Vote for Joe

A couple entries back, I asked supporters (no matter where you’re at in the country) to google “Ohio newspapers” and send brief endorsement letters to the editor of some of those papers. We are now in the midst of a “Buckeye Blitz” of Ohio. The reason is simple. Ohio was the bellweather state in the nation last presidential election, and all eyes were focused on it. And it was a razor thin margin in Ohio that, ultimately, determined the election. The demographics in the nation haven’t changed much, and we believe it may well come down to Ohio this next presidential election as well… So, our strategy is to become viable in Ohio as early out as possible. (It helps that we are from Ohio as well.) And if we look viable in the key state, it will be enough to make it a national story — with some staying power. As this happens, we can then mobilize our supporters in other states to get on the ballots, do some stepped up campaigning, and so on… (Because we don’t have the big party machine and all the millions for adverstising, we had to come up with another strategy. And this is it.)… Now, we need your aid in helping raise our profile in Ohio, if you’d consider it. As mentioned above, we are asking people from all over the country to write endorsement letters to the editor of Ohio newspapers about the “Average Joe” Schriner Campaign. Some points to consider stressing in the letters would include: 1) That I am an Ohioan. 2) We consistently tell people that my wife and I are running as your “average concerned Ohio parents.” And we are concerned about such things as mounting levels of: abortion; war; violence in the streets; global warming gasses; nationaly debt; homeless and hungry — both here and in the Third World. This all is not the kind of thing we wanted to leave our children. So instead of lamenting about the state of the world, Liz and I quit our professions and set out to do something about it. 3) We’ve traveled the country the past 15 years looking for people who have come up with common sense solutions to all these problems. And we found them. 4) Our platform is based on good old fashion common sense. 5) Our goal is to help move the country in a direction where once again God is first, family and community are close, there are way less people in need, and the streets are again safe for our children. Note: Please feel free to use any of the latter in the letter, or any other reason(s) you’re supporting the campaign. And if you would, would you let others know about this strategy as well. The more letters, the better. Thanks.

Our campaign manager in Georgia, Thomas Farmer, just sent me an insightful essay he wrote about unequal distribution of wealth worldwide. It follows… “Photojournalist Peter Menzel has published something of a sequel to his 1995 acclaimed work Material World, which studies families from 30 countries around the world and photographs them with all of their possessions. His new work, Hungry Planet (http://www.menzelphoto.com/hungryplanet/) is done in collaboration with Faith D’Alusio and focuses on what families aournd the world eat. Similar in style to Material World, Menzel photographs families with the food that they typically consume in a week. The photography is stunning and, as you might imagine, the contrasts are stark. A German family of four is shown in front of a lavish spread of food including juice, beer, pizza, fresh meat, and produce with a food expenditure for the week of $500 USD. A Darfur family of six is photographed in a refugee camp with a bottle of water and some sacks of grain. Their expenditure for the week is just over $1 USD. Much like Material World, the work is moving in its simplicity. We are given human faces for our largess and the world’s inequities; these images should be fresh in our minds as we consider issues beyond our borders and decide where to expend our resources… We focus on our foreign policy on oil, maintianing our way of life, and preventing another terrorist attack, when several 9/11’s happen in the Third World every d ay due to starvation. Shouldn’t our political debates be addressing these issues? Shouldn’t our tremendous resources as a nation be focused on this battle?… Our policies and actions should uphold the dignity of life, not blindly preserve our way of life in the name of material progress. While we seek to maximize profits and “progress” in our captitalist society, we are seemingly unsure of the goal of our progressions and what to do with our largess… These works offer us a clear vision of the world and our place in it. Such visions should guide us as we head to the voting booth…” Note: “Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.” –GK Chesterton: Orthodoxy, 1908

I interviewed Paul Yoder in Apple Creek, Ohio. His farm sells “100% grassfed beef and lamb, pastured chicken, turkey, pork, eggs…” Mr. Yoder uses no artificial chemicals on his fields or artificial hormones with his livestock. He does everything naturally, or better put “…the way God intended it,” Mr. Yoder says. He also sells shares in his cows, and people in turn get raw milk as well. Milk, Mr. Yoder asserts, that is much healthier than the pasturized and homgenized milk sold in stores. (Pasturization, for instance, kills the good bacteria and enzymes needed to break down the fats and protein, he said.) Mr. Yoder has a circle of health conscious customers from a fairly large radius, as far north as the Cleveland area. He said over the years a trusting relationship has developed between he and his customers, like it was in the old days when local farmers used to grow for local town people. This relationship, he continues, is just as important (if not more) than the actual transactions. It is about building community, as again, there was a lot more of in the old days. Note: Mr. Yoder told me he decided not to use artificial farm chemicals because of the possible detriment to consumer health. Although it was risky financially to begin farming that way, he said doing what was right was more important. I found that extremely refreshing.

Liz and I gave a talk to an assembly of students at St. Mary’s School in Mansfield, Ohio yesterday. I said a strong platform point of ours was helping the marginilized in society. And several years ago we had moved into the inner city of Cleveland to live side-by-side with some of these marginalized people, one of whom is Richard. Liz explained to the students that we had met Richard at an outreach center to the poor that we volunteer at. Richard is 50, single, a Vietnam veteran — and lives in a tent below a birdge in Cleveland, year round. Richard has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his time in Vietnam. A car backfiring will send Richard spinning back to being shot at in the jungles of Vietnam, paralyzing him for hours. He also continually moves from high anxiety to deep depression, keeping him from holding a steady job. Liz said to the students that what Richard had asked for for Christmas the year before was a small Coleman Stove to stay warm with in the tent… I told the students that Richard needed more than the Coleman Stove. He needs quality, long-term mental health counseling to considerably diminish the PTSD symptomology. He needs job training and/or more education. And Richard needs a home. I then asked to see a show of hands of how many students had garages at home. Every hand went up. I then said we in America shelter cars while people like Richard in Cleveland and little children in Chicago, L.A., Phoenix… sleep on inner city streets. I ended by asking if they thought it would be a good idea for their parents to convert their garages into a living space for some of these marginilized people? Most indicated yes. “Then, if you would, would you go back home and tell your parents about this idea,” I said. They promised they would. (I figured it would be better coming from them, than from me.) Note: Just in case of some of the students forget to tell their parents, I also mentioned the idea to a reporter from the Mansfield News Journal during an interview later in the day… Liz said at the start of her talk that she’d been reading the book The Irresistable Revolution. At one point, the author said that he’d read a poll that said some 80% of Christians questioned believed Jesus spent significant time with the poor. But out of the same group, only 2% said they spend any significant time with the poor. [I couldn’t help but think: Wouldn’t a garage apartment be a good way to start.?]

“Average Joe” sighting… Shortly after we drove into Cleveland, I got a call on my cell phone. It was Stephen Piscura who said he’d been following the campaign for awhile now and when he saw our vehicle going by an Ohio City coffee shop, he “almost knocked over a table” trying to get to the street to flag us down… While we missed connections then, he and a couple of his friends caught up with us later in the day… In his early 20s, Stephen is a senior at Kent State University and is on fire for Christ. He is spending the summer in Bangkok working with a Christian ministry called “Remember Nhu.” This is an outreach to youth forced into the sex slave trade. A growing problem all over the world, the ministry website www.remembernhu.com calls it one of “the darkest moral tragedies of our time.” Stephen said what motivates him to help is that Christ is in the face of each of these tremendously desperate children and teens. (In places like Bangkok, children are sold by their poverty stricken parents into brothels, and the like, so the rest of the family can eat.) Note: If all this isn’t bad enough, these youth are also at great risk, daily, of contracting AIDS.