A video on progress that I edited for the Washington Bus. Animations and all.
I've made it! The long haul to the East Coast is finished, which means two things:
1. I will be resuming regular daily blog content tomorrow.
2. I am thinking endlessly about how to make myself more connected to this NYC community as I have during the summer to my Seattle community.
As I prepare for both of those things (as well as the coming hurricane), I will be thinking a lot about progress and change. Hence, I present to you a video I edited on what progress means to each of the Summer Fellows in my program over the summer. This video is reposted from the Hella Bus blog. Enjoy!
The time has come again for yet another one of my famous exits. The hours are counting down until my flight into hurricane-ready NYC and I am reflecting on every last moment of my summer in Seattle while simultaneously worrying about how my father and I are going to move me into the dorms in a city that is otherwise evacuating its residents. Since it has been quiet around the blog for the past month, those reflections are stored up in my mind, on my journal paper, and in photograph form awaiting upload. In the coming days, I will share all of these with you, dear readers, but for now I just want to give thanks.
When I returned from New York in mid-May, I had a month essentially to myself. I taught myself some marketing skills, spent some time with some amazing high school friends, and genuinely relaxed for the first time in months. It almost looked like I would have a typical Seattle summer - indulging myself in artsy learning opportunities and working through my bucket list of fun things on my own. That quickly changed when I started my job at the Bus.
As I've said in previous posts, my Fellowship with the Bus was honestly one of the best and most connective experiences that I've had in Seattle. For too long, I have felt that my hometown had nothing to do and little for me to get involved in; through the Bus, I have become more connected to this place than ever I could imagine. I have commuted to the city at all hours of the day and night, spent time with more amazing people than I thought possible, and explored enough events and locations to know the best and worst spots from here to Kirkland. In essence, I got exactly what I wanted: to connect back to the home that I thought I would never return to. And I am immensely grateful for it.
That feeling, that connection, makes this moment peculiar. I am sitting in a coffee shop on Capitol Hill contemplating my summer and all the new faith I have in Seattle in being a place I could spend a good deal of my life in. And yet I am leaving. Back to a city where I am a party of one, where I have had both my best and worst experiences, and where I can no longer communicate face to face with the people I have built strong ties to in the last two months. It is as surreal as it is exciting, as amazing as it is saddening.
I'm going to take over NYC this year. That is the energy that the Summer Fellows and my own new found strength has given me. This summer in Seattle has taught me that fun can be had even amidst tremendous amounts of work, and I am ready to take that philosophy back to Barnard. Tomorrow, I will touch down in the middle of this hurricane fearless and ready for the next big adventure. And this time, I won't forget to write about it.
Thank you again, Summer Fellows, for supporting me and giving me greater power than I already had invested in me. You have built for me a better home in the place I grew up, and I hope that you will keep in touch as we all move forward into the next year.
Happy barbecue eaters at the Yes on Districts office.
I have been an explorer for as long as I can remember - however, I have not yet had the opportunity to explore much of the great state of Washington, since I was either a) unable to drive or b) attending school across the country. So, naturally, this weekend I jumped at the chance to canvass in the city of Yakima for the Yes on Districts campaign.
Briefly, the Yes on Districts campaign will create 7 districts in Yakima (there are currently 4) so that each city council member represents a smaller number of people and can be more accessible/cater to their needs better. It is a proposition in an off-year election, so they needed all the help they could get raising awareness of something that could be monumental for Yakima. Thus, the Washington Bus hooked us up with the opportunity to canvass with their group. Woo hoo! Adventure and local politics!
We will be going back there in August with a greater number of volunteers for the final push towards the primary, so don't hesitate to contact me if you want to join us next time!
This week was event-filled and awesome, so a lot of the work I was doing happened outside - particularly at the Seattle Pride Parade, in which I fanatically snapped pictures of everything from the Washington Bus Summer Fellows to the amazing outfits that people adorned. Check it out after the jump - and yes, there will be dancing.
I am a young voter - there, I've admitted it. I'm on par with the unicorn in my rarity and have only been voting for nary 2 years now. However, I have worked on campaigns before. In my high school days, I registered people to vote when I was not yet allowed to touch a ballot. I cheered on President Obama's election without being able to send in my vote. And, I must admit, I became a little bit worn out.
I distanced myself from politics when I moved to NYC - there were so many more interesting things to do with my first year at college than canvassing for change, right? I also found myself in a new place, so I had no clue what the important issues were for that area. Instead, I took national and global politics as my weathervanes to gauge the state of politics and left local work behind.
I am happy this summer to return to my local roots in Washington. I have had the great fortune to be chosen as a Summer Fellow at the Washington Bus, a youth-oriented movement that wants to bring young voters out of their unicorn status and get their voices heard when the ballots drop. They have reconnected me to the local Washington landscape in a way that has surprised me: they have forced (if the word 'force' can be taken as a gentle shove) me to go to events like Seattle Pride and have taught me all about local politics. Today's post is about my first week and experiences with the Washington Bus, and what it feels like to get back into the political game.
Are you a youth voter? Let me know what you think about politics in the comments! And if you're not a youth, what are your views on youth voters/the youth population in general? Let me know!
