Chris Matthews (Swaziland 1968-70) Gives a Shout Out For the Peace Corps
I am reading this 11 years after it was written but am happy to read it. I was a PCV…
On this evening’s Hardball, Chris Matthews had a new (I think) twist to his show by answering Tweets and someone tweeted: “Chris, what can I do to help America?” or words to that effect.
Chris answered immediately with “Join the Peace Corps” and then gave a simple, rational and sound reason why the man should join for all the reasons we know from our own experiences. While most Americans might ask: is there still a Peace Corps? at least Matthews is raising the flag for all of us. He doesn’t have to do it, but he does. He believes in the Peace Corps. As we believe in it.
The world is going, as my mother would have said, ‘to hell in a handbag,’ with wars and Arab Springs, and struggles to find a way to create democracies, and for some reason Obama and Congress and all the powers-that-be forget that in the ‘back of beyond’ work being done by PCVs everywhere in the development world more good for America and the world is being created than whatever the ‘blowhards’ in Congress have done in years.
I know it doesn’t make any difference what we–PCVs and RPCVs say or think or do–but it does piss me off that so few in Washington realize what Volunteers have been doing for other fifty years! So, thanks, Chris.
YESS!
I am reading this 11 years after it was written but am happy to read it. I was a PCV 1986-1988 in Guatemala. Living 27 months abroad with very little money or resources (just like the locals in what we used to call “developing” countries) gives one a lot of insight. It changed my life in a positive way in too many ways to innumerate. i live a life of serving others and find joy in this. We are so fortunate to live in the USA with a very high standard of living that most Americans take for granted. I have lived a life of trying to make the world better and I have seen so many of my RPCV colleagues do the same in medicine, social work, education, and in so many fields that directly serve humanity.