I have a hope, for which many have called me a dreamer, of one possible way our society could look, maybe in 40 years, or maybe even sooner, if we all wanted it to happen.
A new CCC for a new USA could lead, or at least help start, the way. With a new sort of education.
It involves four main phases, broken down into smaller goals, with the ultimate hope being to build a world as safe and free for creative human endeavor as possible. For every human being on this planet. This post is mostly about a small part of Phase I, but other posts have begun, and will continue, to explain the remaining phases and the overall idea.
The first phase involves building empathy, and bringing each one of us to see each one of our fellow human beings as … a human being. Each one meriting humane treatment, and human dignity.
That empathy building phase was Phase 0 (yes, I’m a computer scientist by first training, so I start with 0…). Phase I is meant to go from the years 2015 to 2030, building a movement to strengthen some of our most crucial and obviously key pieces of our social infrastructure, which are in the public domain. During this period, one of the ways that we can both build conceptual support and also literally build our physical infrastructure that needs support, is by borrowing an idea from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which worked during the Great Depression to create jobs while educating young (white) men at the same time. What we want to do now, is to educate, facilitate service, and build a community-service frame of reference, while also upgrading our public infrastructure, just as FDR did in the 1930’s via his program.
Bringing back an updated version of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), or Roosevelt’s Tree Army, as it was popularly known, could provide a stepping stone between the empathy-building work that must always be on-going, and the support-building work of bringing our society to a consensus on the needed support for the most basic of our public social infrastructure institutions, like Public Libraries, Public Transportation, Public Education (especially in the financial and legal areas, where so many consumers fall prey to financial predators, and end up in debt due to lack of knowledge), and Public Health. These four systems under gird our entire societal structure, and need support perhaps the most urgently, in return for which we potentially get the most payback for all members of society. While we do the difficult work of building the necessary consensus to get there from here, a simpler step might be to bring back some form of the CCC, updated to be far more inclusive, and used as both a means of providing employment to young people, and also to educate them, much like the Gap Year in Europe. But instead of having our new high school graduates backpack around the country, they could be sent to work in urban public library branches, light-rail and subway/Metro stations, local urban public schools, or inner city health clinics. As they rotate from one part of the country to another, say, monthly, they learn first-hand of the conditions in places they are not from and have not lived, while serving communities they have never met, working alongside peers from different walks of life, and seeing a side of their native land that they did not grow up with. In short, learning the realities, and different perspectives, of this large and diverse nation of ours.
The rest of the ideas are here, with a warning that they will be rearranged and better explained in future posts: (My hope, in 2014, was that the precautions/programs described below, particularly the TinyHouse/Bedsit on an acre/person with free basic food, would prevent child abuse, by giving all human beings at any age once capable of reaching the stove and cooking an egg, permission and power to get the hell out of Dodge if necessary…)
The Adulthood Challenge is Phase II of a four phase program of Equality and Health for All, which I’ve been modifying since 2014.
Action Items:
1.) Look up the CCC, preferably finding two different sources;
2.) Share your findings with two friends on FaceBook;
3.) Find your Senator’s local office address;
4.) Write a letter to your Senator, email it, and then snail-mail it to the local office;
5.) Share your letter on FaceBook, and treat yourself to a healthy reward!!
6.) Accept the thanks of all of us who work for kindness and safety, Sibling in Arms.
Gratefully,
Let’s #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail and support these four key parts of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !
ShiraDest
September, 12020 HE
Like this:
Like Loading...
