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Children's Defense Fund Campaigns

The Children’s Defense Fund seeks to educate the public to threats facing children in America, and to solutions that improve the odds for children to reach their potential. The Black Community Crusade for Children (BCCC), Cradle to Prison Pipeline®, Protect Children Not Guns and Be Careful What You Cut campaigns — were designed to mobilize child advocates by providing key information and tools to create meaningful change — in their communities, online, and at the national level. Learn more about CDF campaigns and how you can make a difference.

Protect Children Not Guns

One child or teen dies or is injured from guns every 30 minutes. Gun violence saturates our children’s lives. More children and teens die from guns every three days than died in the Newtown massacre. The number of children under five killed by guns in 2012 was higher than the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty that same year. We can do better. Join us in our campaign to stand up, speak out, and organize with urgency and persistence until all legislators at the national, state and local levels protect children instead of guns. Every child’s life is sacred, and it is long past time that we pass common-sense gun safety regulations to give all children in America a safe start in life.

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Cradle to Prison Pipeline

CDF's vision is to dismantle the Cradle to Prison Pipeline® that leaves a Black boy born in 2001 with a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime, and a Latino boy born the same year with a one in six chance of the same fate. CDF seeks to replace this pipeline to detention and mass incarceration with a powerful pathway to college and successful adulthood. Opportunity gaps begin at birth. CDF works to level the playing field through early intervention and prevention, increasing supports and services such as quality early childhood development and education and affordable, comprehensive health and mental health coverage. We work to keep children in school and learning by reforming school discipline policies and practices and promoting positive school climates.

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Be Careful What You Cut

Cutting children from the budget now will cost us later. This campaign is about bringing the real dangers of cutting child investments into sharp focus to build the public will and make the economic case to protect children from budget cuts. It’s a simple calculation, really. Protect now or pay later.

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Black Community Crusade for Children (BCCC)

The Black Community Crusade for Children (BCCC) was launched in 1990 to combat one of the worst crises the Black child and family has faced since slavery and confront the deepening crisis faced by Black children. A toxic cocktail of poverty, illiteracy, racial disparity, violence and massive incarceration is sentencing millions of children of color to dead end, powerless and hopeless lives and threatens to undermine the past half century of racial and social progress. Over the past two-and-a-half decades, BCCC’s successes include the CDF Freedom Schools® program; the Harlem Children’s Zone; youth leadership development programs which have trained 20,000 young leaders; economic empowerment work in 77 “Black Belt” southern counties; and the placed-based policy work of PolicyLink.

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