For at least 100 times over the past several days, I've listened to Vivian Green’s rendition of "Oh, Freedom." Her performance was morally powerful, personally humbling, and haunting in a bittersweet way. In its courage and moral power, it offers lessons to those of us concerned about the needs and dignity of children and adults with disabilities.

To me, it says "alone" rarely works. As alone we sweat and worry to help children (and adults) who need comprehensive, high-quality services and programs, we have little power to improve the far-reaching structural and institutional shortcomings that imperil their futures.

To succeed, we need to think about far more than the few children dear to us. But, if like most Americans and immigrants, we're isolated from politics and powerful organizations, we have little chance to improve "city hall" and transform public apathy into public empathy, especially for children who suffer from poverty, homelessness and/or mental illness.

Yes, children are occasionally helped by legal decisions won by dedicated parents, teachers, advocates and schools.

However, these occasional decisions rarely help the innumerable children forced to grow up in segregated communities with perpetually woeful education budgets, or children educated under politically motivated laws that do far more harm than good. Nor do they help children whose parents lack the money to challenge the few remedial and special education programs that impede achievement and corrode children’s emotional well-being.

Alone or in small, poorly organized groups, parents and professionals accomplish little, with pitiable prospects of doing better. But in larger, well-organized groups, ones that focus, persist, and share similar values, they have a far better chance of accomplishing much more, so much that for decades they may well improve the lives of all of America's children, tall or short, rich or poor, gifted or not.

In other words, large numbers of parents, professionals and others who make informed, strategic, coordinated and persistent efforts can create just about the only chance of helping children (and adults) with disabilities in an evermore oxymoronic "Citizens United" nation, in which "truthiness" makes clear that "one dollar equals one vote," and that "you’re on your own."

So, think about these questions. Politically and group-wise, what can you do to advance the well-being of all children and adults with disabilities? What talents and connections can you offer? How can you sustain your efforts? What one group could you join or create?

How could you create a critical mass of people that can move politicians to advocate for moral budgets and laws that ignore bumper-sticker politics and actually help all children (and adults) with disabilities? What's your first doable step in achieving the goal of helping all children with disabilities?

What obstacles stand in your way and how can you minimize or eliminate them? And once you’ve answered some of these questions and you commit yourself to action, you must take action. Why? No action, no benefit.

I'm sure that many of you can generate other important questions. Similarly, if I were to suggest solutions, I'm sure that some of you might offer better ones. But I doubt that any of you will find a performance of "Oh, Freedom" that’s better than Vivian Green's. So in the next few hours, I’ll start listening to her performance again and again and again. And, if Vivian Green ever reads this, "Thanks, Vivian."