Mary Can excerpts from the article be used?? Or the entire article?? 73/Greg W7OZ ----- Original Message ----- From: Hobart, Mary K1MMH To: arrl-odv Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 1:38 PM Subject: [ARRL-ODV:7979] National Journal Article The following article appears in the Nov 23 edition of the National Journal, a weekly publication in Washington focusing on politics and government. The readership is mainly on the Hill in Washington. The article came as a result an interview I did with author Jonathan Rauch about a week ago. He told me then that when he interviewed Leslie Lenkowsky of CNCS and learned about all the grantees, he felt Amateur Radio was the most interesting. Mary, K1MMH

National Journal

Copyright 2002 by National Journal Group Inc. All rights reserved

Saturday, November 23, 2002

America's Secret Weapon in the War on Terror: Americans by Jonathan Rauch

As everyone knows, today's Americans are pampered, cynical, and

self-absorbed. The Greatest Generation served nobly, but then the mold

broke. After 9/11, the government asked Americans to give but little, and

little is what they gave. As everyone knows.

Suppose what everyone knows is not actually true. Suppose President Bush

called for volunteers in the war on terror, and thousands of people came

forward. Suppose they created volunteer networks for disaster relief,

emergency preparedness, and civil defense. Suppose they did most of this

work at the community level, under the radar of the national media. And

suppose it all happened not in the massive, militarized, top-down mode of WWII but in

the networked, decentralized, bottom-up manner of WWW.

Well, brace yourself. Americans have heard the call.

WASHINGTON-In his office a few blocks from the White House, Leslie

Lenkowsky waves a magazine editorial lamenting America's post-9/11

complacency. Then he fills me in on things the editorialists probably did

not know.

Lenkowsky heads the federal Corporation for National and Community

Service, a dinky (by government standards) agency that runs the AmeriCorps

national-service program and makes grants for volunteerism. Two months

after 9/11, Bush gave a speech challenging the public to volunteer "in our

own communities" to make the homeland more secure. The national-service

agency responded by rummaging through its budget and coming up with $10.3

million in grant money for 9/11 volunteerism. Five worthy proposals poured

in for every one that the agency could fund. Nonetheless, by July the

corporation had approved 43 three-year grants to nonprofit and public

agencies in 27 states.

Some of the programs, Lenkowsky explains, are relatively conventional:

money to place AmeriCorps workers with the Red Cross or to enlist

volunteers in cities' homeland security efforts. Some, however, break new

ground. Milwaukee will teach public-housing residents to patrol for

suspicious goings- on, use two-way radios, coordinate with police, and so

forth-skills that, not coincidentally, will also be useful against

ordinary crime. A program in Manhattan's Chinatown will create an

immigrant network to communicate with non-English-speakers in time of

crisis.

Then there are the hams. "If you had told me we'd be giving a grant to a

ham- radio group," Lenkowsky says, "I wouldn't have believed it."

NEWINGTON, Conn.-America boasts 650,000 licensed ham-radio operators.

About 1,500 of them are certified in emergency communications and are

prepared to rush to the scene of a forest fire, flood, or hurricane with a

"jump bag" full of portable radio equipment. "Amateur radio has been doing

this for decades, with their own equipment, at no cost to the government

or any corporation or community," says Mary M. Hobart, of the American

Radio Relay League. When there is a major train wreck or chemical spill,

"sometimes hams will show up and not be needed, but hams will show up."

That can be crucial. When phone lines, radio towers, and even satellites

go down, hams-broadcasting each to each, and operating self- sufficiently

on batteries or generators-stay on the air. After September 11, when New

York's cell phones turned into paperweights (remember that giant antenna

atop the World Trade Center?), hundreds of hams, some from as far away

as Texas and California, turned out to provide radio lifelines for

emergency workers and relief agencies.

Not all of those people had been trained, and, says Hobart, "during an

emergency is not the time to train someone." So, with its government grant

and some private money, the Relay League has embarked on an effort to

increase the country's supply of emergency-ready hams from 1,500 today to

at least 6,500 in three years. Just since last month, 600 hams have begun

the training.

"We have the ability to create a national platform for emergency

communications," says Hobart. "If, God forbid, something were to strike in

both Virginia and California, we have the mechanism to connect those two

together."

On 9/11, of course, all commercial air travel halted. If that happened

again, how could hams, and other urgently needed personnel, be rushed to

the site of an attack?

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.-You may have heard of Angel Flights. Under the

auspices of a national nonprofit called Mercy Medical Airlift, 4,500 or so

private pilots around the country volunteer themselves and their planes to

fly patients long distances for specialized medical care.....

FALLS CHURCH, Va.-Those people swarming around the Pentagon after 9/11?

Many of them were volunteers, too. The American Red Cross, according to

Susan Aarhus, is 97 percent volunteer......

One could go on. Maryland's Frederick County-home to Camp David and the

army's Fort Detrick biowarfare lab, among other potentially juicy

terrorist targets-is readying an Alpha Squad of police, fire, and medical

units to respond to a bioterror attack. I missed their joint

decontamination drill a couple of weeks ago, but later I caught up with

Alan E. Imhoff, a retiree who is helping organize hundreds of the county's

retired doctors, nurses, and other health personnel into a volunteer

medical-reserve corps. "Basically," says Imhoff, "our whole focus is on

what we do locally for the first 72 hours, until state and national

assistance reaches us." He adds that preparedness programs are sprouting

in Maryland so fast it's hard to keep up with the acronyms.

The jihadists of militant Islam are reported to believe that as they

toppled the Soviet colossus, so, in time, they can topple the American

one. What they do not understand is that the Soviet state made war on

civil society for most of its 70-year rule. Americans, meanwhile, have

nurtured their churches, charities, and clubs. The Soviet Union fell

because it was brittle as well as brutal. America, with its countless

nodes of activity and authority, is somewhat more vulnerable than the

USSR, but it is infinitely more robust. More robust than Al Qaeda

realizes. More robust, even, than many Americans realize.

"Through this tragedy," Bush said in November of 2001, "we are renewing

and reclaiming our strong American values." So we are. This Thanksgiving,

Americans have much to be thankful for-beginning with each other.