Why I announced at Hope HS & have my campaign HQ in So. Providence

Rhode Island is a pretty state. It has some very exclusive neighborhoods, but it also has many towns and cities with homes occupied by hard working middle class families struggling to get by and often one paycheck shy of financial ruin.

It is an ethnically diverse and culturally rich state for being as small in size and population as it is..........

But there is another side beyond the soccer moms and tailgate parties. In large part, the party machine expends more effort on the protection of the incumbency of its loyal members than helping stop the shrinking prosperity of the communities they represent.

The hardest hit are what I called in my campaign speech - the "underrepresented". One third of households with children are headed up by a single parent. Our manufacturing economy was replaced with the lower wages of a service economy with over 25% of households in poverty. Exploitation of minorities has been the rule with funds going to "connected" communities for street repairs and education.

I believe Congressman Patrick Kennedy referred to some areas in Rhode Island as "war zones". I'm not super-tough, but these neighborhoods were similar to the ones in which I grew up in LA, Brooklyn and Chicago. These are my people.

I made my candidacy announcement at Hope High School because of the irony. Hope is the state's motto. This High School is a stone's throw from two exclusive private high schools and Brown University. It is under funded and many of Providence's most at-risk students attend school there. Community indifference has not only threatened to close the school and has also put teachers at their tethers' end. These are the kids who would most likely be dropping out. Many of them are also from broken homes and more likely to be serving in Iraq. The occasional answer has been to shut it down and sell the valuable land it sits on as a remedy to a blight that has less to do with the students than it has to do with leadership. The theme of my announcement, “No more blood for oil in Iraq”, was because Bush lied to us. I talked about the school being one side of the two Americas right here in RI, just like Katrina and how funds for education, job growth and healthcare would only come when we had leadership that demanded it for those least able to care for themselves.

They did not want policy, they wanted conviction. Drowning people don't want swimming lessons, they want a life preserver.

So to keep my faith with these folks I kept my other promise and put my campaign HQ in South Providence, which is principally populated by minorities. You will seldom see white folks here and that's the rub, because I can bet it'll be an area that will soon become gentrified because of some of the beautiful early 1900’s homes that are waiting to be renovated.

If elected officials are not connecting with the poor, working and middle class people other than to attend clam bakes and little league games, then they aren't going to prevent the true hardships our inadequate domestic policy causes for people who have hopes and dreams just like you and I.

Don't take my word for it. Just read these two posts and wonder why people who are running for office (like me) have such a tough time with the incumbent leadership.....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Carl

Sheeler for US Senate
www.carlsheeler.com

Democrats, not aristocrats.