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.

Keeping up with John Edwards

Sometimes I think people reading my blog must think that I'm a professional political junkie or something like that. I know all of my posts are about the Edwards campaign. In the past six months, for me, it's all about the Edwards campaign. Every single day the question I ask myself is "what can I do to help get the word out about John Edwards today?" It was not always this way.

Once, I had a life. Up until late 2003, as a matter of fact, I had more or less ignored politics for 20 years. I voted, but that was about it. Then, two things happened. Bush cheated his way into office and proceeded to ruin my country, which eventually angered me so much that I felt I had to do something about it. Then, in the course of looking for a Democratic candidate to challenge him in 2004, I discovered someone who I thought would be not just a good president, but a great president. That is John Edwards. I've been rooting for him ever since.

It's not easy these days to keep up with John Edwards. I write blogs about him at least a few times a week, but if all you know about John Edwards is what I write in my blog, I will be the first to confess that you're missing a lot of substantial news about him.

For one thing, the guy is a nonstop policy guru. His campaign puts out several press releases every week with new and detailed policy proposals, only some of which I find the time to write about. In this post, I'll do a quick update on a few things I didn't have time to write about in the past week or so.

A few days ago, Edwards announced a plan to protect our food supply, require country of origin labels, and strengthen the FDA. The plan would require imported food to meet the same safety standards as homegrown food produced in the USA, and would help protect the business of family farmers, too. From the press release:

Des Moines, Iowa – Senator John Edwards today announced a new initiative he would pursue as President to ensure the safety of food for American consumers and to help farmers and ranchers in Iowa and across the nation. Edwards will discuss the initiative on a conference call with Iowa reporters today and will be joined by Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), who is supporting his campaign for President.

"It's time to stop the delays and stop giving in to big agribusiness and food importers," Edwards said. "We need to give Americans the information they need to choose the best, and safest, food for their families."

"Senator Edwards grew up in rural America and understands the challenges we face, and that's reflected in his proposals to strengthen agriculture," Herseth Sandlin said. "We need the kind of presidential leadership he's offering, whether it's protecting our food supply, helping our agricultural producers, or revitalizing rural America."

Edwards is clearly right in step with what voters want on this one. A recent consumer reports poll shows that 92% of Americans favor country of origin labels on food.

What I didn't know, and wouldn't have known from the campaign's press release, is that Edwards has been an advocate of country of origin labeling since at least 2002. As MontanaMaven wrote in her great diary on the subject on Daily Kos,

Senator Edwards support of the 2002 Bill which mandated Country of Origin Labeling(COOL) for beef,pork,lamb, fish, perishable agriculture commodities and peanuts. (The fish and seafood part has already been implemented.)

Proving once again that John Edwards is COOL.

Then, just today, Edwards announced a plan to train 150,000 American workers every year for "green collar" jobs.

Des Moines, Iowa – Senator John Edwards today announced a new initiative he would pursue as President to ensure that regular Americans share in the benefits of the new energy economy. His investments in a new energy future are projected to create over a million new jobs economy-wide, and the new Green Collar Jobs training plan will offer job training and placement for up to 150,000 workers a year.

"We can turn the crisis of climate change into an opportunity for a new energy economy, right here in America – and Iowa in particular," Edwards said. "Now is the time to make sure that the economy of tomorrow is an all-aboard economy where nobody is left behind."

Green collar jobs! How cool is that?!

Another thing I like about Edwards is that he isn't afraid to speak out on things that other politicians find inconvenient to bring up. George Bush's mental problems, for example. This is what Edwards said yesterday about Bush's statement on Iraq:

"The president's remarks today defending his Iraq policy without regard to actual facts border on the delusional. The president claimed that the same people attacking U.S. troops today are the ones who perpetrated 9/11. It must be nice to live in a world where your actions have no consequences. There was no group called Al Qaeda in Iraq before the president's disastrous mismanagement of the war gave them a foothold, a fact the president flagrantly ignores. After being discredited again and again, the president is still trying to link Iraq and 9/11 - a rationale for the war that virtually everyone except Dick Cheney has now recognized was false.

"The president needs to stop pretending and start taking responsibility for the results of his failed strategy: There are more terrorists. Al Qaeda is resurgent and restored to full strength. And that's according to the Bush Administration.

"We need a real strategy against terrorism, like the one I have offered. We need to take Al Qaeda in Iraq as seriously as we take terrorism anywhere. As president, I will apply the full extent of our security apparatus to protect our vital interests, to take measures to root out terrorist cells, and to strike swiftly and strongly against those who would do us harm. I will also launch a sweeping effort to eliminate the conditions that generate instability, radicalism, and violence toward the U.S. and our allies."

I would have left out "bordering on," but I'm not a Southern gentleman.

Well, those are a few of the key events this week. I know that's not all. I expect to have even more trouble keeping up with John Edwards next week, when he launches his Road to One America tour to highlight the issue of poverty in the United States. Should be an exciting week!