I just wanted to share something kind of cool that was a coda of sorts to our advocacy day. One of out ITO is from Georgia- Caroline. She had a 3 pm appointment and I was her buddy for it. We had 2 hours of downtime between our senate meeting and her rep so we spent some quality time walking around DC and fangirling outside of offices. As we were walking Caroline was telling me she is a part of the Collision Project at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. I was immediately excited because I interned with Collision before I started teaching. Collision project is a 3-week intensive where high school students “collide” with a text and write and respond to it and then a playwright creates a performance piece. I asked her what text they were working with and it was John Lewis’s MARCH. I was excited because I love John Lewis and Collision and she told me the shows were this weekend.
On our way to the rep, we stopped by John Lewis’s office to tell his staff “thank you” and Caroline told them about the project and they said he’d be in Atlanta and she should contact the scheduler. Fast forward to yesterday. I was attending to support Caroline and also see how students responded to the text and support the arts. John Lewis attended ( I didn’t tackle him or do anything weird). Here is Caroline meeting him before the show:
The performance piece was truly inspirational. The students expressed their concerns and their passions and how they feel they can make a difference. In the talkback, someone asked: “What advice would you give to other young people?”
Caroline stood up and answered talking about her experience on the hill. She said “your representatives and their aides will listen to you and they do care about the teen voice- you just have to use it”
So- we had at least a little victory. Bonus points go to John Lewis who told the ensemble performance inspired him to go back to Washington and continue the good fight.