In recent months I've been offered to chair a board I've been on for a long time. Also, the local Democratic Party is spinning up an interesting venture (a "service corps") to provide direct services to the community and it wants board members. In some ways I think the service corps a good idea. I even gave a little money towards the kick off. In others I'm less sure. I've been thinking about that this morning.
The big problems are with expected scope and systems. What can someone asking for help reasonably expect the Corps to do? Help with anything? Is it to be a privately-funded analog to NYC's 311 service, providing a guide or entry point to municipally-provided services? Or will it endeavor to help with just about anything, including services typically-provided by the private sector?
Either one of these is a massive undertaking. Is the goal to ultimately provide all of the services or primarily to build goodwill and let people know the Democratic Party is trying? To build internal, aligned connectivity.
How will it set guardrails around requests on risky, loaded issues? Like if someone calls in saying "my insurance company won't pay for gender-transition surgery for my 11-year old"? Or "I can't afford ammunition for the handgun I like to carry everywhere?"
At some point in time it risks become a big, lossy overlay on the full set of governmental and non-governmental services, mostly a recipe for failure. But maybe the thing is that you don't expect petitioners to get everything solved for them, they just need to have a place to ask and someone on the other end of the line. And it becomes another place to aggregate constituent concerns, to listen and learn.
It's an interesting endeavor but it has the potential to become all-consuming and one where setting boundaries is very difficult.
1 comment:
Congratulations, they have good taste in Chairpersons!
I can't say whether the initiative will work out or not. . . but I think you are right that people want, almost more than anything, to feel that someone is listening to them.
In the 19th century, political parties in the US--and, say, the Social Democrats in Germany--were much thicker organizations. Clubs, parties, sports, dedicated newspapers, etc. Much more than the thin apparatus to agree on platforms, run primaries, and nudge certain candidates forward. There's part of me that thinks we need those richer organizations for long fight against reaction. So, who knows, maybe this is just the right step. . .
Again congrats! They chose wisely!
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