It's empowerment time in America, said Marc H. Morial, new president of the National Urban League.

	Martha Rial/Post-Gazette
	National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial delivers the keynote address at the Urban League Conference yesterday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
		MORE COVERAGE Jesse Jackson visits 2 city churches, preaches to the faithful Bush, 7 Democrats scheduled to speak before Urban League Index to Urban League coverage

He officially opened the group's conference, "The Black Family: Building on Its Resilience," by addressing more than 1,500 guests and conference-goers gathered in the assembly hall of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, last night.

The speech marked the first national appearance for Morial. In his crisp dark suit, he laid out a broad and forceful mandate that will push the league to a more visible, active role in addressing civil rights.

"We must lead a new movement," Morial said of his 105 Urban League affiliates. "A movement that is more than ideas and thoughts, but a movement of action."

To battle the more sophisticated and structural elements of inequality that plague black American progress, he identified five critical areas that must be targeted: education, including an emphasis on uplifting young black men; economics; health and quality of life; civic participation; and racial justice.

On many of the issues, he pledged that the league will convene national summits, bringing together voices from Main Street to Wall Street.

On education: Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court decision desegregating schools, there shouldn't be the gaps in reading and math between black and white students, nor the overcrowding and dilapidated conditions of urban schools, he said. Next spring, he'll launch a national summit on urban education.

"It is not just about leaving no child behind. It is about pushing every child ahead," he said.

He wants an emphasis on young black men: More than a half million black men are incarcerated and nearly 30 percent born in 2003 can expect to spend time in jail. Those rates are unacceptable, said Morial.

"Too many are drifting into the underclass of joblessness and hopelessness. We have too many of our black men as both perpetrators and victims of gun-related violence," he said.

He promised a national commission on black men that will be one of "revival, renewal and resurrection."

On economics: Despite gains in homeownership and access to capital, the prosperous '90s are over, he said.

He called for a new economic agenda that will focus on entrepreneurship, jobs in the urban economy, seeking corporate investment in the inner city, more affordable homeownership and public private partnerships to repair the inner-city.

On health and quality of life: Morial called the growing rates of deaths from cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and obesity "a state of emergency."

"We die faster and live sicker," he said. He wants the Urban League to begin a national wellness initiative to promote healthy eating, fitness, preventive health care and access to affordable healthcare.

On civic engagement: The conference will hear from President Bush tomorrow and have a debate among seven of the nine Democratic contenders for president, but Morial said that voter apathy remains "a weapon of mass destruction" in the black community. He promised that the league -- through its young professionals group and its guild of volunteers -- will take a new and active role in voter registration. In the spring, he'll convene a Legislative Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., showing the league's diversity and strength to the administration and Congress.

"Mark your calendar, save the date," he said, "the National Urban League will make its voice heard on major issues of public policy."

Finally, Morial wants the group to embrace its civil rights past and push racial justice from employment to police violence, from redistricting to racial profiling. As it goes about its job training, education and home-building programming, he says the group will work harder to build multiracial coalitions to solve 21st-century challenges.

Morial said the Urban League must have the courage and conviction, the fortitude and the fight to have a "movement to empower people of all races, creeds, colors, religions, ethnicities and orientation -- a movement which honors the legacy of the past while embracing our hope for a better future."