Lobby Day and its aftermath!

To say this week was a little bit crazy would be an understatement. Stating of on Monday, Joyce and I met for breakfast with Washington Council-member William Pitt to discuss Washington’s economic development and how politics run in Washington. Joyce and I were also given a grand tour of Washington, which Joyce didn’t really need considering she grew up in this town, but we were still thankful.Out of the politicians we have met, Mr.Pitt was truly a character who was not shy in providing his two cents for almost every topic. At the end of the meeting (which lasted a little over 3 hours), Joyce and I were ready for a distraction. But we kept it moving by arranging plans for LOBBY DAY. I was excited to  see we had a full van of constituents from Pitt County and Beaufort County. We teamed up with Juvencio Peralta, director of NALACC, and invited eight teens from Jovenes Latinos en Accion to attend Lobby Day.

Lobby Day was very intense, chaotic, exciting, and most importantly: motivational. Arriving at the General Assembly building made everything we’ve been prepping for come to real life. Our first meeting was with A.B. Swindell was a chance encounter since his L.A gave us the disappointing news that he could not meet us. However, he could escape us and talked to us in the hallway. It was a little disturbing when he stated talking in Spanish to us. I hope he wasn’t tying to impress us with his bilingual skills because we were thrown of guard more than anything. The best part of Lobby Day came during the presentation of Larry Lessig, who is a great public speaker. All of the teens who came with the Greenville team discussed how motivated they were by his presentation. This was like music to Joyce and I’s ears.

Unfortunately, all the good moments were met with some distrubing news. After hearing about the Senate’s decision to take out the public finance piece out, I was disappointed with our Senators mainly. When we first head about the news, Shaunee, Joyce and I were preparing to deliver a presentation to the Beaufort County Democratic Women group. It helped to be distracted with this presentation so we could remember to continue fighting the good fight for clean elections and a true democracy!

Best wishes for the weekend!

Congratulations to all the summer interns!

Ana & Joyce