Archive for August, 2007
On Thursday, Mayor Giuliani came through a country store in Nashua, New Hampshire. I caught up with him with a few ONE members to talk about US efforts to fight global poverty and disease.
After giving a quick speech, Rudy made his way through the crowd to our group of ONE members. I told him that President Bush has been a leader in the fight against global AIDS in Africa and I asked him, if elected President, if he would help poor African farmers the chance to trade their way out of poverty. He said that he stands behind that effort 100%. He said that he recognized ONE and told everyone how much respect and admiration that he has for the organization.
Even though it was a busy event, Mayor Giuliani took a moment to pose with 2 ONE members before he got on his campaign bus. He reiterated to the group and the small press corp how much he admired the ONE Campaign and the work we are doing.
Later in the week, Mayor Giuliani ran into more ONE members in Manchester and spoke with them about the importance of our issues and how much he enjoys seeing ONE members on the campaign trail. ONE member Neil thanked the Mayor and told him that he would see more of us along the way.
Fighting global poverty and disease is not an issue that one party owns – for our nation to truly live up to our values and make poverty history, it will take an American effort. From the activist on Main Street, to the halls of DC and on to the White House – ONE Vote ’08 is the grassroots movement of people that will save lives and help make a better and safer world for everyone.
-Matthew Bartlett, ONE Regional Organizer
Gov. Romney held a town hall meeting in Londonderry, New Hampshire, the other day. Like many candidate events in New Hampshire, there were ONE bands everywhere you looked.
Here in New Hampshire, a lot of people from both parties are turning to ONE, and turning out to the candidate events to make sure each and every person running for president, knows that as Americas, we want our nation to be a leader in the fight against global poverty and AIDS in Africa.
This was Gov. Romney’s only public event in New Hampshire that day and after the event there was not much time to talk with him so I snuck around the back of the location to where some of the press had gathered around his vehicle.
After a few questions from the press, Gov. Romney’s campaign officials said that he had to leave, but as he turned around I was able to thank him for talking about the need to reach out to impoverished countries in Africa and fight AIDS and poverty through medical diplomacy and technology.
I also handed him a copy of the New Hampshire Union Leader Op-Ed that had just been published that day by our ONE Vote ’08 New Hampshire co-chairs, Joe Keefe and Rich Ashooh.
No matter the event, ONE members are finding ways to make our collective voices heard. Each time a ONE member takes an email action, writes a letter to a newspaper, or phones their elected leaders in Congress, they are acting on behalf of the more than 2.4 million Americans and the bottom billion people in the world that live in extreme poverty. We are being heard across the country and we are stronger, when we act as ONE.
-Matthew Bartlett, ONE Regional Organizer
Women’s empowerment has been getting a boost in a small village in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. The village of Awra Amba (“Top of the Hill”) was founded by 20 Muslim and Christian peasants in the 1980s and now has 400 residents and a growing fan club.
According to a piece in the Christian Science Monitor, the village is an experiment in egalitarianism in an otherwise traditional society, a community where education is emphasized, women are given three months maternity leave from work responsibilities, and men join the women in cooking and weaving, traditionally female activities. Awra Amba’s vision of women’s empowerment, the third UN Millennium Development Goal, has attracted increasing attention internationally:
“Government officials and members of parliament, sheikhs and priests, and local and foreign nongovernmental organization workers have made the trip via a rocky road only accessible with a four-wheel-drive vehicle to see the success for themselves.
“I was completely captivated by my visit to the community,” says Ambassador Tim Clarke, head of the European Union delegation to Ethiopia. “I regard it as the model for the world community on how gender issues should be treated. I have come across nothing else like it anywhere in Africa – and indeed the world. I am using it to inspire the work of my office here on gender mainstreaming and empowerment of women.”
-Porter McConnell
Think the epidemic of poverty and disease in Africa is just too huge to tackle? Think again.
Take a look at great news from Kenya the other day. During the past five years, child deaths from malaria were cut by more than 40 percent!
But what’s also astonishing is the way this result–which means millions of children saved–was achieved: by simply handing out mosquito nets. Kenya and international organizations gave out 13.5 million insecticide-treated mosquito nets, meaning that 52% of children in Kenya now sleep under nets, up from 5% in 2003.
When you hear the staggering figures (up to 2.7 million Africans die of malaria each year, 75 percent of them children, tens of millions suffer chronically from the disease) the problem can be overwhelming, too massive to relate.
But as the ONE Campaign is telling America’s leaders and the news from Kenya proves, there are effective and affordable solutions that we can take on right now that will literally mean the difference between life and death for the poorest people in the world. Yes, the problems are huge and ending them may sound like a dream. But when countries focus on proven solutions, like delivering mosquito nets, big things happen, like saving millions of children and ending a disease.
-Steve Wilson
The ONE Campaign concert team has been back out on the road the past few weeks, recruiting new ONE members and volunteers along the way!
We just launched our third summer on tour with the Dave Matthews Band. We kicked the tour off in Boston two weeks ago with a powerhouse crew of volunteers. Among those that joined us were Amy, who is one of the lead volunteers in the Boston area, and Wendy, a South African native who for some reason kept accidentally asking fans if they wanted to ‘help end world peace’. WE knew she meant world poverty, but the fans who stopped looked pretty confused! It worked though, once they stopped she explained what she MEANT to say and got them signed up and involved! In Philly we had Brit, Brent and Maria join us – Brit had just met us the week before at the Virgin Festival and brought her friend Brent along, and Maria was also a first time volunteer. In Pittsburgh we got to work with Brian, a lead volunteer for the area who comes out and helps at every show we do, and his team of great volunteers – they hold the record so far on the tour for the most sign ups, though we’re pretty sure our teams in Milwaukee and Florida are going to do their best to steal that title! We’ve already also been through Hartford and DC, and have gotten thousands of Dave fans involved with the campaign. We’ve got a good six weeks left of the tour ahead of us, and expect it to be even bigger and better than the last two years.
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Aug 17th, 2007 10:25 AM UTC
By Field
What are the Iowa State Fair Soapboxes?
A twenty minute opportunity for presidential candidates to tell the crowded Iowa State Fair what they will do for our country. Rep. Duncan Hunter, Sen. John McCain, and Governor Bill Richardson were amongst the participants for the first week of the State Fair.
These candidates were hit with tough questions from ONE members about America’s role in eradicating TB and malaria and creating access to the medication needed for HIV/AIDS patients. All responded with different strong solutions. With each question ONE members asked the candidates, the crowd shouted cheers of support!
-Deborah Helsen, Iowa ONE volunteer
Every time ONE members meet with US Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL), we always start our meeting by thanking him for his leadership on global poverty issues. As an original co-sponsor of the Jubilee Act in 1999, Rep. Bachus was in on the ground floor and has worked tirelessly on debt relief issues alongside Bono/DATA and Bread for the World, both founding members of the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History.
When Rep. Bachus first championed debt relief in Congress, his colleagues didn’t “get it”.
“People on both sides of the aisle told me there was no political upside to this,” Bachus said in an interview at the time. Now, those same skeptics see just how forward thinking he was – not only has debt cancellation reduced poverty, improved health care and education, but it has also decreased poor countries dependency on foreign aid. This year, Rep. Bachus, in a bi-partisan effort with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), introduced the Jubilee Act of 2007 – legislation that will further extend debt cancellation to the world’s poorest countries without imposing harmful economic reforms.
Earlier this year, Rep. Bachus joined Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) to also introduce the Education for All Act. Rep. Bachus recognizes the importance of education in ending the cycle of poverty and further sees education as “an investment in international security.” “Young people who are reading books aren’t building bombs,” Bachus said in an interview with the Birmingham News. He added, “The US has always succeeded because of the strength of our ideas. We need to fill the vacuum with a message of hope, not hate, in these countries. We can’t play educator to the world, but we can certainly come closer than being the policeman to the world.”
We ended the meeting by briefing Rep. Bachus on both the Growth Act and the Child Survival Act. He enthusiastically received the information and felt confident that these were both measures he could support. He promised an answer within the week!
When ONE members asked how we could help him, Rep. Bachus pointed out that letters to the editor are very effective. A point well taken and often heeded. For example, when ONE members were unable to get an in-district meeting with our senators during the August recess to discuss the Farm Bill, we wrote letters to the editor of the Birmingham News publicly stating our position. Even without a face-to-face visit with our senators, local ONE Campaigners were able to effectively communicate our viewpoint.
Many thanks to Rep. Bachus for his continued leadership.
[People in picture are: John Derrick, Elaine VanCleave, Rep. Spencer Bachus, Suzanne Martin, Mark Connell]
