Dear AACAP Leadership:

We write to express serious concern about AACAP's selection of former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton to receive its highest honor--this year's Catchers in the Rye Humanitarian Award.

The award was established to "honor an individual who has made sustained and significant contributions to the field of children's mental health." We believe that an honest consideration of her domestic and foreign policy record demonstrates a profoundly troubling disregard for the health and wellbeing of children and especially the welfare of poor children of color.

With regard to domestic policy, Clinton opposes universal state subsidized health insurance. The lack of universal health coverage leaves millions of children and their families without access to health care resources, including mental health resources. She has been a solid ally of the for-profit health insurance conglomerates, prioritizing private financial interests over public health. She served on the board of Walmart, a company whose record of aggressive anti-unionism and paying wages so low that many workers qualify for state aid is well-known. She has been a stalwart supporter of Wall Street banking and investment firms and economic policies that have resulted in record levels of economic inequality. As a result, millions of working families, and disproportionately families of color, are struggling to make enough to cover the basic bills, let alone possess the means to provide their children the support needed to flourish. 

Though Clinton served on the board of directors for the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), she lent considerable support as First Lady for her husband's restructuring of welfare. About this legislation, founder and president of CDF Marian Wright Edelman wrote that "'President Clinton's 'signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children.'" Mrs. Edelman's husband, Peter Edleman, resigned in protest from the Clinton administration, calling the legislation the worst thing president Clinton has done. Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton regarded the welfare reform legislation to be a great success. She also supported her husband's criminal justice reform efforts, which many scholars contend was racist and classist as it led to a massive growth in the incarceration of persons of color and the poor. The US now has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Hillary Clinton has been among the most hawkish of political figures in a nation that leads the world in military spending and militarism. She has consistently supported increased military spending and energetically advocated for every US military intervention. Clinton supported the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. She played an instrumental role in persuading the Obama administration to undertake a massive bombing campaign against Libya, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and making Libya a haven for terrorist organizations and slave markets. As thoroughly documented by Brown University's Cost of War site, US military interventions supported by Clinton have resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties, the majority of whom were children, and the destruction of life-supporting infrastructure. War is the ultimate crime against children and, as Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs wrote in 2016, Clinton's "foreign policy ‘experience’ has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.” As secretary of state she supported the overthrow of the elected president of Honduras and the installation of the current regime that has engaged in savage repression and murder of poor and indigenous populations and which has fueled a massive migration of families, including tens of thousands of children, fleeing terror and seeking refuge in the United States. Last but not least, Hillary Clinton has been a strong supporter of some of the most tyrannical regimes in the world, all of which run roughshod over the health and wellbeing of children. 

One could go on to enumerate many other examples of policies that Clinton has supported which have caused and are still causing immeasurable suffering to children and their families.

Though she and the Clinton Foundation have supported efforts to improve the lives of some children, Hillary Clinton's record as First Lady, senator and secretary of state is overwhelmingly not favorable to a positive assessment of her support for the health and wellbeing of children and especially for the wellbeing of poor children and children of color in the US and in other nations. 

For these reasons, we implore you to reconsider your nomination of Hillary Clinton for this award.

There are so many others who truly deserve this important recognition.

Sincerely,

Medea Benjamin
Author and cofounder, Codepink: Women for Peace

Helen Caldicott MBBS, FRACP, MD
Member of American  Board of Pediatrics,
Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility – 1985 Nobel Peace Prize

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, PhD
Author, "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States" and "Not 'a Nation of Immigrants'"

Liza Featherstone
Editor, "False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton", Author and Jacobin Magazine Columnist

Margaret Flowers, MD
Director, Popular Resistance

Cindy Sheehan
Host/Executive Producer of the Soapbox
Founder of the Women’s March on the Pentagon

David Swanson
Executive Director, World Beyond War

Mark D. Wood, PhD
Professor, Religious Studies
Director, School of World Studies (2013-2021)
Virginia Commonwealth University