The Politics and Civics of National Service: Lessons from the Civilian Conservation Corps, VISTA, and AmeriCorps

9. AmeriCorps's Roots and Relationships

9 AmeriCorps’s Roots and Relationships In his first inaugural address, Bill Clinton challenged “a new generation of young people to a season of service.”1 Seven months later, he signed the legislation creating AmeriCorps to help them do just that.2 Housed in the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNS or CNCS), it has three components: AmeriCorps*VISTA, AmeriCorps*NCCC, and AmeriCorps*State and National. As part of AmeriCorps, VISTA retains its focus on serving low-income communities and its administrative structure, while growing to approximately 7,300 members in 2011. AmeriCorps*NCCC, much like the CCC, combines civilian service with certain military-type elements . Its approximately 1,200 uniformed members live together and work on team-based, short-term service and disaster relief projects. The bulk of AmeriCorps members—about 74,000 in 2011—work through the State and National component, which awards grants to programs chosen by the CNCS or by individual states. AmeriCorps differs from earlier programs by letting state commissions largely determine their projects, and the federal government does not choose or directly pay individual State and National members . Members can serve for up to two years and receive a stipend for living expenses, health insurance, and child care if they need it. They also earn a $5,350 voucher for higher education for each full-time year served, which provides the basis for AmeriCorps’s principle of reciprocity—help with educational expenses in exchange for service.3 149 09-2380-6 ch9.indd 149 12/24/12 10:44 AM 150 americorps AmeriCorps’s Roots In advocating for a new national service program, Clinton highlighted one very old one—the CCC, which was not even recognized as national service during its lifetime. He explained, “Twice before in this century, Americans have been called to great adventures in civilian service.”4 His would represent the third; the CCC was the first. The Peace Corps had been the second. AmeriCorps and the CCC At the signing of AmeriCorps’s legislation, Clinton acknowledged “the roots of our history,” explaining that “the CCC . . . gave Americans the chance not only to do meaningful work so that they could feed themselves and their families but so that they could build America for the future.”5 He then signed the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 with Franklin Roosevelt ’s bill-signing pen. The CCC influenced AmeriCorps through inspiration—through stories told by its elderly alumni, plaques honoring its work, and volumes of history . Rhetorically, Clinton sought to place AmeriCorps within an American tradition, drawing legitimation from what had come before. He also sought to legitimize AmeriCorps’s principles of reciprocity and citizenship. Thus, as the CCC had been based on “the idea that people should be asked to serve and be rewarded for doing it,” so would AmeriCorps.6 And just as the CCC had instilled in its enrollees citizenship in its various forms, so would AmeriCorps , giving young people the opportunity to fulfill their civic responsibilities and “bonding each to the other with the glue of common purpose and real patriotism.”7 The CCC also influenced AmeriCorps programmatically, through AmeriCorps ’s National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC). The similarities are striking. Like the CCC, the NCCC is residential. It gives participants a “24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week” experience with approximately two hundred other young adults from around the country. Like their CCC predecessors , the NCCC’s participants wear uniforms and work in teams, the better to build esprit de corps, and engage in environmental and disaster relief work (although the NCCC also does other work). Finally, the CCC was and the NCCC is strongly national; based on federal property (public lands for the CCC, downsized military bases for the NCCC); and funded, organized, and run by the federal government. As Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), an NCCC supporter, explained, “AmeriCorps’s NCCC members know they are part of a national effort to serve their country. The communities they serve know that, 09-2380-6 ch9.indd 150 12/24/12 10:44 AM americorps’s roots and relationships 151 too.”8 However, the differences are equally striking, and none more so than their size: at its peak, the CCC enrolled more than 500,000 participants; the NCCC, 1,200. As a result, while NCCC participants and the communities they serve may know they are part of a larger national effort, the nation...