December 10th, 2007 at 3:23 pm | posted by ONE.Partners
About a month ago, we asked you to take action on the farm bill. Thousands of you made phone calls to your senators urging broad reform of the farm bill. Yet, the senate was delayed in taking action. After many false starts, the senate is likely to begin voting on amendments to the farm bill on Tuesday, December 11.
Even if you’ve called before, please take the time to call again. This may be our last chance to impact our senators.
I had the extreme personal honor this month of being invited to a morning with Dr. David Beckmann, the President of Bread for the World. It was unexpected and I was delighted: I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. The big issue up for discussion was the Farm Bill. It’s time to raise awareness and mobilize for real change.
Before we got started, I asked Dr. Beckman’s assistant if I could pass around the ONE petition, and thank the good Lord, before I left I stuffed a fistful of ONE bands in my bag, too. After we circled the room with introductions, I was asked by Dr. Beckmann to please pass ONE bands around the room, and the a sign-up form for ONE. I’m so glad I didn’t have the embarrassment of not having any on me! Well, this is interesting: all but one person in the room was already signed up and getting the action items and emails. That is so cool!
Bread for the World is an original ONE partner. The early ONE volunteers in our regions are indebted to their offices for taking our calls during 2004 and 2005 prior to an interactive yahoo site with groups and regional leadership, training, and toolkits.
I was anticipating a large sanctuary-full of people. Instead, I found myself in a comfortable setting with about one dozen other active members of the anti-poverty movement. The interaction with Dr. Beckmann and among the local activists proved invaluable. The partnership with ONE was commended often for our participation in hunger and extreme poverty and campaigns, such as ONE Vote ’08.
The Farm Bill is anticipated to hit the floor of the Senate later this week or the beginning of next week. We have been encouraged to contact our senators and ask them to support the “FRESH” amendments to the Grassley/Dorgan amendment, that would cap commodity payments to $250,000 per household, and the Lugar/Lautenberg Amendment that broaden the agricultural safety net by making a free revenue insurance program available to all farmers, saving billions of dollars to be used for nutrition, conservation, the McGovern-Dole international school meals program and more.
As noted in a previous blog, we either need to act now or we will have to wait five more years until the Farm Bill is revisited again. This Bill also addresses non-domestic agricultural trade issues, and as we enter the holiday season, we indeed can use our voice on behalf of the extreme hunger, to truly “feed the world, let them know its Christmastime.”
August 6th, 2007 at 11:18 am | posted by Virginia Simmons
We’re back.
Susan McCue, John Ryan, Weldon Kennedy, Aaron Banks, Annisa Wanat and I are back from YearlyKos, the progressive netroot’s yearly conference.
Our mission: to make ONE a presence.
The fact: People kept telling me, “it seems like ONE is everywhere.”
Throughout the weekend
*We hosted a global poverty panel;
*Distributed ONE bands and shirts to each of the 2,000 attendees;
*Held a demonstration outside (expect a post from annisa on it);
*Attended five democratic presidential candidate caucuses (Obama, Edwards, Clinton, Richardson and Dodd); and
*In the process of building a crowd for our panel and talking about global poverty issues at other panels, and in the hallways in between, we did our best to get the word out to every one we saw.
Our panelists
*Susan McCue (ONE’s President);
*Christina Siun (blogger at FireDogLake);
*David Beckmann (Bread for the Word’s President);
*Natalie Sugira (native Rwandan and ONE ambassador); and
*Gene Sperling (Center for Universal Education Director and Global Campaign for Education U.S. Chair)
were remarkable. If you get a chance to see them speak, do.
You can view the first 12 minutes of the panel on this ustream video, and you can check out Matthew Yglesias’ live blog post, from the event.
(Important comment to conservative bloggers: build a conference and ONE will be there!)
August 1st, 2007 at 2:47 pm | posted by Virginia Simmons
David Beckmann of Bread from the World is talking to WMBI live now about his participation on the Aug 4 9:15am global poverty panel at YearlyKos. You can listen live here.
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The content of each post and each comment represent the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the ONE Campaign or ONE Action. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any posts expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
About a month ago, we asked you to take action on the farm bill. Thousands of you made phone calls to your senators urging broad reform of the farm bill. Yet, the senate was delayed in taking action. After many false starts, the senate is likely to begin voting on amendments to the farm bill on Tuesday, December 11. 
We’re back.
Our panelists
