| John Edwards & Tavis Smiley's Covenant with Black America:
Shared Priorities, Common Policies
On Thursday, John Edwards will participate in the All-American Presidential Forum, moderated by Tavis Smiley, a discussion based on Smiley's book, The Covenant with Black America. John Edwards believes every American should have the same opportunities he has had, and has made that equality of opportunity the central tenet of his campaign. Edwards has offered the most detailed policy agenda, on issues ranging from health care to economic opportunity, from ending poverty in a generation to ending the war in Iraq, of any candidate. Like The Covenant, which offers specific solutions to key problems in America today, John Edwards has provided bold ideas to change the country and build One America in which all Americans can prosper.
The following document compiles Edwards' proposals to address the 10 issues raised by The Covenant.
Covenant #1: Health Care and Well-Being
The Covenant recommends more research on health disparities, universal health care, healthy neighborhoods, decreasing environmental toxins, and diversity training for health professionals.
John Edwards is the only major 2008 presidential candidate to lay out a specific plan to transform America's health care system and guarantee universal health care for every man, woman and child in America. Under his plan, businesses will either cover their employees or help pay for their insurance. The government will make insurance affordable through new tax credits and by leading the way toward more cost-effective care. New "Health Care Markets" will give families and businesses a choice of quality plans, including one public plan based on Medicare. Finally, once these steps have been taken, all American residents will be required to take responsibility and get insurance.
Heath care reform is particularly urgent in disadvantaged communities. Nearly 20 percent of African-Americans are uninsured. African-Americans especially are more likely to get, and less likely to survive, chronic diseases like heart disease, asthma, AIDS, diabetes and cancer. To end these shameful disparities, Edwards' plan will offer preventive care without co-payments through Health Care Markets and begin a new era in chronic disease treatment with an emphasis on proactive monitoring and care. Edwards will also work to reduce exposure to environmental toxins, invest in new research into health disparities, and recruit health care professionals from diverse backgrounds.
Covenant #2: Education
The Covenant recommends investing in child and parental development, federal support for all levels of education, a well-rounded curriculum, well-paid and culturally sensitive teachers with small teacher-student ratios, and improved school facilities.
John Edwards believes we all pay a price when young people who could someday find the cure for AIDS or make a fuel cell work are sitting on a stoop because they didn't get the education they needed. More than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, our education system remains shockingly unequal. African-American and Latino students have only about a 50 percent chance of graduating high school with a diploma. States spend $900 less per student in their most diverse school districts.
To make our system of public education the sturdy ladder of opportunity it should be, Edwards will invest more in teacher pay and training to attract the best and brightest to be teachers where we need them most while reducing class size. Edwards will also invest in preschool, fund special education, and strengthen high schools with a more challenging curriculum. Edwards will also create second-chance schools to help former dropouts get back on track.
As the first person in his family to go to college, Edwards knows firsthand the difference a college degree can make-and it is more true now than ever. That's why in 2005, he helped start a pilot program in Greene County, North Carolina, that will help more than 125 students enroll in college next fall. It pays for one year of public-college tuition, fees, and books for anyone willing to work part-time in college, take a college-prep curriculum in high school, and stay out of trouble. Edwards has proposed expanding the College for Everyone program nationwide. As president, he will also simplify the process of applying for student aid and increase access to college counselors in high-poverty high schools.
Covenant #3: Criminal Justice
The Covenant recommends drug policy reform, overhauling mandatory sentencing, ex-offender reentry programs, aid to women in prison, accountability in juvenile justice systems, and reforming "zero tolerance" policies.
Our prison population has increased more than tenfold in the course of a single generation, with a disproportionate - and devastating - impact on African-American and Latino communities. A majority of these youth will be arrested before the age of 21. We must reverse course.
Edwards supports sentencing reform to address the disparity in punishments for crimes involving crack and powder cocaine and to limit the one-size-fits-all mandatory minimum sentences for first-time, non-violent offenses. We need more alternatives to incarceration - such as drug courts - for first-time, nonviolent offenders because sending them to prison can create lifelong criminals.
We now have more than 2 million inmates in America. We need to help them get back on their feet for our sake as well as theirs. Ex-prisoners have difficulty reconnecting with their families and finding work and many have mental health and substance abuse problems. Reintegration needs to begin while they are still in prison with drug treatment, literacy, and education. Edwards has also proposed 1 million stepping stone jobs and restoring the right to vote to all those who have served their time.
We must have a justice system that all Americans believe will treat them fairly. In 2002, Edwards helped lead the fight against the nomination of Charles Pickering, Sr., to serve on the Fifth Circuit Court of appeals due to his disturbing history of disrespect for civil rights.
Covenant #4: Police Accountability
The Covenant recommends hiring community-conscious law enforcement, diversity training, oversight mechanisms, facilitating police complaint filings, thorough investigations of accused officers, and data collection on police abuse.
Edwards strongly opposes racial profiling in law enforcement. It is wrong to stop, search or arrest someone because of stereotypes and it does nothing to make us safer. In the Senate, Edwards co-sponsored legislation that would ban racial profiling in federal law enforcement. As president, Edwards will make stopping federal racial profiling a national priority, support laws to prohibit racial profiling at all levels of government, and provide training to law enforcement. Edwards will also support steps to encourage community policing and build trust between police officers and the communities they serve.
Covenant #5: Affordable Neighborhoods
The Covenant recommends expanding affordable housing in neighborhoods with rich opportunities, increasing African-American homeownership, fair housing enforcement, prioritizing public transit, diversity in transportation planning bodies and mixed-income housing near transit.
We need to build One America where every child can grow up in a safe and affordable neighborhood, but we have far to go to achieve that goal. More new jobs have been created in the suburbs, outside the inner cities where many African-Americans live and beyond the reach of public transportation. Housing costs have skyrocketed in many parts of the country, and families often must choose among jobs, schools, and affordability. African Americans have the lowest homeownership rate in the country, at 49 percent. Predatory lenders have targeted African-American and Latino homeowners, resulting in billions of dollars in lost equity and neighborhoods riddled with foreclosures.
John Edwards has proposed an ambitious set of housing policies to promote economically integrated neighborhoods, encourage more affordable housing, and create more than 1 million additional housing vouchers. Edwards will create 1 million stepping stone jobs, lower taxes for low-income working families, and promote education, savings, and strong families. To end the scourge of predatory lending, Edwards will also create a national independent agency whose first and only job is to protect consumers, enact a strong national law against predatory mortgage lending, and help families facing foreclosure with a national Home Rescue Fund.
Covenant #6: Voting and Democracy
The Covenant recommends strengthening the Voting Rights Act, ending felony disenfranchisement, DC voting rights, reforming voter ID requirements, and ending voter suppression and intimidation.
Fifty years after the Voting Rights Act, we still have more work to do to ensure a meaningful right to vote for every American regardless of their skin color. Edwards will restore the right to vote in all federal elections to ex-offenders who have served their sentences. Edwards believes that all voting machines should have secure paper ballots while facilitating access for voters with disabilities and speakers of minority languages. Finally, Edwards believes we should allow voters in federal elections to register on Election Day to help end the fiasco of purge lists, provisional ballots and intimidation of groups that try to register voters in disenfranchised communities
John Edwards knows that we must make everybody's vote worth more by guaranteeing that corporate money doesn't drown out the voice of regular Americans. Edwards has never taken a dime from PACs and Washington lobbyists, who too often represent the big special interests, and he supports full public financing of federal elections.
Covenant #7: Rural Development
The Covenant recommends improving rural quality-of-life including education and health care, allowing family farmers to sell directly to local markets, farm credit availability, funding the 1997 class action suit, legal aid for farmers, supporting co-operatives, and a national agricultural education program.
Edwards comes from small-town America and is committed to bringing hope and economic fairness back to rural America. Many rural areas are struggling: rural families earn 27 percent less than other families and 244 of the poorest 250 counties are rural. More than 40 percent of black families in rural communities live below the poverty line. Rural manufacturing has been hit particularly hard by international trade, the off-shoring of jobs, and automation.
Helping innovative small businesses is a promising approach to economic development, but only 1 percent of state economic development funds now support entrepreneurs. Edwards will create the Rural Economic Advancement Challenge (REACH) Fund to bring capital and management expertise to small-town America. He will also strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act to prevent banks from discriminating against rural areas and increase investment in rural small businesses.
When it comes to family farms, we need a president who will stand up to the giant agriculture conglomerates, the big packers and other special interests who have tilted the playing field against family farmers. We also need a president who will make sure all our communities have good schools, good health care, and the support systems they need. John Edwards will help rural communities hire and retain new teachers. He will also make a national investment in broadband to support distance learning and telemedicine in rural areas.
Covenant #8: Economic Prosperity
The Covenant recommends investment in African-American communities, monitoring predatory lending, tax-free homeownership savings accounts, community benefits agreements, national job training for youth, unionization, IDA savings accounts, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and increasing the minimum wage.
It is morally wrong to tolerate the fact that 37 million Americans are living in poverty, 5 million more than when President Bush took office. John Edwards has called for the elimination of poverty within a generation and laid out a detailed plan to do it by creating what he calls a "Working Society." Edwards will increase the reward to work by raising the minimum wage, cutting taxes for working families, and passing stronger labor laws. Edwards will also reform schools and expand affordable housing near good jobs and schools.
The continuing impact of history is clear in the racial wealth gap. African-Americans have less than a dime in wealth for every dollar that white families have. Edwards has a plan to cut debt, stop predatory lending, and help working families save with matched savings accounts. It is time we did more than say "buyer beware" while millions of families go broke every year. Last week, Edwards promised to create a national independent agency whose first and only job is to protect consumers, enact a strong national law against predatory lending, reign in credit card abuses and shut down the payday lenders who charge interest rates over 36 percent.
John Edwards has a record of helping families build economic prosperity. In 2006, Edwards campaigned in six states to help raise the minimum wage. Because he knows that unions are the key to restoring and growing the middle class in America, he has helped more than 20 national unions organize thousands of workers all over the country in the past few years. These union campaigns largely focused on helping African-American and Latino workers organize into unions, and they go to the heart of closing the income gap. Twenty years ago, 1 in every 4 African-American workers was a union member, now just 1 in 7 belongs to a union.
Covenant #9: Environmental Justice
The Covenant recommends enforcement of environmental laws, implementing the environmental justice Executive Order, healthy schools, maintenance of HBCUs, debris management, and involving impacted communities in environmental planning.
Proximity to toxic wastes is correlated more closely with race than with any other factor. Pollution and brownfields are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods. African-Americans have high rates of environmental-related illnesses, like asthma and lung cancer, because nearly three-quarters live in areas in violation of Clean Air Act standards. We must enforce the Clean Air Act strongly across the country. John Edwards is committed to equal justice for all Americans, and that includes environmental justice.
Building a new energy economy based on clean, renewable energy will promote environmentally safe and economically strong communities. Edwards will shift our electricity sources from polluting central power plants - which are more likely to be near African-American and Latino communities - to distributed renewable generation like community wind, solar and biomass energy sold back to the electric grid.
The devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita - and their disparate impact on African-American communities living in the low-lying neighborhoods of the Gulf - is perhaps our most vivid example of why environmental justice is a matter of life and death. John Edwards started his campaign on a front lawn in New Orleans' Ninth Ward out of a sense of duty to correct the ongoing failure of leadership there. Since the storm, he has visited the Gulf Coast 3 times to help clean up and rebuild hurricane-damaged communities, including organizing a group of 700 college students to join him in March of 2006 for an alternative spring break. When he is president, he will take personal responsibility for fulfilling the broken promises in that region, with a recovery czar who reports to the president every single day about the progress of the recovery effort in the Gulf.
Covenant #10: Digital Divide
The Covenant recommends increasing computer ownership, state funding for internet access in community-based organizations, municipal broadband, and universal broadband access.
The Internet has been an engine of innovation and opportunity that started in America and revolutionized the world. Here at home, however, too many are denied access to it, including 40 percent of African-Americans and rural Americans. In fact, African-American children are about 35 percent less likely to have a computer and Internet at home than white children.
As president, Edwards will help create universal, affordable access to broadband so there are no neighborhoods where the lights of the Internet are not on. He has also advocated with the FCC for reforms that will make the internet more affordable and keep it democratic.
In 1996, John and Elizabeth Edwards established the Wade Edwards Learning Lab , a free after-school computer and learning center adjacent to Broughton High School, a public high school in Raleigh , North Carolina. In 2002, they started another learning lab in Goldsboro, North Carolina. These labs help narrow the digital divide by making technology and the internet available to children who do not have access to the tools they need.
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There is also a list of endorsements from black elected officials and leaders and his response to the Supreme Court decision today related to racial diversity in public schools. As someone who grew up in the segregated South, it hurts me to say that more than 50 years after the Brown decision, we still have two school systems -- one for people who live in the right neighborhoods and one for everyone else. We used to believe the Constitution required school desegregation, but now this Court is on the verge of making the radical decision that the Constitution prevents elected school boards from voluntarily desegregating schools. |
