From Cynthia McKinney: An Update and a Request

Hello all! I have just completed several wonderful tours this month, with Denver and Michigan to go! I had the most wonderful opportunity to tour Stockton, California, touted by some last year as the foreclosure capital of the world. I learned that so many Stockton homeowners find themselves in upside down mortgages. But Congress and the Fed bail out the banks while the expected 2.2 million homeowners who find themselves at risk of losing their homes are forced to scramble and are told to tighten their belts.

Unfortunately, Stockton is also the home of a young, pregnant migrant farm worker who died in the fields due to heat exposure and lack of water. I had the opportunity to meet her uncle. I viewed Stockton's corn fields now primed to supply the newly-constructed ethanol plant instead of satisfy human food needs. I also visited a pepper farm that reminded me of how the food in the supermarkets reaches our tables. Luis Magana organized the tours for me and I hope to reconnect with him when I return to Stockton. Everywhere I go, the treatment of workers as well as joblessness are real issues. We don't have to do this and we don't have to spend $720 million every day for war. We can have a better U.S. but we'll just have to vote for it. I'm asking people to be willing to do something they've never done before in order to have something they've never had before.

In Ohio, Anita Rios and Bob Fitrakis hosted Rosa and me. That was a wonderful visit! And the raido interview with Khari resulted in a packed room, with standing room only, after the radio show, full of people wanting more substantive conversation about the state of our politics. I was amazed that so many people would take time from their weekend to discuss politics after only hearing us on the radio that morning. People in Columbus, Ohio and all over this country are hungry for the truth. It is clear that there are many potential Green votes out there! The challenge now is to get on the ballot so we can go after those votes for November.

In Tennessee, the Green Party is operating at high energy. Chris Lugo, candidate for Senate traveled with me from Memphis, through Jackson, ending up in Nashville, where our petitions were turned in to the Secretary of State for our Independent candidacy, since it requires 45,000 valid signatures or so to qualify as the Green Party on the ballot. I visited both Fisk University and Tennessee State while in Nashville and had the opportunity to screen compost at the community garden operated by one of the Tennessee State University profs. The visit, however, was punctuated with the sad story of an entire community devastated from the health effects of a landfill gone bad. And of course, Tennessee always brings to mind the life and the murder of Dr. King. We do have a lot of work to do.

All of our events in both Ohio and Tennessee were well-attended and full of thoughtful questions. Please help keep Rosa and I on the road and in the faces of voters who need and want to know more about the Green Party--not the alternative, but the imperative.

Squeezed inbetween these two tours was a quick trip up to DC for a C-Span taping (Cynthia McKinney will appear on C-SPAN's Road to the White House, airing twice on Sunday, September 7, at 6:00 pm and 9:30 pm). Rosa and I have been doing lots of radio interviews. And I've done more video tapings which will surface in the coming days. A new 9/11 Truth film, Elephant in the Room, will be released early next month, but the section with me in it is already on the net. The film won Best British Documentary and then the home of the director was broken into!

Also, we are working on improving our net presence and our website. We will do an official unveiling as soon as the new site is completed. In the meantime, please bear with us as we work through the challenges assocaited with changing sites. If there's something missing, please let us know. If there's soemthing there that you like, please let us know that, too! We are particularly interested in improving the function of our donate page! And I'd like to invite you to try it out, too!

Finally, it is clear that people all over this country are terribly dissatsified with the current state of affairs. It is becoming increasingly clear, too, that they are also dissatisfied with the corporate choices being foisted upon them by the corporate press. The movement we seek to build is truly possible. Please donate today: www.runcynthiarun.org.

Cynthia McKinney