What Public Citizens Can Do about the Y2K Crisis

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3. Public citizens can play a leadership role in helping to organize a social response to the Y2K problem at the national, state, and local levels. The year 2000 problem poses a set of interlocking challenges in each community. Too often, it has been addressed as a technical problem for individuals or corporations, without looking at the larger social dimension. Public citizens can take the lead in getting beyond this narrow view and in mobilizing the resources of their local and state communities to address the social dimensions of the Y2K crisis. Businesses can also help by providing key technical and fiscal support to national service organizations that can activate their networks of local chapters to prepare for Y2K.

Nobody can say with certainty at this time exactly how much social disruption and damage will be caused by the Y2K problem. But it is certainly within the realm of possible scenarios to foresee major infrastructure breakdowns and social disruption both locally and worldwide. We must begin immediately to formulate contingency plans to address some of the 'worst-case' scenarios if we hope to be able to mitigate them. Public citizens can further such community, state, and national preparedness by supporting several actions:

· Plenary sessions or special breakout sessions on Y2K at the annual conventions of their trade associations and of leading national service and relief organizations, and the publication of Y2K-preparedness articles in the newsletters of these organizations. These sessions and publications should educate and alert people that the Y2K problem requires emergency attention outside normal planning and action cycles.

· Special coordinating meetings for trade associations and national service and emergency response organizations. The purpose of such meetings would be to promote networking among key leaders in these organizations and coordinated contingency planning at the local level throughout the country.

· Public information and community organizing efforts built around churches, synagogues, schools, and other local institutions. Consider encouraging the use of these local institutions as emergency relief centers, complete with supplies of food, water, and blankets as well as backup generators and fuel so that members of the public will feel protected against freezing or starving in the event of a major infrastructure breakdown. The existence of such centers might help to prevent or minimize panicky individual hoarding and the civil disorder that could follow from an individual/exclusive rather than a community/inclusive response to infrastructure breakdowns.

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