The Next Needed Greatest Generation

 They were the Greatest Generation because:

       
Economics
pressed them into persistently working HARD in an ethnic melting pot
from which they prayed, in disparate languages, that all the
neighborhood's kids would inherit a better life.

        
They
were luckily born into a land of untapped physical and human resources,
where they humbly learned hand and mind skills that built and grew
things, far removed from ostentatious penthouses where specious
financial gimmicks were patented recently.

         
They
quietly bore more than calluses, as they served in large numbers at
home and abroad to build a safer, saner world for loved ones.

       
The country had
wheelchair leadership that did not roll backwards from financially
empowered oligarchs and corporate states.  Instead,
FDR sent armies of willing Americans to defeat both.
fdr

Today, we have untapped resources in a depressing economy
that demands persistent hard work.  Will
Americans push our leadership to send the right and BIG enough armies
against today's similar challenges and, in the process, build a 21st
century Greatest Generation?

The 21st century does not need a gigantic military
corps and continuous wars to test a generation's mettle.  It
needs a robust, voluntary American World Service Corps (AWSC)  that
helps address our economic needs, taps into our underutilized human and
overburdened physical resources, builds a healthier world, and reflects
our leadership's readiness to go BIG.

One who experienced the Greatest Generation, war veteran
John Kennedy, envisioned the Peace Corps quickly growing to 100,000. 
He
knew how essential a robust corps of peacefully serving volunteers is
to augmenting our military via building generations of peace. 
(Think
here of dramatically reducing or eradicating warring in Viet Nam, Iraq,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia... had JFK's robust Peace Corps been
built).  JFK stressed the Peace Corps would be
significant when it hit one million.  Unfortunately,
only about 180,000 have actually SERVED since the Peace Corps birthing
in 1961.  Consequently,
too many unaware and easily scared people reflexively think the answer
to world problems is to expand military involvements and enhance
corporations that profit from such, while hunger, poverty, and weapons
of mass destruction spread among a world approaching 7 billion,

Senator
Ted Kennedy's much needed and praise worthy Serve America Act (SAA) is
trying to revive his brother's vision, but it only calls for the Peace
Corps to grow over the years to the 15,000 PCVs size it was in the late
1960's.  And as the SAA is drafted, it must continue
fighting for budgeting needs over this and future administrations,
which has historically contributed to the demise of a strong Peace
Corps and VISTA.  

People's Lobby's  citizen-initiated
American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals is written
to lock in 21 million AWSC volunteers into service over the ensuing 27
years before sun-setting can be considered.  It
provides traditional and non-traditional funding
mechanisms that voluntarily
involve the rich in funding national service.  PLI's
Fair Tax Bracket Reinstitution Act (FTBRA) provides a backup and escrowed
funding mechanism to fund the 21st century AWSC that will
erase the devastating economic and physical costs of war.

With America's
economy, reputation, and policies under siege, this is when a strong
leader should mount a full court press to involve LOTS of Americans,
with other nations serving alongside, in addressing domestic and world needs.  


AWSC volunteers serve in the world

If
enough Americans understood how much 21 million serving Americans, and
cohorts from other nations, could do for the world, they would press
Congress to push this legislative solution to dramatically grow
governmental, non-governmental, and other nations' peaceful service
corps.  

Because
Kennedy was unable to serve long enough to implement his service
vision, we have stumbled into wars that drained our and the world's
economies.  It is time to build a 21st
century
corps that erases domestic and international needs and hardships that
will simultaneously shield our military from avoidable wars and improve
our public policy IQ.
Kennedy's Peace Corps Volunteers - Rockwell

If we build the AWSC, they will come.... And serve... 
And America
and the world will grow safer and saner.

Help
People's Lobby inform the upcoming Democrats for America Conference to
the benefits of implementing the AWSC by voting (nominating) Dwayne at http://democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/503-dwayne