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Joe on Urban Youth   c.2004 Shaun Heasely   all rights reserved

        Common man… Common sense… Uncommon solutions…    

“Schriner’s platform is change harkening back to simplicity, common sense and family values.”  --reporter Janet Hanson, Rural Northwest (ID) Online News.

Joe at a glance:  52-years-old.  Husband of 13 years and father.  Faith: Catholic.  Graduate of Bowling Green State University.  Journalist and author.  Former addictions counselor, with an emphasis on family systems.  *Independent presidential candidate the last three election cycles.  On the road extensively.  In between campaign tours, now does part-time house painting and handyman work to make ends meet.  Volunteer work with:  Brown County (OH) Board of Mental Health; Catholic Worker outreach to the poor in the inner city of Cleveland; “We Are The Uninsured” Healthcare Movement in Ohio.  Little League Baseball coach (won some, lost some).  Hobbies:  Trying to beat his wife at Scrabble, running, photography, sandlot soccer and basketball with his children.

            In Joe’s words:

      “I’m, for the most part, your “average” Midwesterner, I told the Duluth (MN) News.

  I jog through the streets of Cleveland, Ohio, in a pair of gray sweats.  My favorite spot to eat is the “Old-Fashion Hot Dogs” place around the corner (chili-dogs a buck and a quarter).  What’s more, I cut my own lawn.

Oh, and I’m running for president.

I told the Lancaster (OH) Eagle Gazette that the reason I am running for president is that I am a “concerned parent.”  That is, I don’t want to leave a world of climate change, war, abortion, rural and inner city poverty, violent streets, nuclear proliferation, astronomical national debt, little social security, dwindling access to healthcare… to our children.

What sane parent would?

Now, I didn’t go to Harvard, Yale, or even Rutgers for that matter.  I went to Bowling Green State University where I majored in Journalism.

I then worked for a couple intermediate sized Ohio newspapers.  I later became a counselor.  And in 1990, as a lead up to the presidential run, I took my journalism skills on the road to look for common sense solutions to the societal problems I outline above.

And in some tremendously extensive, cross-country research, I found those solutions.

       Getting policies enacted…

             On the Southside of Chicago in a gang war zone, I learned how to end homelessness.  In Atwood, Kansas (pop. 1,500), I learned how to balance the National Budget.  In Grand Junction, Colorado, I learned how to get healthcare for all.  In High Springs, Florida, I learned how to end global warming, for good.  In Juarez, Mexico, I learned how to unequivocally solve the immigration issue.

             And it was with this information, and much more, that I set out to run for president.  No big money.  No special interest backing.  Just with these answers to make the country a much better place for our kids.

While campaigning for president the past seven years (and 80,000 miles), I’ve been telling people about these answers in hundreds of talks, more than 1,700 newspapers, a lot of radio, television and in a very ‘up-close-and-personal way’ on the street corners of America. 

I told Channel 10 News in Albany, Georgia, that I can get a policy enacted long before I ever get to D.C. if somebody picks up on an idea and tries it in their town.  And who knows how far out it will ripple out from there.

           So in a small way, I said during a talk at Toledo University, I am “already president now.”  The students all smiled, politely.

        Be the change…

I am also a firm believer that this won’t be a better world for our children until more of us follow the saying: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  

In this pursuit, my family and I try to live the messages we are conveying, at least the best we can.

On a 50,000-watt radio station in Indianapolis, Indiana, I said our platform asks some people to consider moving into the inner cities of America to live side-by-side with the poor.  So our family moved to Cleveland’s inner city where we volunteer at an outreach to the poor.

I told the Tifton (GA) Gazette that our family has also set aside a ‘Christ Room’ for the homeless at our place.  And in D.C. we’d do the same thing.  Just like I may well be looking for a youth baseball team to coach when I get there.

I recently coached an inner city Little League Baseball team in Cleveland.  On draft day I picked the kids who looked liked they’d be picked last, first.  And apparently I did pretty well with this because we lost almost all the games.  Many of the kids on the team, sadly, didn’t have a father at home.

And many of these families don’t have healthcare insurance either, just like two million other Ohioans.  To help try to reverse this, my children and I have done volunteer work for the “We Are The Uninsured Movement” in Ohio.

The reason our children are involved is because Liz and I want them learning as much about helping others as they do learning about Math, Science and English, I told The Mississippi Press.

In fact, as president I would propose having the option of at least one-third of school curriculum being volunteer work out in the community.  I would also propose many more classes be focused on environmental awareness.

To do our family’s part for the environment, we have created a “Kyoto Protocol Home Zone.”  (I even put a Kyoto Protocol Home Zone sign up in the front yard, to Liz’s embarrassment.)   We live in a small place, don’t use air conditioning, cut the thermostat back in the winter, bicycle or walk almost everywhere within a five-mile radius, and we recycle practically everything.

In D.C. we’d do this as well. 

Heal the family...

My concern for the environment, for the disadvantaged, for the unborn, flows out of my spirituality.  I’m Catholic.  And trying to live the essence of the Gospel message is what I try to be about, I told columnist Mike Haynes of the Amarillo (TX) Globe News.

And part of living the Gospel message is being centered in faith, having time for family, being concerned about others.  I’m not the “poster guy” for all that, but I try.

What’s more, it’s Liz and my role to make sure our children have a wholesome and emotionally healthy upbringing.  And I have some additional expertise in the latter area.

Besides having been a journalist, I was also a counselor who worked with family system dynamics.  And it is my contention that the current breakdown of the family in America (parents being physically or emotionally abusive, or absent, or addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, work…) is creating a constellation of societal problems, I told ABC News in Monterey, California.

Because of these dysfunctional family dynamics (and they seem to be everywhere these days), kids grow up depressed, angry and emotionally empty.  As a result, incidence of domestic violence, street violence, addiction, mental and emotional problems spike in kind for the next generation, and the next…

So to heal the country, you have to heal the family.  There’s just no way around it, I told the Bangor (ME) News.

And we have a solid plan to do this, based on research we’ve done in Arthur, Illinois, Holbrook, Arizona, Carmel Valley, California…

Snow shoveling...

Now when I’m not grappling with these family and societal issues, Liz is beating me at Scrabble (an issue in itself), I’m playing racquetball with some buddies in Cleveland, or trading baseball cards with our kids.

That is, I’m doing all this in between doing chores for Liz.

During a campaign talk in Wichita, Kansas, I was asked what the first thing I’d do as president was.  I responded that we’d get to D.C. in January, so it would probably be snowing.  If that indeed were the case, the first thing Liz would have me do is shovel the walk.

And so it goes… ”  

                                                                        --Joe