Young Americans (Expendable)

AmeriCorps in 2025 - A THREE-MINUTE Commentary

This past week, thousands of American young adults lost their jobs with no prior notice. They were all employees of AmeriCorps, the domestic branch of the Peace Corps.

AmeriCorps ( VISTA ) was founded in 1965 by an act of Congress. Our President at that time was Lyndon Baines Johnson, who is known for his Great Society programs and significant civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

For 60 years, AmeriCorps has helped young adults develop vital work skills and has served as a pathway to future employment opportunities. The program provides trained full-time workers to nonprofit community organizations such as the Red Cross, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Habitat for Humanity, and senior assistance agencies — agencies that bring essential services to low-income individuals and under-served communities.

• When disaster strikes, Americorps workers repair homes, assist survivors, and help restore communities. Thousands of members have been deployed to affected areas in the aftermath of fires, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes, to offer relief.

• Members work with schools to support the education of less fortunate children, helping to improve their attendance and engagement and increase their high-school graduation rates.

• AmeriCorps workers help conserve natural habitats, protect clean water, improve home safety. They provide vital services — everything from installing free smoke alarms to entire neighborhoods, to clearing park trails.

• AmeriCorps members also work with veterans and military families, helping to connect them with educational opportunities, jobs, and the benefits they have earned.

This government program has worked successfully for 60 years, teaching our young adults empathy for the less fortunate, and giving them a strong sense of civic duty in service to our country and its citizens.

In April, there were over 5,000 AmeriCorps members serving in 1,200 programs nationwide. Last week, seventy-five percent of AmeriCorps employees were summarily fired, with no previous notification.

This was carried out, not by an Act of Congress, which is legally required, but rather by only two extraordinarily wealthy men who don’t understand what it means to be suddenly unemployed, to lose the means of supporting one’s self or one’s family. They appear to be unconcerned about the Americans affected by the decimation of this program, both the workers and those who are recipients of their aid.

Personally speaking, this week, with one illegal signature, these two men, aided by an indifferent, complicit Congress, took away my house mate’s employment, so she has to temporarily move in with family. With one illegal stroke of a pen, I lost my renter and over half of my already pathetically low, senior income. We are only two out of the thousands who have been affected.

I am as old as dirt, but I am hitting the streets with the masses of protesters. I marched and sat in in 1963, and changes were made. Why not now?

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For inspiration, you might like to review here Franklin D. Roosevelt’s amazingly effective service programs of the 1940s - the CCC and the NYA, when nearly five million young American men and women received vocational training, found work, improved their education — and made use of their newly acquired skills in service back to their country.

It shows how much measurable good a brilliant President can do if he cares .

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