ORRRC and homeland security - NRPA: Perspectives - Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission - Brief Article

This January marks the 40th anniversary of "Recreation for America," the Report to Congress of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC). Starting this month, and in each issue of Parks & Recreation in 2002, we will include a section reminding us of the myriad accomplishments that resulted from the recommendations of this landmark commission. In my mind, it is the single most important recreation study of the 20th Century, because of its tangible results. Mr. Laurance Rockefeller, the ORRRC Chairman, and NRPA's first Chairman, opens the series of articles this month with his essay on the importance of the Commission's work.

2002 will also bring our Nation to grips with the most serious challenge to our internal security that we have faced since the War of 1812, when the White House was burned to the ground. The terrorists who have attacked us will not prevail!

While we take action, aggressively, to prevent further terrorist attacks, we must also assure that the homeland that we are defending, and our rights as equal citizens to enjoy the fine quality of life that we have in America, is not jeopardized in the process.

Too many of our elected leaders, at all levels of government, still make the false assumption that parks and recreation are not essential to our citizenry. In the coming year, or longer, we will face the challenge that local, state, and federal governments will try to fund homeland security by transferring public funds away from agencies and functions, such as recreation and parks, that they do not deem to be essential, in order to give greater funding to police, fire, first aid, or other agencies and programs who justify their budgets in terms of homeland security.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Literally in the wake of the collapse of the World Trade Center's twin towers, and radiating out from ground zero even faster than the smoke, dust and debris, Americans, first solemnly, then defiantly, and finally in a truly American spirit of community, gathered in public parks to share their emotions and bond together in a way that happens best in America in our public spaces, and especially in public parks.

That Americans choose to gather in public spaces to grieve and to celebrate should be well known to all. Too often though, we "just do it" and take the public parks for granted, never stopping to realize that having spaces for public gatherings, whether celebration or protest, is an essential American tradition that we cannot allow a focus on homeland security to endanger.

These public spaces, parks and sites of glory, honor, grief, and shame, include many of the "hallowed ground" sites of our nation's wars -- Fort Necessity, Little Bighorn, Saratoga, Yorktown, Antietam. These public spaces also preserve some sites, like the World War II Japanese internment camps at Manzanar (CA) and Minidoka (ID) that are intended to remind us of our overreaction, fear, and infringement of human rights.

We gather in public parks to share emotions and experiences, and to gain new insights through public discourse and by better educating ourselves about the past, in order to better understand and cope with the present and to prepare for the future.

For Americans to maintain, even enrich, our quality of life, we need to assure that our public parks and recreation sites remain open, and are well maintained and managed by well-turned professional staff. Cutting the budgets for public park and recreation agencies is not an acceptable solution to the need to also fund homeland security.

The homeland that we all love, the homeland that we need to secure, is one that can best be secured by continuing to demonstrate to the world that we will care for this land, that we will continue to assure that all Americans have equal access to it, and that we will fight just as hard to maintain the quality of life that we enjoy through the natural, cultural and recreational environment around us, as we will to ensure our personal safety, our energy supply, or the human rights of the citizens of other countries around the world.

If we pull back into an isolationist shell, if we forsake our environment, if we curtail public park and recreation sites or programs, if we infringe upon our inalienable rights in the name of fighting terrorism, then the terrorists will have accomplished their only realistic goal, to intimidate our nation, force a retrenchment, and curb our instinctive desire to aid others less fortunate than ourselves.

So throughout 2002, as you read Parks & Recreation Magazine, especially the articles about the ORRRC Commission and its results, please keep in mind that you have a responsibility to present and future generations to actively work to assure that our legacy of local, state, and national parks, public lands and recreation sites all across America receive as active and diligent a defense network as does our Nation as a whole.

T. Destry Jarvis Executive Director

COPYRIGHT 2002 National Recreation and Park Association
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group