[Community-service] service through legislation?

[Thomas Peralta]

I agree with what you, Chris and Roanna have to say about the topic but...there is the difference between legislative campaigns that provide solution for a small percentage of the people and a campaign that affects the majority of the people and their everyday lives.  Granted it is a small percentage of what we see as "Community Service", but it does fall under non-partisan. and is something everyone can agree with.  There are tons of laws and statues still on the books that make no sense at all.  They also block further improvement to a community until they are revoked and officially canceled.   To me, a baby-boomer, growing up in the civil rights era and student during the Vietnam protests, I understand advocacy, but there is a small classification of advocacy that is non-partisan and serves to improve life for mankind as a whole.  It is this little niche that I work in.  The county committee that I work on was formed to weed out these old and senseless laws and statues so improvements can be made in a community for the betterment of that community.  What has taken so long to straightened out for the safety of all pedestrians, not just the handicapped population is finally reality.  By weeding out these old statues, we provide a service to the community that improves daily lives, cuts down on injuries and paperwork, improves the looks of the neighborhoods, as well to streamline the financial budgets of the community.  It has taken us eight years to change statues that prevented progress and find solutions to the objections to proposals that made sense for community safety.  We knew we would have a lot of opposition from individuals whom this effected as a financial problem and the firestorm we faced when the statue went on the books and the individuals it affects had a time deadline to meet.  But unlike most statues that bring forth the problems, we also proposed solutions to the problems it might cause for individual homeowners and businesses also affected by this.  There are so many things that need to be tackled in the small towns and big cities and that can't happen without this vital service that opens the way for the improvements.  I know I am going to lose this battle, but will continue to work on these statues that prevent the living environment of my community and my state to improve/  I truly believe this is a community service. 

     On Friday, February 13, 2015 7:16 AM, Darian Smith via Community-service <community-service at nfbnet.org> wrote:
   

 I think I feel much the same way as Chris on this one,
 Legislative work is most certainly important  and ultimately    serves to change the lives  of  the community effected, ideally for the better.
  I Think that the kind of  community service work we talk about, and encourage is along the lines of what Chris has mentioned.  This allows us to get our hands dirty in an issue that is both of interest to us and  important to the community in which we live.
  Imagine  the effect that service can have on top of  everything else we do.  We can show that we expect equal rights in the workplace, the classroom, and in the market place  and show that  we also have a right to have an active part in serving  in our communities and we expect to be able to exercise that right to  tutor, to mentor, to feed, and comfort,  and we intend to exercise that right.
  Thanks so much,
  Darian                
> On Feb 12, 2015, at 1:54 PM, Chris Parsons via Community-service <community-service at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> This is a really interesting question. My opinion is that activities like this would fall under advocacy rather than community service. As Roanna pointed out, these types of activities do ultimately have the potential to help people in the community, but I think that there is a difference between advocacy activities, which tend to more directly involve politics and legislation, and community service activities, which can certainly involve a specific cause--hunger and homelessness, animal welfare, education, etc., but which I think also involve more direct means of providing help for or impacting a particular population or issue, such as cleaning up a park, volunteering at an animal shelter, or packing food at a food pantry.
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Darian Smith via Community-service
> Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 9:03 PM
> To: Community Service Discussion List
> Subject: [Community-service] service through legislation?
> 
> Hi all,
> Something that has  periodically come up  in conversation  as it relates to what we do as the Community Service Division is the idea of activities such as working on legislative campaigns, or pushing local or national legislation and  whether or not it would be considered community service?
> I am most  interested to know your thoughts.
> thanks so much,
> Darian
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