Prominent Civil Rights Activists Endorse Edwards For PresidentJOHN EDWARDS 08New Orleans, Louisiana – During his visit to New Orleans and Baton Rouge today, Senator John Edwards received the support of three prominent civil rights activists. Actor Danny Glover, Louisiana civil rights activist Kwame Asante and Mississippi civil rights activist Derrick Johnson all endorsed Edwards for president.
Glover and Asante joined Edwards today in New Orleans, where they worked on a damaged house in the 9th Ward and then visited Orelia Tyler, whose home Edwards worked on during his presidential announcement. Today, Edwards is also speaking at the National Conference of Black Mayor' 33rd Annual Convention in Baton Rouge, where he will discuss how we can help New Orleans recover and how we can work to end inequality in our country.
Glover endorsed Edwards saying, "John Edwards brings everyone to the table. His words, actions, and policies speak to all of us. He brings integrity, honesty, and a spirit of activism that challenges each of us to do more to make this a better nation and a better world. I know him, I trust him, and I know he will be a great president."
Asante said, "There is no greater a need or more important a time for our country to have a president that responds to the call of the people. Senator John Edwards' attendance at the National Conference of Black Mayors Convention in Louisiana is an example of his desire to answer that call. I support John Edwards by joining him on Friday in the 9th Ward of New Orleans to continue the work of rebuilding homes in New Orleans."
Johnson said, "John Edwards brings a level of integrity that this country needs and deserves."
http://johnedwards.com/news/headlines/20070504-civil-rights-activists John Edwards: Union manJohn Edwards believes a new labor movement is the answer to the country's great divide. Should corporate America be afraid of him?by Nina Easton, Fortune Washington bureau chief
May 7 2007: 5:53 AM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- No one was paying much attention to John Edwards in February 2006, when a historic contest for control of Congress was getting underway and the 2008 presidential race was still a sliver of light on the horizon. But Danny Glover was. He had to. For three days the Lethal Weapon star and the one-term Senator were glued to each other's sides like a pair of mismatched LAPD cops as they traveled across the country to lend support to hotel workers and their unions on the eve of a threatened strike.
At the time, Glover was the veteran of poverty politics; Edwards was still a rookie in training. So Glover, who prides himself on his ability to sniff out poseurs and users, warily scrutinized the carefully coifed politician from North Carolina. "There's real humility and false humility," Glover says. Which was Edwards?
In Boston, he watched Edwards listen to the plight of a single mother, an Italian immigrant who had managed on a hotel maid's pay to raise four children and send each one to college. In Chicago, Edwards took a lesson in the back-breaking work of lifting 113-pound mattresses and changing luxury duvets weighed down by piles of pillows and shams.
In L.A., the former Senator arrived overscheduled and tired, but impressed labor leaders when he readily agreed to squeeze in an extra meeting with a group of kitchen workers on their break.
The rich lawyer with the soft Southern accent bonded comfortably with this unseen servant class. Like a juror on one of Edwards's personal-injury cases, Glover found himself falling under the trial lawyer's spell. As the duo walked into a meeting of 60 African-American community leaders in downtown L.A. to make the case for greater black support of unions, the deal was sealed. "He was able to talk with them, not up to them or down to them," Glover recalls. "Here was a man who sincerely had empathy."
(snip)
"The difference between union and non-union is literally the difference between poverty and middle class," Edwards told Fortune. "Hotel workers, restaurant workers, home health workers, hospital workers - at last count there are some 50 million people who work in the service economy. Those jobs aren't going anywhere else. They have to be done in the United States."
Courting the labor vote is standard procedure for Democratic presidential candidates, but Edwards goes well beyond the usual union-friendly rhetoric; he has aggressively lobbied on behalf of legal changes to make it easier for labor to organize. The testimonials have already begun: "I'm 61, and in my lifetime I don't recall any candidate for President who articulated a belief not just that unions are good, but that they are necessary for what ails society," says John Wilhelm, president of the apparel, textile and hospitality workers' union Unite Here.
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http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008849 Transformational Change For America And The World - JOHN EDWARDS for PRESIDENT 2008:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:
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"I'm proposing we set a national goal of eliminating poverty in the next 30 years." - JOHN EDWARDS 08 Silence is Betrayal - JOHN EDWARDS 08Ending Poverty in America
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