[John Edwards] takes view of poverty to Fayetteville State

From Fayetteville Online

By Andrew Barksdale
Staff writer

John Edwards said he saw two Americas when he campaigned for president two years ago. He saw a country where the gap between rich and poor was widening and the number of hungry people was growing.

The former U.S. senator from North Carolina transformed that stump speech into a new career after he and his presidential running mate, John Kerry, lost to President Bush in 2004.

Edwards is commanding the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, which opened last year at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The center aims to explore ways to reduce the 37 million Americans whom the government says live in poverty.

According to the 2000 census, 12.8 percent of Cumberland County’s population live below the poverty line, which is defined as a family of four earning about $19,000 a year. Statewide, the poverty rate is 12.3 percent.

A charismatic politician with a youthful face and trim fit, Edwards has taken on a new campaign by visiting college campuses, signing up students to volunteer and touring the world to fight poverty, which he calls a “great moral issue.”

“I have spent the last year — and I’ve had a little time on my hands...,” Edwards jokingly said during his visit Friday to Fayetteville State University.

Edwards said he hopes to inspire a new generation in much the way that young people 40 years ago took up the civil rights cause.

“There is a hunger in America, a hunger for us to be involved in something big and important,” Edwards said. “They want to be inspired about something, and it’s not the war in Iraq.”

On a personal note, Edwards told the crowd that his wife, Elizabeth, who was diagnosed with breast cancer more than a year ago, had finished treatment and was cancer-free; “knock on wood, she is doing great,” he said.

About 200 students at the historically black university filled chairs and stood in a crammed section of the student union to hear Edwards and U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge of Lillington during an hourlong presentation. Both are Democrats.
Racial issue

Edwards said poverty strikes blacks in greater numbers, especially single mothers who worry daily about meeting basic needs and lacking health care for their children. He said the average net worth of a black family in the United States is $6,000, compared with $80,000 for a white household.

Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it brought to New Orleans, where thousands of poor people were left homeless, brought new awareness of the issue, he said.

Edwards dispelled the notion that poor people are lazy or failures. He said people often need help from their families, public schools and other resources to succeed.

“None of us get here by ourselves, and what we do matters as a nation,” he said.

Edwards grew up in Robbins, a mill town in Moore County, before becoming a successful and rich trial lawyer, and then a U.S. senator in 1998.

Edwards and Etheridge agreed that education was key to raising people out of poverty. They criticized the Bush administration for wanting to cut funding for college students and Medicaid.

Edwards also advocated for raising the federal minimum wage, which is $5.15 an hour. The audience applauded the move.

Etheridge said he was an original co-sponsor of the American Parity Act, which says for every dollar the United States spends in Iraq on schools, health care, roads and other infrastructure, the same amount should be spent domestically on similar projects. The House has never passed the bill.

“It’s a question of values,” Etheridge said.

Other ideas that Edwards mentioned are establishing work bonds, in which the government matches someone’s savings, and providing housing vouchers to allow poorer people to escape some of the cities’ inner slums.

This year, Edwards started “College for Everyone,” a pilot program in Greene County, east of Goldsboro, through which high school graduates can get their first year of college tuition and books paid for if they commit 10 hours a week to a job or community service as college freshmen.

The speech inspired students such as Carlitta Moore, a junior majoring in biology. “He has a great mind-set on what he says about poverty and great ideas on how to improve it,” she said.

Jessica Bates, a senior studying psychology, liked Edwards’ message, too.

“It will really work if a lot of people would give it a chance,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know about poverty.”

Some political insiders say his poverty campaign helps keep him visible for a possible 2008 presidential run, but Edwards said Friday he has not made up his mind about his political future. For now, he will stay focused, he said, on his poverty campaign.

Staff writer Andrew Barksdale can be reached at barksdalea@fayettevillenc.com or 486-3565.