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thedrifter
07-03-08, 06:20 AM
Obama: Students should serve
He calls on young people to help in their communities

By Nancy Mitchell, David Montero

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Cindy Stevenson liked what Barack Obama had to say Wednesday about students getting engaged in community service.

But the Jefferson County School District superintendent worried about differing definitions of community service. Does a school food drive count? What about work in a church? Or involvement in the Boy Scouts?

"The difficulty is, when you start making it a graduation requirement," she said. "That's when individual value systems among parents and different groups in the community . . . you can get an awful lot of conflict."

The plan Obama outlined in Colorado Springs called for getting middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of community service a year and 100 hours a year for college students.

He said the goals would be achieved by making federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs.

But Obama also said he believed young people would rise to the occasion - challenging what he said were "cynics."

"These are the voices that will tell you - not just what you can't do - but what you won't do," Obama said. "Young Americans won't serve their country - they're too selfish, too apathetic or too lazy. This is the soft sell of the status quo. The voice that tells you to settle because settling isn't that bad."

But Stevenson worried it sounded like a federal mandate.

"Somehow I have a hard time imagining the federal government withholding funds from poverty-stricken 8-year-olds based on high schools not doing community service," she said.

Obama's speech before about 400 in the gym at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs was warmly received. But critics complained that was because the event was invitation-only and featured only people friendly to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Colorado Republican Chairman Dick Wadhams and state Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, launched a pre-emptive strike against the visit by hosting a conference call where they kept alive the controversy stirred up when Gen. Wesley Clark - an Obama supporter - questioned whether Sen. John McCain's military service alone made him qualified to be president.

The Obama campaign has been distancing itself from those comments and, in fact, praised those who served in the military - particularly those at Fort Carson. Obama also toured the U.S. Air Force Academy, NORAD and Peterson Air Force Base later in the day before attending a $1,000-a-person fundraiser at the Broadmoor Hotel.

The McCain campaign played nice as well after Obama gave his speech.

"It was refreshing to hear Barack Obama laud military service in his speech today," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in a statement. "We hope this will be the tone we hear from him, his campaign and his surrogates from now on."

Obama's speech touched on big themes of giving and service, invoking the names of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

He also took a shot at President Bush.

"Instead of a call to service, we were asked to go shopping. Instead of a call for shared sacrifice, we gave tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans in a time of war for the first time in our history," Obama said.

"Instead of leadership that called us to come together, we got patriotism defined as the property of one party and used as a political wedge to take us into a war that should never have been authorized and never been waged."

Some questioned why Obama visited El Paso County, which hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater in a landslide. But El Paso County barely sided with Johnson even then - 27,844 to 23,882 votes.

It is also home to James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. Dobson also took shots at Obama for his "distorted" interpretation of the Bible.

But Dobson's name didn't come up. Instead, the crowd heard Obama quote King and say he was running for president because of "the fierce urgency of now."

"That is why I'm determined to reach out - not just to Democrats, but to independents and Republicans who want to move in a new direction," Obama said. "And that is why I won't just ask for your vote as a candidate - I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am president of the United States."

Indeed, Obama will need to curry favor with independents if he wants to win Colorado's nine electoral votes in November.

Unaffiliated voters make up the second- largest block of voters in the state, accounting for 34.4 percent of registered voters.

Republicans are at 34.6 percent.

It was Obama's first visit to Colorado since the end of May, when he visited a school in Thornton.

Service proposals

* Asking people to join the military, with goals of adding 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.

* Increase AmeriCorps ranks from 75,000 to 250,000.

* Double the size of the Peace Corps.

* Expand USA Freedom Corps to create online network where people can browse volunteer opportunities.

* Launch new Social Investment Fund Network to include faith-based groups, private sector and government.

* Goal of 50 hours of service a year for middle and high school students and 100 hours of service for college students.

* Launch training for military veterans in "green" jobs.

* Expand YouthBuild Program, which puts young Americans to work building affordable housing.

Ellie