Sen. Edward Kennedy, along with gubernatorial candidate Shannon O’Brien, Lieutenant Governor candidate Chris Gabrieli and ‘Boston Public’ star Chi McBride, addressed a crowded ballroom at the Marriott Copley Place Hotel Friday night at Action for Boston Community Development, Inc.’s 40th anniversary dinner.
Kennedy, who has a senator since the creation of ABCD in 1962, said the organization has been vital in the improvement of Boston by creating housing, volunteering and education-reform committees.
‘I’ve seen all of this work and it’s been done in the most trying and difficult of circumstances because your nation too often doesn’t recognize that we are one nation with one history and one destiny and America will never be America unless we all move along together,’ Kennedy said, eliciting an eruption of applause.
Kennedy, the special guest speaker and a past recipient of one of the organization’s legislative awards, also commended ABCD for giving poverty-stricken children ‘the option to have freedom.’
ABCD is Boston’s official anti-poverty agency, serving more than 100,000 low-income people every year. Over its 40-year existence, ABCD has implemented programs and services over a range of areas.
‘You put a mirror up in terms of community and show us what needs to be done, but you don’t just show us what needs to be done, you show us every day how to do it,’ Kennedy said.
Kennedy’s brother, former President John F. Kennedy, drafted the original plans for the War on Poverty, which was put into effect by former President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, two years after ABCD started helping the poor in Boston.
Some current ABCD programs include Head Start, a program that provides young children and their parents with educational, health and social services; University High School, an alternative high school in cooperation with Boston Public Schools; Urban College of Boston and Foster Grandparent/Family Friends Program, which reintegrates retired seniors into the community to enhance the growth of children.
‘We’re not the welfare department; they give people fish every day so they don’t starve,’ said President and CEO Robert Coard in a new video promoting ABCD. ‘Our philosophy is that we give them a fishing pole and teach them how to fish.’
O’Brien, continuing her Fighting for Families Tour, said the government cannot do everything and that it takes volunteers to help out.
‘When you go out and help people, it makes all the change in the world,’ O’Brien said.
David E. Kelly and his show ‘Boston Public’ were honored for bringing Boston’s schools, community and fears to the forefront. Chi McBride, who plays principal Steven Harper, attended the dinner to accept the award on behalf of the cast and crew. A self-described ‘humbled’ McBride said, ‘I’m very thankful to be associated with a group who will take care of us.’
Clarence Carter, director of the Federal Office of Community Services, said there is no finer community action organization in the United States.
‘If the next 40 years are as successful as the first 40,’ he said, ‘we can come back and say we’ve finally won the war on poverty.’