“I don’t think that our country can have 20% of its people for whom the American Dream has become the American nightmare. We can’t afford, no matter who is president or which party is in power, to have one fifth of our nation who don’t see themselves as participating at all in the tremendous advances that have been taking place in our country. Our national unity must be founded on shared opportunity.”
Our Quote of the Week suggests that we cannot truly have harmony unless everyone in our society has access to the economic opportunities that will allow them to feel financially stable and engaged.
Sargent Shriver gave this Address to the YMCA in April of 1964, while he was Director of Peace Corps and shortly after President Johnson had appointed him to lead the War on Poverty. In the speech, Shriver draws parallels between Peace Corps, which was successful and was continuing to expand, and the War on Poverty, which was still in the exploratory stages and whose programs had not yet been implemented. Shriver makes the point that both of these initiatives were important because, like the YMCA, they were based on the principle of service. He says:
“It is an effort at any rate to produce a program which is constructed in the national interest. And both of these programs are patriotic not in a nationalistic sense of patriotism but in a sense to service to your country and service to your fellowman.”
In communities around the country, the programs of the War on Poverty—Community Action, Head Start, VISTA (now AmericorpsVISTA), Foster Grandparents, Job Corps, Neighborhood Health Centers, Legal Services—have consistently proven that nurturing a culture of service and emphasizing the importance of shared opportunity benefits all who participate. It is up to each of us to uphold service as a value in our communities and to operate in ways that allow everyone in our society, particularly those who are marginalized because of their economic status, race, age, or difference in ability, to participate fully in society.
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