[MCAEnews] Literacy President
The MCAE Advocate
mcaenews at lists.literacytent.org
Tue Nov 13 22:14:50 EST 2007
Hi MCAE members and supporters.
Following are two messages regarding the Literacy President
Campaign. The first message from Art Ellison gives some background and
some links to the Literacy President Campaign. All candidates for
President are being asked to respond to questions regarding Adult
Education. Candidates John Edwards and Barrack Obama have responded,
but the other candidates have not.
In order to get Adult Education on the agenda of the other
Presidential Candidates, the national ABE student organization, VALUE,
has posted a petition, that I urge you to sign, that will be sent to
all Presidential candidates the week of December 17.
To see and sign the petition, go to ...
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/litpresident [1]
The full text of the messages is below.
Kenny Tamarkin, Executive Director
To the Field,
Many of you are aware of the Literacy President campaign that has
been in action for the past year. The campaign has been raising the
issue of adult education with all of the candidates for President in
both parties. The primary goal of the campaign is to make adult
education and literacy one of the top three education priorities for
the next President. Listed below are the links to two great resources
that have been developed by the Literacy President folks.
The link to the Literacy President Website will connect you with
lots of information about each campaign. The link to the candidate’s
web page will allow you and your students to connect to the Web Pages
for any and all of the candidates. You can use this link to
communicate with a particular candidate’s campaign with questions
related to the candidate’s position on adult education. You will
notice that the Edwards and Obama campaigns have issued detailed
positions papers on their support for adult education.
I hope that this material will be useful to you and to the adult
education teachers and students in your state.
Please let me know if you have any questions. Art Ellison,
Co-chair, Policy Committee, National Council of State Directors of
Adult Education
LITERACY PRESIDENT CAMPAIGN WEBSITE AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES WEB
PAGES
Microsoft Word Format:
http://www.litpresident.org/Candiates-Web-Pages.doc [2]
Adobe PDF Format:
http://www.litpresident.org/Candiates-Web-Pages.pdf [3]
Here is the link to the home page:
http://www.litpresident.org/ [4]
Literacy Petition messages:
VALUE tentatively plans to hand-deliver the petition to the
Washington
DC offices of each of the candidates running for President during
the
week of December 17. For this petition to be credible, the field
really
needs to come up with several thousand signatures. With any less,
our
field looks weak and "ignore-able" to the next administration.
We have just five weeks in which to gather as many signatures as
possible. For this petition - and the field - to be credible, we
need to
gather AT LEAST 500 additional signatures a week for five weeks.
That
would give us at least 2,700 signatures. VALUE's Executive Director,
Marty Finsterbusch said his dream would be to collect 10,000
signatures
by December 17 - that's 2,000 signatures a week. That would put the
adult literacy field on candidates' radar screens!
There are several ways you can help pump up the signatures on this
petition ...
1. Everyone, after you sign the petition, urge other members of your
family to sign too. We could quickly double the number of petition
signatures if each person signing gets one family member to sign.
2. Everyone: send an email message to your friends and colleagues
asking them to sign the petition. If you enter your email address
when you sign, you will automatically receive a confirmation email
that includes a draft message you can then forward to your friends
and colleagues.
3. Tutors and teachers: please use this petition as an opportunity
to
discuss with your students the importance of the presidential
election to future adult literacy policy and have them sign the
petition. Urge them to have their friends and family sign it too.
4. Local, state, and national organizations: please send a call to
action for the petition to your members through your email
distribution list and post it on your web site as a news item - that
you're taking part in the Literacy President Campaign by gathering
petition signatures.
5. Local, state, and national organizations: include a call to
action
for the petition in any electronic or hard-copy newsletter that
literacy supporters will receive before mid-December.
6. Everyone: during your Thanksgiving Day gathering, have everyone
there sign the petition. This may be a shameless suggestion, but we
must seize every opportunity to raise the visibility of adult
literacy to our future President, whoever he or she may be.
To see and sign the petition, go to ...
www.ipetitions.com/petition/litpresident [5]
This is a nonpartisan activity - this petition will be delivered to
all
of the candidates from both parties. This petition simply urges all
candidates to provide information that will be posted on a public
web
site. Therefore, neither the gathering of signatures nor the posting
of
candidate responses is electioneering.
Let's get busy! Here are the numbers as of 7:30 AM Eastern Time
today for the Literacy
President Petition ...
There are 221 signatures. Pennsylvania is in the lead with 43,
followed
closely by Massachusetts with 37. California is next with 22. The
other
states in double-digits include New Jersey (17) and Arizona and
Maine,
each with 14. Anonymous has 16.
Still in single digits ...
NM = 9; VT = 6; NV = 5; NH, NY, TX = 4 each; DE, FL = 3 each; MD,
MN,
NC, RI, TN, VA = 2 each; and DC, IL, KS, MI, OH, OR, WA, WI = 1 each
The following states aren't even on the board yet ... Alabama,
Alaska,
Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana,
Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Misouri, Nebraska, North Dakota,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and
Wyoming.
To see and sign the petition, go to ...
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/litpresident [6]
This non-partisan petition simply asks all of the candidates running
for
President to answer five questions about adult literacy policy under
their administration. Edwards and Obama have already responded. To
read
their answers, go to www.litpresident.org [7].
- Jon Randall
jrandall at fastmail.fm [8]
--
Links:
------
[1]
http://webmail.mcae.net/parse.php?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ipetitions.com%2Fpetition%2Flitpresident
[2] http://www.litpresident.org/Candiates-Web-Pages.doc
[3] http://www.litpresident.org/Candiates-Web-Pages.pdf
[4] http://www.litpresident.org/
[5]
http://webmail.mcae.net/parse.php?redirect=http://www.ipetitions.com%2Fpetition%2Flitpresident
[6]
http://webmail.mcae.net/parse.php?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ipetitions.com%2Fpetition%2Flitpresident
[7]
http://webmail.mcae.net/parse.php?redirect=http://www.litpresident.org
[8]
http://webmail.mcae.net/javascript:top.opencompose(\'jrandall@fastmail.fm\',\'\',\'\',\'0\')
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