World Service Corps answer for
Dwayne Hunn
How do we prepare for the next Big Blow?
A feeble FEMA blew it. Volunteering Americans didn’t. They sent comforting breezes. We need more gentle breezes.
People’s Lobby’s citizen-initiated World Service Corps
proposed congressional legislation sends a parade of refreshing breezes needed
to overcome inadequate experience, disastrous leadership, and disasters. The World Service Corps (WSC) will strengthen
Had the WSC been implemented years ago, you would not hear
talk of taking 25 years to rebuild
If enacted in this or the next Congress, each year for the next seven years approximately 140,000 Americans would voluntarily choose to serve in their choice of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, State Conservation Corps, etc. By the seventh year one million American World Service Corps members of all ages, or less than .6th of 1% of those aged 20-60+, would annually serve for a year or two at home or abroad for at least the ensuing 20 years, whereupon Congress could consider sun-setting the WSC legislation.
How cost effective would the
WSC be?
How cost effective is spending a reputed $4 billion on a
hundred acre fortress style, triple reinforced American Embassy in
While military recruits are being offered bonuses and college education payments ranging from $90,000 to 150,000, this WSC proposal provides an education scholarship at completion that will pay for two years of community plus two years of state college (about $15,000). In addition, WSC volunteers would receive a readjustment stipend equal to that received by a Peace Corps volunteer (about $7,000). Since the WSC is structured to send concerned Americans to governmental and non-governmental agencies and use three cost-reducing financing mechanisms, the annualized cost of each World Service Corps volunteer would be about $25-40,000.
When budgeted, supplemental, off-line, some hidden, and post-war related costs are totaled; today’s annualized cost for each of our 1.4 million military personnel is over $600,000. (www.WorldServiceCorps.us/???? Even with that skyrocketing cost, our smart generals are saying this war can’t be won without winning “hearts and minds.”
In comparison, the WSC is the bargain of a lifetime that rebuilds lives. Its volunteers specialize in wining “hearts and minds” abroad, as well as at home. In addition, it would dramatically reduce what is spent on our military, thereby providing a net savings to American taxpayers.
What does having the WSC up and running do for
Imagine, if the World Service Corps had been running for four years before Katrina?
In
· Wouldn’t wait for orders from some bureaucracy on high.
· Would know from first hand experience how to ratchet-up what they were already doing.
· Would be sent from their less affected surrounding areas to the scenes of need.
Many individual volunteering Americans, often over the
protests of a myopically administered FEMA, rushed to
New, productive 21st
century army needed to augment military
Indicators are that global climate change will bring us more terrifying hurricanes, tornados, floods, etc., and that our battered image will continue bleeding as terrorist recruitment climbs.
With our increasingly privatized army, fewer and fewer serve their nation. The patriotic fervor ignited by,
“Ask not what you country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country…”
has been buried over the generations by budgeting and hawking wars.
America and the world’s 21st century needs Americans to lead a new army that better handles disasters, while conquering the frontiers of poverty infected with sicknesses, refugees, resource depletions, and hatreds.
Uncle Sam needs more red necked, blue nosed, and enlightened purpled Americans working on community and global village needs. Having a million WSC volunteers developing physical and mental calluses dealing with local and global village needs will answer the clarion call of,
“Ask not what
Those of us who worked for the founders of People’s Lobby, Ed and Joyce Koupal, understood the philosophy they drilled into us:
“This country runs on laws. If you want to change the country, write its laws.
“Final Responsibility rests with the people. Therefore, never is final authority delegated.”
To better handle the next Katrina, Louisianans should push their elected officials to support, cosponsor, and push for introduction and passage of the citizen-initiated World Service Corps Congressional Proposals. Its quick passage will provide cost-effective incentives to add tens of thousands of Americans each year to helping Katrina ravaged areas recover. It will also better prepare us for the next Big Blow or Bad Blast.
For more information on how to help and to sign the Online Petition www.WorldServiceCorps.us
Dwayne Hunn is
Executive Director of People’s Lobby Inc., who has used the initiative process
and citizen education to introduce initiatives and pass laws in