Let's End Poverty This Christmas

I just read this on the Huffington Post and was about moved to tears. No matter how little we have (or more accurately, we think we have), there are millions of people in the United States and even more around the world, with far less.

A Christmas Prayer to End Poverty in our Time
by Marion Wright Edelman in the Huffington Post

As 2.1 billion Christians in our world prepare to celebrate the birth of the most famous poor baby in history, I hope they and all peoples will commit to helping all the poor babies in our rich nation and world find a place in our hearts and at our tables of plenty. At a time when the gap between rich and poor in our nation and the world is at its widest ever, an economic downturn driven by the greed of a few has jeopardized the lives and economic security of all of us. I hope we will all raise a mighty voice to reset our nation's moral and economic compass.

God help us to end poverty in our time.
The poverty of having a child with too little to eat and no place to sleep, no air, sunlight and space to breathe, bask and grow.
The poverty of watching your child suffer and get sicker and sicker and not knowing what to do or how to get help because you don't have a car or health insurance.
The poverty of working your fingers to the bone every day taking care of someone else's children and neglecting your own, and still not being able to pay your bills.
The poverty of having a job that does not let you afford a stable place to live and being terrified
you'll become homeless and lose your children to foster care.
The poverty of losing your job because you cannot find reliable child care or transportation to work.
The poverty of working all your life caring for others and having to start all over again caring for the grandchildren you love.
The poverty of earning a college degree, having children, opening a child care center, and taking home $300 a week or month if you're lucky.
The poverty of loneliness and isolation and alienation--having no one to call or visit, tell you where to get help, assist you in getting it, or care if you're living or dead.
The poverty of having too much and sharing too little and having the burden of nothing to carry.
The poverty of convenient blindness and deafness and indifference to others, of emptiness and enslavement to things, drugs, power, violence and fleeting fame.
The poverty of low aim and paltry purpose, weak will and tiny vision, big meetings and small action, loud talk and sullen grudging service.
The poverty of believing in nothing, standing for nothing, sharing nothing, sacrificing nothing, struggling for nothing.
The poverty of pride and ingratitude for God's gifts of life and children and family and freedom
and country and not wanting for others what you want for yourself.
The poverty of greed for more and more and more, ignoring, blaming and exploiting the needy, and taking from the weak to please the strong.
The poverty of addiction to drugs, to drink, to work, to self, to the status quo and to injustice.
The poverty of fear that keeps you from doing the thing you think is right.
The poverty of despair and cynicism.

God help us end poverty in our time in all its faces and places, young and old, rural, urban,
suburban and small town too, and in every color of humans You have made everywhere.
God help us to end poverty in our time in all its guises--inside and out--physical and spiritual,
so that all our and Your children may live the lives that you intend.

Marian Wright Edelman, whose latest book is The Sea Is So Wide And My Boat Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation, is president of the Children's Defense Fund.

Senator Obama's Thank You Letter to Illinois

From today's Chicago Sun-Times:

Obama's letter to the people of Illinois

November 16, 2008
BY PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA

Today, I am ending one journey to begin another. After serving the people of Illinois in the United States Senate -- one of the highest honors and privileges of my life -- I am stepping down as senator to prepare for the responsibilities I will assume as our nation's next president. But I will never forget, and will forever be grateful, to the men and women of this great state who made my life in public service possible.

More than two decades ago, I arrived in Illinois as a young man eager to do my part in building a better America. On the South Side of Chicago, I worked with families who had lost jobs and lost hope when the local steel plant closed. It wasn't easy, but we slowly rebuilt those neighborhoods one block at a time, and in the process I received the best education I ever had. It's an education that led me to organize a voter registration project in Chicago, stand up for the rights of Illinois families as an attorney and eventually run for the Illinois state Senate.

It was in Springfield, in the heartland of America, where I saw all that is America converge -- farmers and teachers, businessmen and laborers, all of them with a story to tell, all of them seeking a seat at the table, all of them clamoring to be heard. It was there that I learned to disagree without being disagreeable; to seek compromise while holding fast to those principles that can never be compromised, and to always assume the best in people instead of the worst. Later, when I made the decision to run for the United States Senate, the core decency and generosity of the American people is exactly what I saw as I traveled across our great state -- from Chicago to Cairo; from Decatur to Quincy.

I still remember the young woman in East St. Louis who had the grades, the drive and the will but not the money to go to college. I remember the young men and women I met at VFW halls across the state who serve our nation bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I will never forget the workers in Galesburg who faced the closing of a plant they had given their lives to, who wondered how they would provide health care to their sick children with no job and little savings.

Stories like these are why I came to Illinois all those years ago, and they will stay with me when I go to the White House in January. The challenges we face as a nation are now more numerous and difficult than when I first arrived in Chicago, but I have no doubt that we can meet them. For throughout my years in Illinois, I have heard hope as often as I have heard heartache. Where I have seen struggle, I have seen great strength. And in a state as broad and diverse in background and belief as any in our nation, I have found a spirit of unity and purpose that can steer us through the most troubled waters.

It was long ago that another son of Illinois left for Washington. A greater man who spoke to a nation far more divided, Abraham Lincoln, said of his home, "To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything." Today, I feel the same, and like Lincoln, I ask for your support, your prayers, and for us to "confidently hope that all will yet be well."

With your help, along with the service and sacrifice of Americans across the nation who are hungry for change and ready to bring it about, I have faith that all will in fact be well. And it is with that faith, and the high hopes I have for the enduring power of the American idea, that I offer the people of my beloved home a very affectionate thanks.

Possible 3rd Party Candidate - October Surprise!

This is HUGE!

We all knew there would be an October Surprise in this election and I know what it will be!

Thanks to grassroots organizing - community organizing, if you will - there is a new 3rd party candidate!

You can watch the media frenzy over this new political superstar by clicking here.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on this new candidate in the comments.

I think it goes without saying, but I'm withdrawing my support for Obama in favor of this candidate. Will you join me?

An Open Letter to Sarah Palin

My friend Scott (he's one of the good guys) posted this on his Facebook page and I just have to share it with you.

Feel free to distribute it as you like.

Hello All,

I just can't refrain from sharing this piece with you which I wrote this morning after Sarah Pallin's appalling speech last night! I was so outraged by her smarmy sarcasm! This piece has just been picked up by Women's Feature Service, a syndicate to which I regularly contribute, so I am prohibited from submitting it to major dailies. However, feel free to share as widely as you'd like!

Elayne Clift
PO Box 299
Saxtons River, Vt 05154 USA
802-869-2686/fax 2687
eclift@vermontel.net
www.elayneclift.com

AN OPEN LETTER TO SARAH PALIN

Okay, you did it. You hoodwinked your party and a lot of other Americans too, I suspect, with your cheerleader’s charm and your finger-waving fervor. You got yourself called “Hottest VP.” Some say you “knocked it out of the park.” Well, I think you should be knocked out of the park, Sarah, and here’s why.

First, your hypocrisy is astounding. How can you possibly say that something like an unplanned pregnancy is a personal matter deserving of privacy? Doesn’t every woman who grapples with a painful abortion decision deserve the same privacy? What rock have you been living under that enables you to advocate for abstinence-only sex education when you can’t even teach that dubious value to your own daughter? Why do you speak of love and support for children (including the unborn) when your party refuses to legislate policies that would offer them decent healthcare and early childhood education and provide their mothers with a modicum of support, including paid maternity leave?

You are a selfish woman, Sarah, with dubious priorities. “J’accuse”, as writer Emile Zola wrote -- but you must pardon me for exposing my elitist education -- because as a mother myself, I cannot fathom how you would subject a teenage daughter in trouble to the kind of public scrutiny she now must endure in the interest of your own ambitions. At the risk of sounding like a failed feminist, I must also say that being the mother of a special needs child too, I just don’t get how you can abdicate the desperately important advocacy and monitoring that will be required in these first years of your son’s life. (I know your husband is deeply involved and responsible, but believe me, Sarah, no one does it like a mom.) As you said yourself, “Children with special needs inspire special love.” Where is your special love, Sarah? Family values, I might remind you, are not just a set of lofty ideals wrapped in grandiose rhetoric; they involve making hard choices in the best interest of everyone in the family.

By now many people are finding you either mean-spirited or remarkably ignorant. I think you are both. Nothing revealed these characteristics so much or so shockingly as your attack (and Rudy Guliani’s) on community organizing. “I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” you said. Don’t you get it, Sarah? Community organizing is what your beloved faith-based charities do! Community organizing by women all around this country is what happened in the 1970s and 80s to enable you to be taken seriously as a candidate for vice president, and to stand, God forbid, a heartbeat away from being the CEO of the most powerful country on earth. Community organizing is what got us the Americans with Disabilities Act which will serve your son well as he matures. I will never, ever, forgive you, Sarah, for your snide, sarcastic, demeaning, despicable disrespect for one of America’s finer traditions – or for your surly attacks on the media, America’s Fourth Estate and a pillar of any democracy.

Your much anticipated coming out party was billed as a way for all of us to get to know who you are. Well, Sarah, I know who you are. You are the bully in the sandbox, the teenager who thinks she can get her way by being flirtatious, the adult who thinks she can get by without doing the hard work and get ahead without paying much dues, the politician who believes that lies are more expedient than facts. I know who you are, Sarah, and I don’t like or trust you. I find you duplicitous, shallow, insulting and frighteningly retro – all qualities I am terrified to contemplate in a V.P. or a president.

For the record, by the way, here are just a few reasons, reported by the Associated Press, that I find you duplicitous and dishonest:

• You said you had protected taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending but the truth is that as mayor of Wasilla you hired a lobbyist and went to Washington every year to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. Since you’ve been governor Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal funding, the largest per capital request in the country. And that Bridge to Nowhere? You only dropped the idea after it was ridiculed nationally.

• You accused Barack Obama of never having authored a major law or reform, “not even in the state senate.” The fact is that as a new senator Mr. Obama worked in a bipartisan way to pass federal legislation, now law, that helped intercept illegal shipments of WMDs and made it harder to stockpile conventional weapons. He also co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

• You falsely accuse Mr. Obama of planning to raise all kinds of taxes without fully sharing his complete and complex tax plan. In reality, just for starters, the McCain-Palin plan would raise taxes for middle income taxpayers by 3% while the Obama-Biden plan would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly.

• You and Mr. McCain continue to inflate your experience and role as governor in a state that ranks 47th in terms of population. For example, you may be in charge of your state’s national guard, but your authority does not include calling those guards into actual military service. (Alaska has one of the smallest state guards in the country, by the way.) Contrary to what John McCain has claimed, you do not have national security as one of your primary responsibilities.

Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Even your own political pundits, Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy, were caught by a live mike calling your speech “political [expletive]” and bemoaning the fact that “It’s over.” Honey, I’m afraid that as the truth keeps surfacing and folks get beyond your being a “hotty,” and when you must finally respond to the press on the Sunday morning talk shows or at press conferences, and when the spotlight shines down upon you as you debate your formidable, experienced opponent you will no longer be the toast of your party. You will simply be toast. And that’s something I wouldn’t find hard to swallow at all.

# # #

Elayne Clift writes about women, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt.

Those Damn Community Organizers

Ever since I heard Candy Crowley on CNN report the line about Community Organizers from an early copy of Palin's speech released to the press yesterday afternoon, I have been completely incensed.

I had to resist the urge not to throw things at my TV last night when she actually said it. My only saving grace was that I didn't want to punish myself by breaking my TV.

This morning, FranIam wrote a great post about how difficult it is for her to remain positive this morning in light of that speech. I gotta give FranIam kudos, she's really working hard to resist the urge to reach into the muck that the GOP is spouting.

In her post, Fran also asked for the opinions of her readers and what we thought of the speech. I commented about the community organizing line and I can't stop thinking about that comment.

Here's my comment:

I was over-the-top offended by many parts of her speech, but the line that will stay with me forever was the line that in 1 sentence managed to insult every volunteer helping those less fortunate in America:

"I guess being mayor of a small town is kinda like being a community organizer, except I had responsibilities."

Volunteers who help people with no voice have responsibilities too. Those responsibilities may not come in the form of municipal code, but they're a code from a much higher power - our conscious. The responsibilities of volunteers come from that place deep in our souls that won't allow us to ignore the poor, weak and the suffering. As far as I'm concerned, that's the highest calling there is and the most important responsibility we have as humans.

If not for those "community organizers" you clearly hate so much, would the
"community" previously known as the 13 Colonies have come together and risen up
against England? What do you think the Founding Fathers were? They weren't born
with that title. They were fucking COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS.

Oh, and that work you did on the PTA . . . THAT was Community Organizing too.

And all that GOTV stuff that goes on around election day? Community Organizing.

Rallying a group of volunteers to send care packages to the troops in Iraq, including your uber-patriotic son, Track? Community Organizing.

I could go on.

To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, "Governor, I know community organizers. I've
worked with them. They're friends of mine. Governor, you're no Community
Organizer."

Here's a few more things that occurred to me a few minutes ago (when I really should be focused on work) . . .

I guess you're gonna have to give up your relationship with Christianity, Sarah. Your messiah, Jesus Christ, was also a Community Organizer. He had no "responsibilities," except the ones to God and the rest of humankind.

You know your cute hubby, Todd Palin, the First Dude? You love to talk about how he's a union member. Do you know who started unions? Community Organizers.

And one more thing Sarah Palin, you know those women who came together in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries to fight for women's suffrage and ultimately made it possible for the likes of you to be standing at the GOP Convention and (God help us) a candidate for Vice President in 2008? You know those women, right? Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Lucretia Mott, Jane Addams, Helen Kendrick Johnson, Jeannette Rankin, Alice Duer Miller, M. Carey Thomas, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Olympia Brown, Maud Younger, Caroline Severence, and many many more.

They were ALL Community Organizers.

Before you go dissing Community Organizers with a cute, yet shrill (yep, I said it) sound bite, maybe you should think for a moment who fought for your rights and exactly how it is you are able to be where you are today.

In case you're unaware Sarah, Ordinary People CAN Change the World. The fact is, they usually do.

Community Organizers, Sarah. It all starts with Community Organizers.