Ask what you can do for your country.
"My wife Patti and I owe so much to our service in the Peace Corps. It inspired a lifetime of public service that began in Ethiopia during the late 1960s."U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, a returned Peace Corps volunteer, Co-Chair of the Congressional Peace Corps Caucus.
I have encountered dozens of returned Peace Corps volunteers over the years. They have something in common: An uncommon commitment to public service. They are a self-selected cohort. Some entered the Peace Corps in midlife or as retirees, but most entered the Peace Corps as a young person, typically after college and before settling into the burdens and joys of career, family, home, mortgage--those entanglements that Zorba in the movie Zorba the Greek called "the full catastrophe." My observation is that Peace Corps volunteers carried something special into that adulthood. It was the conviction that their lives could mean something, that they are part of something bigger than themselves, and that in tiny ways they could make the world better. They thought globally, which meant that bettering the lives of people in faraway places was part of that mission.
The Peace Corps still has bi-partisan support. The Guest Post notes that Medford's current U.S. Representative, Republican Cliff Bentz, voted against reauthorization of the Peace Corps along with many Republicans. John Dellenback, Medford's U.S. Representative for four terms in the late 1960's, lost his seat in the post-Watergate 1974 Democratic landslide. Dellenback served as Peace Corps director for two years. Like another Oregon Republican of that era, Senator Mark Hatfield, Dellenback had a reputation as a peace-oriented Christian Republican.
Jack Mullen's youth was in Medford. After graduating from the University of Oregon he joined the Peace Corps. He now lives in Washington, D.C.
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
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| Jack Mullen--the tall man in the back-- with members of Guatemala's La Cooperativa La Victoria farmers planting a hillside demonstration plot of potatoes in 1971. |
I served in the Peace Corps for three years; Guatemala (1970-72) and Mali (1972-73). When the topic of my Peace Corps service comes up, a bewildered inquirer invariably asks, “Does the Peace Corps still exist?”
Yes, just as it has since its inception in 1961, although the pandemic forced temporary closure for the existing 62 overseas programs. Most programs (56) are now back on their feet and a new country, Vietnam, just received its first nine volunteers on December 30, 2022.
This week, the Peace Corps Reauthorization Act comes up again for a vote in House of Representatives. I say again, because the Peace Corps Reauthorization Act passed the House last September by a 290-125 vote. All House Democrats voted yea. The Oregon delegation voted 4-1 to reauthorize, with Second District Congressman Cliff Bentz being the only dissenting vote. Bentz joined the likes of Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and Marjorie Taylor Greene voting no.
The Senate decided last fall, with midterms looming, and a heavy, end-of -erm, legislative docket, to put the Peace Corps Reauthorization Act to a voice vote seeking unanimous consent. Rand Paul (R-KY) voted no, kicking re-authorization can to the present Congress. Nothing comes easy in Washington these days.
The idea of a national U.S. volunteer service first gained traction in 1950 when United Autoworkers President Walter Reuther called for a “total peace offensive.” Reuther kept at it and influenced Hubert Humphrey to introduce a Peace Corps bill in 1957, which went nowhere. After John Kennedy won the Democratic nomination in Los Angeles, Reuther, a strong backer of Kennedy, snagged a meeting with the nominee in August, 1960 and convinced Kennedy to campaign and enact Peace Corps if he were to become President. Kennedy’s famous October 1960 speech at the University of Michigan calling for a national Peace Corps went over well and in the summer of 1961, the first Peace Corps Volunteers arrived in Ghana, Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Colombia.
The idea of a Peace Corps had its critics at the time, none more than Richard Nixon. Nixon, in his 1960 campaign, said the Peace Corps would be “a cult for escapism and a haven for draft dodgers.” He and other critics went on to say young people lacked the necessary skills and maturity to serve overseas.
Nixon may have had a point on “young people lacking the necessary skills.” After all, as a youth, my summer jobs were picking pears in Southern Oregon with Peter Sage, and irrigating Hawthorne Park at night for the Medford Parks and Recreation Department. Add some high school Spanish and damn, I was surprised when I was accepted in October 1969. I suppose, on paper, I looked like a unique agriculturalist who worked with an exotic fruit and having irrigation experience to boot.
I was scared to death about my flimsy skills and how I could relate to Guatemalan compesinos. Fortunately, Peace Corps training was simple enough to instill in me and the other young volunteers enough tools to ingratiate ourselves with local farmers. Example: We were supplied with new, disease-resistant seed potatoes that could increase yields three to five fold. By setting up demonstration plots on small ag cooperative lands, compesinos could decide for themselves if they’d approve of the new seed varieties.
I am under no illusion I that made a dent in the world food supply, but maybe, in some small way, living in a small village, plodding alongside small farmers and their families, speaking their language, I showed that I cared, that America cared.
Without engaging with local people on their own turf, most foreign aid programs misspend large sums of money. What our Peace Corps group, known at Group XIX in the history of Guatemala Peace Corps, cost the U.S. taxpayer is peanuts compared to all our other overseas spending at the time. Today’s request to Congress for reauthorization for a $480 million Peace Corps budget is still small compared to our other foreign aid programs, be they military or non-military. I doubt this makes much of a difference to Kevin McCarthy. I just hope Oregon Congressman Cliff Bentz takes a second and reconsiders his September 19 vote to not re-authorize the Peace Corps. He probably won’t.
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7 comments:
I think Jack Mullen, probably out of modesty, sells himself a bit short. Introducing a food crop that yields 3-5 times the yield of the indigenous crop is how whole countries have managed to feed their growing populations. Those small farmers who learned from his demonstration plots taught others and, I suspect, that today all of Guatemala's farmers use higher yield potatoes, feeding the whole country.
I had the opportunity to work in the Peace Corps in Nepal from 1964 to 1969. One of the tasks I worked on was to be involved with the first and second groups of agricultural volunteers who were introducing newly developed rice and wheat to the local farmers. Do you know how such an introduction is done? One farmer at a time. One of John Dellenback's sayings was, "Do you know how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time."
When the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers in agriculture trained and went to Nepal, the prediction was that within 10 years or less the Indian subcontinent would be dealing with famine. That famine never came because of the new grains.
The Peace Corps Volunteers didn't do it all, of course. But when those former volunteers visit their former villages today, they report relative economic prosperity and a well fed population.
Thank you for your service, Jack Mullen.
Any museum worth its salt must be based on truth: the good, the bad and the ugly. No white-washing. This includes corruption, incompetence and abuse of power.
Otherwise, it is not a museum. It is a propaganda tool or a "Hall of Fame."
Apparently you did not appreciate my candid post yesterday.
I enjoy candid posts. When they come from "Anonymous" I do a style check to see if they come from suspicious sources. Some "candid" anonymous comments are simple to block--obvious disruptions from known disrupters. Others are in a gray area. I am willing to engage disrupters but I would prefer to leave disruptors alone if the blog is left alone by them. We are in a trial period and I am in a watch mode. Therefore, anonymous comments have a high bar for publication.
Right now our country is in bad shape, psychologically speaking. We are severely divided, deadlocked, and there is no coherent sense of national purpose.
But we are in nowhere near as bad shape as we were in the 1930s. Despite that, on December 7, 1941 the country suddenly came together, seemingly with one mind, and one purpose. In the prophetic words of Admiral Yamamoto, a “sleeping giant“ woke up.
I think we still have the potential to wake up like that. The trigger could be a war, or a religious revival, or something that none of us can predict. But we’ll know it when we see it.🤞
It’s no surprise that Republicans oppose the Peace Corps. They oppose universal healthcare, rational gun laws, renewable energy, free and fair elections…pretty much anything good. I appreciate Phil Arnold’s reminder of how to eat an elephant. That’s what we need to do with the elephant in the room – the GOP.
A worldwide pandemic that killed millions caused even more divisiveness because it was exploited by the right.
Many refused to simply wear a mask;.do you think they'd accept rationing, a draft or a similar sacrifice.
Religious awakening? Not sure what you mean but with the increase in education comes a decreasee in religious beliefs. So I don't think that's in the cards, either.
The trouble this country is at war with itself already. Why do you think Trump and others do Russia’s bidding?
We spend trillions on the military yet. thanks to our political system , elect people who want to destroy this nation.
How does a nation government itself when many of its elected leaders want to destroy government?
The elephant needs to be slayed.
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