On Thursday, I took a brief hiatus from school to drive to Columbus, OH to spend the day lobbying.  This trip was part of an invitation from the Humane Society of the United States (www.hsus.org), to participate in an outreach initiative in Ohio.  The timing couldn’t have been better.  First of all, this week in Empowering Urban Youth we are focusing on animal welfare issues.  Secondly, a key message of the course is to teach young adults that they have the power to make a difference in the world.  I felt that by standing up for what I believe in, by exercising my rights as a citizen, that I would be demonstrating this “power” to my students.  When I spoke to my students on Wednesday, about the lobbying trip, they had a lot of questions, and they were very excited about this opportunity.

My first time lobbying was in July of 2008 in D.C., and it was an amazing experience.  There is something very empowering about speaking out about issues that you feel strongly about.  To be able to share information, and educate others about the issues that other people and animals are facing, issues that are completely resolvable with a little effort and energy, is exhilarating.  This same feeling accompanied me on my trip from the Senate offices to the Representative offices in Columbus.  Armed with fact sheets, personal stories, and sensible passion, I met with the staff of Senator Schuler and the staff of Representative Stautberg.  As I sat there sharing the data and the stories, I remembered my time spent in D.C. last summer, as well as all of the times that I’ve spoken on behalf of inner-city and urban students.  There is something indescribable about using your time, energy, and your life to stand up for others. 

I was reading The Element, by Ken Robinson, in which he describes being in your “element”.  He describes the feeling as that of floating, or stepping outside yourself to almost see the situation from a viewpoint other than your own.  This is how I felt sitting there in the offices of the elected officials, and this is also how I feel when I’m teaching my students.  This was also an amazing experience, because as I said, it is very empowering to be able to stand up for what you believe in, and to seek victory in a way that does not involve force, but instead is achieved through the power of knowledge and information. 

This reminds me of the “victory” that my students achieved in November of 2006 when they joined me in a voting outreach day in Ohio.  On that cold, and rainy Tuesday, my students from Covington, Kentucky spent their day off from school standing in the rain and cold in Fairfield, Ohio at two different voting stations asking Butler County voters to “vote yes on Issue 12″.  Issue 12 was a levy, that if passed, would raise property tax dollars to build a new shelter for the Animal Friends Humane Society.  My students and I had been volunteering at AFHS for almost a year, and upon mentioning the voting opportunity to my students, they were eager to join in the effort to get the levy to pass.  After having visited the shelter dozens of times, they knew how desperately the animals and staff at the shelter needed a new facility.  So, they stood up for what they believed in, and spent the day reaching out to others, speaking on behalf of the animals.  At the end of the day, though there were exhausted, cold, and wet, they had an amazing amount of energy, as if they were floating being carried along on the wave of empowerment.  The next morning, I was greeted at school by the students with shouts of “we won”, “we won”!  The levy had passed, and my students were confident that it was their signs and their requests to voters that had made the levy pass.  Victory, without force, and victory, in which everyone can win.

This is the feeling I had yesterday in Columbus, and this is the feeling that I want my students, and all urban students to feel.  This is the mission, the core, of Empowering Urban Youth.