What Public Citizens Can Do about the Y2K Crisis

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The first thing we must do, both personally and societally, is to resist the powerful urge to engage in 'us versus them' thinking and to worry only about ourselves, our immediate families, and our organizations. Some wonderful examples of communities coming together to meet Y2K challenges have begun to occur throughout the country. A Center on Y2K and Civil Society could work to raise awareness through a thoughtful media campaign and dissemination of accurate information; could support specific community planning initiatives; and serve as a clearinghouse for dissemination of checklists, best practices, and models for community preparedness. In all of our efforts, we must pay particular attention to assuring essential services for the most poor and vulnerable members of our communities.

8. Public citizens can help make response to Y2K a budgetary priority. To maximize the impact of Y2K-preparedness efforts, public citizens may wish to contribute to the creation of a one-time emergency fund for the support of organizations and activities addressing the Y2K problem.

A common fund could be jointly administered by a small staff and an advisory board or it could be part of the Center on Y2K and Civil Society discussed in section 7 above. Guidelines should be established that would allow money to be disbursed on an expedited basis to qualified individuals and organizations for the purposes described above. The fund should also consider and review unsolicited proposals from individuals and organizations that believe they have something special to contribute toward Y2K preparedness.

* * *No single group can assess the complexity of the systems threatened by the Y2K problem or where the consequences of failure might be felt. Foundations and nonprofits, local, state, and national governments, and each of us individually and working with each other must take responsibility for meeting the year 2000 challenge. The Y2K crisis requires collaboration among neighborhoods, communities, cities, states, and the federal government in a manner unprecedented in American history. We must begin to develop social responses to the year 2000 problem. We need to engage in this discourse within our organizations, our communities, and across the traditional boundaries of competition and national borders. We must understand that Y2K is a systemic, worldwide crisis that requires us to respond in the collective, humane way we would respond to the devastation caused by multiple, simultaneous earthquakes and floods. In working together to meet this formidable challenge, we can affirm our interconnectedness and common humanity.

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