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Former Peace Corps volunteers organizing for Obama
John Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961, the same year that Barack Obama was born. Now, the two have come together, sort of, behind Obama’s campaign for president.
Former Peace Corps volunteers announced Friday that they have set up a Web site to try to organize some of the 190,000 so-called Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV’s) in support of the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Tom Leonard, the chief organizer, said his RPCV’s for Obama involves some 10,000 people, each of whom is committed to reaching out and trying to produce at least 10 more votes for the Illinois senator.
“Because of the thin margin of success in previous elections, the resulting 100,000 votes in November can make a difference,” Leonard said in a statement.
The effort, which the former Peace Corps volunteers are calling the “November Project,” is taking place at www.rpcvsforobama.com.
In his 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama described his mother as “a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism.”
Actually, neither Obama nor his mother served in the Peace Corps. Nonetheless, in his campaign for president, Obama has promised to double the size of the Peace Corps from 7,800 volunteers to 16,000 by its 50th birthday in 2011, which, incidentally, will also be Obama’s 50th birthday.
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