On Thursday, Senator John McCain came to Iowa for the first time with new running mate Governor Sarah Palin.
The event was held at an air hanger in the Cedar Rapids airport and thousands of people attended, including many University of Iowa students in ONE T-shirts!
After the event, and after Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin toured parts of Cedar Rapids to see devastation from recent flooding, their motorcade pulled up to a long line of people, including ONE members, waiting for the senator and governor to board their plane.
As they walked through the line and shook hands, Senator McCain saw our ONE shirts and said that ONE is a wonderful organization and thanked us for what we do.
Next in the line came Governor Sarah Palin who shook hands with a ONE member who handed her a ONE band. She said “right on!” and immediately put on the band. (See our video). We were so happy to have represented ONE on Gov. Palin’s first visit to Iowa!
We keep spotting ONE shirts and white ONE bands on the Idol Gives Back show tonight. You can pick up your own at the ONE Store.
Earlier Bono was wearing a special edition EDUN ONE shirt. EDUN is a socially-conscious clothing company with a mission to create beautiful clothing while fostering sustainable employment in developing countries. All of the ONE EDUN shirts are made of 100% Africa cotton in Lesotho, Africa, one of the poorest countries in the world. Learn more about EDUN here.
You can pick up your ONE shirt, ONE band, and/or special edition EDUN shirts here.
If you see a ONE shirt or band on the show again tonight- let us know in the comments.
World champion Ethiopian runner Meseret Defar continued her 5-year undefeated streak by winning the 3000 meter at the World Indoor Championships on Saturday. All through the race, Meseret Defar wore her white band. (Getty Images)
“It was somewhat inevitable the multi-talented Defar would prevail, and so it proved as she simply destroyed the field by winding up the pace from 400m out and unleashing her legendary kick-finish over the final lap.
And even Defar herself conceded in a post-race interview victory here at the Palau Velodromo Luis Puig was not the most testing of her career. “Today it was an easy race for me, because of that I didn’t have to run too fast,” she explained. “I feel that I’m ready for Beijing (Olympic Games) now.”
College students, politicians, pastors, even grandmothers are wearing the white ONE band. To illustrate the diversity of ONE, I decided to start a Facebook group called “Who’s Wearing the White ONE Band?” to highlight just who ONE is.
Posted photos include ONE CEO David Lane and other ONE staffers, pastors Brian McLaren. Jim Wallis, and Bread for the World president, David Beckmann, former Senate Majority leader Bill Frist, presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama, US Representatives Republican Spencer Bachus and Democrat Artur Davis, rockers Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, and newcomer Preston Lovingood of Wild Sweet Orange.
These are just some of the famous faces who have donned the white ONE band as an outward sign of their support for the movement. But, you’ll also see the school teacher who learned about ONE at a concert, the grandmother who got her ONE band at an AIDS walk, and the college student who was introduced to ONE at an Oxfam hunger banquet.
Take a picture of yourself, your friends, your family wearing the white ONE band, join the Facebook group, and post your pictures. Invite others to join. Let’s start a symbolic chain of white ONE bands that spreads across America.
-Elaine Van Cleave, Bread for the World and ONE Campaign member
Bloggers from both ends of the political spectrum rarely find agreement on issues. Even more rarely do they sit around a table to brainstorm on ways we can work together. This summer, The ONE Campaign provided the issue and the setting that brought conservative and liberal bloggers to stand together….
Until now, there has been no widespread movement to force this issue into the political agenda of the United States.
Now, we have The ONE Campaign. When people see my white ONE wristband, they usually ask which cause of the day the white band is for. I simply reply “The ONE Campaign is the campaign to make poverty history.” After allowing a moment for the levity of the situation to absorb, I usually throw in, “It’s Bono’s poverty thing.”
I’ve been hugely impressed by the reach of The ONE Campaign in recent months. I’m originally from New Hampshire, and it seems that nary a presidential candidate comes into my state without being “banded” by ONE and asked to talk about the complicated issues surrounding global poverty and disease. Approaching these leaders with such topics is how change can begin from the top – in government halls and meetings between international governments.
In FORGE, we’ve decided to mimic the sentiment on the ground, where change is also occurring. Whenever FORGE hires a new refugee staff member to run FORGE projects in the camps, they’re given a ONE band as a reminder that our domestic staff may be young Americans and they may be refugees in exile, but in our mission for peace, prosperity, and health, we are working as ONE.
The gesture goes a long way. After handing out the bands at a recent All-FORGE staff meeting, many of our new staff members came up to me and held out their newly-decorated wrist. “Yes, Nicholas,” they said.
“We work with you as ONE.”
Take a look at the attached picture. It shows the wrists of Kjerstin Erickson, FORGE’s Founder & Executive Director and Kashinda Lwika Zaina, a member of FORGE staff in Mwange Refugee Camp. Two people, two continents, two histories, two skin colors, and ONE shared vision. And a conspicuous tattoo.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
