Obama Youth Brigade

There has been a bit of buzz in various circles about what is being nicknamed the "Obama Youth Brigade." Here is part of an article from the website www.thevoicemagazine.com ...

This bill’s title is called “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education” (GIVE). It forms what some are calling “Obama’s Youth Brigade.” Obama’s plan is require anyone receiving school loans and others to serve at least three months as part of the brigade. His goal is one million youth! This has serious Nazi Germany overtones to it.

There are parts of this bill that read in a very shifty manner. The goal of this bill is to reshape volunteerism in America. The way they are doing this is to require all student loan recipients to server at least three months in an approved volunteer capacity. And there are two categories it seems: there are groups that receive federal funding for volunteerism, and then there are roles that are added to groups where the specific role is federally funded (less about the organization and more about the role.) What does this mean and why might it be shifty?

If you read the approval part of the bill is says the following...

SEC. 132A. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.
...(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of proselytization, consistent with section 132.

Now, many groups may read this and loosely imagine that it implies that any student who is receiving loans cannot be involved with such groups for the period they are serving their minimum three month volunteer duties. This would basically imply that if you want to belong to or relate to a church, then you have to disavow any involvement for the service period to remain eligible for funding. I think there might even be folks who grant or govern such loan programs that attempt to read this section in that manner, but that isn't really what it is saying.

This really says that you cannot consider your "religious" service to be the thing that fulfills your 3 months of service. Why would that be? For the above reasons. It isn't saying that you can't be involved in such stuff. It is simply saying that you can't get federal credit for it. At one point it even contradicts itself a little more stating that if the role simply has nothing to do with the above list (let's say your role is to stand in a closet and take inventory of choir robes) then your time can count for that. As soon as you put one on and start singing, you are off the volunteer clock.

Is this a bad thing? I think it is, but not for the reasons you might suppose. What I think is crazy about all of this is that it has nothing at all to do with effectiveness. You could get credit at a food pantry that simply facilitates the lifestyles of people who need a food pantry simply because it has nothing to do with God. At the same time, there could be a food pantry around the corner that also helps get people work and retrains them for that work providing job coaches, but because the people in the program also believe wholeheartedly that God in the lives of people is a good thing, the government simple categorically says that program can't be supported as a location worthy of your volunteered time.

This is "life on a curve." Said another way, because the government decides to single out religion as a factor for prejudice apart from other criteria that it could assign prejudice to, our life's experiences favor a certain view of life if we want to accept that criteria in our life scenario.

But, Steve, what about separation of church and state? Hmm, let's say I feel like I get value from working with diverse groups of people. Let's also imagine the government wants to encourage that so it rewards (or rather doesn't penalize) my employer if my employer promotes this and hires accordingly. At the same time there are times in that environment of diversity that people do stuff that is offensive to me (this can happen in very diverse groups quite easily.) So do I turn around and say that the government is sanctioning their behavior or overtly supporting it because it allows it to occur within the greater opportunity called diversity? Heavens no. At the same time people in Congress think that in the middle of a diversity of service if "religion" exists, then allowing that to happen would be the same as sanctioning it and endorsing it. For them, it is more important to be prejudice in that scenario than to allow volunteers to experience effectiveness. Worse yet is the fact that they might hide behind the notion that to allow it is breaking down some sacred "separation of church and state."

The fact is that our constitution say that the government shall not establish a state religion, but that was not meant to imply that the government should categorically prejudice itself against the ever real and possible effectiveness of helpful programs that emerge from the religious world today. In fact, I think it is more constitutionally sound to imagine that the government should be a friend to all citizens equally and limit itself to that strictly, rather than attempt to have more influence than it ever should have had.

I think this prejudice is the real problem. If volunteerism was a relay race, and volunteers wanted to spend time with the fastest and strongest teams they could gain access to, then the government just rigged the race such that an entire "class" of teams that have been running this race for a very long time have become immediately disqualified for some of the worst criteria imaginable.

But, Steve, if they want to go volunteer in a church, nobody is stopping them... what is the big deal? The deal is that people are about to be forced to put in a minimum of three months of service IF they accept student loans. If you are a student and you do this, THEN you are in the program. AND if you are in the program, then you must agree to serve BUT just not with "those groups over there." Let's hope that these kids decide to make volunteering a life-long activity. At this point they will be busy in school, and only if they agree to bow down to the federally sanctioned volunteer opportunities with their extra time will they be eligible for funds. Maybe I am lazy, but if I were throwing 2 hours a week at helping my church food pantry out as a kid, that would likely go away under a program like this simply because the Fed has decided that my church isn't in the race. Now THAT seems wrong to me. I think I am just not seeing what the big deal is with sanctioning this prejudice. Why is it necessary? If you have ideas, feel free to share them.