The Children's Defense Fund, a leading national nonprofit advocate for kids, is organizing a so-called "baby brigade" that its head hopes will prove to lawmakers they can't ignore the plight of the nation's most vulnerable population when discussing health care reform.

Marian Wright Edelman was in Denver on Wednesday to speak at the annual fundraiser for the Colorado Children's Campaign. She said the Nov. 4 rally in Washington would bring mothers, babies and strollers to a building that has not prioritized them in the past.

"I hoped I'd be out of business by now," Edelman said in an interview before the event at the Seawell Ballroom. "[But] our children are going backwards."

Edelman says there are provisions in both the House and Senate versions of health care reform that could end up hurting America's children further. Currently, she says 8 million kids don't have health insurance and 80 percent of them should but can't muddle through current government bureaucracy.

More than 40 years of work on this issue and Edelman says she grows weary of politicians saying they agree with her only to not fund projects that protect kids.

"A decent rich country that has lots of money can do these things, but it's a values problem. It's a priorities problem," she said.

The reason to rally at the Capitol with thousands of strollers is because, Edelman says, the politicians aren't listening. Amendments to provide comprehensive health care to all newborns regardless of economic class have not been agreed to by congressional leadership. Edelman says the cost would be $10 billion per year.

"We're hypocrites," she said. "We've got this huge gap between who we say we are and what we, in fact, do... We love our own children, but we don't love others' children.

"We are absolutely determined to break through this cloud of invisibility in this big debate about PayGo and employer mandates and individual mandates and pre-existing conditions - all important issues but the fact is if you don't fix the children's health system here in Colorado and around the country and make it easy rather than hard to get through those bureaucratic barriers, we will have failed another generation. We're going to lose them."