Will a new Congress have enough vision to address world needs with a peaceful, cost effective army that helps everyone get along and live better? We need to build the ranks of Habitats, Peace Corps, CCC's, etc., to deal with the future, which is what People's Lobby's American World Service Corps Congressional Proposal does. Learn more and help make it happen.

::::::::

For over a week, a dozen yellow buses transferred us mostly Americans with our hard hats and tools from a barbed-wire campsite to a barbed-wire under construction village.

You couldn't miss the tin shacks, tattered canvas pieces, ragged huts posing as homes and stores.   You'd see the milling masses in their ramshackle markets with food and clothes piled on rags.   You'd take a photo of the open rock-lined trenches battered with trash and debris serving as their sewage system.   You'd wonder how the children, with white bows in their hair, dressed in immaculate red and white uniforms, could each day appear so pristine while living amidst dusty, humid squalor.   You'd marvel that such cleanliness could come from crouching women and children beating clothes in streamside plastic buckets.  

Such wasn't new to this former Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) from the slums of Mumbai with several Habitat Builds notched on my belt.   What was new?   Building and camping behind concertina-wired ten foot fences and only looking down the bus window upon the harsh living conditions, rather than mixing amidst the poverty stew.  

Also new was the looks detected on so many faces looking up at our air-conditioned buses.   Stern, hard, maybe angry"   Did that kid flash me and my windowed camera the bird?   

As PCVs, most of us became accustomed to smiling adults and kids happily hanging on to our arms.   We won hearts.   We weren't finger saluted.

Stateside we may rightfully complain about our increasing wealth concentration and our consequential myopic public policies.   But the bad hand America's poor and shrinking middle class has recently been dealt is being thrown in spades throughout much of the world, which is dangerous -- even when you own drones.  

Dispatches from Columbus' colonizing era indicate that Haiti (Hispaniola) was a trusting, communal, and prosperous place.   It became the ideal setting to ignite the greedy economic engine of human slavery and then the more opaque debt servitude.   When the heat of centuries of hot political intrigue, corruption, and self-aggrandizement is added, today's Haiti looks like this through the CIA's concerned eyes:

-          More than    2/3rds of the labor force do not have formal jobs.

-          Illiteracy rate 57%

-          Population Below Poverty line 80%

-          In abject poverty 54%

-          Lowest 10% Consume 0.7%

-          Highest 10% Consume 47.7% (2001)

-          Gini Index 59.2 (2001), among world's worst wealth disparity

-          Unemployment 40.6% (2010 est.): 188 out of about 200 countries

^-           Under five mortality as a result of waterborne illness: 16%

-          No Haitian city has a functioning sewage system

-          Urban households with water supply: 52%; Rural 26%

-          Schooling expense per family: US $109 per year

In December, as our small contribution to alleviate the above conditions and 2010's devastating 7.0 earthquake, about 600 Irish Haven and Habitat Jimmy Carter volunteers slept and coughed in crowded tents, while sweating days building the second annual 100 Habitat homes (of planned 250) in Leogane, Haiti.   Google Habitat Haiti for more.

Considering the wrath of climate change coming down earth's pipeline and the seething needs of the world's poor, such efforts are far from enough.   If you think it's wise to have a new peaceful army that works daily to address such needs, Google People's Lobby's American World Service Corps Congressional (AWSC) Proposal , and let Congress know they should develop enough vision to build it.

Authors Website: http://peopleslobby.us/

Authors Bio:

Dwayne served in the Peace Corps in the slums of Mumbai, India, worked several Habitat Projects, and was on the start-up team of the California Conservation Corps. He has a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, has been a builder, teacher, political organizer, small businessman, affordable housing developer, and a rock-piler at Rubel's Castle. Some pics and stories at http://peopleslobby.us/more-projects/rubelia.

Some story tidbits about his recent well-regarded book about Rubel's Castle are available at http://peopleslobby.us/more-projects/rubelia.

In 2013 Rubelia was designated a National Historic Monument, right up there with Hearst Castle. CBS clip: Rubel's Castle is on verge of listing on National Registry http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/08/07/rubel-castle-in-glendora-on-the-verge-of-getting-national-historic-recognition/

Dwayne is presently Executive Director of People's Lobby Inc (PLI, 501c4)and People's Lobby's Education Foundation (PLEF, 501c3). You can read PLI's American World Service Corps Congressional Proposal (AWSC) at
http://peopleslobby.us/awsc-congressional-proposal

Rebuilding People'Lobby web site is available at http://peopleslobby.us/

Congresswoman Woolsey (D, CA) offered to introduce it in the 111th Congress, then retracted. Please contact your Congressional reps and ask them to become an original sponsor or cosponsor. The AWSC citizen-initiated congressional proposals could be, with you pushing your representatives, among the most significant legislation passed and implemented in decades. Imagine having 21 million Americans cost effectively doing good at home or abroad over the next 27 years.

In December 2009 Ralph Nader choose People's Lobby's book, "Ordinary People Doing the Extraordinary, The Story of Ed & Joyce Koupal's People's Lobby" as one of the Ten Best Books to Read for 2009. You can purchase the book from PeoplesLobby.us or learn more at http://peopleslobby.us/more-projects/books.

"This country runs on laws. If you want to change the country, write its laws," People's Lobby's founders Ed and Joyce Koupal used to say. If you want to enlighten public policy, involve millions of Americans in addressing public needs, prepare for climate weirding, etc., help make it happen. The AWSC addresses with people action many of our most pressing and costly needs. To sign the reopened American World Service Corps petition/letter, which contacts Congress for you: Paste http://www.change.org/petitions/view/field_21_million_american_world_service_corps_volunteers_over_the_next_27_years
Please help make the AWSC happen. To learn more about People's Lobby, visit the web site at www.Peopleslobby.us.

Recent books both available on line and from publishers: Every Town Needs a Castle (Prelude to next book, Every Country Needs a World Service Corps)
http://peopleslobby.us/more-projects/rubelia


Ordinary People Doing the Extraordinary (Nader's 2009 TopTen Books to Read List)
http://peopleslobby.us/archives/736
Library: http://peopleslobby.us/organizations/peoples-lobby/library