Democratic Presidential Candidates Invited to Historic Debate

Press Release (excerpted):

For immediate release

Contact: Jeremy Weir Alderson, [--snip, snip--]

DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN HISTORIC DEBATE

The Homelessness Marathon, America's only national broadcast focusing on homelessness and poverty, has invited the Democratic presidential candidates to participate in a debate unlike any other in American history: The sole topic will be the candidates' plans for ending poverty, and all of the questions will be asked by homeless people.

This debate will take place in San Francisco, starting at 5 p.m., PST, on Wednesday, January 30, 2008.

The debate will be incorporated into the next edition of the Homelessness Marathon, an annual, 14-hour-long live radio broadcast that this year aired on 120 stations coast-to-coast. Free Speech Television, which reaches, potentially, 25 million homes, will televise this event live. And the debate will be supported by a coalition that so far includes:

- KBOO - San Francisco's "Poor People's Radio"
- Poor Magazine
- Dollars and Sense Magazine
- Progressive Democrats of America
- San Francisco Bay View ("National Black Newspaper")
- San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness
- Western Regional Advocacy Project

"We're relatively small organizations," comments the Homelessness Marathon's founder, Jeremy Weir Alderson, "but we stand for something big, and that's that the people, themselves, have a place in this process. We'll have questions asked by all kinds of homeless citizens, whether they're vets, former foster kids, migrant farm laborers, mothers, minimum wage workers or disabled people whose disability checks aren't big enough to get them housing."

"Everyone knows," Alderson adds, "that the candidates spend a lot of time courting the rich, but will they turn out for the poor? We're betting that they will."

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