Edwards kicks off 3-day poverty tour with walk through New Orleans’ 9th Ward

Presidential hopeful, former Sen. John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth joined New Orleans ACORN head organizer Tanya Harris and ACORN leader Vanessa Gueringer in a walk down Delery Street in New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward Sunday, July 15, visiting new homes built and financed for Hurricane Katrina survivors with the help of ACORN.

The low-income neighborhood was the first stop on a three-day “Road to One America Tour,” which has a goal of bringing attention to poverty in the South and Midwest.

They visited the home of ACORN member Gwendolyn Guice who was able to rebuild with financing from Countryside Bank after receiving financial counseling from ACORN. Her family was scattered after the hurricane and now lives in Cleveland, Ohio; Fayetteville, N.C.; and New Iberia, La., the Times Picayune reported.

Edwards then spoke with ACORN member Henry Phipps who is still living in a FEMA trailer while rebuilding the brick house he’s owned for 18 years. Phipps, 63, said he has received no government help. His family is living on the West Bank until the house is restored. According to recent FEMA information, 80,000 Gulf Coast families continue to live in trailers, the Times Picayune reported.

Edwards’ plan to rebuild New Orleans has three major points: rebuilding infrastructure – housing, schools, roads and hospitals; creating jobs; and securing the city from hurricanes by enforcing levees and strengthening public safety through crime prevention. Edwards proposes hiring 50,000 Gulf Coast residents to repair the infrastructure and urged the Veterans Administration to move ahead with a new downtown hospital.

“We have an awful lot of work to do,” Edwards told the New York Times. “You take the words ‘working poor’ — these are two words that should not be in combination in the United States. Most of the country is not aware of the rebuilding by you folks,” he said. “You’re not getting any help, and America needs to be there for New Orleans,” Edwards added.

Edwards has visited the Gulf Coast six times since Hurricane Katrina struck almost two years ago.

Edwards will travel to 12 cities in eight states "in order to bring attention to the 37 million Americans living in poverty,” he said. He will visit Marks, Miss., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began his Poor People’s March in 1968 and finish in Prestonsburg, Ky., where Robert Kennedy toured poverty-stricken areas in the same year.

Edwards will also meet with Local 100 homecare workers and visit Cleveland, Ohio, to see ACORN’s activities, halting massive home foreclosures in that city.

16-07-07 13:53
MRICKARD