It takes a village and a kindly bartender

Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) gave a lively presentation at a recent WAIP-WISH policy salon by describing her upbringing and how the community she lived in helped her achieve her goals. 

Before an audience made up of the autumn 2009 class of Glenn fellows, Lynn Jennings and Ervin Johnson of the CBC Foundation and Dan Lewis of WISH and participants in the Congressional Black Caucus’s fellows program, the congresswoman talked movingly about her youth on Cleveland’s east side. Raised by a single mother, the family received significant assistance from church members and while she was attending Shaker Heights schools, Fudge said a kindly restaurateur provided lunch every day because her mother was at work and the school she attended had no cafeteria.

In her remarks about public policy, Rep. Fudge made an eloquent case for taking care not to strive for legislative perfection.  As she put it, “we mustn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”