World Service Corps needed to inspire more Conservation Corps to temper Katrinas

Dwayne Hunn

Another catastrophic storm strikes.

Our government started its response – a thousand bed medical boat, 1.5 million MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), and the promise of national guardsmen, while the Red Cross begged for volunteers. With a million displaced people, it’s a meal for each for a day. With tens of thousands hurt and infections spreading, it’s too many sharing too few in-coming hospital beds, which were, at this writing, four boat days away.

Meanwhile, volunteer Americans are hitching up, as usual. Yet, the government’s conveyor belts seem un-geared for delivering volunteers to the war zone.

Imagine, however, if the citizen-initiated World Service Corps (WSC) Congressional legislation had passed years ago www.worldservicecorps.us. Today, an American army of skilled and ready would be there.

What is the World Service Corps, you say?

It would result from passing citizen-initiated proposed Congressional legislation, which needs probably 50 bipartisan cosponsors to gain Congressional passage. Consequently, it needs your grassroots support.

If passed in Congress this year, the WSC laws would annually ramp up America’s best resource until by the sixth year one million Americans, or .6 of 1% of those aged 20 – 60+, would voluntarily serve in their choice of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, etc.

Included among those organizations might be new or expanded state conservation corps, modeled after the Washington, California, and Maryland Conservation Corps. Their training and prior work experience would add woefully needed energy, resources, and experience to addressing domestic human and physical calamities, such as Katrina.

Americans love serving and building. Thanks to the financial incentives in the WSC proposals, many more states would add conservation corps programs to address what seems like increasing natural calamities. Were the WSC proposals passed into law this year, next year those states with new and existing conservation corps would be ready and able to send their prepared workers to help next year’s calamity victims.

What are the cost effective, federal incentives in the WSC congressional proposals?

Those voluntarily choosing to serve in the WSC would receive two years of community plus two years of state college tuition, equivalent educational loan pay-off, or investment in Medical or IRA Accounts, each of which could be transferable to family members. Each of those cost-effective investments multiplies America’s strength. Just ask Fed Chair Greenspan, who unequivocally states that the GI Bill of Educational Rights is what has given our economy its resiliency.

So, why hesitate in supporting and implementing a WSC program that helps at home as well as abroad, where our growing Ugly American image is making life hard on not just our soldiers?

The global village is filling with people, and some of us trample heavily on its fragile environment. Now, a preponderance of science suggests that Mother Nature is snapping back.

The citizen-initiated WSC Congressional proposal offers America a peaceful means to temper an angry Mother. It also offers millions of Americans the opportunity to serve the sufferings’ needs, while practicing the human and appropriate technology needed to live more gently with Mother Nature. Had the WSC been up and running, tens of thousands of prepared WSC members from the Red Cross, Americorps, State Conservation Corps, etc., would be now working in Louisiana and Mississippi.

While doing good at home, the WSC also volunteers America’s best resources, millions of its can-do Americans, to erase the spreading Ugly American image and end the generations spanning Terrorist War more quickly. If citizens push Congress to pass the WSC into law, it would be among the most significant legislation passed in decades.

Today’s kids will thank you tomorrow -- for pushing Congress to pass WSC legislation to give a million Americans a mission to build a safer world.

Dwayne Hunn was on the start-up team of the California Conservation Corps and authored the proposed citizen-initiated World Service Corps congressional legislation. Learn more, sign the on-line Petition, and help at www.worldservicecorps.us.

Had the World Service Corps (WSC) been up and running, tens of thousands of prepared WSC members from the Red Cross, Americorps, State Conservation Corps, etc., would much more quickly be working in Louisiana and Mississippi. Go to www.worldservicecorps.us and help enact its citizen-initiated enabling legislation.