Day 1
Today was the first day of College Convention 2008!
Our group is made up of me, Alicia Merschen-Perez, Brendan Boyle (the other blogger), DJ Orton, Shannon Donnahue, Juan Escoriza, Sarah Dallon and Amy Torregrosa. We were accompanied on the ride up by one of our advisors for the trip, KC Ferrara, who I had the pleasure of working with this summer. I think this is a great group of people, and I am friends with all of them, which makes this experience just that much better. We left RWU at around 10:00am.
We arrived at around 12:30pm, and got in just in time to see Rep. Dennis Kucinich speak. Rep. Dennis Kucinich is an Ohio Representative, and a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination. I only heard about half his speech, but from what I did hear it was a really amazing talk. Rep. Kucinich is a great public speaker and really held the audience well. His ideas and beliefs really do parallel most of mine. Coming from San Francisco, peace and non-violence are important parts of my morals and values. I truly believe the power of love is much stronger than that of hatred. Rep. Kucinich spoke about this, and I really do agree with him. He also mentioned believing that war is not a good foreign policy, and should never be used. This concept is definitely one I agree with, and would love to actually see work out, but right now it does seem a little far-fetched. Overall, I loved Kucinich’s speech and honestly do wish that his ideas were something America took more seriously, even so it was excellent to hear those ideals from a candidate.
After Kucinich’s speech we had to get some lunch, but made it back in time for a break out session. I went to one on health care, and a program called New Hampshire for Heath Care, a project of SEIU. I went to it because I am not very informed on the various candidates and their stances on health care, but is an issue I do care deeply about and think the candidates should all share their basic plan for the future of American health care. The program educated a lot about their own approach to the health care reforms and the 2008 election, and it was interesting to see their views on it.
We got out early from that session and hung around, managing to see Rep. Kucinich conducting a few interviews outside. I finally did manage to meet him, which was very exciting. He really seemed to care about what college students views were and what concerns they had in the 2008 election. Then the entire delegation headed out to dinner, where our other advisor Dr. June Speakman met us. Here is a photo of me and Brendan at dinner!
On the way back from dinner, we found some workers from theheatison.org, which is a group that wants to make global warming a key issue for 2008, something I really care deeply about as well! Because of this, I had to get a picture with them, so here it is:
After dinner, we went back to hotel in time to see Senator Joe Biden speak. Sen. Biden was an amazing speaker. He really captured the audience, and voiced his passion and energy for the issues he really cares about. Senator Biden is the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee on Senate, thus making foreign policy something he concentrated vastly on. Some of the more important points I think he touched upon were that the war in Iraq is a very important issue, and we need a candidate with a plan for action, here is a quote from Sen. Biden, “...it’s not about change, it’s not about experience, it’s about action...”, he stressed each candidate needing to know a plan before they are elected. He touched upon other issues, and definitely supports dealing with global warming, in fact he helped to write the first bill in Congress ever about global warming. He also spoke about the importance of education, and wants to make it much easier to go to education, without getting in thousands of dollars of debt. He also spoke about the Republican party not really being moral, and used many examples. One of which is a quote, “..we are literally squandering our planet because we want more money..”. This quote obviously hits home for me, and I really do agree, I mean what is more important our planet or your wallet? And can you survive with just your wallet, and not a planet? I thought that point was crucial. In addition, Senator Biden reached out to the aspiring politicians in the crowd by giving them some advice, he said, “...decide what is it is that is worth losing for...”, which really does make a lot of sense, you need to have passion to be a politician, and finding such an issue is something which stimulates passion. Lastly, I thought that Senator Biden’s life story was really interesting. He was elected as a Senator at the age of 29, and is the 2nd poorest man in Congress, which I find very interesting. Most of the Congress is made up of millionaires. I just think that it really shows Senator Biden’s character that he not only admits this, but embraces it and uses it as a way to explain what might be wrong in America. I really loved Senator Biden’s speech and can imagine him as a great president.
Well, tomorrow can only be more amazing than today, and I am really looking forward to it. Here is a last photo of me in front of the podium.
