Vote for Joe

URGENT!   To get on the ballot in Colorado (which polls show is a key swing state in this election), we need donations totalling $500.   We also need nine (9) “electors” in Colorado.   An elector is a registered voter who would commit to go to Colorado’s State House  in December to  cast a vote for us — if we won the election.   This is a perfunctory part of the Electoral College System.   Perhaps one of our supporters in Colorado could marshall getting nine electors in a particular area so you could, for instance, car pool to the State House.   The deadline for all this is June 17.   If you can help, would you e-mail me at joeschriner@hotmail.com   or call 419-792-9059   Thank you.   Note:   We have campaigned extensively in Colorado over the years, and if it looks like we’re going to have a showing in Colorado, it might be enough to make  our campaign  a national story.   But we need people to step up to help with this.

Buckeye Back Roads Tour cont.   We are  in motion again.   This morning I gave a Pro-life talk at Sacred Heart Church in Oberlin, Ohio.   Preceding the talk, the priest said that we all too often don’t take the gospel message seriously.   He asked, for instance,  how many people “…would leave Heaven to save someone from going to Hell?”   I followed up by saying in the talk that we are so ensconsed in the comfort of our own homes  (air conditioning, television, music…)   — read ‘Heaven;’ while 4,400 little unborn babies go to their deaths everyday   in America because of abortion.   Shouldn’t we be forgoing  our comfort to take to the streets regularly to protest, to fill   the newspapers with pro-life letters to the editor, to fill   our legislators’ offices with letters, to volunteer at, and tremendously fund, local crisis pregnancy centers…?   So that babies don’t die and people don’t have to go to ‘Hell’ because of the choices they make to abort.   I also  posed: “If abortion continues because of our own sins of omission —  will we, too,  go to Hell?”   Note:   The priest also asked another fascinating question today.   “How many of us would sell all that we own, [give the money to charity]  and go live with the poor (in solidarity)?”   While not going to that extent, yet, a Sacred Heart Peace and Justice Group member said their church has recently become part of a nine-church Interfaith Hospitality Network in Lorain County.   These churches rotate in putting up homeless families.

I just had an article posted on the new e-magazine Liberalati.   Go to www.liberalati.com and scroll down.   The article it titled: Environmental Murderers.   Note:   In the last blog entry, I mention we are just readying to leave on our next campaign tour leg and we need donations.   If you can help: Schriner Presidential Election Committee, 2100 W. 38th St., Cleveland, Ohio 44113   thank you… Joe

A couple weeks back, I gave a talk at the Christopher Program, an Alternative High School in downtown Columbus, Ohio.   The class I talked in was doing some tremendously creative “Service Learning” projects.   One student was doing an education program about “Environmental Awareness in the Work Place.”   Another student was working with a local social service agency to help further awareness about domestic violence and sexual assault.   Yet another student was doing a form of street theatre to raise awareness about safe driving habits…   As a spin-off, I said I’d interviewed a man who owns a Driving School in Loudonville, Ohio.   he   told me there are 33,000 traffic fatalities every year in America, one death every 13 minutes.   That’s almost five deaths every hour, or 120 traffic deaths a day.   The man said that would be the equivalent of a half-full airliner going down every day   in this country!   America has lost a little more than 4,000 Service people in Iraq over five years.   We’ve lost some 165,000 motorists during that same time.   Our roads have become “war zones,” it’s just that we don’t look at it that way, I said.   Among  a number of  things,  I said our administration would push to have highway speed limits go back to 40 mph, like  they were  in 1941.   This would significanlty save on gas, cut down, just as significantly, on  carbon dioxide gas emissions,  and make the highways tremendously safer.   Several students indicated I might not get a lot of votes with that stance…    Note: Several days later,  I got an e-mail from Jonathan Renard, one of the Christopher Program students.   He wrote:   “I especially found it interesting when you said: ‘Do you want to vote for a president that says what you want to hear, or do you want to vote for a president that challenges your thoughts?’ I have been thinking about that all weekend,” he added.

I gave a talk  to a high school “Justice Group” in Cleveland this week.   It is part of the Catholic Schools for Peace and Justice (www.cspj.net) network here.   I learned the group has sponsored such events as “Dance for Darfur,” which raised some $7,000 for Darfur, explained CSPJ coordinator Augie Pacetti.   These high school students have also done events to promote “Fair Trade” and  help the “Invisible Children” of  Uganda.   They help with tutoring at a neighborhood “Arrupe House” program.   They do street outreach to the inner city poor…  When senior Nick Drosos was asked why he’s involved, he simply replied:   “I just think it’s right.”   Enough said.   Note:   Our Education platform calls for a paradigm shift, if you will.   That is, we would like to see one-third of school curriculum be “Service Learning” projects  — like the ones this Cleveland “Justice Group” is involved with –out in the local community, and in the world at large.