Remarks at the National Center on Poverty Law Reception

"The Center was founded in 1967 to be the “hub” for communication, information, and strategic planning by lawyers committed to ending poverty through law and policy."
Washington, D.C. • September 16, 2003

I want to thank Evie and Fred Rooney for hosting this reception and for welcoming us to their beautiful home tonight. Eunice and I have known the Rooneys for almost forty years, -- we value their friendship and their commitment to making our country a better place for all of its citizens.

I thank each of you for being here this evening. The Board of Directors of The National Center on Poverty Law has honored me by changing the Center’s name to The Sargent Shriver National Center On Poverty Law. In doing so, The Center also remembers and pays tribute to all those who worked to create a National Legal Services Program for the Poor and for those who are carrying on the work in this challenging and new time.

I am especially pleased that through the Center my name will be used to strengthen our country’s commitment to social and economic justice by connecting the history and talent of the past with the innovation and talent of the future. I am so proud that so many over the years have stayed the course and so many new and energetic young people have joined the effort to shape the United States’ role in this world as a leader for justice and human dignity.

The Center was founded in 1967 to be the “hub” for communication, information, and strategic planning by lawyers committed to ending poverty through law and policy. Through the Center, I am pleased to still be associated with every Legal Services Lawyer throughout our country. The Center not only provides lawyers with the research and communication resources that they need to be efficient and competitive in their day-to-day representation of low-income clients, the Center helps these advocates be collaborative and strategic in giving their clients a strong and critical voice in today’s multilayered debate involving public policy, government funding, and the tax system.

I am glad that you are all here tonight, not only to share this happy moment with me, but to be a part of something bigger. We all must speak out for equal justice for all: Justice which we and the national government have created for all.

I do not hesitate to say that I believe our country, and each of us, has a chance to create a New World, -- a world the likes of which has never been in any history book, or never proposed by any nation, in the written or even unwritten, history of the entire world. Every one in this room has a chance — a real honest-to-God, down-to-earth, day-by-day chance — to transform our country, and the 21St Century, with such access to equal justice! That is the challenge we face, --

To create, a better and unprecedented New World, a New World created in the 21St Century, for God, for all Countries, and for all human beings.

Peace requires the simple but powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us.
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Sargent Shriver
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