Five years ago, I watched the firefighters across the street from my apartment building muster. As I recorded my podcast a few minutes later, I couldn’t stop the tears from coming.
This year I’m looking forward more, considering my actions that affect others.
Response 1/3: Serving as an auxiliary
This morning, I went to the Sixth Precinct, a few blocks down Tenth Street, and mustered with police officers as an auxiliary. From formation, when it was my turn, I read the name of one of the officers from the precinct who died 25 years ago today. Relatives of those officers attended, as they do every year. At the refreshments afterward, donated by a local market, the relatives were in good spirits. As solemn as the day is, they aren’t mourning every moment.
On the way home I stopped at the firehouse. Showing my badge there opens them to conversation, but I only said a few words this time. I had arrived just as they saluted at the time Flight 77 had hit the Pentagon. After their salute, they also became casual, joking around. We are honoring the past, not living in it.
Response 2/3: Volunteering
While working as an auxiliary is a volunteer position, I also volunteer delivering food that would go to landfills to people who, for whatever reason, come to where we distribute it to get it for free. Yesterday I met a friend who rose high in the big-time corporate world to catch up. I happened to have a volunteer run that day, so she joined me. I think she valued the experience, seeing the understaffed store and the chapel and cafeteria at the distribution place. I think more of us would benefit from interacting with more of our neighbors.
Volunteering, acting in service to others, wearing a uniform… these activities add to our lives. I looked up volunteering in the US. Apparently at most 28 percent of Americans volunteer formally through an organization. Probably more do on their own, though according to this site, “40% of volunteers, take part in fundraising activities, while another 30% concentrate on administrative activities of the non-profit organizations.” In other words, they help causes, but don’t interact with those they’re helping. Full respect to them and their work, but there’s something different in physical contact or even just eye contact and conversation with people being served.
This site reports that “Most Americans report volunteering rarely (28%) or never (32%). One-in-four (24%) report volunteering a few times a year, while 9% volunteer weekly and 8% volunteer monthly.”
Still, here are some personal benefits volunteering produces from a site titled Volunteer Statistics:
Volunteering boosts careers, health, and well being while driving huge US social and economic impact.
- Volunteers report 27% higher likelihood of promotion at work
- Regular volunteers have 22% lower mortality risk over 4 years
- Volunteering increases life satisfaction by 12.7 points per study
- 53% of US volunteers are women
- 35-44 age group has 32.4% volunteer rate, highest in 2022
- College graduates volunteer at 40.3% rate vs 17.1% for less than high school
- Volunteering contributed $122.9 billion to US GDP in 2016 equivalent value
- 4.75 billion hours volunteered in 2015 valued at $122.9 billion
- Average value per volunteer hour was $24.14 in 2016
- In 2022, 60.8 million Americans aged 16 and over engaged in formal volunteering
- 28.3% volunteer rate among Americans 16+ in 2022, down from 30.3% in 2019
- 51.5 million Americans volunteered informally in 2022
- US volunteer rate declined 7% from 2017-2020
- Post-COVID volunteer rate rebounded 13% by 2022
- Micro-volunteering grew 25% since 2019
[The site had a lot more statistics for those interested]
The Americas in general seem like we could volunteer more, it seems:
Response 3/3: Working to End the Cause of Imperialism
I’ve read and listened to commentary on 9/11, as I’m sure we all have on this quarter-century anniversary, coincidentally the nation’s quarter-millennium anniversary.
I’ve heard calls to remember and honor, to hold jihadism and those behind it to task, to hold American overseas involvement to task, and more.
The more I’ve worked on reducing pollution and depletion—not just talked about it, complained, lectured, or told others what to do—the more clear the problem I’m working on has become. It’s not about the environment at root. It’s about how humans affect each other without their consent and, in American terms, do we enforce the Constitution or not.
I asked recently, Is peace possible when nations deplete? The answer is no. If you see otherwise, I’m open to learning what I’m missing. In the meantime, it seems clear that as long as any nation depletes, every other nation must prepare that the depleting nation is preparing to acquire what it’s running out of. Putting it that way is too abstract, though, since every nation in the world is depleting resources it can’t replenish. Every nation is prompting every other nation for imperialist action.
The people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks are responsible for their actions. Meanwhile, humans lived 300,000 years without every single community threatening every other community. Human life, prosperity, and longevity do not require any depletion whatsoever. Our lifestyles do, but our lives don’t.
I am not talking blame. I’m talking responsibility. Most of all I’m talking opportunity for liberty, freedom, equality, democracy, and national security.
My number one response to 9/11 is to create a desirable vision of a global culture that doesn’t promote imperialist motivations such as resulted in 9/11 and nearly all terrorist attacks, as well as a doable, rewarding path to it. Actually, I didn’t create that vision. I just read it in the preamble of the US Constitution:
to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
My work is to enforce the Constitution, hardly visionary nor, I hope, controversial. My upcoming book explains more, but a major point is that pollution and depletion violate the Constitution in several ways. We just haven’t noticed because we’ve focused on the environmental impacts.
I can’t wait until we unify behind manifesting the simple words that constitute this nation’s government.