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Friday, September 26, 2008
Smollett: ‘Let’s all join togeter’
Actress Jurnee Smollett visited ECU’s campus Friday afternoon, energizing its students to get involved in this year’s election on the way.
After an entrance that brought most of the room into a circle dancing around the “Great Debaters” star, Smollett jumped on a Mendenhall stage and encouraged the crowd to give their support to Sen. Barack Obama, specifically citing his plans to give a $40,000 tax break to college students and to raise the Pell Grant. She didn’t have to try hard, as no supporters of the opposition attended the rally.
But Smollett, 22, stressed the importance of staying involved with the campaign. “They say between the ages of 18 and 35, they say we’re apathetic, and that we get riled up and pumped and fired up about something, and then we don’t close the deal,” Smollett said. “So this is the last leg of the race. Let’s all join together.”
Breaking the stereotype that her age group is uniformly indifferent is one of the reasons why Ashley Glover, junior communications major at ECU, likes seeing celebrities get involved in politics.
“I’m excited about people coming out and campaigning and getting us excited about (the election),” Glover said.
And that’s one of the reasons Smollett’s been travelling to college campuses. “I feel that often times, younger voters feel that their voice doesn’t matter,” Smollett said later on. “And really it’s been the youth driving this campaign, so they’ve proven the skeptics wrong.”
Smollett, who has been on the road since January, has also expressed a desire to get more African American citizens registered and says spreading the word is the best way to do so.
“This is something that goes back to Barack’s work earlier in his life,” Smollett said. “He was registering voters — African American, Caucasian voters, everyone he could reach — in Chicago during Clinton’s election. So he believed that every one should have that chance to participate in the process and to use their voice. He wants to make sure that everyone who wants to be registered, is registered.”
On Sunday, the rally continues with appearances by Ellen Pompeo, who plays Meredith Grey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” and Danielle Panabaker, known for her roles in “Shark” and “Mr. Brooks,” at 11 a.m. Sunday in Mendenhall Great Room 2.
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Bev Perdue drops by
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beverly Perdue stopped by Greenville on her way home to New Bern today to discuss the campaign and the Congressional bailout proposal.
Perdue, the state’s lieutenant governor, said she listened to people express frustration with the instability in the nation’s financial institutions and the congressional bailout proposal during meetings earlier Friday with state employees, advocates for people with developmental disabilities and a labor group.
“There is this sense of, ‘I’m being wronged by the government,’ but then there’s this sense of really understanding that something has to be fixed to salvage the financial backbone of America,” she said.
North Carolinians can take comfort in knowing the major banks that make North Carolina their base of operations are stable, she said. However, they too are seeing drops in their stock prices.
“I think it proves everything can be rattled by an economic crisis,” she said.
North Carolina’s economic woes began with the mass closings of textile and other manufacturers at the beginning of the decade, she said.
“We’ve built those jobs back through education and science and technology and now we are, or we were, fundamentally healthy and on the right track,” Perdue said. “Even in North Carolina in the last six months things have been pretty good but foreclosures have been up in the last 90 days.”
Perdue took an opportunity to highlight her differences from Republican opponent, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCory by pointing out he believes community colleges should stop offering high school equivalency degrees.
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‘Grey’s’ and ‘Shark’ stars to speak for Obama at ECU
Ellen Pompeo, who stars as Meredith Grey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” and Danielle Panabaker, star of “Shark,” will be at East Carolina University Sunday to speak in support of Barack Obama. The event will begin at 11:30 a.m. in the Mendenhall Great Room. Pompeo and Panabaker are expected to talk about the importance of registering to vote and getting involved in the election. The deadline for voter registration is Oct. 10 and early voting starts Oct. 16. The actresses will also make stops at UNC Wilmington, Campbell University, Meredith College, UNC Pembroke and NC State University.
