Change Agent

Shannon Mendez
7/18/19
Blog #6

Change Agent 

My alarm went off and before I got out of bed, I started to realize that today was the big day. I was scheduled to lobby for ten different meetings with the state of Georgia and Delaware. You may be asking yourself why lobby for two different states? The truth of the matter is that my home state is in Georgia, but I go to school in Delaware. Lobbying for Delaware was a great experience especially because I got to meet Senator Chris Coons who was the main sponsor for one of the bills we were pushing to be reintroduced in the Senate. I also got to meet Alice who was my partner in all the Delaware meetings. We both agreed to take turns talking since she was an expert discussing about the global poverty issues while I would discuss about issues in poverty in the U.S.

Furthermore, I got the chance to lobby for the state of Georgia as well. This part of the lobbying experience was very ongoing, optimistic, and went smoothly because we all worked as a team to take different roles and responsibilities in the lobby meetings. Best of all this group made everyone feel involved and motivated for the next meeting. In every lobby meeting, whether it was for Delaware or Georgia they seem to support the idea of reducing the amount of poverty in the country. The one meeting that kept us all going was the meeting we had with John Lewis’ Staffer, Thomas Dorney. He stated how happy he was to hear us lobby about the issue of poverty which is something that we are all affected upon regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and age. He was very proud of what we were trying to accomplish, and he mentioned how he would love to see us back in his office to keep the conversation going. Most importantly, he expressed how important it is to make our voices count especially because this is a place for all people.

Through this whole experience, I started to think about that maybe nothing was going to change that day, but hopefully soon enough there would be a change in policies so other individuals can afford a place to sleep and food to eat. I knew that one day all the hard work I had done would be repaid by changing policies and laws. I hope RESULTS keeps up the good work to keeping everyone involved and informed. Later that day, I walked by the office of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez where her office outside is filled with sticky notes to show how much they support her. It was something very unique and interesting to see and one day I hope to get to meet Representative Ocasio-Cortez.