Vote drive woos poor

[wyethwire]

The State
Voter drive woos poor
Similar picnics to follow at area housing complexes

By MARIE HODGE
Staff Writer


Willie Hampton is 19 and looking for a job in telemarketing or computers. Polite and friendly, he confides that he’s working on his GED and has had a few nibbles, but no real bites yet.

He finds the politicians “somewhat to blame” for his difficulty in finding employment, partly because they “send so many jobs overseas.” He wants to help put politicians in office who respond to the needs of people like him, people who struggle to survive economically.

So, Saturday afternoon, during a visit to see his father at the Gonzales Gardens public-housing complex on Forest Drive, Hampton joined a community picnic designed to register voters who might put such politicians in office.

The main goal of the picnic, the first of what its organizers hope will be several in public-housing complexes, was to register 100 new voters — an ambitious goal, considering Gonzales Gardens houses only 174 families, according to John Hingleton, president of the gardens.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/9023058.htm