Watch9 - OneAmerica = FOCUS '08

My interest in blogging began with watch on the ninth, which I created to help keep John Edwards' 2008 Presidential Campaign, OneAmerica, on message about helping to alleviate poverty in the US.

I had developed my own ideas in that latter regard with a four-part series on John's and my local community radio station, WCOM 103.5 FM, back in October 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

My co-hosts and I 'designed' an off-the-cuff program that would focus on addressing the symptoms of poverty, rather than just the causes.

Much was being done by others to look at how to eliminate poverty in the US over a 30-year timespan. But too little was being suggested about how to help ameloriate the immediate pain.

We came up with FOCUS On Poverty: the notion that every man, woman and child in the US should have access to adequate food, clothing, housing and healthcare. Now. Not in 30 years time.

John's campaign settled into a seemingly tranquil third place in Democratic polls in about June of 2008.

I was concerned that, whoever might eventually be the Democratic nominee, the issue of poverty, and specifically FOCUS, be on as many different agendas as possible in 2008 and beyond.

And so, FOCUS On Poverty 2008, the blog and the campaign, was born.

I set out above some of the original posts from watch on the ninth. Then I turn to the nitty-gritty of trying to focus the nation's attention on FOCUS On Poverty, in the run-up to the elections of 2008.

Don't just read and digest. Lend a helping hand. There is something you can do. And there is always time to do it.