Word: summiteer
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This has been a week of superlatives for volunteering. The country, directed by President Clinton, is focusing on the power of individuals to effect change for their communities and for the nation as a whole. This week began with the President's Summit for America's Future, a three-day conference on civic action which wants to engage volunteers and collect corporate money to help two million children by the year 2000. In a rally for volunteerism in Philadelphia, President Clinton spoke words of inspiration to the 5,000 listeners who joined him: "We're still losing too many kids...
...President's Summit comes at a significant moment, both socially and politically. According to recent studies by Robert Putnam, popularized in his article "Bowling Alone," rates of volunteerism in America are down. Although the nuances of the findings have been contested, it is generally agreed that hours devoted personally to hands-on volunteering have dropped significantly over the past 50 years. Many argue that the decline is rooted in government action crowding out individual volunteering by undermining a sense of personal responsibility. We--as a nation but more significantly, as the young and educated of this country--are less involved...
...transpiring. While the 5,000 rallyers listened to President Clinton, several thousand more people gathered at another rally a number of miles away--this one to protest. According to Brian Becker, a coordinator of the National People's Campaign that is sponsoring a counter-conference to the Summit, "the [President's] summit is all hoopla and propaganda." Becker and the thousands that joined him claim that the President's conference and the campaign for which it is a kick-off are a paltry and thinly-veiled attempt to justify both the reduction in government aid to the needy...
Echoes of this sentiment came from a surprising corner. Former President Jimmy Carter, a key figure in the three-day Summit, spoke of a new "harshness" in the American people's feelings about and the government's policy toward poor people: "There has been a hardening of concern in the Federal Government...a discrimination against people who are poor and deprived that is quite traumatic in its impact." What is particularly interesting in Carter's words is that he spoke not only in his own name, but in the name of the former Republican President Bush, as well...
KINSHASA, Zaire: Confusion overtook the planned Friday summit between Mobuto Sese Seko and rebel leader Laurent Kabila when the embattled Zairian president didn't show up for his flight, leaving some befuddled Zairian Cabinet ministers waiting at the Kinshasa airport. Government officials said the meeting was now slated for Saturday, while rebel spokesman Bizima Karaha was pushing for Sunday. South African officials, meanwhile, were still insisting that the summit would take place on Friday as planned. U.S. envoy Bill Richardson is now trying to salvage the peace talks...