I know I’m not the only one who will be addressing my disappointment with the outcome of the Ethics bill. This is the first time I have experienced the side of politics that makes me feel completely defeated. Robert’s outlook is that this is the job and we’ll go back at it next year and keep fighting for it but when victory was so close my energy deflated when I read that Nesbitt agreed to gut the Ethics bill and completely take out Voter-Owned Elections. The hardest part was that we were part of it. We were in the building on Lobby Day, listening to the committees push this bill through, talking to legislators and seeing all the support for the public campaign financing and in one day all the support was forgotten.
Though we lost a battle against corporate money, I learned a lot about this job and the people who do it. The fight is ongoing and there may never be effective progress yet I’ve learned that even though you win some and you lose some all that matters is that you stood up for something that you believed in. On a brighter side, this experience has given us a lot of insight into our next moves. The first step I would take would be mass education about Voter-Owned Elections. Just listening to the robo-calls and hearing the stance the other side has taken against VOE offers up a stable defense for us to build upon.
Our Charlotte University Collaboration is going well. We are in the final stages of solidifying everything to be sent out to the individual schools so now, it’s a waiting game. Good luck to everyone!
Alannah- Charlotte
We should definitely include ‘ability to withstand crushing heartbreak’ as one of the skills we require for future interns!
I think you learned a really valuable lesson about social activism and the struggle that happens to bring about change (a lesson I’m still learning myself). It’s sometimes the easier (and more rational) thing to do to walk away..but crazy, irrational people like us keep going!
PS I’m excited to hear more about the collaboration you all are planning in Charlotte.