ROANOKE, Va., Jan. 27, 2009 — Social activists are all around us. Successful businessmen who turn the full weight of their influence and financial power to the cause of enacting social justice and alleviating poverty are something altogether different. In his new book, “If Not Me, Then Who?” (published by iUniverse - http://www.iuniverse.com), author, businessman and activist E. Cabell Brand recounts over four decades of work with the disenfranchised and how each individual can do their part.
Cabell Brand has taken the adage “think globally, act locally” to heart in ways few others have. “If Not Me, Then Who?” is not so much a memoir as a template on how to affect change in one’s community. Combining pragmatism with ingenuity and insight, Brand first furthered his family’s successful shoe company and then redirected his money and efforts into social activism. Working with other great activists such as President Jimmy Carter (http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org), Brand has focused his personal assets into helping his country and his own community grow and better develop itself.
After returning from WWII, Brand went to work at his father’s shoe company. Traveling with the salesmen from his father’s company, black and white alike, Brand witnessed firsthand the disparities between blacks and whites in post-WWII America. This insight fuelled Brand’s desire to see social justice become a reality.
Brand opens “If Not Me, Then Who?” with a story about attending a White House dinner. Among the people sitting at Brand’s table was the White House’s current resident, President Bill Clinton (http://www.clintonlibrary.gov). The story poignantly illustrates Brand’s ability to seize a situation and press his point:
An hour later, when Clinton had finished speaking, he looked across the room, saw me in the audience and returned to our table. “Mr. Brand,” he said, “you never had a chance to ask me that question.”
I said, “Well, thank you, Mr. President. My question is why did you in your budget cut the Community Service Block Grants, which fund a thousand community action agencies in the United States?”
And he said, “I don’t know anything about that. You go see Frederick Raines over at the next table. He’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, and ask him.” And I said, “Mr. President, would you go with me?” And he said, “Yes.” So we went over to Raines and asked him, and he said he didn’t know anything about it. So I told him that it was a tragedy to cut this budget because this money was leveraged more than 20 times locally and dealt with poor people and needed to be restored and eventually increased. With the President of the United States standing there, Raines said, “Well, I will look into it.”
Since it was not a huge amount of money in the federal budget, relatively speaking, it was fully restored and has remained about at that level ever since with constant lobbying of the Congress, even during Republican administrations.
E. Cabell Brand has lived and worked in the Roanoke, VA area his entire life. He is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute with a degree in electrical engineering. He has sat on the Board of Directors of CHIP Virginia, The Woodlands Center for Growth Studies, the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment and the Carnegie Council on Ethics & International Affairs, to name but a few. He is the founder of Total Action Against Poverty and the Cabell Brand Center for International Poverty and Resource Studies. His awards and accolades are too numerous to name here.
For more on Mr. Brand, visit his center’s website at Cabell Brand Center: http://www.cabellbrandcenter.org/index.html
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