ONE: Organization to end world poverty

I signed up for this a few weeks ago and just got an email from Tom Daschle. Yeah, it creeps me out that he's hanging around will Bill Frist, but if they're really going to work on this issue I don't care who does it.

Dear undeterred:

I just returned from a trip to Rwanda with my friend Senator Bill Frist, MD and leaders from both political parties. Senator Frist and I went to Rwanda not as politicians, but as students, to learn about people who are rebuilding their country after the unspeakable horror of genocide.

My news from Rwanda is very encouraging. The hard work of the Rwandan people and the generosity of Americans are coming together in partnership to create a model for how we can end poverty in the most desperate countries on earth.

I came home more convinced then ever that we’re all in this together. Rwandans' daily struggle to start anew, even as they deal with poverty and disease, is also our own struggle to build a more prosperous and safer world.

To further the progress in Rwanda and spread that hope, we need to take full advantage of this election year. That’s why Senator Frist and I will be meeting with our respective parties' leaders in the next few weeks, as they’re writing the platforms that will be unveiled at the presidential nominating conventions in Denver and Minneapolis. These platforms contain the policies on which Barack Obama and John McCain will campaign for the presidency.

We're going to ask these committees to make sure that their platforms take on the generational challenge of tackling global poverty, and we need your help to do it.

Click the link to sign the petition seen below, and I’ll deliver your signature when I meet with representatives from the Democratic Party – and Senator Frist will do the same on the Republican side – to ask these political leaders to include extreme poverty and global disease in their 2008 platforms.

http://www.one.org/platforms/

As a proud American, I urge you to make ending extreme poverty and global disease in the developing world a core part of your 2008 platform by including commitments to:

-Fight AIDS, TB and malaria and improve basic health services, particularly for mothers and young children
-Ensure access to clean water, basic sanitation and sufficient food supplies
-Spur economic growth through equitable trade and investment policies
-Modernize and increase development assistance, focusing on partnership, transparency and accountability
-Achieve universal primary education

In Rwanda, I saw the tremendous impact of some of the very things you’ve worked to make possible. Deaths from malaria have been cut by 66%, in large part because of the increase in bed net and anti-malarial medicine distribution. The death rate from malaria, as well AIDS and TB is going to continue to fall, because of your work pressuring Congress to reauthorize PEPFAR, America’s global AIDS bill, for five more years.

Victories like PEPFAR are saving lives and giving people in places like Rwanda new hope, making the whole world a safer and more prosperous place. Now we have the chance to make ending extreme poverty and global disease a focus for the Democratic and Republican parties.

Click below to sign the petition and I’ll deliver your signature when I meet with Democratic Party leaders to ask them to make the struggle against global poverty a priority in 2008.

http://www.one.org/platforms/

My late friend Paul Wellstone was fond of saying that, “The poor don’t have a lobbyist. That’s why I went to Washington.” The hope for a better future that Senator Frist and I saw in Rwanda shows what’s possible when two million of us “go to Washington” on behalf of the world’s poorest people. This summer, together, we have the chance to go to Denver and Minneapolis and show that ending global poverty is a priority for both political parties.

Thank you for joining me,

Senator Tom Daschle
ONE Member and National Co-Chair ONE Vote ‘08