John Edwards Visits Harvard
Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina speaks on “Restoring the American Dream” at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum yesterday.
photo credit: Matthew Conroy/Harvard Crimson
"Look at poverty with open eyes...knowing we can end it." - JR Edwards
John Edwards visited Harvard's Institute of Politics to speak about his work on poverty on April 13th. Click here to view video (Realplayer) of the event. It's about an hour and five minutes long.
Edwards began with a joke:
"I'll bet none of you knew I was the son of a mill worker, did you?
I knew that was news to every single one of you."
He said that ending poverty is the biggest issue facing the country. He pointed out the fact that 36 million people live in poverty in America today, and that the content of our country's character is at stake in following necessary steps to alleviate poverty. According to Foster's Online, 'Edwards talked about a couple from North Carolina who started an institution that loans money to the poor to start their own businesses, which he called “the perfect example of what you can do if you have the heart and the backbone to do it.” They started in 1985 with $77 they raised in a bake sale, he said, and have provided $3.9 billion in financing to people living on the margins of society while also destroying the stereotype that lending to the poor is risky.'
Harvard Crimson staff writer Javier C. Hernandez has an interview with former Senator and VP candidate Edwards which appears in today's news. Edwards stressed, while he believes it's important to promote freedom around the world, that it’s also important to make sure that our American democracy is working the way it’s supposed to work. He believes that America would be headed in a different direction, had he (and Kerry) been elected last year. He stressed that the gap between people who are doing well in this country and people who are struggling gets wider and wider. He said, "The income gap, the asset gap continue to get worse under this president. It’s not an accident—it’s the direct result of the policies [the Bush administration] is pursuing. We would have fought with everything we had for an America where your family, where you live, the color of your skin has no influence on your opportunity. That’s the America we believe in. "
The Crimson's Hernandez has also written an article discussing how Edwards outlined his proposals for fighting poverty.
For more commentary, see Stirling Newberry's diary at Daily Kos.
Excerpt:
Many people here will remember his stance on the war first, and not kindly. It can be safely said that I also differ with Senator Edwards' vote on Iraq - but let us not let differences become divides, because it is clear that Senator Edwards genuinely has committed himself to ending poverty, and not merely physical poverty, but moral and spiritual poverty, poverty of hope, poverty of generosity, poverty of participation, in America.--Stirling Newberry
Thanks to Saheli, I've learned that John Edwards was a guest blogger at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo today. It takes a man of political courage and conviction to admit he has learned to see things in a different light:
"Like a lot of Democrats, I voted for a bankruptcy reform bill before. I can't say it more simply than this: I was wrong."
Michael Phillips says: "John Edwards is so hot right now. Yesterday he gave a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School, today he gave a speech at New School University's Social Research Conference on Fairness. And then he blogged, not on his One America Committee blog but on Josh Marshall's bankruptcy bill special." Michael linked to the text of Edwards' New School fairness speech.