Nevada ONE member Robin Mercer delivered 50,000+ petitions asking Governor Mitt Romney to go on the record and tell us exactly where he stands on fighting extreme poverty and global disease. Will he – and the other presidential candidates – take up the challenge?
Stay tuned.
Update: UNR ONE Club President Tracey Gaffney and club member Adam Allen just presented John Edwards with “On the Record” petitions, too.
ONE member Libby Pederson outdid herself this weekend in Iowa, delivering “On the Record” campaign petitions from more than 50,000 ONE members to four of the presidential campaigns. The petitions ask the candidates to go on the record, in writing and on camera, to tell us exactly what they plan to do to end extreme poverty and global disease.
But we won’t hear back from them until they hear from us, and that’s what petition delivery is all about. Check it out below.
Here’s Libby Pederson delivering a petition to a Chris Dodd campaign staffer.
There she is again outside Joe Biden’s HQ.
And inside Mike Huckabee’s office.
What a trooper, once again, handing petitions to a staffer from the Barack Obama campaign.
ONE stars Matthew Bartlett and Michael Castaldo passed along our “On The Record” petitions by hand to staff people from Senator John McCain’s and Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s campaigns this weekend.
More than 53,000 people have already signed the petition urging every presidential candidate to go on record with their plans for extreme poverty and global disease. If you haven’t yet, sign on now and add this “On The Record” widget to your website or blog.
Last night I went to Rindge, NH, with some ONE members wearing ONE shirts and ONE bands to help represent the world’s poorest people during a town hall meeting with Sen. McCain.
I raised my hand to ask a question about malaria but when Sen. McCain saw my shirt, he asked me to talk about the ONE Campaign!
After talking about the 2.4 million member movement that ONE is, I thanked Sen. McCain for his support of the FRESH Act that would help reform the wasteful government payments in the Farm Bill that end up devastating small local farms and African farmers. I then spoke about US efforts to fight malaria, something that Bill Gates himself urged all the candidates to support and expand. Sen. McCain said he would support those efforts, and then went on to ask me to talk about the importance of clean water in the developing world.
When I started working for the ONE Campaign in 2005 I had just come back from a year in Ghana, working on small-scale economic community development projects. Working for ONE, and advocating for ONE’s core issues, it was very real to me that we were working to help families support themselves through life-saving medicines, important clean water and hygiene programs, and through creating economic opportunities by making trade more fair – the kinds of things that people in Ghana desperately needed.
Now, I am back in Africa – Nigeria, this time, and again working on a community development project – the Gwaimen Center, a community-based sustainability center to support widows and orphans in Kwoi, Nigeria. Now that things have come full circle, I am now seeing the fruits of ONE’s arduous labors.
During my first week here, we stopped at a clinic in Kagoro to visit a friend. One of the first things that I noticed was this sign. “USAID had been here – from the American people.”
I suddenly had the clearest image of members of ONE’s amazing dedicated staff (whom I miss greatly!), ONE volunteers from around the country, and the 2.4 million ONE supporters, calling their leaders and asking them to support important initiatives like this. ONE is on the front lines – fighting for things that make a difference in the lives of people in other countries – from the American people.
I’ve only been here two weeks, so will continue to send stories from the ground!
-Anne Batchelder, ONE member, former ONE Deputy Field Director, and founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria
On Friday, I traveled waaaay north in New Hampshire, and through a surprise snowstorm, to see and hear President Bill Clinton campaign for Hillary…and make sure that he heard from ONE Vote ’08 while he was in the Granite State.
Before the principal of White Mountains Regional High School introduced President Clinton, he told a quick story about President Clinton’s and President Bush’s speech at the 2007 UNH Graduation Ceremony. He said that one of the biggest things that struck him during President Clinton’s speech was when he spoke about a rural tribe in Africa. In that tribe, when someone greets another person, they respond in their native language with what is translated in English to mean, “I see you” – a recognition of a person’s humanity and an affirmation of each other. I thought this was also a fitting notion for our work with the ONE Campaign, as we use our collective voices for those that do not have such a voice in the global community.
After a brief speech, President Clinton made his way through the crowd and I was able to speak with him and remind him that Bretton Woods, NH, was just down the road, the place where the free world gathered in 1944 and the roots of the Marshall Plan were created. I told him that it was important to renew that Bretton Woods promise by fighting AIDS, Malaria and TB in Africa today, and we discussed his own efforts in the most desperate places on Earth.
From the snowy mountains here in New Hampshire, all the way to sub-Saharan Africa, people are realizing that we can save lives and beat extreme poverty, when we come together as ONE.
Sen. McCain campaigned in New Hampshire over the weekend and many ONE members were able to catch up with him on the campaign trail to make sure he knows that saving lives in Africa is not only possible, but it is a priority!
New Hampshire native Emerson Lennon was able to attend a town hall meeting with Sen. McCain at Dartmouth College in Hanover. He passed out ONE Vote ’08 literature and even got a chance to speak with Sen. McCain after the event. Emerson told me that Sen. McCain told him how good it was to see ONE again and how much he supports our efforts. He even snapped a quick photo for the blog!
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