public concern and political action when it comes to children’s well-being? This paper addresses four aspects of this question: First, in what ways is the public concerned for the well-being of children? Second, why has this concern failed to lead to political mobilization? Third, what factors helped to translate public concern with children in earlier eras into political movements, and why were those movements able to contribute to the policy-making process? Fourth, what might contemporary children’s advocacy* /reconfigured in light of these insights* /look like? Answering these questions sheds light on how collective public will develops and how and when it translates into collective political action benefiting children. Introduction In March 2005, the Memphis TennesseeCommercial Appealran a three-part series on Memphis’s status as the ‘‘nation’s infant death capital.’’ Among the grim statistics reported in the series: the infant mortality rate in Memphis is the worst in the nation (at 14.2 deaths per thousand births). One Memphis zip code is deadlier for babies than Vietnam, Iran, or El Salvador. Black mothers in Memphis are almost three times more likely to lose babies before age 1 than White mothers (Edmondson 2005a, 2005b, 2005c).

Across Shelby County, an infant dies every 43 hours. Memphis is certainly not facing this epidemic alone: a dozen large American cities have double-digit infant mortality rates (Edmondson 2005c, 4).

Accompanying the series of articles was an editorial placing the infant mortality crisis within the context of poverty and related social ills, including drug abuse, violence and ignorance. The newspaper’s editors closed the series with a rousing call to arms, demanding ‘‘aggressive action’’ to reduce the deaths of infants in Memphis and to change the culture of poverty and hopelessness that lies beneath it (The Commercial Appeal 2005).

Eliminating the effects of poverty is a tall order. But in many ways this set of conditions* /and the resulting call to action on behalf of children* /parallels another moment in Memphis history. Responding to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

in April 1968, physicians and staff of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis Journal of Children & Poverty, Vol. 12, No 1, 2006ISSN 1079-6126 print/1469-9389 online/06/01021-17 – 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/10796120500502094 turned their attention to racial and health care disparities across the city. They established a volunteer health clinic to serve poor children, and* /unexpectedly* /found extraordi- narily high rates of malnutrition among children. City leaders met their findings with skepticism and denial (Fath 1983).

Working with a community action agency, the St. Jude’s group shifted their clinic’s focus to improving community nutrition. The clinic gave away iron-rich supplements to the mothers of all children born at the City of Memphis Hospital and established supplemental food programs for low-income families and for expectant mothers. Children in the program were followed in extensive research studies, which suggested that the program significantly reduced anemia and led to decreases in infant mortality. In time, the program generated a great deal of national interest. It was featured in an article inRedbook Magazineentitled ‘‘How to save babies for two dimes a day,’’ and was the subject of a television documentary that was seen by Senator Hubert Humphrey. 1 Based on the success of the Memphis program, Senator Humphrey introduced federal legislation that modified the Child Nutrition Act along the lines of the St. Jude’s program. The resulting WIC program (the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children) continues to support the nutritional needs of low-income mothers and infants today.

Within a political context characterized by a national concern for hunger in America and with civil rights, the media attention focused on the St. Jude’s nutrition program, aided by a key Senate ally, helped to translate this Memphis initiative into a federal program that has become part of the safety net we as a nation offer to poor children and families (Hayes 1982). The development of the WIC program also suggests a number of ways in which the current call to mobilize to battle infant mortality may lead to public concern and political action. Both child malnutrition in the early 1970s and infant mortality in 2005 present us with tangible evidence of the plight of poor American children. Second, in both of these instances, the children’s cause was taken up by critical allies within medicine, academics, politics, and the media. The media coverage devoted to both of these causes was emotive and data-rich. In the 1970s, this media attention triggered heightened public and political concern and, ultimately, led to policy change.

Do these parallels suggest that the call for aggressive action today to battle infant mortality will succeed in sparking public and political mobilization? To answer that question it is helpful to consider an even older example of mobilization for children, led by the labor activist Mother Jones.

In the spring of 1903 I went to Kensington, Pennsylvania, where seventy-five thousand textile workers were on strike. Of this number at least ten thousand were little children 2...Every day little children came into Union Headquarters, some with their hands off, some with thumbs missing...They were stooped things, round-shouldered and skinny. Many of them were not over ten years of age.

We assembled a number of boys and girls one morning in Independence Park and from there we arranged to parade banners to the court house where we would hold a meeting. A great crowd gathered in the public square...I put the little boys with their fingers off and hands crushed and maimed on a platform...I made the statement that 22 DOUG IMIG Philadelphia’s mansions were built on the broken bones, the quivering hearts and drooping heads of these children...

The reporters quoted my statement...The Philadelphia papers and the New York papers got into a squabble with each other over the question. The universities discussed it. Preachers began talking. That was what I wanted. Public attention on the subject of child labor. (Jones 1969, 71 /73) Ultimately, the Kensington strike was broken and the children were driven back to work, but not before Mother Jones marched her ‘‘Industrial Army’’ of striking children from Philadelphia to New York City, stopping to speak to crowds in cities and towns along the way. Upon reaching New York City, Mother Jones marched her band up Fourth Avenue and addressed an ‘‘immense crowd of the horrors of child labor’’ (Jones 1969, 79).

Our march had done its work. We had drawn the attention of the nation to the crime of child labor. And...not long afterward the Pennsylvania legislature passed a child labor law that sent thousands of children home from the mills, and kept thousands of others from entering the factory until they were fourteen years of age. (Jones 1969, 83) The Historical Legacy of Social Movements for Children What are the implications of the children’s crusade of 1903* /and the broader movement of which it was a part* /for current efforts to mobilize on behalf of children’s well-being? The parallels we find may help us better understand the conditions under which social movements emerge and contribute to policy changes improving the well- being of children in this country. Perceptions of Injustice, Agency, and Identity Mother Jones sought to raise public concern for the condition of children. Though general conditions are much less dire than a hundred years ago, American children and youth continue to face a wide range of threats to their well-being, including not only high infant mortality rates, but also high rates of child poverty, uneven access to medical care, under-performing schools, troubled and broken homes, and crumbling communities (Annie E. Casey Foundation 2005).

The poor and weakened condition of American children is all the more striking when compared with other industrialized nations. According to the Luxembourg Income Study (Rainwater and Smeeding 2003), the United States is the richest nation in the world in terms of per capita wealth, but falls to 21st place in child poverty rates. (Among developed nations, only Mexico has a higher rate of child poverty than the United States.) One of the most striking aspects of the plight of American children concerns its political dimensions. As a society, we have chosen to protect other groups before children.

While we have cut our rate of elderly poverty in half over the last three decades* /chiefly by building cost of living adjustments into social security payments* /we have allowed the percentage of American children who live in poverty to more than double during that SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AMERICA’S CHILDREN 23 same period. The result is that the wealthiest nation in the world invests a ‘‘pitifully small percentage of our resourcesand our concernin the early years of the people who will obviously inherit the nation’’ (Hodgkinson 2003, 1, italics in the original). Issue Salience At the same time, these threats to children’s well-being resonate with a wide cross- section of the public. Across the divides of race and class, Americans consistently stress the importance of children’s issues, and, regardless of income or ethnicity, parents mention almost identical concerns when discussing their kids and families (Hewlett and West 1998).

A recent poll from the Public Education Network and Education Week (2004) finds that at least 80 percent of voters favor full funding of Head Start, reduced class sizes, protecting the federal budget from education cuts, and increased teacher pay. In some polls, adult Americans have ranked ‘‘preparing young people for the future’’ as the nation’s highest priority by a wide margin (The Gallup Organization 2002). As Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West argue: ‘‘On the critical issues that underpin and condition daily life* / workplace policy, tax policy, and child safety* /there isenormous unity across race, class, and gender’’ (2002, xx, italics in original). 3Pointing to the implications of these conditions for mobilization, Hewlett and West argue that there is fertile ‘‘ground on which to build a parents’ movement’’ (2002, xx).

Widespread awareness and concern with the injustice done to children presumably lays the groundwork for a social movement for children. What factors mitigate against the development of such a movement? The answer, of course, is multifaceted. A complex mix of factors undermines the power of the children’s movement. Frame Confusion While Americans agree that children are in trouble, we disagree over what should be done and who should take action. There is no agreed upon ‘‘master frame’’ defining the plight of children or connecting general unease with their condition to specific antagonists or to specific policy solutions (Gamson and Goodson 2001; Kirkpatrick 2003).

This disagreement is evident in public attributions of where responsibility for children lies. A majority of Americans believe that it is other parents, rather than the government or some other group, that should take better care of children (Bostrom 2003).

This belief takes several forms: 83 percent of Americans believe that parental inattention is the most serious problem facing families (Public Agenda 2005); 60 percent of Americans report that families, rather than government or employers, should be responsible for ‘‘ensuring access to child care’’ (Public Agenda 2005); polling data suggest the public is frightened by youth crime, is worried that other parents are not taking responsibility for raising their children, and is skeptical about government playing a larger role in securing children’s well-being (Public Agenda 1999). 4 24 DOUG IMIG Demographic Trends A second set of factors that contribute to the disconnect between public concern and political action follow from demographic trends that are rapidly changing the social landscape in this country. First, a growing number of Americans have no regular contact with children. Of the 105 million households in the United States, less than a third (34 million) have children under the age of 18 at home (Hodgkinson 2003, 7). The political implications of this shift are dramatic: while parents made up a majority of U.S. voters in 1956 (55 percent), today they constitute a shrinking minority (Teixeira 2002). Second, American society is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, leading to ethnic cleavages that make collective identification and collective action more difficult to engender. As Bud Hodgkinson (2003) notes, in a little over a decade there will be no ethnic majority among American children under the age of 5. The same will be true ofall Americans before the year 2045. Young children are the most diverse group in the United States, and they will make the nation more diverse as they age (Hodgkinson 2003, 4).

Moreover, the strong correlation between ethnicity and poverty in America further undermines efforts to build political voice. About one-third of Black and Hispanic children are growing up in poverty, compared with 10 percent of Caucasian children (Hodgkinson 2003, 5).

Additionally, there is a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and political voice in the United States. ‘‘Political voice may be in the center of a virtuous circle of capabilities for those advantaged in a society, but [it is at the center of] a vicious circle of incapabilities for the disadvantaged’’ (Verba 2003, 676). Racism further undermines opportunities for cross-class and cross-race mobilization. In his careful study of attitudes toward welfare, Martin Gilens (1999) argues that Whites’ attitudes toward poor people and welfare recipients are dominated by stereotypes about low-income Blacks. The result is an aging, White middle class that has less regular contact with children and is increasingly unlikely to feel connected to problems afflicting families with children and families of color.

Fragmented and Transient Communities Further, while a great many individuals report concern over the problems faced by children, efforts to unite concerned individuals into a collective political voice face daunting obstacles. Not only do neighbors have less regular contact with each other than in the past (Putnam 2000), but American neighborhoods are growing more segregated along racial and class lines (Frankenberg and Lee 2002).

These trends toward fragmentation are amplified by the increasing transience of the American public. Of the 281 million Americans, roughly one in seven move each year* /the highest known migration level of any nation (Hodgkinson 2003, 4). Transience is amplified for children in poor families, who move more often than their middle-income peers (Lee and Burkam 2002).

One consequence is that our public schools remain highly segregated. As Gary Orfield and his colleagues at the Harvard Civil Rights Project report, ‘‘large metropolitan SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AMERICA’S CHILDREN 25 areas, smaller central cities and suburban rings are areas of great segregation’’ in this country, leaving most students with little school contact with people outside their own ethnic group (Orfield and Lee 2003).

The result is that the places where neighbors do come together to discuss children’s issues* /along the sidelines of their children’s ball games, or at parent /teacher organization meetings, for example* /provide few opportunities for individuals to discover that their concerns are shared by parents and non-parents alike who live across town, who may be of a different race, have a different family structure, or are surviving on a markedly different income. This disconnect confounds efforts to build a collective identity able to span communities, let alone capable of spanning the country (Hewlett and West 1998; Imig 2001). 5 A Disconnect Between the Public and Policy Making Each of these factors contributes to the isolation and political silence of even the most concerned individuals, and adds to the distance between the public and politics (Skocpol 1999). Moreover, individuals may doubt that their voice matters or that they can make a difference when a multitude of advocacy groups already claim to speak for children (DeVita and Mosher-Williams 2001).

Likewise, there is a great deal of, at least rhetorical, support for children to be found in government action, including the White House pledge to ‘‘leave no child behind.’’ Meanwhile, the states, which bear primary responsibility for the bulk of child and family policy, are busy trying to shore up existing programs with declining revenue (McNichol 2004). As a result, much advocacy effort necessarily is directed at state and local institutions, further masking not only the national character of the plight of children, but also the nation-wide concern for their well-being.

Encouraging Mobilization for Children If all of these factors stand between the public and its capacity to mobilize around its shared concern with children, what would it take for such a movement to emerge? Put differently, what chance does the call for aggressive action to stem infant mortality* /or to curb the negative consequences of poverty on children* /stand?

In their seminal examination of the development of American children’s policy, W.

Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson argue that significant shifts in the direction and magnitude of child and family policy have come in the wake of more general social tumult and anxiety: During certain periods of rapid change* /especially the decades before the Civil War, the progressive era around 1900, and the Great Depression of the 1930s* /anxiety has become especially acute, generating institutional reforms and ideological revisions with lasting implications for families and children. (1988, 4) Grubb and Lazerson link significant shifts in economics, politics, and society with attitudinal and behavioral changes, which, in turn, prompt widespread demands for 26 DOUG IMIG expanded governmental commitments to progressive policies. Grubb and Lazerson, however, offer few clues for how best to understand the links between periods of rapid change and attendant levels of social and political anxiety, the mechanisms through which anxiety is translated into public sentiment and mobilization, or how best to spark political responsiveness.

We can begin to gain analytic leverage on these links by borrowing from the work of social movement scholars, who have attempted to build a more systematic understanding of the influence that various factors have both on the development of social movements and the influence that movements will have on public policy. This body of work has identified a wide range of factors that contribute to movement mobilization, including political opportunities, framing processes, mobilizing structures, and repertoires of contention (for representative overviews see McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996; Tarrow 1998). Political Opportunities Political opportunities refer to changes in political and social conditions that raise or lower barriers to political mobilization and policy access. For example, opportunities to mobilize are affected by highly contested elections, by the degree to which governmental administrations are sympathetic or antagonistic, and by the alliances that movements build (Tarrow 1998). Research on social movements points to four key ways in which political opportunity structures matter for child advocacy.

Family and workforce patterns elevate the children’s agenda.Grubb and Lazerson argue that changes in poverty rates, divorce rates, and maternal employment rates will precipitate key social and political changes affecting children’s policy (1988, 4). Today, 72 percent of women with children under the age of 18 (64 percent of women with children under the age of 6) are in the labor force. The political implication of this development is that the availability of affordable, quality child care becomes a universal issue (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics 2005).

Social movements champion children.Historically, the political voice of children has been amplified by other social movements, such as Progressivism (Lasch 1995), or the Women’s and Civil Rights movements (Steiner 1976). Children are represented only by proxy, and children’s movements are spun off from other movements. Mother Jones was enmeshed within the labor movement, and WIC was enacted in the context of the fight against hunger in America and in the shadow of the Civil Rights movement (Hayes 1982; McAdam 1995).

Electoral uncertainty amplifies marginalized voices.Instability within political coalitions increases the willingness of political elites to champion new policy preferences and previously marginalized constituencies (Hansen 1991; Piven and Cloward 1979). In the classic example, extending the franchise to women heightened political uncertainty, creating agenda space for consideration for child and family policy (Skocpol 1992). SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AMERICA’S CHILDREN 27 Government action creates opportunities for advocates.Creation of new govern- ment programs* /alongside more routine authorization and appropriation cycles* /also creates new venues for advocates, focuses media attention on specific policy frames, provokes counter-mobilizations, and provides resources to movements’ supporters (Costain 1992; Cross 2004; Imig 1996; Skocpol 2004; Walker 1991). Framing Processes Framing processes include both the strategic efforts of activists to shape the discussion of children’s needs, as well as the dynamic by which advocacy messages are filtered by the media and received by the public and policymakers (Bales 2001; Snow and Benford 1992). Successful iterations of advocacy are built around master frames that resonate with concurrent structures of political opportunity. Observers of social move- ments point to the following dynamics.

Successful frames situate critical events within policy narratives.While dramatic events may raise public outcry, translating general unease into mobilization requires that advocates work to articulate and explain the place of specific events within overarching policy narratives, including preferred solutions (Stone 1997).

Successful frames convey injustice, agency, and identity (Gamson and Goodson 2000).Powerful frames have the capacity to build a sense of linked fate among otherwise atomized individuals. During World War One, for example, the Kindergarten movement was able to build widespread public support for kindergarten programs by appealing to the need to ‘‘Americanize’’ the children of recent immigrants (Beatty 1995).

Following World War Two, mothers called for the continuation of Lanham Act funding for child care by demanding ‘‘American Standards for American Children’’ (Imig 2005).

Successful frames resonate with concurrent movements.This is evident, for example, in the success of movements subsequent to the American Civil Rights Movement that were able to adopt the ‘‘rights’’ frame championed by that movement (Meyer and Boutcher 2004; Tarrow 1998, 117).

A chorus will amplify the message.More effective configurations of advocacy are galvanized around shared master frames invoked by a broad range of activists (Bales 1999). Analysts suggest that the rhetorical upper hand in framing current social policy is held by right-wing strategists, who recognize the critical importance of framing and have been willing to systematically fund frame building work (Block 2003; Lakoff 2004).

Mobilizing Structures Mobilizing structures refer to the formal and informal organizations and networks which give rise to social movements and through which they operate. Successful movements for children are built on effective mobilizing structures in the following ways. 28 DOUG IMIG Horizontal linkages build shared identity, vertical integration leads to policy influence.Early 20th-century women’s organizations, which met in local communities but were nationally federated, made it possible to influence policy at the local, state, and national levels by building local identity movements, articulating shared agendas, and passing information and policy preferences from level to level (Skocpol 1992, 1997; Skocpol and Dickert 2001).

Coalitions build shared identities.Ultimately, the power of organizations may follow more directly from their ability to form coalitions than from their individual efforts. This may be particularly true in the age of the internet where movements* /both tangible movement organizations like Greenpeace, and more amorphous movement collectives like the campaign against neo-liberal globalization* /are able to draw upon a striking array of ‘virtual’ organizational capacities.

Patterns of children’s mobilization reflect the arguments between (gendered) professions.The development of maternal health provisions in the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921 and their re-emergence in Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) reflected arguments between nurses, physicians, and social workers. Similar patterns of conflict, with parallel policy implications, occurred between kindergarten advocates and the public education system (Michel 1999; Sarbaugh-Thompson and Zald 1995). Repertoires of Contention Repertoires of contention refer to the forms of strategic engagement challengers employ, ranging from institutional lobbying and educational campaigns to more contentious political events like demonstrations, sit-ins, and boycotts: in other words, how social movements actually move. Key findings concerning the repertoires of child advocates include the following.

Little is new in the advocacy toolbox.Child advocacy strategies have remained remarkably constant over time. They include a focus on data collection and dissemination, protest politics, campaigns to influence public opinion, and institutional lobbying.

Charisma and entrepreneurship are easily exaggerated.Charismatic leadership and entrepreneurial acumen are likely to be distributed randomly across time, but patterns of advocacy group formation and mobilization are strongly cyclic and episodic, reflecting more general patterns of political opportunity (Meyer and Imig 1993).

Effective tactics embrace political opportunities.More successful iterations of advocacy are less a function of developing new tactical repertoires, alliances, or networks than they are a function of choosing strategies that mesh with concurrent structures of political opportunity. SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AMERICA’S CHILDREN 29 Tactics and frames are mutually reinforcing.The critical strategic objective of advocates is to build a policy narrative that resonates with the public, ties widely perceived problems to particular policy solutions, and is able to mobilize critical public groups around a shared advocacy frame.

Toward a New Movement for Children Armed with these insights, can we begin to unravel the paradox at the heart of this paper? That is: under current social and political conditions it appears extremely difficult to build a political movement for children, in spite of high levels of public interest and concern.

In more concrete terms, this paradox suggests that rising awareness of the injustice of double-digit infant mortality rates in a dozen large American cities is not enough in itself to spark a movement. Against such an effort stand very real obstacles to mobilization. Precisely because infant mortality rates are strongly bound up with poverty, race, and questions of individual responsibility, the issue may divide rather than unite Americans behind a shared political agenda. Can we envision a framework for mobilizing around children’s well-being that might effectively overcome these obstacles?

The following section briefly sketches two frames that offer opportunities to mobilize which transcend the boundaries of race and class, and that emerge from and respond to contemporary structures of political opportunity. 6 Mobilizing Around Public Schools The infrastructure of public education in this country presents one of the most promising opportunities for cross-class and cross-race mobilization. Public schools currently educate 55 million children (89 percent of all children in the United States) (Carnevale and Desrochers 1999). If we unpack the much-reported unease about public schools, we find that more than 70 percent of Americans give their own children’s public schools high marks (Public Agenda 2004). The massive buy-in to public education, evident in the number of parents who send their own children to public schools, has led one of America’s most successful community organizers, Ernesto Cortes (1996), to argue that schools and churches are the two local institutions that work in most American communities.

Public education offers a ready-made infrastructure for linking parents and communities, and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act presents a galvanizing frame around which to mobilize. NCLB offers an intriguing opportunity for advocates as it represents a massive incursion of the federal government into child and youth policy, and is occurring during a period of federal retrenchment from social justice. Former Education Secretary Rod Paige pointed to the potential implications of NCLB for progressive children’s policy when he argued that NCLB is the ‘‘logical next step’’ in the long and far- flung court battles over desegregation:

Equality of opportunity must be more than just a statement of law; it must be a matter of fact...factually speaking, this country does not yet promote equal opportunities for 30 DOUG IMIG millions of children. That is why the No Child Left Behind Act is so important...(Paige, quoted in Hendrie 2004) Following Secretary Page’s logic, NCLB accountability measures will prove that educational opportunity in the United States is not equal, bolstering claims for equal protection under the law. If the courts accept this argument, it would provide an opening to advocates for children and young people. The 50 years sinceBrown v. Board of Educationhave seen a sad pattern of disinvestment in public education in this country:

through segregated Southern academies in the 1960s, White flight in the 1970s, the assault on affirmative action programs in the 1980s, and today through voucher programs and through shifting school funding from property taxes to gambling (Andrews 2004; Bollinger 2004; Ratner 2005).

In this context, NCLB offers children’s advocates a new mobilizing frame, grounded in the American commitment to equal protection under the law and undercutting the boundaries of affluent districts. NCLB links the fates of families from different economic classes and racial groups, from different school districts, and, potentially, even from across the nation. One result is that states are scrambling to be exempted from the law’s provisions. By August of 2005, Connecticut had already sued the federal government over the No Child Left Behind Act, and several local school districts and the National Education Association had lawsuits pending (Columbia Daily Tribune 2005).

In short, NCLB offers a new master frame to advocates that taps into core American values, directly challenges institutional inequality, and transcends economic class. As Lee Bollinger (2004) has argued, NCLB presents an opportunity not simply to build the collective identity needed to encourage political action, but also to break down the very social structures that propagate class and race-based inequality among children in this society.

The difficulty, of course, is that patterns of mobilization around NCLB are likely to reflect more general patterns of social mobilization in society. If the media headlines are any indication of developing trends, it is more affluent districts, with the financial resources and civic skills needed to exercise political voice, that have been the first to mobilize around NCLB provisions Urban Development and the Knowledge Economy A second frame with the potential to catalyze the children’s movement is created by shifting economic forces in this country. As a growing share of American productive capacity depends on the skills, training, and education of workers, rather than on the industrial infrastructure that drove Fordist modes of production, cities are beginning to rethink the ways that they attract and maintain their economic bases and labor pools.

Robert Reich (1998) argues that in 20 years fully a third of all jobs in the United States will be in knowledge-based industries such as information technology and medicine. Significantly, unlike a smokestack-based economy, the principal productive capacity of knowledge workers is completely portable. In consequence, for states and cities to thrive in this economy, they need to be able to attract and hold concentrations of SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AMERICA’S CHILDREN 31 highly educated and skilled workers, the group that Richard Florida (2003) has labeled the ‘‘creative class.’’ The economic survival strategies of both cities and businesses, and, consequently, the conversation between cities and businesses, is likely to shift from market inducements (e.g., ‘‘smokestack chasing’’ tax abatement strategies) to efforts to build the infrastructure and amenities that attract and hold knowledge workers (cf.

Harrington 1999). Research suggests that competitive cities in this new era need to provide an infrastructure of good schools, safe streets, livable neighborhoods, recreational opportunities, a clean and healthy environment, and reasonable commutes (cf. Florida 2003). These factors constitute asoft infrastructurethat will undergird the economic competitiveness of cities and businesses in the future. The need to nurture these aspects of soft infrastructure, in turn, suggests an opportunity to transform all levels of government as well as the business community into allies for child advocates.

How so? To the extent that cities and businesses see their survival tied to the promotion of child and family-friendly policies* /including strong schools and safe streets and sustaining a pool of well-paying jobs with attractive health care and child care benefits* /advocates for children have the opportunity to gain government and business allies who find their traditional power base in flux, and are seeking ways to rebuild both a healthy economic infrastructure and a stable political power base. This same political uncertainty, in turn, should increase the attractiveness of child-friendly public policy to policy makers.

For the advocacy community, this economic shift and its political implications offers an opportunity to promote a community-based children’s agenda that would appeal to both governments and markets. Linking communities, businesses and governments in this way presents an attractive opportunity for activists because it builds upon the concerns they already share with business and government leaders in ways that can be mutually reinforcing.

In sum, by resituating the children’s movement within contemporary structures of political opportunity, we may recapture the opportunity to define community, business, and governmental responsibility for children in terms that will galvanize rather than polarize American communities and families, and will forge tangible alliances with government and with the business community in support of the well-being of children. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank Sally Cohen, Sheila Kamerman, Alfred Kahn, Sidney Tarrow, and Fasaha Traylor as well as the anonymous reviewers for theJournal of Children & Povertyfor their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this article. I thank the Children in Distress study group of the Yale University Bioethics Project, the Yale Center in Child Development and Social Policy, and the Columbia University Institute for Child and Family Policy for the opportunity to present versions of this work. This is a substantially revised version of Hooks Institute Working Paper no. 04-09 (www.Benhooks.Memphis.edu). This project is made possible by a grant (no. 2541) from the W. T. Grant Foundation. 32 DOUG IMIG NOTES 1.This history is built from Fath (1983), Hardman (1973), and Hayes (1982).

2.Elliott Gorn places the numbers in the Kensington strike closer to ‘‘a hundred thousand workers, sixteen thousand of them children under sixteen years of age’’ (2001, 131).

3.For a range of public opinion data indicating the prevalence and intensity of public concern for children, see Public Agenda (1999, 2005). Many analyses record the plight of American children, including the Children’s Defense Fund’sThe State of America’s Children(2005), and the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s AnnualKids Count Data Book(2005).

4.Moreover, as Margaret Broadkin (2001) argues, while business leaders and scal conservatives surely love children, they rarely support increased government spending on any programs for fear of higher taxes.

5.Community fragmentation also both contributes to, and is exacerbated by, the decline in membership in national organizations such as the National PTA, uncoupling local parent /teacher organizations and dismantling their national infrastructure for advocacy.

6.These suggestions parallel the proposal by Mona Harrington to frame child and family policy around issues of family care. Harrington notes that more and more American families depend on care providers to look after their children and aging parents. Shifting family structures, the growing number of women in the workforce, and families relying on two incomes, along with the aging of the American population, creates a moment, Harrington believes, where we have a chance to engage the public in a conversation about issues related to high-quality affordable care for our children and aging relatives.

These concerns cross the divides of race and class and are pressing upon a large number of families. For an analysis of the political implications of these trends, see Mona Harrington’s excellentCare and Equality(1999). REFERENCES ANDREWS, K. 2004.Local civil rights struggles and school desegregation. Hooks Institute Working Paper, no. 04-01. Memphis, Tenn.: The Hooks Institute. http://benhooks.memphis.edu/ researchpublications.html (accessed 2 September 2005). ANNIE E. CASEY FOUNDATION . 2005.Kids count data book. Baltimore, Md.: Annie E. Casey Foundation. http://www.aecf.org/kidscount (accessed 16 September 2005). BALES, S. N. , ed. 1999.Effective language for communicating children’s issues. Washington, D.C.:

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Doug Imig, Ph.D., is a Policy Fellow at the Urban Child Institute in Memphis, Tennessee and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Memphis. His research and teaching concern social movements and the politics of child well-being. He is currently looking at the ways in which a political voice for children is built and sustained, and the ways that activists have attempted to advance a political agenda for children over the last century.SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR AMERICA’S CHILDREN 37