SCOPE

A bold and visionary plan must be adopted to equalize the “other New York and eventually the other America”, a city of miserable squalor for over 1 million New Yorkers made vulnerable by multigenerational, multidimensional poverty, tenuous and illegal immigration, deep-seated racism, and structural violence. 

A comparable level of deprivation existing for 50 million Americans and undocumented persons.

Structural violence being maintained by physical apartheid of the social services, opportunities, and social networks. Which from a very early age segregate the poor of our nation by skin color, class, gender, and ethnicity.

This proposed Citywide initiative will enroll young New Yorkers, regardless of citizenship status, on a pathway to fully subsidized CUNY education and healthcare at HHC Hospitals and Clinics. 

As well as U.S. citizenship for undocumented youth.

The City Service Program will enroll teenagers age 18 to 25 in certain high-poverty vulnerable neighborhoods in a 3 year Public Service Program. 

This program will be open to any New Yorker but those areas demographically poorest would be the primary target beneficiaries namely Harlem, the South Bronx, South East Queens, Central and East Brooklyn as well as anyone growing up in Public Housing.  

It will be modeled on the Israeli Program Sherut Leumi/National Service as well as the Korean, Swiss and the Indian National Skills Development Corp.

These youth ages 18 to 25 will live in dormitories, eat together in joint cafeterias and form an adjunct branch of the following city services both uniformed and civilian. After their service, they will be eligible for preferred hiring into the agencies they served with.

DSNY (Sanitation) 

NYPD (Police)

FDNY (Fire)

FDNY EMS (EMS)

HHC (Health and Hospitals)

DOE (Education)

DEP (Environmental Protection)

MTA (Transit Authority)

City Hall Administration

City Courts

Parks Department

DOI (INFRASTRUCTURE)

They will serve 3 years as an embedded, uniformed adjunct to each group they are eligible for. They will at the same time after training be integrated into the regular duties of that service where appropriate.

Upon completion of this City Service, they will be eligible for a full scholarship at a CUNY, full coverage at city hospitals, U.S. Citizenship if applicable and preferential lists for hiring at the City Agency they served in.

PURPOSE

What is the goal of a National Service?

That the civil service, public sector, and defense necessary to secure our nation are met with the full Mobilization of all youths 18 to 21. Who, regardless of their background is trained, regimented, and utilized to serve their country.

The true maximal goal is that by age 21 every American will have earned universal free education and universal health care but contributions to the good of the nation.

This system will forge patriotic and fraternal bonds between privileged and impoverished, between different ethnicities and religions as well as break regional prejudices.

Youths at age 16 and 17 will eventually all take a Comprehensive Application Bridging America (CABA) and such a physical, mental, and psychological exam will place all youths aged 18 into one of four divisions of the National Service.

Civil Service Aiding administration, governance, law and civic duty

Social Service Aiding social service agencies such as education, health, and infrastructure.

Defense police and military forces 

Labor infrastructure, construction, and sanitation.

Or

Exemption based on disability or mental illness.

This system will be divided to allow for numerous skill sets, abilities, and career pathways. Its fundamental divisions will be Civil Service in government, Public Service in Social Services, and Defense in the police and military. Labor the construction trades in service of national infrastructure.

What is meant by conscription? 

That no one will legally be able to buy their way out of it and all citizens of all classes and identities will gain in common Service a pathway to equal education and equal health.

It will become mandatory for all citizens and refusal will carry deep social stigma and social exclusions.

Defeating the Pushback 

The conservative pushback is that it is a socialist project. They will reject its direct challenge to white privilege and elite entitlement. They will reject socializing education and healthcare out of hand.

The liberal/ radical push back to conscription is that it will be used to “strip rights and make war”. 

Both sides will oppose it being mandatory. Will oppose conscription with many rhetorical devices, but ultimately the liberal elite and conservative elite don’t want to see their grandchildren conscripted. And don’t want to see the equality such a plan might induce by leveling the field.

The goal of this program is not an enlargement of imperialism nor a hostage body of labor. 

To enable lasting deep social inequality one advances policy that segregates society by class, race, and gender, and all combinations of. This has been the policy line since slavery and colonialism.

A divided people are a weak electorate, swapped between 2 elite parties. They are divided by imaginary barriers and divided against their own interests.

The interest of the common woman and man being a regime that secures human rights before the law and uses the resources of the nation to benefit the citizenship.

Many failed social policies have attempted bottom-up or top-down endeavors to impose a more just and equal society. Those with total disregard for property rights acting in a proclaimed radical revolutionary priority have ushered in societies frankly both as unfree as they are unequal. If not written off as bloody and repressive dysfunctional dystopian democides.

This class of ideology has for the past 400 years produced a narrative, articulated and dissected best by Oberto Unger, that something reformist is irrelevant and something radical, utopian. Thus a cautious center of elites adopt a conservative or liberal policy based on the status quo.

The challenge to the Conservative method is that it has exacerbated global inequality as never before experienced, as conservative social and fiscal policy is to preserve the status quo. 

The challenge to the Liberal method is that it never goes far enough in leveling the class barriers and deeply rooted racial apartheid.

The challenge to the Radical method is that the speed at which new utopian social policy is implemented unleashes lasting violence.

Stages 

Stage 1 of the Pilot will focus on 3 vulnerable district clusters. Harlem/South Bronx, East New York/Brownsville, and South East Queens.

Stage 2 will be expanded and opened to all New Yorkers who apply.

Stage 3 will tax incentivize middle-class involvement.

Stage 4 is conscription.

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