Road to One America: the Youngstown Business Incubator and Hill House in Pittsburgh

This is my third and final diary about the stops on John Edwards's Road to One America Tour that I visited on July 17, 2007. Previously, I've written about the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, where residents are plagued by predatory lenders and home foreclosures, and also Beatitude House in Youngstown, Ohio, a transitional shelter for homeless women working to get back on their feet. Today's diary focuses on the last two stops on the tour that day: the Youngstown Business Incubator in Youngstown, Ohio and Hill House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Youngstown Business Incubator was a very unusual stop on the Road to One America Tour. Youngstown used to be a big steel town with a lot of manufacturing jobs, but it has fallen on hard times. The Business Incubator is working to create partnerships between business, education, government, and the community to attract better jobs and high tech jobs to the area and train local workers to take those jobs. It is a model for how communities that have lost manufacturing jobs can transition to business models that will be more competitive in the new global economy.

John Edwards met with local business leaders in a roundtable discussion at the Youngstown Business Incubator. I was able to record some of the meeting on video before the battery died in my camera.

Here are some key points that were made during the discussion:

YBI links entrepreneurship and education, helping to keep kids in schools and help local businesses to create job opportunities. These job opportunities help local graduates stay in the Mahoning Valley.

Youngstown is making an effort to become the poster child for what needs to happen throughout the Great Lakes. This is a major transition, which requires local, state, and national help.

The key to the success of YBI is in creating partnerships on many levels. This includes private sector/public sector partnerships, profit/nonprofit partnerships, and business/government partnerships.

John Edwards called it a model for what can be done nationally.

Later that afternoon, Edwards visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he toured the facility at Hill House, then gave a rousing speech.

Hill House is a community organization which has multiple programs for education of youth at different ages, as well as Senior services and other community services. Prior to Edwards's speech, three graduates of various Hill House programs spoke about how those programs have helped them.

The first success story was a young woman who had participated in their Mission Discovery science education program, become a counselor in the program, and is now about to enter college on a full scholarship.

The second success story was that of a young man who, although once a gang member and drug dealer, learned parenting skills and life skills through their fathers program, and now coordinates that program.

The third success story was a woman who had at one time been addicted to drugs, homeless, and had her children taken away from her. The Hill House helped her to get clean, get her life back on track, get housing and get her children back.

After the speeches by the graduates of Hill House, John Edwards spoke about some of the problems facing working people in this country, some of the things he had witnessed on the Road to One America tour, and the programs he would propose to help solve these problems.

We've got 37 million people in this country who live in poverty. 15 million live in deep poverty. I mean intractable, deep poverty. It is not OK. The work that Dr. King began in Marks, Mississippi - that work has to continue today, and he has left this legacy in our hands. He has left this responsibility to us.

Here's an excerpt from his description of his visit to Cleveland earlier that same day:

In a one block radius - 38 homes in foreclosure. 38 homes. And this is not a poor neighborhood. These are working, middle-class people. The one thing that we've got to make sure everybody in this country understands and knows in their gut is that this cause, this march that we're on to end poverty and give opportunity, real opportunity to everybody, is not just about the poor. Everybody's at risk. Everybody is vulnerable.

One new thing I want to say a word about tonight is what we need to be doing about our schools. I'm sure some of you followed this U.S. Supreme Court ruling that turned Brown vs. Board of Education on its head. Taking away the power of schools to voluntarily desegregate - huge mistake. Huge mistake. But we don't just have racial segregation in our schools in America. We have huge economic segregation, and everybody knows it. [inaudible due to applause] ...it's not true that we have one public school system in America - oh, no we don't. We've got two public school systems in America. We've got one for those who live in wealthy suburban areas and then one for everybody else. One for kids who go to inner city schools and poor rural schools and one for everybody else. We have got to build one public school system.

His proposed solutions for economically segregated schools include bonuses to good schools that take in kids from the inner city and creating magnet schools in the inner city that will attract kids from all over.

Toward the end of his speech, Edwards called on all of us to help in the fight to end poverty.

What we need - what we need, brothers and sister, is we need a movement. We need a movement to end poverty in this country. We need a movement to lift up all those people that I've seen in the last day and a half. I carry them around inside me. I do. When I say this cause is the cause of my life - as long as I'm alive and breathing, I'm going to speak for them. I'm going to fight for them, and I'm going to stand up for them, but I need you. I need you in this cause. They need you. They need your courage. They need your strength. They need your voice to be heard, because it is the only way that they're going to have the chance that they're entitled to. It is the only way that they're going to have the dignity that every human being in this country ought to have. You know, if I can paraphrase Gandhi, you've got to be the change that you believe in. You can't stay home and help somebody else is going to do this for you.

After his speech, Edwards stayed around to answer some questions. I had a hard time getting close enough to him for my camera to pick up the audio, but here's a short clip where I think you can hear him OK. In this video, he's talking about football, affordable housing, and magnet schools.

John Edwards walks neighborhood plagued by home foreclosures in Cleveland

When John Edwards announced that he would take three days away from campaigning and fundraising to shine a light on the problem of poverty in America and the possible solutions, I knew I had to be part of this.

The Edwards campaign has made a real effort to encourage citizen journalism, so bloggers were welcome on the Road to One America Tour. I strongly support Senator Edwards, and I applaud his efforts to create a movement against poverty in America. Over the past few months, my outrage has grown as wealthy Republicans and pundits, who never lift a finger to help the poor, continue to attack Edwards for his laudable efforts on behalf of those less fortunate. I knew it was time for me to stand up for this honorable man and his efforts to fight poverty, by acting as an honest witness.

Yesterday, I joined Senator Edwards for four of the stops on his Road to One America Tour. It was an eye opening and a heart opening experience. Seeing the depth of compassion that John has for those who are struggling and hearing the stories of the people that he visited made me more determined not to turn a blind eye to the struggles of those in this country for whom the American dream dissolves into a forgotten nothing in the cold light of day.

This is the first in a series of diaries about yesterday's tour stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania. For the first stop, we visited the neighborhood of Mount Pleasant in Cleveland, Ohio, where 38 homes in a one block radius face foreclosure.

I arrived in the neighborhood of Mount Pleasant a few minutes before Senator Edwards was scheduled to arrive. I was not surprised, however, when I soon learned that he was running on presidential campaign time, and would be a little late. I waited with a mix of journalists and neighborhood residents.



Before long, I was befriended by Ulysses Glen from the Eastside News, a local paper. When he found out that I was not from the area, he was kind enough to introduce me to some community leaders.

The first person Ulysses introduced me to was Zach Reed, the Cleveland City Councilman for that neighborhood. Mr. Reed was kind enough to grant me an interview about the problems local residents face with home foreclosures and predatory lenders. He told me that many of the residents of the neighborhood of Mount Pleasant are elderly African Americans, many of whom have lived in their homes for 30, 40, or 50 years, and many of whom are now facing foreclosure. Some help is available from the city government, but residents often are not aware of it, or are afraid to ask. Mr. Reed also gave me his thoughts on Senator Edwards. The full interview is in the video below:



The next community leader I met was Khalid Samad, a community activist in an organization called Peace in the Hood, which works to reduce gang violence, broker cease fires between gangs, and get gang members involved in positive activities such as entrepreneurship and school. Mr. Samad gave me a bit overview of some of the issues his organization faces, and its history.



Mr. Samad was a member of the youth gang unit for 11 years. As an activist, he has traveled around the country brokering peace deals between gangs. The organization was started in 1993 after the National Gang Summit, but the roots of Peace in the Hood go back even further.

In the 1980s, gang violence rates were so high that the United Nations considered declaring parts of Los Angeles war zones. Mr. Samad and others helped to bring together faith-based and nontraditional faith-based groups, such as Nation of Islam, Hebrew groups, the United Church of Christ, and the Lutherans to work on calming the violence. They started in two cities with the biggest gang problems: Chicago and Los Angeles. After initial successes in these cities, their efforts expanded to 10 or 15 more cities, and these efforts culminated in the National Gang Summit in 1993.

Mr. Samad told me that as a result of the efforts of anti-gang leaders, statistics in major cities for homicide and other gang related crimes fell 25 to 30% in the early 90s.

Though their initial efforts met with some success, the law enforcement community and the political establishment didn't embrace their efforts. It was mainly a grassroots movement, and it has been difficult to sustain a lot of it. Mr. Samad told me that to have continued success, more support is needed in areas like job training, help for ex-offenders, particularly in getting their records expunged, and people to do the needed work. They also need help with afterschool programs and job training.

I wish that I had had more time to speak with some of the these community leaders. I learned a lot from them, but I had to cut short my interview with Mr. Samad when Senator Edwards arrived.

John Edwards had come to visit the area because it is one of the hardest hit by predatory home foreclosures. Edwards met with local Cleveland ACORN members Mariah Crenshaw and Debbie Suber, who are in danger of losing their homes to predatory lenders.



In fact, local residents told Senator Edwards that there are 38 homes in foreclosure in a one block radius in that neighborhood.

According to information given to the media by ACORN members, Ohio saw a 64% increase in the number of foreclosures in 2006 over the number filed in 2005. ACORN says that Cleveland has the 14th highest foreclosure rate in the country. The area that Edwards visited was in two of the cities hardest hits zip codes, 44105 and 44120. There were 313 foreclosure filings in these zip codes in the month of April.

John Edwards walked the neighborhood with local residents and heard their stories. After gathering information from them, he addressed the media about the foreclosure and predatory lending crisis both in Cleveland and in the rest of America.



Speaking along with Senator Edwards was Mariah Crenshaw, a resident of Mount Pleasant who has lived in her family home for over 30 years. She inherited the home from her mother, but after facing a divorce and an illness at the same time, she found herself in financial trouble. She is now one of many neighborhood residents facing losing her home, and is leading neighborhood efforts to fight back against predatory lending and keep their homes.




Edwards spoke to the media about some of his plans to protect homeowners from predatory lenders, combat abusive payday lenders and help families to save, and promote economic diversity in schools. He then answered questions from the media.



Edwards's proposals include passing strong national laws to prevent predatory lending, creating a home rescue fund to help families in danger of losing their homes, and helping families in bankruptcy renegotiate their mortgages. He would also put a cap on interest rates that payday lenders can charge. Edwards also spoke of the need to promote economic diversity in schools.



Edwards spoke out strongly about the need to protect people's homes across America. He noted that some residents of Mount Pleasant are receiving assistance from the city, but said it should not be just a local problem. The federal government needs to come to the aid of homeowners, as this is happening all over the country.

A pamphlet I received from Cleveland ACORN members indicates that homeowners facing foreclosure should call them at 866-67-ACORN.