Posted on 01/28/2006 2:29:32 PM PST by WestTexasWend
- It's a good idea, but tricky to pull off -
The land next to the levee was a blank, with only house foundations hinting where a neighborhood had been. St. Bernard Parish was silent, buildings jammed with rubble. But Tulane University was a comparative garden, spruced for students coming back to Tulane, Loyola, Dillard and Xavier universities. At a campus welcome-back concert, Gov. Kathleen Blanco greeted the students joyfully. They were, Blanco said, the greatest stakeholders in Louisiana's future and valued candidates for her proposed "summer of service."
Blanco's idea was distinctly vague: She pledged to flesh it out at a February meeting of governors' spouses. But the rough outline was this: In conjunction with faith groups, Habitat for Humanity and other volunteer organizations, Louisiana would encourage college students across the country to come and help with reconstruction. It's an intriguing idea that could bring meaningful progress — or easily become a mess.
The crucial part is to resist any illusions. Hurricane Katrina unleashed the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history, destroying as many as a quarter of a million homes and erasing the communal life of three-fourths of New Orleans' population. Most of the city's schools remain unusable. The area is so immersed in mold that the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council advises tearing out all carpets, flooring, drywall and insulation soaked for more than two days.
This toxic landscape cannot be rehabilitated by college students. No matter how good their intentions, they lack the skills, organization, continuity of presence and materials that would make Louisiana whole again. Above all, they lack the funding. Already, state residents and lawmakers are squaring off over who will receive promised billions in federal rebuilding dollars. Neither the state nor the federal government should try to abdicate the vast rebuilding duty to young volunteers.
At the same time, there are some successful precedents that Summer of Service organizers should consider as they try to make good use of the idealism thousands of young people have expressed. Volunteers in Nicaragua and China, in the early, hopeful days of their countries' social revolutions, had great success bringing literacy and medical care to the poor. In this country, volunteers wielded collective power in the civil rights movement.
Harnessing that sense of social responsibility, often dormant during recent decades, would perhaps do more for the college students than for Louisiana.
To administer any massive volunteer undertaking, Louisiana should tap experts from agencies with experience mobilizing such efforts, including Americorps, the Red Cross and the church and lay organizers who got their start in the civil rights era.
But the best hope for a successful project is to keep it manageable. The first step would be creating a state office to facilitate projects by experienced, smaller-scale groups. The Toledo Blade reported that Ohio colleges are deluged with volunteers, and at least half a dozen schools have planned service-related trips.
Habitat for Humanity told the newspaper that students vie for its 90 weekly Gulf Coast volunteer spots. Louisiana officials should quiz Habitat and similar groups about the best size and organizational strategies to make volunteers useful.
The state should also investigate ways to pay its good will workers. The average college student today graduates with $27,000 in debt. State and federal leaders can join forces to help student helpers take part in the rebuilding without bankrupting themselves. Colleges should offer credit for volunteer semesters in the disaster zone.
But the most promising model of all, said Ira Colby, dean of the University of Houston's school of social work, might be the Works Progress Administration of the Great Depression. Tens of thousands of displaced Louisianans long to go home. Yet they also need to support families. A smartly administered WPA-style project would marshal or promote individuals' particular abilities and also pay a living wage. It would offer sustenance, self-respect and the benefit of rebuilding their own cherished community.
Speaking of vague notions for the future, part of me wishes Trump would take this on.
What a great idea--actually working for your government handout, an idea conservatives have been promoting for years. Funny how when we suggest it we're smeared as cold, heartless beasts.
Hey Blanco, get your own fat ass down to New Orleans and do some work.
I think this is a great idea! All those liberal college kids crying racism and foul on Bush for Katrina should show the country how to do it right!
If they can get the kids to clean up for free, that will leave a lot more money to find its way into the corrupt Democrats pockets.
Unions will protest this unless they pay the students prevailing wage!
There is a huge lack of mature, responsible leadership in Louisiana.
Can someone from New York City, please, come on down, and show us its done?
Sounds to me like the Dimocrats are becoming a little more obvious about their belief in involuntary servitude: after all, we owe everything we are to the State, right?
--Exactly. Your right.
Nothing new here. The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), WPA (Works Progress Administration), Habitat for Humanity and the Peace Corps all rolled into one. They just want to put a new suit of clothes on it and douse it with a different perfume....
Yes. Democrats are very often ready to volunteer the services of others
Someone should tell Blanco that there are plenty of paying construction jobs in Florida.
Construction added 25,100 jobs in 2005, a 4.9 percent increase spurred by the need to repair and replace buildings damaged or destroyed by a spate of hurricanes that stuck Florida during the past two years.May said the construction numbers could be even higher, but contractors have been having a hard time finding enough workers to meet the demand.
I don't think Democratic "idealists" are very adept at real-world problem solving. Blanco might be labeled a union buster, if she doesn't watch out.
This will be as successful as a 'thousand points of light'. The government created it's own give-me-something-for-nothing attitude and now they have to deal with it.
Kind of like the Boy Scout program already is, huh?
Yeah really, and I'm sure that N.O.'s welfare rolls weren't empty. How about getting some of those people working for their "keep." Get some local prisoners out there too. What, these people can't put in 8 or 10 hours of non-back breaking labor.
I makes you wonder what the U.S. would have done had it been Germany or another European country after WWII today. I have visions of attorneys having everyone bickering with each other.
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