The Forum is being organized by a new nationwide coalition called ServiceNation. According to the press release from Time magazine, which is cosponsoring the event with Be The Change, Inc., City Year, Civic Enterprises and Points of Light:

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain will discuss in depth their views on service and civic engagement in the post-9/11 world during a primetime forum on the evening of September 11 in New York City.

The Forum is being staged by ServiceNation, a dynamic new coalition of 110 organizations that has a collective reach of some 100 million Americans and is dedicated to strengthening our democracy and solving problems through civic engagement and service. It will be the opening event of the bipartisan, Sept. 11-12, ServiceNation summit, which will launch a one year grassroots campaign to expand voluntary community and national service opportunities for all Americans; use proven service strategies to tackle some of America’s most chronic social challenges; and call on all Americans to make service a bedrock ideal in our democracy

At the Forum, called “A Nation Of Service,” Senators McCain and Obama will appear on stage separately to discuss their respective visions for the role of service in America’s future. Richard Stengel, Managing Editor of TIME, will moderate, and the event will be open to all broadcast networks.

I think this will be a very interesting evening with a lot of discussion of the role and responsibilities of citizens in the 21st Century. It should also help put that issue on the forefront of presidential campaign for at least a night and probably longer into the campaign. I hope that citizen preparedness will be featured as a significant way that Americans can get involved and engaged. I hope to attend the Forum and the Summit, and I will report on the blog about it.

 

So, I thought it would be appropriate for the 100th post to incorporate a terrific reader suggestion, which luckily arrived this week. In an email, Bruce Hennes, a crisis communications consultant from Cleveland asked:

“I write with a request:  With the presidential contest going on right now and more competitive House and Senate seats than anytime in the recent decade, it would be very appropriate, I would think, for your readers to pepper candidates for political office with questions about preparedness, especially questions that get the candidates to move beyond the platitudes.  I would like to see your blog address that question, perhaps even providing a complete list of those questions.”

Great idea. One objective of this blog is to help get the issue of citizen preparedness discussed in the presidential campaign and then onto the agenda for the next Administration. Yet, as Bruce points out, it is a topic that has not been really addressed thus far in the political debate.

So, in the days to come I will be contacting the campaigns of both Senator Obama and Senator McCain to get their positions and ideas on citizen preparedness and engagement. And I will post the answers on the blog. (Bruce also recommended I put together a list of questions that readers can ask local candidates to find out their ideas on citizen readiness which I will do as well.)

Thank you Bruce for the suggestions. And thanks to everyone who has been reading and contributing to this blog over the past three-and-a-half months. I hope that together we can have a positive impact on the preparedness of the American public.