Sunday, November 23, 2008
Opinion, Politics

Going broke? Volunteer!

Barackobama.com is directing visitors to volunteer for relief efforts to aid the victims of the Southern California fires

By Arianna Huffington

I recently got a blast e-mail from the Obama campaign. I immediately wondered what I was going to be asked to do: Donate to the Franken campaign? Make calls for Jim Martin down in Georgia?

It turned out to be neither. The campaign was letting me know that barackobama.com was directing visitors to volunteer for—or donate to—relief efforts to aid the victims of the Southern California fires.

Obama has always said that a call to service would be "a central cause" of his presidency. "We will ask Americans to serve," he said in a signature speech in July. "We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing challenges."

In the past, Americans could look to the safety net of social programs put in place by FDR during the Great Depression to mitigate the effects of an economic downturn. But, as Steven Greenhouse documented in the New York Times, the U.S. has become a "far different place" since the recession of the early '80s: Unemployment insurance is less generous, welfare has been scaled back, as have job training and housing programs.

These holes in the social safety net make a commitment to service even more urgent. This is a moment where it isn't enough to look to the government; it's a moment where we need to look to each other—and to ourselves.

Obama clearly understands this. "In America," he has said, "each of us is free to seek our own dreams, but we must also serve a common purpose, a higher purpose. . . . Because, when it comes to the challenges we face, the American people are not the problem—they are the answer."

Perhaps one good thing that will come out of the hard times will be a collective willingness to do what so clearly needs to be done to ameliorate the human suffering those hard times have brought.

In a recent column, the New York Times' David Brooks paints a gloomy picture of the coming psychic toll he predicts will envelop what he calls the "formerly middle class." It's a toll that would be greatly lessened if those heading for "a perilous psychological spiral" would look outside themselves and, at the same time they are trying to improve their diminished circumstances, find ways to serve others even less fortunate—bringing both perspective and meaning to their lives. SP