San Francisco can better handle big quake with World Service Corps

Why the San Francisco Board of Supervisors ought to pass a Resolution supporting People’s Lobby’s citizen-initiated World Service Corps proposed congressional legislation…
Dwayne Hunn

Some day the quake will hit. Bridges may crack. Levees may flood. Buildings will tumble. Fires will start. Many will be hurt. Too many will die.

Neighbors will help neighbors like never before. Heroes will step forward. Hopefully, government personnel – from FEMA to police and fire – will be near enough to respond. But for many and for too long, suffering will dominate too many days and nights.

San Franciscans will endure what New Orleaneans have suffered. Life won’t be pretty.

What if with a simple, cost effective federal law we were able to reduce dramatically the suffering? Help clean, repair, and rebuild the quake riddled area – or any devastated areas -- much more quickly?

What if we could give FEMA, police, fire, schools, hospitals, devastated families, and individuals a back-up army of ready and able full-time volunteers?

Would the Board of Supervisors help spread the word with a Resolution supporting it?

People’s Lobby is requesting that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors better prepare the Bay Area by passing a resolution supporting People’s Lobby citizen-initiated World Service Corps proposed congressional legislation.

World Service Corps (WSC) proposed congressional legislation

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, 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.

Cost effective….

How cost effective is the WSC proposed legislation?

Today’s military recruits are offered from $90,000 to 150,000 in educational grants and bonuses to sign up. In the WSC proposals, completion of WSC service provides an educational grant that pays for two years of community plus two years of state college tuition payments, only about $15,000. In addition, they’d receive a readjustment stipend equal to that received by a Peace Corps volunteer (about $7,000). With the WSC structured to strengthen governmental and non-governmental agencies and with the three financing mechanism in the bill, the annualized cost of each World Service Corps volunteer would be about $20-40,000. http://www.WorldServiceCorps.us

When budgeted, supplemental, off-line, and hidden costs are lumped together, the cost of each of our 1.4 million military personnel today totals over $600,000 per year. (http://www.worldservicecorps.us/educational_research.htm )
Even with skyrocketing costs and resources diverted to the war, 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 builds life. And the full-time work of its Special Volunteer Forces will strengthen the WSC’s existing brigades who specialize in wining “hearts and minds” while nation building.

Locally…

Locally, what does having the WSC up and running do for the Bay Area?

Imagine if the World Service Corps were up and running for three or four years before a quake struck… or levies burst…. or terrorists attacked the Bay Area.

It means that if disaster struck years from now in San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin Counties, etc., thousands more Americorps, Habitat, Head Start, Red Cross, and revived Teacher Corps and State Conservation Corps would already be working in those communities.

This trained and working army of peaceful, productive Americans would have already been addressing essential needs for years. Many, already working in the affected areas with their full-time volunteer service in a rejuvenated AmeriCorps, strengthened Red Cross, muscled Habitat, expanded Head Start, rejuvenated Teachers Corps, etc., would immediately be out helping people and the area recover. They wouldn’t wait for orders from some bureaucracy on high. They’d know from first hand experience how to ratchet-up what they were already doing.

Many individual volunteering Americans rushed to Louisiana after Katrina. Often they did it over the protests of a feebly administered FEMA. They did it because many Americans, like most people, still have this engrained desire to help their suffering fellow man. Just as Americans rushed to help Katrina victims, WSC volunteers from the region would rush to the Bay Area’s scenes of need.

WSC volunteers trump terrorists
Terrorists indicate that the Bay Area rates high on their targeted list. Indicators are that global climate change will bring us more terrifying hurricanes, tornados, floods, etc… In today’s world of shrinking icebergs and unshrinking needs, isn’t it prime time to encourage more Americans to volunteer their help for some period of their blessed, comfortable lives?

With our increasingly privatized army, fewer and fewer Americans 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 hawking and budgeting conflicts and wars.

The world’s 21st century needs America to lead the way to a visionary, peaceful, productive army that conquers the frontiers of poverty with it sicknesses, refugees, resource depletions, disasters, and hatreds. It needs more Americans:
• Directly involved in their communities and the global village’s needs.
• Building calluses and strengthening the jellied muscles of coach potatoes.
• Erasing the growing Ugly American image.
• Reducing mind sets that fuel terrorist recruitment.
In dealing with local and global village needs, Americans will also answer, “Ask not what America can do for the world, but together what we can do for the betterment of mankind.”

People’s Lobby workers have:
• Through the initiative process, qualified and established state law, such as the California Political Reform Act, which established the Fair Political Practices Commission.
• Held the only U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings ever conducted on establishing a national initiative process.
• Introduced House Resolution 1807 of 1989 through then Congresswoman Boxer to form an American Soviet Peace Corps to shift Cold War tensions to developing nations’ needs.

In this contentious Congress, citizen-initiated congressional legislation needs support from boards of supervisors, so that legislation beneficial to common folks, rather than special interests, can become law.

Your support will make more citizens aware of the benefits of enacting the WSC and lead today’s fractious Congress to put our best resources -- can-do Americans -- into addressing compelling American and world needs.

Having a million Americans serving in the world’s classroom of needs will do a great deal of good for the world’s 6 billion, America’s 300 million, and the Bay Area’s 6 million. In addition, WSC member’s exposure to this classroom of the world will substantially raise America’s policy making IQ, thereby making us less vulnerable to future policies that cost all levels of government and common folks dearly in lives and dollars.

Timely time for WSC?
Is this the prime time? The right time to do something like this was decades ago, when Kennedy founded the Peace Corps and said to Harris Wofford, Presidential advisor and one of those who help start it:

"He told me he wanted the Peace Corps to reach 100,000 a year. He said it would then be considered serious. In one decade, it would reach 1 million volunteers."

For only the third time since it began ticking in 1947, the hands of the Doomsday Clock have moved forward. It’s now seven minutes before midnight.

Every month that goes by without sending a robust American WSC into the world of growing hatreds and needs brings us closer to increased misery, and maybe some form of Doomsday. The world’s increased needs only adds to increasing discord at home and escalating hatred for Americans abroad.

The quicker Board of Supervisors, local, state, congressional representatives, and candidates take a stand on implementing the WSC proposed legislation, the quicker your community and the world will become a safer, saner place.

The longer the WSC is delayed, the more people will suffer from:
• Diseases, wars, genocides, and poverty.
• Tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes.
• A shortage of Head Start teachers, tutors, and class aides to help teachers Leave No Child Behind, and corps members who can help address needs, clean the environment, build homes for the needy, and develop appropriate technologies.

As a local governing body, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has always been more aware of the connections between local, national, and internationals needs than most other local governing bodies. Hopefully, you will again act with the vision needed in today’s policy arena by helping educate citizens and push other office holders on the need for a WSC to help solve local, national, and international problems.

“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.”

Ed and Joyce Koupal, Founders of People’s Lobby

“Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind…institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.”
Thomas Jefferson

To view 5 miniute news video on WSC http://www.worldservicecorps.us/television_radio.htm