Your URGENT ACTION is necessary NOW!!! TO AVOID HAVING THE PEACE CORPS BUILDING NAMED COVERDELL!!

Your URGENT ACTION is necessary NOW!!! TO AVOID HAVING
THE PEACE CORPS BUILDING NAMED COVERDELL!!

Please do two things:

1) Call your congressional representatives and your Senators to voice
your opposition in naming the Peace Corps Building - 202-224-3121

2) Please forward this notice to all of your colleagues who have
served as Peace Corps Volunteers and are opposed to thoughtless
political posturing.

Below is the web site an article written by Al Kamen from the
Thursday, February 22 in the Washington Post where a couple of
folks on the Hill (specifically Senators Trent Lott and Phil Graham)
want to name the PC Building after Coverdell.

Having served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years in Morocco,
and as the Women in Development Director for 5 years for the Peace
Corps and then for 6 years as a member of the National Peace Corps
Association Board of Directors, and now as Chair of the 40th
Anniversary Celebration Task Force, I personally am disgusted by
the thoughtlessness of this idea, the political posturing and the insult
to all of us who have chosen to serve. Personally, I am vehemently
opposed to naming the Peace Corps building after Coverdell.

Paul Coverdell may have been a nice guy, but he was also a very
controversial director, having traveled nearly 30 times in less than one
year to Georgia saying he was "trying to increase the number of
recruits from there" when, from the inside it certainly looked like he
was running his Senate campaign from the Agency - decreasing
appropriated dollars from Congress for programs to support the work
of Volunteers in the field and increasing the budget for domestic
programs (and the number of recruits from Georgia did not increase
by even 1). Moreover, he served less than 2 years as head of the
Agency; he was not the first director of the Agency and certainly not
the founder of the Peace Corps. He has had a program named after
him at PC - Worldwise Schools and if these Senators are so
interested in naming something, they can name a building in Georgia
or a Caucus room in the Senate.

If they want to name the Peace Corps building anything, they should
put all of our 161,000 names on it and name it after each and every
American who served our country in peace and by choice and not
some political appointee who basically didn't want the job to begin
with! And they should also highlight the names of the 300+
Americans who died in service. Or at the very least - name it after our
founder JFK. Or at least Sarge or Loret. But this is beyond a slap in
the face to each and every one of us who served as Peace Corps
Volunteers as well to our hosts.

Perhaps it would help their thinking if they consider it from the
perspective that if you have 161,000 Americans - each of whom is
allowable by law to donate $1,000 to a primary campaign and $1,000
to a general campaign that gives a total of $320 Million dollars!

Please send this note out to your list serve and whomever else you
think would be as ticked off as I am. Please ask each person to
immediately write/call/email Senators Trent Lott 202-224-6253 and
Phil Gramm 202-224-2934 as well as your own Member of Congress
expressing your opposition in naming the PC building after Coverdell
who simply doesn't deserve it!

Thanks, Barbara Ferris