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SERVICE-2019/10/10 1 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION FALK AUDITORIUM NATIONAL SERVICE: REBUILDING AMERICA’S CIVIC FABRIC AN EVENT CO-HOSTED BY THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION AND SERVICE YEAR ALLIANCE Washington, D.C. Thursday, October 10, 2019 PARTICIPANTS: Welcome: JOHN R. ALLEN President The Brookings Institution Keynote Panel: ISABEL SAWHILL, Moderator Senior Fellow, Economic Studies The Brookings Institution JESSE COLVIN Chief Executive Officer Service Year Alliance JOE HECK Chairman of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service Former U.S. Representative (R-NV) THE HONORABLE DEVAL PATRICK Former Governor State of Massachusetts BARBARA STEWART Chief Executive Officer Corporation for National and Community Service Panel: Why We Need National Service: WILLIAM GALSTON, Moderator Ezra K. Zilkha Chair and Senior Fellow, Governance Studies The Brookings Institution ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 SERVICE-2019/10/10 2 TAIMARIE ADAMS Director, Government Relations Service Year Alliance JOHN BRIDGELAND Former Director, White House Domestic Policy Council Under President George W. Bush Vice Chair, Service Year Alliance JOHN J. DILULIO, JR. Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society University of Pennsylvania PETER WEHNER American Writer Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center Panel: National Service in Practice: ALAN KHAZEI, Moderator Co-Fonder, City Year Vice Chair, Service Year Alliance WILLIAM GARTNAN AmeriCorps Alumnus YouthBuild USA and The Education Alliance ANDREW E. HANSEN, III Environmental Stewardship Program Team Leader, Delaware State Parks U.S. Army Veteran TOJUAN C. REED, JR. Field Team Leader, FEMA Corps AmeriCorps NCCC TAYLOR STONE AmeriCorps VISTA Member, Project Development Habitat for Humanity International KAYLA WHETZEL AmeriCorps Member City Year DC Closing Remarks: ISABEL SAWHILL Senior Fellow, Economic Studies The Brookings Institution * * * * * ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 SERVICE-2019/10/10 3 P R O C E E D I N G S GENERAL ALLEN: I'm John Allen; I'm the President of Brookings. On behalf of the institution and our partners at Service Year Alliance, I want to welcome you all to this important event today. I want to welcome those coming in over the webcast, and of course we always welcome the media. This morning you will be hearing from a distinguished group of leaders and volunteers on the matter of national service. But let me make a few brief comments to begin with. In such divided and turbulent times, we must look for ways to bridge society, to bridge the divides, and to restore a sense of community. In recent years, much has been done, sadly, to burn rather than to build the bridges in our civic nation, leading to a growing culture of fear and distrust, incivility, and a reflex to retreat into the safety of tribalism. Our trust in institutions and our trust in each other have taken a beating and have in fact declined. And that decline makes it harder for us to solve some of the key problems we face as a country and as a people. From my personal experience, I know that when individuals from different walks of life have an opportunity to serve together and to serve their country and to do something bigger than themselves, they almost always live up to the challenge. In fact, they almost always perform magnificently, emerging from the experience better young women and men. And in the process they learn a crucial lesson, that when you serve side by side with another person it really doesn't matter who they are or where they're from, bonds of trust will form and endure and often last a lifetime. It's time to consider whether we should be providing more opportunities for service, not just in the military, but importantly in the civilian sector as well. Research by our scholar Isabel Sawhill shows that Americans are enthusiastic about national service. And what she calls an American exchange program that would ask American families across the country to voluntarily host a young person from another community for as much as a year while they perform their service, that's groundbreaking. If provided with the right opportunities, Americans can work together across so many areas to prepare and to respond for emergencies and disasters, to improve public spaces, to help our elderly American to stay ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 SERVICE-2019/10/10 4 in their homes, and provide training or career opportunities to low income youths. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the long list of opportunities and possibilities that lie before us. This event this morning -- by virtue of those who are participating, and certainly those in the audience -- this event this morning importantly lies at the intersection of where policy meets action. And the people that you'll hear from this morning, the conversations that you will listen to this morning, will be all about translating policy into action. And that is so important. So we welcome our panelists, we welcome our guests, we welcome the conversation this morning, and most importantly, we welcome you. We're going out over webcast and we're very much on the record. And with that, Belle, may I offer you the floor please for your remarks and the first panel. Thank you. (Applause) MS. SAWHILL: Our first panel should probably come right on up. I don't think they're a shy group. So, good morning, everyone. It's great to see this group and I am so thrilled to be on the stage with so many leaders in the national service area. Let me start by saying just a few words about national service itself. I'll be echoing to some extent what our President, John Allen, has just said, but I'm not sure it can be said too many times. We are a very divided nation, you all know that. It's a cultural problem, it's a political problem, it's an economic problem. So I do want us not to forget about that. One writer recently said we are texting and tweeting ourselves into disunion. I thought that was an interesting way of putting it. So we really need to have a good conversation about the potential of national service to bring us together again and to get us off of our phones and into our communities. So there are many benefits to national service in addition to the role it can play in bringing us together. It has benefits for the participants, the young people who serve, it has benefits for the communities they serve. And you're going to hear much more about that through the rest of the morning. ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 SERVICE-2019/10/10 5 But the basic point I think is that democracy cannot flourish when we do not trust each other and do not trust our institutions. And I think national service can play a role. This is not easy task, but we should do everything we can to repair some of these divisions. There is considerable evidence -- now I'm just putting on for a second my hat as a researcher because I've delved into this a bit -- lots of evidence that when people work together on a common task across divisions that would normally keep them apart, they learn, as John Allen said, to trust and respect each other and to form bonds. And the military is the classic example of where we have seen that happen, as he said. Now, I personally got interested in this issue when I was working on a book last year called "The Forgotten Americans" and I got interested in all the usual policy solutions to the problem of people who have been left behind in our society or our economy. But I came to the conclusion at the end that public policy alone, or the usual kinds of policies that we talk about here at places like Brookings, aren't sufficient. They are necessary, but we also have to really start talking a lot more about relationships and about respect. And in some work we're going to be doing in the future, we'll be saying a lot more about that. After I finished my book I decided I needed to field test the ideas and take them on the road. So I went out and I did focus groups in three cities in America with middle and working class Americans. And one of the things that really surprised me was the degree of concern about these divisions and the degree of enthusiasm amongst the public. And I'm not talking about a sophisticated public here, I'm talking about ordinary everyday working Americans, for doing something about those divisions and national service appealed to them a lot. So I then came back and realized that at this point I didn't know nearly enough. In fact, I knew very little about the work that was going on by all the people who are sitting up here on this stage. And I think it's just remarkable that they're all here today. I couldn't be more thankful to the fact that they made time to be here. I want to particularly call out our partnership with Service Year Alliance. This meeting would not have happened without their participation. And we got lots of help from the other ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 SERVICE-2019/10/10 6 groups on this stage as well.
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