DOES VOLUNTEERISM SING THE BLUES?
by Kevin Wohlmut
Once again my hand has been
forced: I was planning to discuss my personal and political motivations for
joining the Peace Corps much later in my two-year term. But a friend passed
around this
editorial from the magazine The Nation (click
here for the original version with active links to background data), so
I am going to open the discussion now. (To do so, I will quote extensively from
the Nation editorial.)
College graduates are "applying to service organizations... in record numbers," says USA Today. Teach for America has tripled its applicants since 2000, the Peace Corps has more volunteers than it's had in 30 years, and AmeriCorps has 50% more applicants than it had two years ago.
...While I'd like to believe that we're the most self-sacrificial generation ever, I think it's more likely that we're volunteering so much because we don't have a lot of other options. For one, we're massively in debt. ...Meanwhile, the labor market for recent graduates, while showing slight signs of improvement, remains atrocious.
But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we really are the most self-sacrificial generation in decades --*
(* We aren't by the way. This CIRCLE study shows that older generations are just as likely to consistently volunteer as our generation.)...will this trend towards volunteerism actually make the world a better place? As I've argued in the past, there's a darker side to the rise of volunteerism: my generation's lack of belief in its ability to spark widespread, systemic social change. My peers are "chipping in" because they don't believe that they can dramatically alter the status quo, only tweak it. They help homeless individuals but don't believe that they can eradicate the problem of homelessness. They deliver donated drugs to developing nations, but don't believe that they can affectively challenge the corrupt pharmaceutical companies that keep the prices so high.
Don't get me wrong. There's a tremendous need for volunteers in the world, and many individual lives are changed forever thanks to community servants. But if volunteering continues to replace activism-- rather than exist in concert with activism-- we're in trouble.
Jonathan Chait made the important point in his LA Times column that Warren Buffett's multi-billion dollar donation to the Gates Foundation pales in comparison to what the government could have done with all of the lost money from the Estate Tax cut. ...Individual acts are important, but they can't come close to matching impact of institutional change.
The world can't afford it if young people "chip in" but then check out of politics. If we don't struggle for social justice, the inequities that necessitate our volunteer service will persist indefinitely.
I don't disagree with most of the sentiments in the article. Taken in isolation, most are pretty much true. But as a whole, the article was far too reductionist. There are so many other factors to looking for a decent job than simply debt and salary versus volunteerism with nothing in between. Between political involvement versus apathy, with nothing in between. I'd like to emphasize some of the linkages and hidden background which the article by Sam Graham-Felsen seems too glibly to gloss over. I have enjoyed Mr. Graham-Felsen's writing style (in two articles now; a second which I also comment on). I don't know this author personally and have nothing against him, but so much of what he wrote seems incorrect to me, that I just couldn't stop myself from writing a rebuttal.
From the article, it doesn't seem like this author has any firsthand experience of the Peace Corps, nor even heard anything secondhand from friends who have served there. By saying that "many individual lives are changed forever thanks to community servants", that volunteers "don't believe that they can dramatically alter the status quo, only tweak it" and "volunteerism [is] my generation's lack of belief in its ability to spark widespread, systemic social change", Mr. Graham-Felsen gives the impression that work in the Peace Corps (or other volunteer services) is nothing more than digging a ditch here, pumping a well there, while giving up my salary for a couple of years. If one were to judge political activism by this same harsh standard, then writing to your Congressman means nothing besides grammar practice, and participating in a million-man-march means nothing besides leg exercise.
I find this offensive. I happen to think my work in the Peace Corps contributes significantly to much larger, "meta-" goals. The physical work I do from day to day to improve people's lives is only one of three goals. Number two, I am promoting a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served. There are negative stereotypes of Americans in many countries, including Mexico where I now serve, which must be fought just as earnestly as we fight racial prejudice and other discrimination at home. Thirdly, through communications with friends and family at home (such as my website), and also by speaking to more and more people in the future, my duty is to promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people. Americans often have mistaken ideas about foreign lands and their citizens, even the ones on our borders. Every Peace Corps volunteer like me, who shares his or her experiences with friends and relatives at home, helps to promote the truth about the world we live in.
I am not simply fantasizing about these three goals in my own mind, by the way, they are written down in the Peace Corps handbook, which I am quoting. (For example, our vacation eligibility is calculated on an assumption that we are working 7 days a week, because we are assumed to be promoting Goals #2 and #3 at all times, 24 hours a day. ) If Mr. G-F does not believe volunteers in foreign countries help resolve current political problems such as Immigration or adherence to global political treaties, then I would like to hear how he intends to make progress in those areas without (a) promoting a better understanding of the American people on the part of foreigners, and (b) promoting a better understanding about foreign countries on behalf of the American people. Those are the explicit, written goals of the Peace Corps, but they are shared with many other volunteer organizations as well. In short, I happen to believe that large-scale volunteerism will change my country. And the world.
Then, when comparing volunteerism with job-seeking on a personal scale, in my experience there is a huge sense of dignity associated with being a volunteer. As opposed to an unwilling serf who shows up reluctantly at his desk because it's the only way he can pay his rent. (I may have been lucky in this respect -- some of my fellow volunteers have told me horror stories, but after hearing and reading about many volunteers, I think my experience is in the majority.)
This dignity is sorely lacking in the American job market as a whole today. So that's why more and more volunteers, young and old, are willing to go to great lengths -- even giving up one's salary to work in a distant country -- to chase it.
(To my former co-workers who may be reading this: not all my jobs denied me dignity and respect. But I've had enough job experience to know that an awful lot do, and with zero job security in America today, sooner or later I would certainly hit more such jobs. So don't think I am writing about you. But let me tell you the story about one exceptionally stingy engineer whom I worked for in La Jolla. One day, he told me he was writing a proposal which would involve my stamping my Professional Engineer's stamp [i.e., stake my professional reputation] upon a set of plans to decommission a multimillion dollar nuclear plant -- without any prior experience in this field, by the way. At the time, this engineer was paying me $18/hour, gross, pre-tax, with no benefits. A week later, I quit the job. I agree with Mr. G-F's article in this respect: If that kind of thing is considered a "job prospect" these days, why the heck not just chuck the insulting $18 and volunteer for a much better work situation?)
Okay, so right now I end up doing a lot the same things here in the Peace Corps as I was doing in the U.S. I sit at a desk and write and design Civil Engineering reports. But I'm doing that in Mexico, dude! It's much different here. During lunch break, I have sufficient time to walk home, make a meal from scratch, and then take a 45-minute nap. Back in the U.S., "lunch" was the name for the bag of Jack-In-The-Box takeout that I picked up on my way back to the office after running three errands downtown. I am not getting paid a salary, but it's very difficult to put a monetary amount on that lifestyle change. Back at home, in my "conventional" career, I was probably looking at an early death via heart disease at my desk while working late after-hours, if I had stuck to that route instead. The first step towards changing the world is for us young people to survive long enough to try it.
People often tell me, "What you are doing is so noble, I don't think I could make the same sacrifice that you are making." When they say that, I often have to bite back a sarcastic reply -- that many of the things I am voluntarily giving up, "sacrificing" if you will, could easily be taken away from you tomorrow, though no fault of your own, just with the stroke of a corporate red pen. You might be making that sacrifice involuntarily tomorrow, yet nobody ever seems to get upset about that fact. As for me, I simply got tired of waiting for the axe to fall. Apart from the loss of dignity, it's well established that there is virtually zero job security in the American employment scene today.
As a volunteer, you are here on your own time, instead of somebody else "buying" your time away from you. It is far easier to define or invent your own job. You have a lot more control over your day-to-day tasks than when some micromanager "above" you is ordering you to perform your job in a certain way.
When you volunteer for a job, your own personal willingness and altruism are the only job security you are ever likely to see these days. Virtually nobody is going to "fire" someone who is doing work for them for free. (Even if they do, under those terms it's pretty easy to find somewhere else to work.) Again, what monetary price can you put on the fact that a volunteer forges his or her own job security through sheer strength of will?
Having made a living off of altruism, dignity, meta-level thinking, innovative job definition, and job security, I am hopeful that a lot of volunteers will return to the "regular" job market and try very hard to force the American work system into incorporating these ideals. If we can do this, it'll be better for us, and better for America, without question.
One of my inspirations is a college friend who served in the Peace Corps educating rural Kenyans. He quickly found the Kenyans' main problem was lack of textbooks. He used the skills and connections he acquired during Peace Corps to establish a charity to bring textbooks and computers to inner-city American kids in Oakland and Washington. They get money for this by importing handcrafts from rural schoolkids in Africa and Latin America -- money which is poured back into textbooks and education in those countries. If that's not changing the world, what is? Government education and "free trade" don't have a good record of progress on that front. Peace Corps is not simply two years spent digging ditches, dammit!
Mr. Graham-Felsen also can't seem to conceive that a Peace Corps term might be a stepping-stone towards further political involvement. In fact, many Congressmen and other politicians have cited their terms in the Peace Corps as an inspiration to become involved in government. The skills of diplomacy and communication between different cultures seem to serve aspiring politicians well, not only when they campaign for election, but also when they try to assemble legislative coalitions. Besides running for office, another possible way to achieve political power and influence is to get and keep a job in a policy-setting department of the government. Like, for example, the State Department. The Peace Corps is often regarded as a backdoor into jobs at the State Department; you certainly learn skills which the State Department is looking for. (By the way, a fringe benefit of Peace Corps service is a year of preferential hiring for Federal jobs.) With the huge surge in Peace Corps and volunteerism in general, it seems to me inevitable that more young people, and altruistically-motivated ones at that, will soon be looking to use these skills in government and diplomatic positions. But no, Mr. Graham-Felsen dismisses the Peace Corps as "tweaking", so I guess he doesn't see this as an alternative either.
The same author first came to my attention with a column that well captured the apparent hopelessness of our political dilemma of the last decade or more. His "No Alternative" article sure sets forth a solid premise: Young voting-age people today have been told their entire political lives that "There Is No Alternative" to corporate control over society, and "There Is No Alternative" to biting off a huge debt and then paying it down until you die as a wage slave. Therefore, he says, they don't get involved in politics. Hit that one on the nose, all right. Tell ya what, Mr. G-F: you don't go far enough. Young and not-so-young activists have been told for decades that "There Is No Alternative" to the thoroughly corrupt two-party system, "There Is No Alternative" Energy source that can replace America's addiction to oil. "Go back home and play your X-Box, sonny-boy, and let the experts debate energy policy."
But Graham-Felsen's solution to these pressing American problems? The only one he seems to offer is to ask for more protest marches. In his article, he bemoans that "Idealism died in this country because the doctrine of 'There Is No Alternative' killed it." Is it a bit schizophrenic to write an article lamenting the death of idealism -- and then subsequently belittle all American volunteers, the most idealistic people you'll ever meet? It seems as if only certain specific kinds of idealism meet Mr. G-F's standards of acceptability. That's not the way our ancestors made America great.
Politically, though, it's all well and good to say that my generation needs to keep "struggling for social justice" rather than "check out of politics" [through volunteerism, the false dilemma he sets up]. But it's not as if we haven't tried the social justice route before. If my generation has indeed come to the conclusion to "check out" of the system, it's not without reason.
Only a tiny few can actually wield political power in our vast, bureaucratized technological nation, and those of us outside the system have experienced an awful lot of frustration recently. The political assassinations of well-qualified "outsiders" like Howard Dean and Ralph Nader bode very ill for our hopes of initiating social change as newbies working through the political system. Such people get assassinated with political innuendo and biased media coverage these days, rather than with daggers, which I suppose is a significant improvement over past centuries. But they are silenced just the same. Both of the established political parties gleefully co-operate to do so, using the staggeringly vast resources of entrenched institutions, whenever a challenger comes along who really wants to initiate institutional change.
Sam Graham-Felsen specializes in student political movements, and on his blog and in the magazine "The Nation" he has a lot of good coverage of student rallies, marches, and demonstrations -- and bemoans them when they seem to be absent. Great, but what are we to do after the rally is over and the flyers have been swept into the gutter?
The next time some right-winger says that I haven't earned the right to question the war in Iraq, because I haven't served my country overseas, I can say "YES I HAVE." A protest march doesn't confer that lasting honor on its participants.
In his "No Alternative" column, he rightly insists that young people's future depends on ending the pointless war in Iraq.
"And if millions of young people take to the streets - as they have in other countries, and as they have in the past in this country - policies will change, the status quo will shift, and young people will once again believe in their own power."
It seems perplexing for him to say this in a 2006 column, three years after world record-breaking demonstrations of tens of millions of people across the country did not dissuade 42% of the Congressional "opposition" party from voting, along with all of the War Party, for the latest war. Look, dude, we held up our part of the bargain. The politicians did not. As I noted with my Dean and Nader examples above, the entrenched, incumbent, unresponsive politicans have jimmied the system to insure that they are not going anywhere anytime soon, that they can get elected without changing their views. More rallies are not the answer.
Massive immigrant demonstrations may have averted a truly Draconian immigration bill in the recent Congress, but the result was basically the harsh and unsustainable status quo. Darfur rallies are popping up on every corner, yet it's still a subject deemed unworthy of a headline. When the political and media system is so obviously nonresponsive to our voices, what good does another demonstration do? "Don't get me wrong, BUT," (as Mr. G-F says)... I don't think protest rallies should stop or be considered passé, or something like that. BUT, after packing the streets, the next step is not a bigger rally (if that's even possible after the massive rallies of February 2003.) The next step is personal action. Volunteers are taking the next step.
This is not just a non-sequiteur. There is a linkage. Several people in my batch of Peace Corps Volunteers said that a big reason for joining was to make up for negative associations of Americans around the world, following the war in Iraq. A rally blocks traffic for a weekend and it's out of the newspapers by the next Tuesday. We are here working in our host countries, promoting understanding on both sides of a national border, for two years at a time. Which is a more effective course of action?
Mr. G-F bemoans the lack of choice, "No Alternative", but he seems to be attacking the people who break from the mould to propose a new one. In this, he seems to very much resemble the entrenched political establishment who got us into the many public disasters for decades leading up to the Iraq War: with the constant refrain of "Lesser Evil," in every election politicos freely admit that our choices are terrible but they insist we take one or the other anyway. Look, dude, the system has us sussed out by now, protest marches and all. Waving a sign in a demonstration is indeed more effort than most people bother with, but that alone is not sufficient anymore in order to put our money where our mouth is. We've waved the signs, now we have to live the life.
Articles with this negative theme -- of which I've read a few -- do not make me worry about the effectiveness of my work as a Peace Corps volunteer. Instead, they make me despair of the mainstream political establishment, which Mr. Graham-Felsen seems to be defending from those he perceives as dropouts. The political system in America has lost its Kennedy-era ability to come up with innovative solutions, so it condemns anyone who seems to be taking a different course. If this myopia is the best political thinking from the mainstream parties today, then I think we're in for many future years which will be indistinguishable from the past ones. Major political parties today are clearly bereft of solutions; millions of voters on both sides will agree, with one party saying nothing but "Stay The Course" and the message from the other party's blogger convention saying "Best not expect much from us anytime soon but ya just gotta vote for us anyway". Screw 'em both, I'm gonna go be a U.S. diplomat in Mexico.
This is a new Peace Corps, it's not just college students digging ditches anymore and it has adapted with the times. So have other volunteer organizations who survived the Gordon Gecko decade of the last century. Please let us citizens try out some new ideas!
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