AT THE ENTRANCE TO THAISS PARK, a carefully landscaped patch of grass, trees, and Little League fields just inside the city line of Fairfax, Virginia, stands a bright enamel sign mounted on a steel pole. “AmeriCorps Adopt-a-Spot,” it announces in eye-catching letters. Below is the word ” LITTER,” slashed in two by a bold red stripe. The message is clear: Thanks to the efforts of AmeriCorps, the president’s new program that pays young people to do public service work, this is a litter-free park.
For the people who live near Thaiss Park, the sign has been something of a mystery since it appeared late last summer. Nobody in Fairfax, it turns out, has ever seen an AmeriCorps worker in the park, much less picking up trash there. Not that there is much trash to pick up. The city’s fatuously effcient public works department already cleans the park twice a week. Fairfax’s broad assortment of neighborhood associations takes care of the rest. “If somebody breaks a beer bottle in the park, it’s gone the next day” says David Murray, who lives nearby. “Littering just isn’t done.” It’s hardly an exag- geration- the two predominant groups in the neighborhood bordering Thaiss Park are Korean immigrants and retired military officers.
So what is AmeriCorp; — or, more specifically, its sign — doing in Thaiss Park? Why did the group pledge to clean up a place that is already spotless? And why did a federal program charged with rejuvenating fractured communities offer its services to one of the most organized and prosperous suburbs in the region? To hear Maria Garin, head of the local AmeriCorps offce, tell it, the decision was an accident of geography. “We basically just piced the park because of the location,” she says. “Most of the young people we’re working with are living in this area, and it was in a good location for them to go and work.” (So far the location hasn’t made much difference; AmeriCorps workers still haven’t visited the park.)
But there may be another explanation for the appearance of the mysterious sign: public relations. AmeriCorps is in trouble on the Hill. After enjoying a measure of bipartisan support since its inception two years ago, the program is facing mounting hostility from Republicans, which is being met by an equal amount of alarmism from the White House. (Killing the program, say administration fiacks, means “preventing students from learning responsibility through community service.”) For their part, the program’s directors have sent word to the managers of the 1,200 local sites that garnering good publicity — that is, convincing the public that AmeriCorps provides indis- pensable services to neighborhoods — is now a top priority. Putting up self-congratulatory signs in affluent Washington suburbs is juspart of the effort.
Early this fall, the program’s governing body, the Corporation for National Service, sent 5,000 copies of the offcial AmeriCorps Media Guide to its project sites around the country. Written in easy-to-understand language, the manual makes it clear that charities that accept AmeriCorps money have an obligation to pitch in with the public-relations campaign. “Keeping local, state, and federal offcials informed about how AmeriCorps is ‘getting things done’ in your community,” it explains, “should be one of your marketing priorities.”
For those who don’t get the point, the guide lists ways to make certain the glories of AmeriCorps end up in print. For starters, local charities should ” Announce specific AmeriCorps accomplishments.” If nobody notices, “Report your accomplishments at local town council meetings.” If that doesn’t work, the guide advises, “Celebrate and participate in a well-known day or week,” or “Link up with another publicity event in your community.” To pique the interest of newspaper feature writers, site managers should pitch pieces profiling budding Stakhanovites on staff — “articles about particularly dedicated and effective AmeriCorps Members.” Run out of news pegs? No problem: “Give an award to an AmeriCorps member or a supportive community leader.” If all else fails, and your good deeds have failed to make the evening news, ” Initiate a new project.”
Many AmeriCorps project directors seem to have taken to heart the injunction to go forth and publicize. In its quarterly report, for instance, the AmeriCorps-funded Real Alternatives Program in San Francisco listed only one difficulty under the heading of “Primary Challenges/Problems Encountered” and it had nothing to do with helping the needy: “Media coverage has been slow at this time,” the directors lamented. “We feel that we need to do more active media advocacy and program promotion.” They added hopefully that “a Media Committee Speakers Bureau was set up to work in this area.” The National Endowment for the Arts, which employs 60 AmeriCorps workers, preempted any such snag by hiring a New York public relations firm, the Kreisberg Group. The flacks, noted the NEA in its quarterly report, have ” been helpful in the placement of stories in the greater New York metropolitan area.” Other AmeriCorps projects have boasted of buying radio and television spots and taking out newspaper ads to publicize the program.
All this self-promotion can be enervating, especially for non-profit groups accustomed to spending most of their time helping actual people. “Real local charities don’t even think to look for a federal grant,” says John Walters, whose New Citizenship Project has studied AmeriCorps for the past year. Charities that agree to accept AmeriCorps money and workers think about it a lot.
The stock Republican swipe at AmeriCorps is that the program has been used as a political tool for the Left. There is of course sme truth in the charge (an organizer for Mississippi Democrat and failed gubernatorial candidate Dick Malpus recruited volunteers at an AmeriCorps site in Jackson this fall, for instance), but liberal bias is not the real problem with AmeriCorps.
The real problem is that AmeriCorps is funded by Congress. And taking money from Congress requires charities to earn national recognition rather than simply local gratitude. Hence the media strategies and public relations firms. For many erstwhile private non-profits it is a shift in focus whose effects are just beginning to be felt. “Every time I turn around AmeriCorps is making us do something that distracts me from my work here,” complains a staffer at Habitat for Humanity, a widely respected charity that recently signed on with AmeriCorps.
Meanwhile, the AmeriCorps publicity machine rolls on, sometimes more smoothly than others. Moments after explaining why she had an AmeriCorps sign placed in Fairfax’s Thaiss Park, site manager Maria Garin lays down her ground rules for media interviews: “Just to let you know, before you plan on using this information or my name or the agency’s name, it has to go through my executive director and my program director.” Does this mean that nobody is allowed to publish the nante of Garin’s group without permission from the AmeriCorps directorate? “Yes,” she replies, “before it is published, it has to go through our executive director.”
Nice try, Maria. But it is hard to blame her for giving it a shot. After all, “Publicity,” the AmeriCorps Media Guide advises, “is simply a means of telling people what you want them to know.” ,
by Tucker Carlson
