Which produces more peace? $90,000 signing bonuses,
Conscientious Objectors or a million World Service Corps Volunteers?
Fewer and
fewer of the well-read are choosing to send sons and
daughters to today’s wars. So, in May
the military announced new recruits could get up to
$20,000 in signing bonuses.
Additionally, it offered up to $70,000 towards a university degree, or
repayment of student loans up to $65,000, plus all-important health and dental
care for recruits and their families.
Soldiers
patriotically offer life and limb, and they deserve compensation. But is there a more cost effective, peaceful,
productive means of spreading national and world security?
Utne continues
warning of the second coming of a draft (Feeling a Draft May/June 05). Preaching the policy of “Don’t do” to
emotionally chargeable and “Can-do” Americans is not as visionary a policy as
is needed in a critically needy 21st century.
Some of the educated
families who read Utne may successfully save their children from a potential draft. But will that change the world as much as having
one million diverse Americans working on the causes of world poverty,
misunderstanding, and war for the next three decades?
Would your
children’s futures be safer if a million Americans worked and learned in the
world’s pockets of needs?
Would
Would the federal
cost be worth it, if volunteers completing the service were then granted the
equivalent of two years of community plus two years of state college tuition
(approximately $15,000 transferable to family members), or an equivalent
investment in Medical or IRA Accounts?
If this makes some
sense to you, what should Utne readers do?
More than just
prepare Utne kids for conscientious objecting.
Help introduce and pass the citizen-initiated World Service Corps (WSC)
proposed congressional legislation that provides the world with an army of
peaceful, productive volunteers who build a more peaceful world. Go to www.worldservicecorps.us to at
least sign the on-line petition and learn how to help build a grassroots
movements for bipartisan congressional support.
What are the World
Service Corps (WSC) citizen-initiated proposed congressional legislative
proposals?
If passed in
Congress this year, each year for the next six years approximately 130,000
Americans would voluntarily choose to serve in their choice of the Peace Corps,
AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, or the
Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, State
Conservation Corps. By the seventh year,
one million Americans would be serving, learning, and improving
How does the
enacting the citizen-initiated World Service Corps proposals erase the need for
a military draft?
Wars stem from the
hunt for perceived and real needs, ignorance, and misunderstandings. The WSC addresses those causes.
From 1965-74,
each soldier in
By the 1970’s
Kennedy wanted a million PCVs to have served.
Then, he believed, the Peace Corps would be making a significant impact
in the world. Today only about 177,000
of us Returned Peace Corps volunteers try to make an impact.
The last time a PCV worked in terrorist laden
The last time a PCV worked in Osama’s
The last time a PCV worked in
A PCV has never served in “evil” spheres such as
Our shortage of Head
Start teachers allows only half of all eligible children and only five
percent of Early Head Starters to be reached.
Katrina reminds us how Americans
want to serve and that the Red Cross, Habitat, Americorps, State Conservation
Corps, etc. need more human resources to do so more effectively.
If you believe today
is a critical time to introduce and pass visionary and cost effective
legislation that deploys
