One Vote Campaign 2008

This post is about a video on YouTube which is an advertisement featuring many celebrities to help raise awareness for the One Vote campaign. This campaign is meant to get American voters out on election day and to help influence the presidential nominees to make poverty in Africa one of the major issues in the 2008 elections. Celebrities such as Bono, Matt Damon and Tom Brady speak on the video and although their words can be seen as inspiring, I doubt it will get many people out to vote.

When looking at the comments posted about the video, I noticed one comment which expresses a view that I happen to agree with. This person said that solving poverty and AIDS in Africa should not be a major issue in our presidential campaign, especially when we have alot of poverty in our own country. The writer also said that it is not the responsibility of the United States to be the world's police. I have always had this opinion, as we are constantly giving money to African countries when you can walk the streets of New York City and see plenty of poor and homeless people. Also, you can go to rural towns in middle America and notice that the people there are living in extreme poverty and the education level is extremely poor. I know the celebrities who are on this video and the people who launched this campaign mean well, but maybe they should look at the conditions in their own country before calling on Americans to make the conditions in another country one of our main political issues.

Click Here to Watch The Video