September 12, 2008

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), a Returned Peace Corps volunteer and one of the Senate’s leading champions of national service, today attended the ServiceNation Summit in New York City.   Dodd spoke about his current efforts to expand volunteer opportunities for Americans of all ages.

The full text of Senator Dodd’s remarks as prepared for delivery is below:

Prepared Remarks: I want to take a minute to thank my friend and colleague, Ted Kennedy.  While he may not be here today – he’s here today, believe me.  There is no greater champion of the ideals and goals we are discussing this week.  And he’ll be fighting with us every step of the way to turn them into a reality.

 

I also want to thank ServiceNation for this historic summit – for recognizing that when it comes to ushering in a new era of service and civic engagement, this is the moment. 

 

It’s a “perfect storm” of challenges and opportunities. 

 

Seizing that moment is what your “Declaration of Service” is all about – and let me be among the first to say: I am honored to sign it. 

 

And it’s a unique moment as well. 

 

As yesterday’s forum showed all of you, perhaps for the first time in history, we have two candidates running for President who have served their country admirably, and whose service to their country played a formative role in shaping their lives, their careers, who they are, and the kinds of presidencies theirs will be. 

 

And whatever our political differences, our democracy will be the stronger for that service.

 

In John McCain, our nation has a candidate who served his country in the military – and he suffered terribly for that service.

 

With Barack Obama, America has a candidate who had hands-on experience serving in communities, helping create opportunity and lift people up knocked down by serious economic challenges.

 

Their examples of service remind us: what’s important isn’t who you serve, where you serve or in what capacity – it’s that you serve. 

 

It’s that you know what it means to join a cause to defend your country. 

 

It’s that you know what it means to live and serve the poorest of our fellow citizens – that implicit reminder of our relative wealth and our immense good fortune. 

 

I am honored to stand before you today as someone who was fortunate to have done both. 

 

My journey began forty-seven years ago, standing with my family on the East Front of the United States Capitol. 

 

The date was January 20th, 1960.  The moment was the inauguration of JFK. 

 

Like millions of others on that frozen winter cold day, I heard President Kennedy call us as a nation and as individuals to service. 

 

Like thousands of others, I was so excited by an American President challenging our nation and our people to be a part of something larger than ourselves – a call to service. 

 

And those of you not old enough to remember those days, let me tell you – it felt good to be an American.

 

As a result, some ran off to join VISTA.  Others to the military.  And still others to Job Corps and the Justice Department. 

 

As a recent college graduate with a degree in English literature who didn’t speak a word of Spanish, I joined the Peace Corps and went to the Dominican Republic, where I built schools, a maternity clinic and a library. 

 

I learned about another culture and another language and acquired a deeper appreciation of the land of my birth.  After I returned home, I served for 6 years as a member of the National Guard and Army Reserves. 

 

Both experiences were enriching and invaluable. 

 

I had never worked so hard in my life as I did the first summer in the Dominican Republic. 

 

The first thing I was asked was why I didn’t speak Spanish better.  I’ll never forget my answer: “porque estoy embarasado” – which for those of you that don’t speak Spanish means, “because I’m pregnant.”  I thought it meant “because I’m embarrassed.”

 

But there was another question that came from almost everybody: “¿Por que viniste?”  Why did you come here?  What made you leave your home and your country and live with us for two years?

 

I had a simple answer for them: an American President asked me.  It is the same answer I have given hundreds of times in the past four-and-a-half decades.

 

Well, 40-odd years, a few pounds and more than a few white hairs later, it is, if anything, with a greater sense of purpose and love of country that I have joined with you these last several years in dedicating so many of my efforts to this idea and ideal we call “service.” 

 

It is appropriate that we meet today.  Because while September 11th showed us that our world had changed, it was September 12th that reminded us:

 

Americans had not. 

 

The community blood drives, the heroic efforts of our nation’s first responders, the flood of donations. 

 

All were a powerful reminder that Americans are not only always ready when their country calls – but that we want to be asked. 

 

We want to serve. 

 

We want to be a part of efforts larger than ourselves. 

 

Looking back, we had seen this enduring part of the American character so many times before—certainly during World War II.

 

But we’ve also seen it since.  Who can forget the outpouring of support that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina?

 

And with our challenges steadily mounting in so many ways, we need to see it again, with millions of families losing confidence and optimism about their future and the futures of their families.

 

14 million children that have no supervised place to go after school. 

 

A health care system that is barely able to hold itself together. 

 

Veterans and seniors unable to get the treatment they were promised or retire with the dignity they have earned. 

 

More than any time in recent memory, we need to call upon our collective imaginations – our ideas, energy, and resolve. 

 

Some question whether America can harness the spirit of service not just in times of crisis, but each and every day. 

 

I stand before you today to say:

 

I never have questioned that. 

 

Neither have you. 

 

And we never will. 

 

Travel across our country, and you find Americans everywhere not divided in comfort, but united in their restlessness for a deeper sense of community required of a free society like ours. 

 

Not simply occupied with their own day-to-day struggles, but hungry to be awakened to a renewed sense of national purpose, shared experience and sacrifice.

 

That is why I am using every forum available to me in support of our cause.  I’m offering ideas in the Senate and on the Presidential campaign trail, tapping the minds of those serving today, from Peace Corps volunteers I meet traveling abroad to City Year corps members back home in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

 

While a fading memory for most, I was actually a Presidential candidate this last year and a half.  Paul Tsongas and I were the first Peace Corps Volunteers that were elected to Congress. 

 

We both ran for President and lost – so if you want to run for President, maybe you want to consider serving somewhere other than the Peace Corps!

 

But I’m proud that we used that presidential campaign to elevate the importance of service in this election.  With the help of many of you, I authored a comprehensive national service plan, the goal of which was to create nothing less than the first generation in which every single American would serve their communities and nation, from kindergarten to retirement. 

 

I am pleased that Barack Obama has adopted many of these ideas for his own national service plan, and I invite my friend and Senate colleague John McCain to do the same.

 

As a United States Senator, I proposed ideas to expand our vision for national service.   And I founded the bipartisan National Service Caucus with my Republican colleague Thad Cochran of Mississippi to highlight its importance. 

 

He’s been a tremendous friend – and a powerful advocate for service.

 

Together, we have introduced Summer of Service legislation for students. 

 

We’ve put forth a proposal that would encourage thousands more to join AmeriCorps and not only help them realize their dream of attending college, but affording it. 

 

And of course, I’ve worked to help the Peace Corps acquire the tools it needs to meet 21st century challenges.

 

Today, at this great gathering, I am pleased to announce two final pieces of legislation to round out our shared vision of service in America.

 

The first is the Semester of Service Act, which says that the opportunity to serve has just as much a place in our educations as math problems or a book report. 

 

So often, the minute students pass an exam, the information they have learned is filed away forever. 

 

But being given the opportunity to put that knowledge into action?

 

That leaves an impression that can last a lifetime.

 

If the online communities and volunteer rates of the younger generation teach us anything, it is that this generation of Americans yearns for shared experiences that introduce them to new people, and give them a new perspective and commitment to our country. 

 

With a Semester of Service, we will ask our students to not only be residents in their communities – but resources to them.  And just as mine did, I have no doubt that this generation will respond. 

 

And one of the greatest gifts we can give our youngest generation is lessons of the past. 

 

That is why I am also pleased to announce at this summit the introduction of the Encore Service Act – and offer an older generation of Americans the chance to serve their communities.

 

To draw upon their experiences.

 

And to share them with their communities and our country.

 

For their service to community, older Americans could receive an education award, meaning grandmothers or grandfathers could literally put thousands of dollars toward their grandchild’s college savings. 

 

The desire for new, shared experiences and opportunity are never limited by age, race or our economic standing – but only our imaginations, our idealism, and our love of country. 

 

These efforts are based on the same fundamental idea:

 

Every American ought to serve.

 

Every American ought to be given the opportunity to serve.

 

And with these ideas I’ve outlined, every American will be.

 

That is why I am asking for your help to gather support for these exciting ideas.

 

The truth is, we’re not gathered here to talk about legislation or white papers – but ideas and ideals – and how to put them into action. 

 

In thinking back to my own Peace Corps experiences, I still marvel at the notion that a great nation would send its citizens abroad, mostly its younger citizens, not to extend its power.

 

Not to intimidate its enemies.  Not to kill or be killed.

 

But to build.

 

To dig. 

 

To teach. 

 

And to ask nothing in return. 

 

The Peace Corps was one of the most radical ideas of its day – not the kind of idea that came out of a subcommittee, or a board meeting, or whatever would have been the 1960s equivalent of PowerPoint.

 

Rather, it was the kind of idea you stumble on in the wee hours, after your third cup of coffee, when all the more conventional business of the day has been put to bed.  

 

But with people like Richard Nixon calling the Peace Corps “a juvenile experiment” how did it happen? 

 

That’s what we’re here today to ask: how do we take these ideas and make them happen?

 

Many of us may be familiar with the story about the genesis of the Peace Corps – how at a 2 a.m. campaign stop at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1960 then-Senator Kennedy found ten thousand students who had waited all night to greet him and challenged them to serve. 

 

What we may be less familiar with is his speech a month later at Cow Palace in San Francisco, where he laid out the practicality of the Peace Corps – how it could advance America’s place in the world. 

 

There he laid out a very simple idea:

 

You can’t hate America if you know Americans. 

 

How can you hate someone helping your child get the nutrition she needs or building her a schoolhouse? 

 

You can’t – and that principle holds every bit as true here at home as it does abroad. 

 

We may be the richest nation in the world – but we all know we can’t write a check for all our problems. 

 

And given the return on service, it’s astonishing that what we spend every year on AmeriCorps or on the Peace Corps, we spend in Iraq in a single day. 

Imagine what we could do if that was reversed.

 

So, ServiceNation, you have it right – this isn’t a moment for baby steps.  We need to think big.  Because when we do, it isn’t just our policies that become more effective – our politics do as well. 

 

Imagine if, after inspiring a generation with talk of towering problems and torches being passed, President Kennedy had announced nothing more than a stripped-down, underfunded bureaucracy – it would be tantamount to extreme disappointment at best, outright hypocrisy at worst.

 

This is all a way of saying – let’s not forget all that you heard just yesterday and these last several months. 

 

It’s our collective responsibility these next few months to ensure those words become expectations.

 

And we can make a big difference. 

 

Instead of fighting amongst ourselves, let’s highlight the extraordinary things ordinary citizens can accomplish for our communities – when given the opportunity.

 

Instead of talking about what we can’t do – let’s talk about what we can and must do. 

 

Let’s push our leaders with everything we have to lead as boldly as they campaign.

 

This is the moment – let’s seize it!  Thank you!

 

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