The MetLife Foundation Civic Ventures study released on June 18, 2008 shows that the Encore Career stands as a reality. As Marc Freedman Civic Ventures CEO said, "This is the first national survey to uncover evidencethat the encore idea is more than an appealing idea." People engage in Encore work now. Education, health care, children and youth work, doing advocacy, teaching, working with the elderly and countless other highly useful tasks tap their creative energies.

In the next few years our USA society has the chance to make Encore part of the fabric of our communities by valuing what older people can contribute and by their recognizing that they have much to learn from younger folks.

Meanwhile we have a national election on November 4. There’s a chance for people over 60 and older, to be civically engaged on election day and earlier. What makes it an Encore opportunity is that many will be so engaged for the first time. They can team up with others who are joyous veterans of election day and related activities.

Here’s what’s happening: states and counties are asking for help more than fpur months before election day. They are looking for poll workers needed to manage what is likely to be a record turn out in numbers of voters and the highest percentage of eligible people voting since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election.

Most of all what’s needed are poll workers for this record turnout. The learning opportunity for older folks is to sharpen up their technical skills to work at the polls. That’s one of many opportunities.

In Virginia employers have been signed up to release workers to assist at the polls and get paid by their employer. In Minnesota they want poll workers who can work with the deaf or blind and can speak a foreign language. Los Angeles County alone needs 25,000 poll workers.

You can ask your state and county how can you help. We can make this election run smoothly, and whatever the outcome, be proud of its process because so many people helped make it happen.

E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post is singing David Cohen’s song. He had a terrific column
this week that touts Obama’s call to service — for all generations — as one of the strongest planks of his campaign.

A chunk from E.J.‘s column:

"Obama already has the template for moving the debate in this direction. In December, he gave one of his best, and least noticed, speeches: a call to national service. The policies he proposed include a doubling of the Peace Corps and an expansion of the AmeriCorps program from 75,000 to 250,000 slots. (President Bush, by the way, deserves credit for saving AmeriCorps from the hostility of some in his own party.) Obama would link his $4,000 tuition tax credit to a service requirement.

"He also suggests ideas that conservatives should embrace, including a Social Investment Fund Network and a Social Entrepreneur Agency that would encourage the innovations of the private, not-for-profit sector.

"But Obama’s speech was about more than programs. It was suffused with the rhetoric of a reformer’s patriotism. ‘I have no doubt that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it,’ he said. ‘Loving your country shouldn’t just mean watching fireworks on the Fourth of July; loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it.’"

David Bank
Editor, Encore.org

Great piece, David. I will send to others.

I’m writing as a supporter of Obama who does not hesitate to give advice when I think he’s missing a beat. In his approach to seniors he’s missing a beat because he treats them as an interest group that pleads rather than contributes. He is recognizing seniors as somebody different from other US populations. That is a political and leadership mistake!

Seniors are producers and contributors to our commonweal. By viewing seniors as an interest group, Obama runs counter to his social movement DNA. His brilliant December Iowa speech on a call for national service laid the basis for a new understanding of what seniors can contribute to solving public problems. Many seniors are ready to pitch in and respond as producers and givers and not be takers and only receive public benefits. 

Obama’s proposals on seniors are substantively meritorious. That is especially so when he deals with issues of poverty, or near poverty, and in his willingness to raise the social security cap on the earned income that can be taxed.. Lifting the income cap so higher incomes are taxed for social security is intrinsically progressive. So on substance there is plenty to cheer what Obama proposes.

The Obama mistake is not about his words or programs , What’s missing is the music that underlies his words. Obama is not playing with seniors or listening to their beatsand rhythms. So something is missing: the necessary recognition that what Obama wants younger people to contribute in the way of tackling tough public problems includes seniors too. They are ready to pitch in.

 An Obama that listens will know how to create a vibrant interaction with seniors. Seniors do not live by subsidies and benefits alone. They are ready to be part of how America has to change and what it has to change to. If Obama puts his head and heart to it he will add to our human problem solving resources. It is in his DNA.

Today’s Wall Street Journal rounds up Obama’s recent efforts to increase his support among older voters. It’s hard to tell from a single article, of course, but his pitch still seems to be framed around older adults as recipients of services (and tax breaks), rather than producers and contributors.

David Bank
Editor, Encore.org