ONE Vote ’08 volunteers fired up the crowd outside and passed out wristbands to debate watchers. Check out the awesome video ONE’s Matt Higginson put together from footage outside the debate.

Great night for Nevadans and ONE!

-Megan Jones

Rep. Dennis Kucinich was in Concord, NH, today where he went to get a charitable haircut to benefit autism. I presented the “On The Record” petitions to him in the barber chair.

Rep. Kucinich was eager to tell me how much he support’s ONE’s mission and efforts. His staff was already familiar with “On The Record” from when ONE member Michael Castaldo dropped off the petitions to his office over the weekend!

-Matthew Bartlett, ONE Regional Organizer

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.

-Virginia Simmons

-Matt Higginson

Thurdsay night, Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson participated in a live, televised forum at Howard University.

ONE volunteers seized this opportunity to send these presidential candidates a message when they arrived at the forum. Each volunteer got one sign that said one of the following words, “What will you do to end extreme poverty and AIDS?” We set up across from a sea of presidential candidate supporters and signs. We could tell that lots of people were intrigued by our unique message. Cars slowed down while they passed us on busy Georgia Avenue to see what we had to say! Our group traveled a few blocks down the sidewalk (in order!), shouting our message so other groups saw us, too. A few limos and town cars with dark tinted windows passed by us, so we can only speculate on who may have been inside!

An hour into our demonstration, our shouting was overpowered by a torrential storm, but that didn’t stop us until our signs were dripping ink and unintelligible!

This was just one of many times the candidates and their supporters will see ONE in the crowd urging both to make ending extreme poverty and AIDS a top priority in the 2008 elections.

By the way, a similar forum with the Republican candidates will occur in September at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Read more on the presidential forums here.

When I spoke with the Congressman, he and his wife Elizabeth expressed their enthusiasm for ONE and Kucinich proudly wore a white ONE band throughout the event.

California ONE members will continue to meet presidential candidates from both sides of the aisle to make sure that poorest of the poor are not forgotten during the 2008 election cycle.