What's really sad is those people were actually there to see "Chicken Little".
Posted on 10/27/2005 1:51:14 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Poverty is the great moral issue facing America today, former U.S. senator and 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards told a crowd of UW-Madison, WI students.
The country is hungry for a big issue - a cause, a calling - it can get involved in, Edwards told about 500 people Wednesday afternoon at the Wisconsin Union Theater. "If you don't believe me, look at the reaction to Hurricane Katrina," he said.
The government reacted slowly, while the people themselves took action, volunteering and donating money to help victims, Edwards said.
"Americans are looking for something moral and just. Something other than this mess in Iraq we are engaged in," he said to overwhelming applause.
"They need a champion. That champion is you," Edwards said, noting that college students have spurred major change in the past, from civil rights to the Vietnam anti-war movement to helping topple the apartheid system in South Africa.
Edwards' Madison appearance was the seventh stop on his tour of 10 college campuses, including Harvard, Yale and the University of California-Berkeley. The "Opportunity Rocks" tour is a project of the Center for Promise and Opportunity, an organization Edwards founded to fight poverty in the United States.
The number of Americans living in poverty rose by 1 million in 2004 and now stands at 37 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
"It's not a complicated thing," Edwards said. "It's just wrong."
Katrina exposed the ugly face of poverty. "We saw that poverty has a face in America. It's largely black," he said.
Edwards, dressed in faded jeans with the sleeves of his blue oxford shirt rolled up, said that the typical African-American family has about $6,000 in assets and that the typical Hispanic family has about $8,000. White families have about $80,000, he said.
Most of the nation's poor are people who work or are capable of working, Edwards said. Many of them are single mothers who are working two or three jobs for minimum wage. They are working 15 to 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week, trying to survive and give their kids a better life, he said.
"We see them (working) in our hospitals and our senior centers," he said. When something catastrophic happens, poor people are wiped out, he noted. "It takes so much less than a hurricane to put them in a ditch."
Edwards had his own personal tragedy when his wife Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer. But it wasn't complicated by their being impoverished.
"By the way, Elizabeth is doing very, very well," he told the crowd.
Edwards sketched out some ways to lift people out of poverty.
• Raise the federal minimum wage to at least $7.50.
• Provide work bonds to help poor families save money so they don't need to rely on predatory lenders.
• Offer housing vouchers that provide mobility.
• Improve educational opportunities.
Last week, Edwards launched a pilot program in his home state of North Carolina, called "College for Everyone." High schoolers who stay out of trouble and agree to work at least 10 hours a week during their first year in college can get free tuition and books for the year.
In an interview after his speech, Edwards, who ran for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, was coy about his future presidential aspirations. "The fight against poverty is where my campaign and heart is," he said, with an audible gulp. "Right now this is where my life is."
Asked what his dream ticket would be for 2008, he responded, "Somebody who would stand up and fight for the kind of people we're talking about here today."
Before Edwards spoke, Scott VanDerven, 51, was musing about Edwards-Feingold in '08.
"It's youthful. It's certainly not traditional. But is it too far left for mainstream voters?" asked VanDerven, a postal carrier from Wauwatosa, who was seeing Edwards speak live for the fifth time.
Afterward, VanDerven said that because Edwards isn't currently running for office, he is better able to air his real views."He could really speak from the heart."
After his talk, Edwards stayed an extra 45 minutes shaking hands, signing autographs and posing for photos.
Jaclyn Shelton, 19, a sophomore majoring in social work, called Edwards inspiring. "It's everything that my classes are about," she said. "We do need to organize. Sometimes because we are a liberal campus, we don't get pushed as much as we should."
After leaving the campus, Edwards toured the Lussier Teen Center and chatted with Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, who endorsed Edwards before the Wisconsin primary last year.
Who is John Edwards? :^=)
Good Evening, Wisconsin Conservative Politics Ping List Members. :)
isn't he the dude from the Breck Girl commercials?
There already is one, you idiot--it's called the War on Terror.
My Little Pony.
What's really sad is those people were actually there to see "Chicken Little".
Why not donate some of the money you spend on hair care products you broke d#ck candy ass loser? Could probably cut poverty in half...
Which will result in job elimination. That'll help poor people a lot.
• Provide work bonds to help poor families save money so they don't need to rely on predatory lenders.
Yes, drive the banks out of business! That'll help everyone!.
• Offer housing vouchers that provide mobility.
Do you plan to force us to pay their moving expenses, too?
• Improve educational opportunities.
In other words, force us to pay their tuition, right? Yes, that's fair, and they'll really value what they get for free!
Bump!
John Edwards can start by putting his money where his mouth is. He can donate half of everything he owns to somebody else and prove it.
Nah, I think he should be made to donate 90%. Nothing introduces reality like losing most of your money.
Rule number one to avoid poverty: Don't get knocked up while single. • Raise the federal minimum wage to at least $7.50.
This will have one of two results. 1) Jobs will be eliminated. There are some functions that just aren't worth $7.50. 2) The rising tide will leave the minimum wage earner exactly where they are now because the cost of everyting will increase to offset the new wage.
• Provide work bonds to help poor families save money so they don't need to rely on predatory lenders. Why would they need to borrow money anyway? If you don't have the cashj don't buy the %150 dollar sneakers. Du'h
• Offer housing vouchers that provide mobility.
Mobile homes for everyone!
• Improve educational opportunities.
This one really torques me. The poor have exactly the same educational opportunities as everyone else. They just don't take advantage of them. (Succeeding is too 'white' for many)
I went to college with a guy who was raised in watts. Family was dirt poor. But his mom made him and his brother study and go to college. Anyone can suceed here.
Speaking as someone who has seen what life is like for the average person in Russia and Kenya - he hasn't a clue what real poverty is.
Regards, Ivan
Hi, Ivan!
Also bear in mind that the crowd he was speaking too are still living on Mommy and Daddy's Dime while attending this uber-liberal college.
They're totally clueless, which seems to be the only base that the Dimowits can pander to. ;)
I wish I could convey real poverty to them - in February 1995, I stood in the courtyard of a Moscow apartment building. The pavement was pitted with large pothole, in which water had collected (it was an unusually warm day). The building itself was crumbling, with bits of rusted pipe sticking out and leaking water. A tenuous electric wire was connecting the building to the power, and it swayed in the breeze, and there were at times a few sparks as it rocked back and forth. Yet a light was on in one house. People were living in that crumbling, unsafe, thoroughly unlovely place.
Poverty in America is nothing like that bad. And it is far more hopeful than the poverty I saw in Russia; one can make it out of being poor in America.
Regards, Ivan
Raise the minimum wage? We've been doing that for decades and yet poverty still exists--Edwards even says so! Give out housing and education "vouchers"? Sure, and the cost of housing and education will skyrocket (college costs are already out of control because of government give-aways).
"And it is far more hopeful than the poverty I saw in Russia; one can make it out of being poor in America."
Exactly. I've traveled extensively in Mexico, and while there is no love lost between myself and illegal aliens, the poverty I've witnessed there is just heartbreaking. And you're right...with little hope of a hand up or a way out. We are truly blessed. But then, this country suffers from a set of people that are so entrenched in their dependency upon Mother Government that they're unable to escape her grasp as well.
(Speaking of Russia, I just read the latest Martin Cruz Smith set in Chernobyl. Yes, it's fiction, but it reminded me once again as to how lucky I am to live in America. The portrait he painted, after much research, of the Chernobyl ghost-survivors is impressive.)
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