I was thrilled when I found out that my grandmother's interest in politics had been reignited by the Plame Leak scandal last Fall. Every day she looks forward to watching the news. Lou Dobbs, she says, is a straight-shooter that isn't swayed by corporate interests or party politics. Having never watched Dobbs before, I have been shocked and dismayed over what I have seen in the last week in a half. Dobbs is simply a conservative man in liberal's clothing who builds his entire broadcast on xenophobic ideals and basks in the limelight as a "straight shooter" because he will criticize the current administration.
Don't get me wrong, I'm entirely for free speech. I think it's essential that the media present as many points of view as they possibly can (even though they rarely actually do).
Dobbs, however, does more harm than good. He does the public a disservice by completely mischaracterizing the immigration debate. Claiming that "radical factions" have taken control of the movement, Dobbs argues that only people with "special interests" or "corporate influence" are for open borders. He claims that the interest in dealing with the immigration problem is purely many companies fighting to continue keeping low-wage workers. His argument is, functionally, a marginally more sophisticated but equally xenophobic version of "they're stealing our jobs". Anyone who examines the economic effects of suddenly deporting 12 million people is, according to Dobbs, simply bowing to corporate pressure.
This biased opinion is bolstered by equally biased and unscientific polls that frequent his show. Claiming that a Guest Worker Policy is against the will of the people, Dobbs argues that Americans "in poll after poll and survey after survey" have shown that they are "opposed to illegal immigration". Well, that's not hard. I'm sure that most people will admit to erring on the side of the law in most cases. However, saying that people are against amnesty or making the citizenship requirements easier simply because they're against illegal immigration is a basic logical fallacy. Dobbs not only doesn't cite direct data, he doesn't even cite precise or vague sources of any kind for these polls.
He also has polls of his own, which include such unbiased questions as "Before even discussing so-called comprehensive immigration reform, do you believe the president and Congress should first be required to uphold the current laws of the United States which compel them to enforce our borders and uphold our existing immigration laws? Yes or no." Clearly, in order to get a true picture of what people want in immigration reform, you should ask them whether or not Congress should behave legally.
Remember, amnesty is not an option. Dobbs points out that

Schwarzenegger invokes Ronald Reagan's name to declare that we can have immigration policies that both strengthen our borders and welcomes immigrants.
No, Governor, we can't.

He continues by saying that securing our borders is key to any effective immigration policy. While I agree that secure borders are a priority, I object to the basic logical principles of Dobbs' argument. Maybe I've spent a bit too much time studying for the LSATs lately, but it is quite evident to me that Dobbs is operating on a flawed premise. Yes, Mr. Dobbs, we CAN have immigration policies that both strengthen our borders and welcome immigrants. Perhaps this comes in strengthening our ports. Maybe it's a Guest Worker Program, or maybe it's in making the path to citizenship easier to encourage people to actually take the legal and legitimate path to life in the United States. However, there is no concrete reason why strengthening our borders requires adopting the xenophobic and uninformed attitude that Dobbs proposes.

A great article on Kos talks about the new Democratic strategy to tackle what is always an election year wedge issue: abortion.

The "The Prevention First Act" requires health plans to cover "contraceptive drugs, devices and outpatient services" if they cover the cost of other prescription drugs and outpatient services. More on the bill:

It would also require the secretary of health and human services to disseminate information on emergency contraception to healthcare providers and require hospitals receiving federal money to provide emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault.

The bill would also mandate that federally funded programs provide information about contraceptives that is medically accurate and includes data on health benefits and failure rates.

Hopefully we will actually see some action on what is an exceptionally important issue, instead of simply hearing more talk from politicos. Women's rights are important and often ignored, and expanding access to contraception is an easy step in the right direction.

Alternet had a great article about something that was also covered in the Denver Post last week: the brutal decisions facing many female US soldiers currently serving in Iraq.

Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.

When I read this, I was stunned. Surely there was some exaggeration, or this wasn't that widespread.
In a 2004 report released by the Department of Defense, the rates of reported alleged sexual assault were 69.1 and 70.0 per 100,000 uniformed service members in 2002 and 2003.
The army's response to this increasingly common problem was to provide an 800 number that victims could call to report this heinous crime, but that solution was certainly not without its share of problems:

There was an 800 number women could use to report sexual assaults. But no one had a phone, she added. And no one answered that number, which was based in the United States. Any woman who successfully connected to it would get a recording. Even after more than 83 incidents were reported during a six-month period in Iraq and Kuwait, the 24-hour rape hot line was still answered by a machine that told callers to leave a message.

While Congressional hearings were called for, none have been scheduled - despite acknowledgements of the problem going all the way back to February of 2004 when Secretary Rumsfeld directed a 90 day review of military sexual assault policies, no ground has been gained.
How can America truly claim to support our troops when we allow them to be victims of heinous human rights abuses and leave them without recourse?

This makes me sick.

More than a dozen states are considering new laws to protect health workers who do not want to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs, a surge of legislation that reflects the intensifying tension between asserting individual religious values and defending patients' rights.

About half of the proposals would shield pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and "morning-after" pills because they believe the drugs cause abortions. But many are far broader measures that would shelter a doctor, nurse, aide, technician or other employee who objects to any therapy. That might include in-vitro fertilization, physician-assisted suicide, embryonic stem cells and perhaps even providing treatment to gays and lesbians.

OK, so the first part of that is nothing new - conservatives have been trying to protect pharmacists who don't want to give out birth control or the morning after pill since Priscilla Owens' notable case a few years ago.
But what was that last part? "perhaps even providing treatment to gays and lesbians". Has our nation slid so far that we will legislate people into second class citizenry? I thought we got rid of that.
Thanks again to Phyllis Schlafly and to all of those she convinced to give up their rights to equal pay, equal health treatment, and marriage to whomever they please in fear of the unisex bathroom.
The proposed legislation goes from the highly politicized to the somewhat mundane:

Doctors opposed to fetal tissue research, for example, could refuse to notify parents that their child was due for a chicken pox inoculation because the vaccine was originally produced using fetal tissue cell cultures, said R. Alto Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin.

"That physician would be immunized from medical malpractice claims and state disciplinary action," Charo said.

It threatens to deny all of us - men, women, and children alike - basic medical services that have been in common practice for decades.
Has politics infected one of the most widely necessary professions in the country? Are we so blinded by homophobia and politics that we can't see it fit to provide someone access to basic health services?

It's ok if you torture, so long as you don't tattle.

Atleast that's what Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's stance is when it comes to the secret prisons the CIA has been running in Eastern Europe.

When asked about these secret prisons and the human rights violations occurring there, Frist simply replied, "I am not concerned about what goes on".
What DOES worry him, however, are the leaks that led to US knowing about the prisons. "My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security -- period," Frist said. "That is a legitimate concern."

Really, Bill? What about the other leaks?

Amidst the flurry of gubernatorial elections, Congress moved quickly to approve cutting $50 million in civilian protection funding in Darfur. Rather than following the lead of Senator Corzine, Congress seems to have backtracked on any actions it's taken on the genocide in Darfur.
The State Department, when faced with the question of genocide in Darfur, responded with an upgrade that puts the Khartoum government on the same level as Switzerland (yes, Switzerland, that constant abuser of human rights).
Before the genocide began in February 2003, the Bush Administration was very interested in helping the mostly Christian southern region of Sudan negotiate with the Khartoum government, who they had engaged in a civil for more than 20 years.
Once the negotiations fell through, the Bush administration lost interest - somehow, the ethnic cleansing going on in the Western region just wasn't as compelling as the civil war between the North and the South.
As Congress, the Executive Branch, and the international community continually failed to confront the government or provide substantive assistance in aid distribution or words of outrage, 400,000 people have died and millions have been displaced.
What will it take for Congress to act? Why is the Bush Administration reluctant to simply agree to allow the ICC to try the perpetrators in Darfur, and why won't they place more diplomatic pressure on the Khartoum government? Why hasn't our media done ANYTHING?
Simple: obscure national interests prove more pressing and more worthy of media coverage than hundreds of thousands of people dying.
The US won't press for the ICC because our government is afraid it will be used to try US soldiers. They won't allow the ICJ, either, since that would mean we accept their jurisdiction and would be liable for past offenses (basically, Nicaragua in the 1980s, among many others).
We won't pressure Khartoum, because we see them as being an intelligence ally in the War on Terror. Basically, we'll look the other way on genocide for information that we could get simply by improving relations with other nations.
When I had the privilege of meeting with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card last week, he claimed that the reason Administration approval ratings were so low was because the media focuses on sensationalism. "A school opening," he said, "isn't considered to be news as much as a road-side bombing". If that's the case, Andy, then why did Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, and the Runaway Bridge have substantially more media coverage than Darfur? Is whether Jessica Simpson is or isn't wearing her wedding ring really more sensational than the continued and systematic government-sponsored killing of hundreds of thousands of people? Is what President Bush keeps in his pockets really more substantial than Congress cutting all the civilian protection for those whose government has failed them - for a region plagued by government-sponsored genocide?
It's really hard to see where the blame should lie, since there's so much of it and so many people seem to continually ignore what should be a growing global concern. While we hear about passages from Scooter Libby's dirty novel, 200 internally displaced persons - those who have "escaped" the genocide - die each day. We have an obligation to those and to those who are victims of the genocide itself to continue to work to pressure the government and keep this ongoing genocide in the national consciousness.

Karl Rove is drowning this week, and not in indictments, despite many predictions to the contrary.

The drowning, though, is more akin to a Harry Houdini-style trick than the demise of the Nixon Administration. Despite indictments being delivered a week ago, the resignation of a high-level official, an ongoing investigation involving a man who is considered by many to be the architect o the Bush Administration, and Bush's approval ratings hitting historic lows, if you turn on the television this week, you'll be treated to conjectures about Alito and pictures of chickens (not that I don't take avian flu seriously, but c'mon, CNN - either give truly in-depth coverage or get a new graphic).

Jacob Weisberg, in yesterday's Slate, wrote a really intriguing article entitled "Karl Rove's Dying Dream: So Much for the Permanent Republican Majority". What he criticized, however, is buried by a media fascinated by the limelight (oh, wait, excuse me, a media offering hard-hitting journalism).

Weisberg discussed the failures of the Bush administration in catering to the middle. In an article riddled with McKinley analogies (which fit), he points out the strategic problems with catering only to your base.

Conservatives of all kinds are in a militant mood heightened by their success in muscling Bush on Miers. They do not realize how their militancy alienates not just the left, but the swingers in the center whom Republicans need to win.

Rove is actually the second Republican realigner to stumble in this way in recent years. After the 1994 election, Newt Gingrich had his own visions of political sugarplums. Gingrich's unsuccessful revolution was more libertarian and less moralistic. He thought the new Republican majority would coalesce around shrinking government (a theme Bush has soft-pedaled, preferring to undermine government through neglect and incompetence). Gingrich was also, frankly, a little nuts. But he failed because he made the same basic mistake that Rove did. Gingrich thought he'd won a mandate for radical change and enshrined a new governing majority. He forgot about the country's nonideological majority, which likes Medicare, Social Security, national parks, and student loans.

Is this the end of the road for conservatives, or have progressives made the same mistakes? One of the most interesting things about the Left is that it's an ideological amalgam. Many (myself included), fault the Left for running to the center. Should we? It's certainly better on a philosophical level to continue our ideological diversity, but is it practical? Should we be trying the "center-out" approach that Weisberg mentions?

No.

The progressive movement isn't party-specific. It's a movement centered entirely on a world-view, on an ideology. Moving to the middle kills the movement, it's as simple as that. We need to work to sell our ideas, not to sell out. We need to show people why our ideas are important to them, and we need to mobilize the "disaffected youth" of our generation.

We may not have a man behind the curtain, but that doesn't prevent us from pulling some Houdini-style tricks of our own (just, please, not this one).

With all this sound and fury over the Alito nomination and the distinct possibility of an ideological shift in the Court, I've started to wonder - how important is the Court in implementing social change?

Gerald Rosenberg, in his book The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? says that there are two basic theories of how courts can operate. The constrained court simply interprets the Constitution and current laws; the dynamic court applies the ideals behind the Constitution to the laws of a changing society. (A good example of the dynamic court would be the Brown v. Board decision)

In an article in this month's issue of The Progressive, Howard Zinn has a really intriguing article entitled "It's not up to the Court". Zinn argues that social activism is the root of change, not Court decisions, because of the Court's lack of enforcement ability.

The best answer is found somewhere between Rosenberg and Zinn. While the Court is not usually the instigator of a movement, a Court decision can bring a movement into the public eye, show the importance of a movement to the legislature, and give movements a rallying point. Having a conservative court wouldn't help the progressive movement - the question is, how much would it hurt?

If the Warren Court had been conservative, would Brown v. Board have kickstarted the civil rights movement? Would Tinker v. Des Moines have increased awareness about symbolic speech and increased the use of such speech in the anti-war and feminist movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s?
Without the Burger Court, would Roe v. Wade have legalized abortion? With the growth of the anti-feminist movement in the 1970s (personified by Phyllis Schlafly), would the feminist movement have continued the battle to legalize abortion? Would it have been successful? Would we have the Lemon test (from Lemon v. Kurtzman) to protect the Establishment clause? Without the Court-imposed moratorium on the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia, would the death penalty debate have gathered as much strength?

The Court has proved essential for the continued presence and success of many social movements in the past. With the growth of grassroots social movements, one could argue that the SCOTUS is no longer as essential for the success of these movements, since a lot of change can be enacted on the state level. However, a conservative SCOTUS could easily overturn such actions, especially a constructionist court.

While Alito's past decisions and personal views are important, the role of a new Court in influencing the effectiveness of social movements needs to factor into our discussions.

Some may see Court decisions as only fulfilling a Hollow Hope, but there's more to it than just sound and fury.

ThinkProgress and the Progress Report have a great analysis on Alito's views and previous court opinions that he's written. I found the one on immigration really interesting:

In two cases involving the deportation of immigrants, the majority twice noted Alito's disregard of settled law. In Dia v. Ashcroft, the majority opinion states that Alito's dissent "guts the statutory standard" and "ignores our precedent." In Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, the majority stated Alito's opinion contradicted "well-recognized rules of statutory construction." [Dia v. Ashcroft, 2003; Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, 2004]

This, while it disappointed me, didn't really surprise me - so far, it looks like Alito sides with the government in cases of individual rights (Doe v. Groody), and with businesses in cases of regulation(Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development, Bray v. Marriott Hotels).

What is surprising, to me, anyway, is this opinion on political asylum, put out by none other than Scalito himself (brought to you by SCOTUSblog)

[Alito wrote]A majority opinion in Fatin v. INS, 12 F.3d 1233 (3d Cir. 1993), holding that an Iranian woman seeking asylum could establish that she had a well founded fear of persecution in Iran if she could show that compliance with that country's "gender specific laws and repressive social norms," such as the requirement that women wear a veil in public, would be deeply abhorrent to her. Judge Alito also held that she could establish eligibility for asylum by showing that she would be persecuted because of gender, belief in feminism, or membership in a feminist group.

Try as I did, I couldn't find the full opinion for Fatin v. INS to see the reasoning behind Alito's opinion. Your thoughts?

Who's next? Was this just a strategic press for time by the GoP? Will Bush pick a "moderate" nominee or a more conservative nominee to assuage his base? Is this going to completely kill Bush's political capital? How should progressives respond?


Frankly, I'm not sure what to think. I hesitate to say that it was a press for time. I think that Harriet presented a lot of opportunities for the White House, even excluding cronyism. She was on Reid's shortlist of people he'd like to see nominated, so it had the appearance of trying to appease the Dems. She was an evangelical Christian, which looked like it would appease the right; she was a woman, which is widely considered to be important in filling O'Connor's spot. She had no paper trail, and so it seemed she would create little controversy.
None of these ended up helping her. She WAS on Reid's short list, but no one knew why, and it looks like he defended his choice, even in the end. Most of the other democrats were quiet.
The right was not so quiet, voicing a lot of concern over Harriet Miers - simply being an evangelical Christian was not enough to save her (which, actually, gives me some hope that logic is still present in the Right).
The lack of a paper trail concerned people from both sides - the Left not wanting to appoint an "extremist" judge, and the Right not wanting to appoint "another Souter".

I'm a little scared to think of who may be next. Priscilla Owens is a LOT worse than Miers, as shown by her paper trail of activist decisions.

Thoughts?

I will be the first to admit that meeting the South Carolina Congressional delegation was NOT at the top of my list of things to do while in DC. When I met Representative John Spratt (D - yes, we have a few Democrats in SC) yesterday, though, he had some really good points about the Democratic party.

What he said that stuck out the most was, "Look, the Republicans have the presidency - the bully pulpit - and they control the floors in the House and Senate. They have a bully pulpit, and we just have 200-some people with bullhorns. We need to use those bullhorns to change things - use them in our home districts, to educate people on the issues and show them the true importance of political involvement, and use them in DC to unify the party and have a stronger stance on issues".

Before we grab our bullhorns, though, there's something worth noting - the Democratic party, while it may not be as populist as it used to be, is still a very ideologically diverse party. As a result, we're just not as solidified as the GoP - nor have we been in recent history, nor will we be anytime in the near future. We need to view the solution to modern political woes as being grassroots movements. The conservatives have done this for thirty years, since the STOP ERA movement in the 1970s.

Our goal needs to be mobilization and education. We might not win anytime soon (though I've got my fingers crossed for '06 just like everyone else) - building a strong movement takes time. We can, however, initiate change on the local level through involvement in groups, grassroots activism, and education. As progressives, we need to show people our view of the future - of what it means to be progressive - to motivate them to get involved.

We need to grab our bullhorns before we have any hope of running the bully pulpit.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson may have misspoken.

When Tim Russert asked, "Senator Hutchison, do you think there's a possibility the White House may pull Harriet Miers' nomination?", she replied, "No, I do not, Tim. I think they have complete faith in her, as I do. I know her. They know her. She is totally qualified for the Supreme Court of the United States. Her legal background, her absolute leadership in the legal field when she was a practicing lawyer are unqualified."

...ouch. Looks like details are important on more than just your Supreme Court questionnaire

In this morning's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz examines the issues of gender bigotry and quotas with regards to the Miers nomination.
While the story eventually gets off-track (for the last few pages, actually), I think that Kurtz raises some very good points that merit discussion.

Now, with the president arguing that Harriet Miers is the single most qualified person in the United States to sit on the Supreme Court, Ed Gillespie, Laura Bush and others are saying her critics may be sexist.

Translation: I can consider gender factors in making my choice, but anyone who raises questions about whether this non-judge is qualified to sit on the nation's highest bench is doing so because she's a woman.

Does that smack of a double standard? Would conservative pundits really be praising a man with the same lack of judicial experience or intellectual writing?

In fact, I would argue that resorting to the old you're-attacking-her-because-she's-a-woman argument is itself a bit sexist, because you're asking potential critics to hold Miers to a different standard because she is a woman.

As a woman and as a feminist, I have always disliked the "separate but equal" policies that still govern the way our society looks at gender. The very fact that not as much is expected of women as of men is something that kills not only "the movement" but also a school of thought that could benefit us on a number of levels. John Dickerson, in a Slate article last Wednesday, sums it up well when he says, "Bush has subjected Miers to what he calls the soft bigotry of low expectations"
Another quiet and deadly threat to gender equality is the idea that women are so fundamentally mentally different from men that we're incapable of ever doing the same things. As one of the girls in my program here put it, "Why would we want to be aggressive and push to get ahead? The maternal instinct prevents us from doing so." As much as it took for me to believe that someone as success-driven and ambitious as my friend would believe such a thing, I find it even more shocking that this belief is not contained to one specific group or demographic. The widespread nature of the belief that women aren't good at pushing to get ahead is also examined in Women Don't Ask. Katha Pollitt, a columnist at the Nation has also written fantastic examinations on the subject, including an article entitled "Invisible Women", in which she examines the same common myths that women "just aren't suited" for certain jobs (in that case, political punditry) because

Women don't shout. Women don't like politics. Women shrink from intellectual debate. Women don't try.

So, I say, we owe it to Harriet Miers (...yes, it WAS hard to choke out that sentence, even on the keyboard) and to women in general to expect the same of her as we would of any other nominee. Yes, we want to avoid the "all white, all male Court", but thinking that we have to lower expectations to do that only continues the bigotry we're trying to fight. If we continue the mindset that we have to lower the bar for women and minorities to meet the same qualifications of white men, then we're furthering a worse and more insidious form of bigotry - the bigotry of low expectations.

*drumroll*... HEALTHCARE! But wait! Don't stop reading, I guarantee this is more important to you than you may think.
As a 20 year-old traditionally healthy college student, I don't think much about healthcare. Two weeks ago, though, when I busted my knee and landed myself smack in the middle of my first ER visit sans-parents, I definitely started to think.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still on dad's health insurance... for the time being. But what about all the people who aren't? We've all heard the statistic that 45.8 million people are uninsured in the United States each year. What many people don't know is that that number doesn't include the transitionally uninsured. The transitionally uninsured are the people who are going from one job to the next, who graduated college and their coverage under their parents' health care, or who are in a waiting period for their new healthcare policy. Many employers put this waiting period at 90 days, but if you're unfortunate enough to be waiting for coverage in a High Risk Pool (which is offered by 33 states for people who don't qualify for other healthcare programs), odds are that you're going to be waiting for 12 months before you see any coverage. The transitionally uninsured will, at some point, be you and me, and they currently number 10 million each year.
But, what's the big deal? I mean, if they're too lazy to get health insurance, that's their problem, right? No. Actually, it's our problem, and it's our laziness that's dragging our economy down and leaving people sick. In fact, 50% of all bankruptcies are atleast, in part, due to medical expenses. Our new bankruptcy bill certainly isn't doing anything to help. Actually, while we're paying more for basic needs like health insurance, the government is covering us less.
Well, what can we do about it? Georgetown's Health Policy Institute is working with the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association to bring the debate onto a more personal level in order to illustrate the true harms of non-comprehensive health care. The Center for American Progress released Progressive Prescriptions for a Healthy America, which outlines what the goverment should do to provide more efficient and more comprehensive health care.
Campus Progress has also started Critical Condition, which provides a look at health care from a young perspective.
So, read up, and get involved, because the health (and money) you save may be your own.

After watching one too many spy movies, I had an unquenchable desire to boldly go where no liberal pro-choice Catholic feminist should ever want to go - to a Young America Foundation training seminar.

Yes, that's right, folks, for the past two or three days, I have been trying my hardest, waiting eagerly by the phone, to learn from "America's largest campus outreach program". After having eyed my roommate's spoils from a YAF luncheon on the Hill last week (...a Reagan poster, a Bush poster (where his wave looks a bit *too* "SIG HEIL"ish), and two "I Love Capitalism" posters), I was eager to see what this conference would bring. I mean, c'mon, Bay Buchanan is the keynote speaker! (If you don't know Bay, her current speech topics include "Guns and More Guns: The Case for Arming the Citizenry", "Failures of Feminism" and, my personal favorite, "Immigration: Time for a Moratorium!").

After all this excitement, all I was left with was heartbreak (...and my "I Love Capitalism" poster, courtesy of my poster). Apparently, per the Events Coordinator at YAF, they limit attendance to "established" conservatives.

Is there a handshake? A password? Maybe a membership card?

Where's the line between a Republican voter and an "Established" conservative? Does it mean you got an Exxon grant?

I think therein lies one (of oh-so-many) key differences between the progressive student movement and the conservative one. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think any of my colleagues here at Campus Progress would ever say, "ah, sorry, I'm afraid you can't host a speaker/attend our conference/write on our site, you're just not progressive enough".

So, welcome to the "other side"- the place that's just a little bit off the beaten path to "established" conservatism.

In the 1930s, then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began an immense effort called the Civilian Conservation Corps in order to put the unemployed to work and help our country help itself.
In the early 1960s, John F. Kennedy renewed that call to service, saying not to ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do to your country.
Despite the massive political protest movements that have followed in the wake of both administrations and the move towards grassroots politics, it seems that this call to service has gone unheeded by our generation.
In 2004, the total number of volunteers, according to the Bureau for Labor Statistics report found on their website (i would link, but my html skills need help, sorry), was 64,542,000.
While this sounds like a great statistic, the amount of volunteers aged 16-24 was only 8,821,000. Our generation was trumped by those who were 35-44, who accounted for 14,783,000 of the volunteers.

What does this mean? A few things.
First, a nation is, in itself, dependent upon the actions of its people. A common misconception of liberalism and progressivism as a whole is that we expect the government to do everything while its citizens sit back and watch. I see this as being vastly untrue. In fact, a government is only as good as its people. Even if we somehow became a socialist state that provided everything for its people and community service wasn't "necessary", it would still be important. Community service gives people the initiative to help others and helps them to consider outside communities when voting and enacting policy. If we have a whole generation that, for the most part, are not volunteering, we don't have this initiative and, in the end, we will be left with a group of people who can't help each other and, thus, can't help themselves.
Next, the only way to truly address the needs of the community is through grassroots efforts. Even the most effective government isn't aware of all of the needs of its people - it's necessary for the communities themselves to step up, and that requires the people within those communities to help each other. With our government structure as it is, funding is provided from the top down. However, this doesn't mean that action can't be or shouldn't be provided from the bottom up.
Americorps, one of the largest American Civil Service organizations, is undergoing massive cuts. NYC Americorps, for example, underwent a $15million cut between FY 2002-03 and FY 2003-04.

The only way to counteract a lack of action from the top down is to push from the bottom up. Get involved! With situations like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, an increasing poverty rate, a lack of healthcare in a lot of communities, and cuts to afterschool programs, organizations are hurting, and they need our help. Donate your time, your talent, or your treasure to help your fellow American and help America as a whole to improve itself for now and for generations to come.

"be prepared" is a message with which my childhood was absolutely inured. while i thought it repetitive and useless at the time, now that i've hit the real world, i'm counting my blessings. administration, officals, however, apparently don't have the same blessings to count.

in 2004, FEMA was in new orleans. surprised? so was i, at first.

due to increased hurricane risks in the gulf, FEMA

held a five-day exercise at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge to develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana.

this "catastrophic hurricane", which FEMA labeled Hurricane Pam, had 120mph winds and the potential to destroy the new orleans levee. despite determining that this would completely devastate the city, funding was not raised.

ok, ok, OBVIOUSLY i'm just one of those stupid communist lefties that want to tax us out of existance, right?

today, though, i'm not talking about taxation. i'm talking about mobilization.

5 days before Hurricane Katrina hit land in Louisiana and Mississippi, the National Hurricane Center predicted that it would do just that. In the five days that preceded the actual landfall, FEMA, the federal government, and the officials of Louisiana and Mississippi should have put the pedal to the metal.

THAT'S when the yellow school buses should have been evacuating the poor.
THAT'S when food should have been sent to food banks in northern Louisiana or Houston, out of harm's way (or, extensive harm's way), but in reach to easily mobilize to the disaster area after the storm had ended.
THAT'S when the red cross should have mobilized medical personnel into Eastern Texas and Northern Louisiana, so that there were enough medical supplies and personnel to tend to the poor huddled masses that our country is supposed to protect.

THAT'S when funding should have been authorized to allow FEMA to put all of this into motion, because in the face of nature's phenomenol strength, the only defenses we have are time and strategy.

is exactly the problem - we've ignored the signals, and lost the only defense that we had against nature itself.