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Liz at a glance:
40 years old. Originally from New Zealand. Faith: Catholic. Married to Joe the past 13 years. Home-schooling mother. Campaign manager, treasurer and in charge of ballot access and campaign literature graphics. Former public relations consultant in New Zealand. Also a former gymnastics instructor. Volunteer work: Catholic Worker outreach to the poor in Cleveland; Brown County, Ohio, Mental Health Walkathon co-coordinator; city youth gymnastics instructor; city youth league baseball coach… Hobbies: Running, photography, gardening, history and scrap booking.
In Liz’s words:
“Kia Ora” and “gidday.”
Kia Ora is the greeting of “hello” in Maori, the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand. The country I am from.
Gidday is, well, a “Down Under” greeting too.
I now live in Cleveland, Ohio, where some people look at me a bit funny when I say “gidday.” I live in Cleveland with Joe – that is when we’re not on the road campaigning.
I was traveling the world when I met Joe. We got married, and I have been here now the past 14 years.
While raising our children, Joe and I have become very concerned about their future – nuclear proliferation, poor international relations, global warming, escalating war and violence in general, unjust distribution of wealth, the declining value of life and family…
I told the Mississippi Press newspaper that it is easy to lament about all this; but it’s better to try to do something about it.
And so we are attempting to.
peace
In the face of yet another international crisis with the War in Iraq, we propose a U.S. Department of Peace. We have spent years researching such initiates as: the “Ulster Project” to decrease tension in Northern Ireland; Bluffton University’s “Cross Cultural Program” to bring social justice and conflict resolution help to other countries; Wilmington University’s Peace Center programs for trust building in families and schools… (Peace has to begin at home.)
The U.S. Department of Peace would work to deescalate tension in Iraq. And it would help secure a future for all our children by proactively building solid, lasting relationships with as many nations as possible.
While we honor those who put their lives on the line for their nation and believe in more support for Veterans and their families; we would hope with a deeper commitment to peace that war would diminish in kind.
saving
the planet
I said to a Chronicle Telegram reporter in Elyria, Ohio, while on an “End Global Warming Bicycle Tour,” that if nothing changes -- nothing changes.
For the future of our children, Americans need to change their lifestyles. It is critical that they start to live more simply and environmentally conscious. In our family, we cycle or walk to the grocery store, we dry our clothes on the line, live with little, recycle, compost and we have converted part of our city yard into a backyard habitat.
And it would be the same for us in D.C.
Government, too, must make a major commitment to save the environment for our children. We have researched a comprehensive recycling program in New Jersey, extensive wind energy production in Oklahoma, effective solar energy applications in Michigan, geothermal technology in Ohio… and much more.
We believe the federal government should push to help subsidize a lot more of these types of projects around the country, and soon. What’s more, we believe America should sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas immediately.
healing
the family, and faith
A friend of ours, Dale Way, says: “If you heal the family, you’ll heal the nation.” And we carry his message with us throughout the country.
In talks, I note that there was a time when families lived and worked side-by-side, valuing being together more than the new house, furniture and latest ‘must have.’
Quality family time is essential. And if children don’t get that, Joe often talks about how this gets transposed into society.
That is if children are neglected (or abused), they grow up angry, depressed, fearful… As a result, incidence of domestic violence, violence on the streets, broken families, mental disorders, drug addiction… increase in kind.
We have made a decision to campaign together as we travel the country because we believe this quality (and quantity) family time is essential. And we actually spend more time focused on the family, than we do on the campaign most days.
We also spend a lot of time trying to live our Catholic faith, whether that’s doing outreach to the poor, being good environmental stewards, doing family prayer time and Bible reading… Our faith is the lynchpin of our family life.
And it is Life in general that we’re deeply concerned about.
pro-Life
During a talk to a prayer group in Tulari, California, I spoke about abortion.
I said that abortion is an important societal barometer for how we value all life. If we are able to kill unwanted babies, we have lost our ability to care. A natural progression then becomes that we are more apt to kill unwanted elderly or disabled people. For that matter, we become more insensitive to killing other nations’ mothers and children in war -- or dismiss the lives of the starving in the Third World.
We must return to valuing Life at all stages, in all places.
While I support laws to end abortion, I believe we must also provide better safety nets for women in crisis pregnancies. In Newport, Rhode Island, we researched Women- to-Women, which is a non-profit group that provides residential help, food, clothing, scholarship money, and much more, for women in crisis pregnancy. And we have looked at similar programs throughout the country.
Ultimately, we must build a society that highly values women and children.
change
in priorities
Building a strong society is also about addressing where our spending priorities are. And as long as we are increasing our spending on war, nuclear armament and space discovery, we are short-changing our children in their basic needs.
These are needs like nutritious food, adequate housing and quality education.
More money should also be earmarked for our seniors by helping shore up Social Security. There should be more money to make sure all Americans have access to adequate health care in America. As there should be more money for the poor and disabled in general.
Added to this, on a radio show in Ocala, Florida, I said there should also be more funds, and more help in general, for new immigrants to this country. People who often come here because of abject poverty and/or political oppression.
family farms
My college education is in Agricultural Science. As part of that degree, I worked on family farms in New Zealand.
It is tragic to see how corporate mega farming is pushing families off the land these days, I told a reporter from the Bangor (ME) Daily News.
While researching agricultural issues all over the country, it is exciting to see some small farmers are working tirelessly to save the farm through a series of creative models. We’ve researched an organic co-op among a group of small farmers in western Ohio. In southern Illinois, small farmers there have formed a cooperative and established a meat processing plant. (Packages are even labeled with which farm the meat comes from so local people have more of a choice in supporting local farmers.)
In Oldenburg, Indiana, we looked at a Community Sponsored Agriculture model that is not only allowing for people to support local farmers, but it is giving city people a chance to reconnect with the land by periodically working on the farm.
On
a personal level…
We also urge people in the city to reclaim some of the land for growing food and for nature in general. And since we moved to Cleveland, our family has turned our back yard (which used to be strewn with old broken alley pavement, weeds and graffiti) into an extensive backyard habitat in an effort to reclaim some of the land.
I also enjoy sports.
I like to run and bicycle. (We have, in fact, done several long-distance campaign bicycle tours) I also enjoy playing soccer and basketball with the kids and Joe. Although I’m having a hard time getting Joe to play cricket.
I also love studying history, literature and playing Scrabble. Our daughter Sarah and I like to make scrapbooks, especially of our times on the road.
Dwight
When we are not on the road, we are back in Cleveland volunteering at a drop-in center for the homeless just up the street from us. On a snowy morning recently in early April -- spring in Cleveland -- I met Dwight.
Dwight grew up in the city, surrounded with violence. He, in turn, used violence to solve his problems -- and ended up in jail. Upon his release, he became a loyal employee who remodeled homes for almost five years.
His employer died a year or so ago. Dwight couldn’t find another steady job (partially because of his record, and so on). His money eventually ran out – and he lost his apartment.
He’s now on the streets. He sleeps in shelters at night and gets work wherever he can. The morning before, he’d stood in the snow and cold holding an advertising sign for a couple hours. And this morning, he was eating his food at the center fast, so he could get out as quickly as possible to pound the pavement yet another day looking for yet another job to help him get by.
Over the years, our family has given the Dwights of this world some money, had them over for dinner, sometimes put them up in a bedroom we’ve put aside as a “Christ Room” for those in need.
And while all this helps (and we urge more people to move down here to help in this fashion as well), it is only part of the answer. A more systemic part of the answer, I told a class at Berry College in Rome, Georgia, is for those more well off to create a country where the Dwights of society become valued members, with all the advantages -- that everyone else has.
Nothing short of that.
And we need leadership to point us in that direction. Part of that leadership would be my husband, Joe.
I couldn’t do much for Dwight this particular morning in April, except to give him some food, listen, and offer to pray for him. When I see him again, I’ll offer him some more food, and, once again, pray and listen to how he’s doing. Our four-year-old Jonathan might even tell Dwight a story.
And as Jonathan is often wont, a story with a happy ending.
Like Dwight’s may some day be.
--Liz
