Published: July 19, 2007 07:01 am      

Edwards challenges Bush to see the ‘other America’

PRESTONSBURG — Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards challenged President George W. Bush from the lawn of the Floyd County Courthouse in Prestonsburg on Wednesday.

“I want to invite George Bush to come here,” he said, “I want President Bush to see the other America and the challenges the people are faced with. I want him to understand what’s happening out here.”

What is happening in the “other America” he said, the America inhabited by everyone but the very rich, is that too many working Americans are living in poverty or are living just an illness or injury away from poverty.

Edwards became only the second presidential candidate to visit the small town of Prestonsburg when he ended his three-day, eight-state “poverty tour” at the same spot Robert Kennedy spoke 39 years earlier.

Among cheers of praise, Edwards told the crowd that had gathered to see him speak that what this country needs is a movement to restore its values and to provide hope and opportunity to all. He said the movement should not start in the Oval Office but in communities such as Prestonsburg that will lead the nation down a road to one America.

While noting that local and state officials have been working for years to attract new jobs and industries to the area, Edwards said that if he elected he would work to raise the minimum wage and provide health care for all Americans.

This struck a note with 60-year-old Theresia Johnson.

“A lot has changed, but I’d say we’ve stayed about the same,” said Johnson, who met Kennedy in 1968 when he stopped in her hometown during his fight to end poverty.

Johnson said she was inspired by Edwards’ remarks.

“I was very impressed with him, everything he said,” she said. “If he can do it, I’ll support him. A lot of people don’t have health care. A lot of people around here have jobs, but they are working for minimum wage and can’t afford it.

“People don’t want a handout. They want to help themselves.”

Floyd County native Connie Kiser, 69, said higher wages and universal health care would go a long way toward helping people help themselves, but it won’t solve the areas biggest problem. Jobs that will motivate and keep young people at home will, she said.

“That would help with the poverty situation, If they could find someplace to work and not leave home. They don’t want to leave,” she said, so they stay and remain unemployed, lose hope and perpetuate the cycle.

Butch Collins, 57, of Mingo County, W.Va., and a member of the United Mine Workers Association, agreed jobs were the most pressing issue. Collins looks at the area’s largest and oldest industry to provide those jobs. He said one reason he backs Edwards for president is because the candidate supports coal liquidification, touted by many eastern Kentucky politicians as one solution to the nation’s energy crisis.

“We’ve got the coal, We’ve got the mountaintop-removal sites to put the factories in. That’s all we need. We’ve got the unemployed people to do the job,” Collins said.

Whether his promises become reality or not, Edwards’ visit to the area and his message won’t be soon forgotten, predicted Calvin Herrick of Prestonsburg.

“Even if he doesn’t get elected, he stirs the people up,” Herrick said. That, he added, “might make a difference.”

CARRIE KIRSCHNER can be reach at ckirschner@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.