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American Morning

Promises to Africa; Democrats & Religion

Aired June 29, 2006 - 07:34   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Here's a question for you: Do The Democrats have a chance of taking control of the House and Senate come the midterm elections? What kind of role will faith play in that? In a speech before an umbrella group of religious organizations, including members of historic black churches, Protestants, Catholics, evangelicals, Quakers, Pentecostals, Senator Barack Obama says not talking about faith for Democrats is a mistake.
Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), ILLINOIS: I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people's lives, in the lives of the American people. I think it's time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern pluralistic society. If we truly hope to speak to people where they're at, to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own, then progressives, we can not abandon the field of religious discourse.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. O'BRIEN: Senator Obama joins us from Washington D.C. this morning. Nice to see you, senator. Thanks for talking with us.

OBAMA: Great to talk with you, Soledad. How are you doing?

S. O'BRIEN: I'm very well, thank you.

OBAMA: Good.

S. O'BRIEN: We make a mistake is how you started. What's the mistake been?

OBAMA: Well, you know, I think there's been a tendency for a lot of progressives, for good reasons, to not want to talk about religion in public. I think there's been a fear that it can sound too preachy or that it somehow encroaching on separation of church and state.

But my point in this speech was that progressives, I think, need to recognize that the language of religion and faith, the moral underpinnings of a lot of the policies we care about, whether it's caring for the poor or making sure that we have a just foreign policy, that all those things tap into religious tradition in this country. And that some of the greatest social reformers in our history, from Martin Luther King to Dorothy Day, spoke directly out of their religious convictions. And we don't have to abandon concern with regard to faith if we want to reach out as broadly as possible to bring about a new American renewal.

S. O'BRIEN: Aren't there sometimes, though, contradictions in policy, or the way you vote, with the faith community? You, for example, support legal access to abortion. You voted against the same-sex marriage amendment. You support increased funding for family planning. You'd like to see more money going into that. Those are core issues for people of faith, who say actually what you stand for goes against my personal faith. How do you reconcile those two things? How do you get those people to vote for you?

OBAMA: Well, two things. I mean, one is, those positions don't conflict with all persons of faith, they conflict with some people's religious convictions, and some people's religious convictions have been shaped by the attitudes or the discourse that exists out in the public. If we were talking about poverty a lot more in religious terms, then it might affect how people prioritize their religious convictions.

So part of the problem is that all they're hearing about is gay marriage and abortion.

Now, having said that, there are going to be real differences. Look, I've got differences in my own life in terms of reconciling my faith with how I live, and these aren't easy or simple questions. And there are going to be some folks who, given their particular views on religion, are going to feel more comfortable with the platform of the Republican Party.

My point is, is that we can't just assume that somehow we have nothing to say to these folks, because there are a lot of very active church members who are deeply involved in the issues the Democrats care about, and we want to make sure that we're there talking to them.

S. O'BRIEN: Are your Democratic colleagues supposed to take away from your speech and your comments now, OK, so I need to start working God into my speeches? And I should mention Jesus Christ at least three times before I talk to various groups, and (INAUDIBLE) in front of large crowds will be all helpful in getting me reelected come the mid-term election?

OBAMA: Well, one of the things I specifically said in the speech is they can't be inauthentic in expressions of faith. Look, if you are secular, then you can still talk about ethics, and morality and values. You know, those of us with religious faith don't have a monopoly on virtue.

The important point is, I guess, to speak about some of the core values and convictions that you have and recognize that whether you are Christian, Jew, Muslim, nonbeliever, that we all have, I think, some common language and some common ground that we don't really talk about much, and that the language of faith can provide some of that spirit of commonality that I think would be good for the country over the long-term.

S. O'BRIEN: Senator Barack Obama joining us this morning. Nice to see you, senator. Thank you.

OBAMA: Great to talk to you, Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Thanks -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Still to come on the program, a bit of irony in New Orleans. A city deluged by water, really destroyed by water. Now it is dry. And it may not have enough. And the reason is underground. We'll explain.

S. O'BRIEN: And coming up, my exclusive live interview with Bono. He's been keeping track of the G8's pledge from last year to improve the African economy through favorable trade agreements. Is the world keeping its promises to Africa? Bono will tell us, coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: For years, U2's Bono has made it his mission to help fight poverty and AIDS, especially in Africa. This morning, a CNN exclusive. We're going to talk to Bono in just a moment, but first, a look at his work, and his legacy, too.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN (voice-over): He's the frontman for one of the world's great rock bands. And the pointman for the Global Aid for Africa Campaign. Bono's interest in Africa dates back to the mid- '80s, and the Band Aid and Live Aid projects, all efforts to raise money and awareness of famine in Africa. Bono wanted to know more and wanted to help. He went to Africa and spent six eye-opening weeks working at an orphanage in Ethiopia. Since then, he's been tireless in his efforts to end poverty in Africa. He founded the group DATA, which stands for debt, AIDS, trade, Africa.

BONO, SINGER/ACTIVIST: I don't think what's happening in Africa, with AIDS in particular and just the poverty and despair there, is a cause. I think it's an emergency. And lots of people have causes, and I have. But 69,000 people die ever day -- not a cause, an emergency.

S. O'BRIEN: Last July, Bono and Bob Geldof staged Live 8, billed as the biggest rock concert ever with a powerful message for the world's most powerful leaders. Days after Live 8, members of the G8, the world's eight most industrialized countries, responded. They pledged to cancel the debt of the 18 poorest African nations, and to increase aid by $50 billion by 2010.

Bono is the only person to be nominated for a Grammy, an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: It's been almost a year since those G8 promises. So what is the status? Bono joins us from Monaco this morning. It's nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us. DATA said it was going to...

BONO: Thanks. Thanks for having us on.

S. O'BRIEN: It's our pleasure.

DATA said it would have this report to serve as a report card, but also a road map for the next years coming. So let's start with the report card part of it. Would you say it's been successful, it gets a stellar grade, or would you say that the G8's commitments get a failing grade at this point so far?

BONO: Well, there's good news and bad news, the DATA report shows. There's a couple of high grades to be given. Maybe we should start with those. I mean, just in the United States, you should be very proud that you have a truly historic AIDS initiative. It was an unfathomable, even a few years ago, to imagine that you could get, I think it's probably 600,000 people on anti-retroviral drugs in an 18- month period. On motorcycles and on bicycles, those drugs got out there, and I think you should be very proud about that.

Though, that said, Congress in the last months have tried to block the president's request for his AIDS money for next year, and that, that's bewildering. You know, I was just in Africa a few weeks ago, and there's kids following me around like I'm a hero. They think I'm American. I don't explain where Ireland is. And I'm saying, you know, the reason she's following me around is because her mother, her father, her sister, her brother, all HIV-positive, all going to die, but these drugs are on their way from America.

S. O'BRIEN: What you're talking about...

BONO: And she thinks I'm a hero. The idea of going back to that kid and saying actually, the Congress cut the budget, sorry about that, is just obscene.

S. O'BRIEN: You're talking about this $3 billion that they're debating right now, and Congress is sort of saying, well, no, more like $600 million is what we're thinking about, which is a, you know, massive percentage cut there. Is the crux of the problem that the leaders of the G8 can pledge all they want, but at the end of the day, if you don't have public support and if you don't have congressional support, and then, frankly, if you don't have the president willing to put political capital on the line and push it through, it's just not going to happen.

BONO: Soledad, you're exactly right. And I think the cavalry here are going to turn out to be the American people. They're organizing in ways that are very inspiring, across the political spectrum, you know. There's two -- I think it's maybe 2.2 million Americans have joined the one campaign recently, one.org, because they're serious about this. They're soccer moms. They're student activists. They're NASCAR dads. They're hip-hop stars. I mean, it's not just rock stars and policy wonks that are on this. And I think it says something deep about the way Americans feel about America right now, which is, they do not like to see their flag disrespected in far- off places around the world. They're very proud of this AIDS initiative. They want to put kids in schools, because they know that Democracy is being taught in those schools.

I was in a school in Abuja with Gordon Brown, the finance minister, the chancellor of (INAUDIBLE), the U.K. And next door to where we were sitting, there was a class being taught in Nigeria about democracy, complicated questions that the kids could easily answer.

A thousand miles from there in northern Nigeria, there are madrassas where children are being taught to hate us.

So I think that it's a missed opportunity not to keep the promises made in the G8 and get more kids to school. Because of the debt cancellation movement -- that's another thing I want to give a good mark on, debt cancellation. They did follow through on that, and when I was recently in Africa, 15 million more kids were going to school, because of the drop-the-debt movement. And all the people that got out on the streets there should, you know, should give themselves a high five. That was really something.

But there's 40 million more African children that want to go to school who can't, and in these dangerous times it might be just smart to get them to school.

So, unless we keep track of these promises and fulfill them, they won't go to school. So that's the kind of yin and yang of this DATA report.

S. O'BRIEN: There is a theory, Bono, as I'm sure you've heard before, that people will say, listen, what Africa really needs is something that money can't buy. Africa needs political growth and socioeconomic growth. And by -- sometimes by giving large chunks of money, what you really do is fund brutal dictators, who often, as we know from Africa's history, steal the money, take the money, and it never gets to the people who really, really need it. How do you make sure that doesn't happen?

BONO: That used to be true. The Cold War was fought on the African continent, and we in the West propped up some very dangerous dictators by giving them loans and throwing aid at them, because they were not communists. And we can't then point to the waste of those resources as just their fault.

Anyway, that era is over. Now we only increase aid to countries where we can see that they're tackling corruption, where there's a clear and transparent process. If there's not, we pull out. In Ethiopia, things were looking great for a while, and then we couldn't see where the money was going, people pulled out. In Uganda, the Global Fund, this extraordinary organization that gets AIDS drugs to people and fights TB and malaria, they pulled out of Uganda because they couldn't see the -- where the money was going.

It's a new era of aid, and I think Americans will become much more generous when they know that the money is being spent well. And I can assure you, with the Millennium Challenge corporation supported in Congress, that's what will happen. S. O'BRIEN: Let's look ahead in the little time I have left with you. You say it's a report card and a road map. You point to a lot of nations that are behind, that aren't really on track to meet their goals, the U.S. included. What has to happen to make sure that in 2010 we're meeting that goal? What has to happen next?

BONO: I think the dawning of on the body politick that this strategic value in dealing with Africa's problems. It's a 40 percent Muslim country. A country like Nigeria is a big oil-producing country. And it would be awful to see Nigeria get into trouble. I think then just at the grassroots level, as we get into the 2008 election, I think politicians will be wise to pay attention to this movement, because it will be five million by then.

And you know, that's like -- that's real political muscle. This -- by 2008, we won't be tin cupping, oh please, please, you know, the poor come bowing around the back corridors of Congress. This is what the American people want. We're looking at not even one percent of the GDP of the United States. We're looking not even at .5 of a percent of the GDP. The United States is at .22. It's a fraction of a single point.

So when Americans see that you can transform millions and millions of lives around the world and critically transform the way they see us in these dangerous times, they will prevail. And history is on our side here. This -- we will win. Right now, we're -- there's people dragging their feet, but we will prevail.

And by you giving us access on your program, CNN, supporting us like you do in your Africa stories, you make it a lot easier. So thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Bono, thank you for talking with us this morning. We certainly appreciate that.

For more information on Bono's campaign's to help fight poverty, go to data.org or one.org. Thanks, Bono.

Andy's "Minding Your Business" right after this short break. We're back in a moment.

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M. O'BRIEN: The days' top stories are ahead after a break. Stay with us.

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