Thrill-Seeking for Nerds (who want to change the world)

Chag Pesach Sameach! I'm so excited; this is my favorite holiday of the entire year. What is Passover?   Also known as Pesach  in Hebrew, this is basically an 8-day-long celebration of the Israelites escaping slavery in ancient Egypt. It's one of the most important Jewish holidays, and we start the whole thing with a seder : the family eats a special meal together, following a specific order of blessings, readings and songs about the Passover story, and actions like breaking a piece of matzah and washing hands. Setting up for one of the tables for a seder several years ago My family usually has a giant seder with dozens of extended family members crowded into one house, but last year, along with many Jewish families around the world, we gathered over Zoom instead (I'm not sure how I feel about people calling Zoom seders "zeders"...) and this year, it was just my immediate family. I often describe Passover to my non-Jewish friends as "the most social justice-y...

As we transition to a new presidential administration and a new Congress, I'm thinking about the idea of the circumstances of advocacy changing.  It's time to kick off the decade of the Green New Deal, time to strengthen global solidarity and decolonize  global health . This is reason enough to sit down and actually have conversations with each other, even the tough ones. It's also time to continue/resume person reflections. How about changing your mind on a political issue? A painting my friend made at our Sunrise launch party For example, over the past year I wondered if I still maintain that climate action has to be bipartisan. Of course, I'd like it to be! But I don't see Republicans taking the climate crisis seriously. We barely see some  Democrats willing to tackle climate justice at the scale we need, based on the science of climate change, the way it intersects with racism and economic inequality, and the urgency of the political moment. This letter to the e...

This morning, I resolved to try some of those self-care steps my therapist and I have been brainstorming. I've always thought of self-care as "go easy on yourself." Like, not stressing out too much if I don't exercise, or eating just because it tastes good and I want to. And I still stand by those being valid! A new idea for me, however, was that self care can take the form of a little extra effort. For example, I made my bed! It took me less than a minute, and I felt a lot more grounded by starting out my day like that-- making my space a little more orderly. Then, in the same vein of straightening up my space to calm down, I spent part of my free second period writing letters to Congress. I got this letter to the editor  about global COVID-19 relief published in a local newspaper last month. When when we have published media, my RESULTS group likes to print out copies and mail them to our members of Congress. You can add your own note, like "Dear _____, I am ...

I'd like to introduce to you one of my favorite bills of 2021 so far: the THRIVE agenda resolution . We'll get to what's in it in a second, but by the name alone I'm already hooked: this is an agenda to Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy (THRIVE). We Model UN nerds and political advocates love a good acronym! Put together by leaders in the movements for environmental justice, Indigenous rights and sovereignty, and racial justice, this resolution outlines a plan for recovery that would be the first step towards our country’s healing, and part one of the decade of the Green New Deal. Making signs for Earth Day 2020 "10 years to act" is catchy, but January-April 2021 is crucial for setting the pace, so don't get comfortable! It's go time. This resolution, first introduced to Congress in September 2020 , centers on 8 pillars , including creating millions of good, safe union jobs and averting climate catastrophe. Ok, so why do we ...

What if we could reach a wide audience of fellow constituents and our members of Congress at the same time? Guess what? We can, by writing a short piece for the opinion section of a newspaper called a Letter to the Editor (LTE)! Usually 150-250 words in length, a LTE is another powerful advocacy tool. If you aren’t familiar with what these look like, here are a couple examples I've written about for global health. Lawmakers should help fight a tuberculosis resurgence (September 12, 2022) The Global Fight to End AIDS  (December 7, 2018) See? Pretty short and to the point. Nothing fancy about it, but more credibility and room to develop your ideas than you'd get with a Tweet. LTEs are short enough that you can keep a couple favorites on a cork board Some everyday people will read your letter, though it may not be our peers at school. (There's one teacher at my school who sees my letters in the paper sometimes and talks to me about them, but overall I get the sense that most...

I wanted to write something about the pros and cons of using social media to engage in the political process. Not least because our very own President of the United States was banned from Twitter following an attempted coup he (and others) incited, an insurrection fueled by propaganda and misinformation that algorithms designed to maximize profit amplified. The thing is, I've only had Instagram since, like, March 2020. Not even a year. Even if I were the most active influencer on the planet, I still couldn't present myself as having any credibility on the topic because my experience on social media is shaped by my age, gender, race, class background, school culture, political beliefs, and more. So, I called for backup and put it up on my Instagram story.   Among the "pros" of social media: “It makes action/resources more accessible” True! You don't have to go through a lot of other websites or attend webinars to find out what your options are for action items. “Sp...

One of the ways I try to balance preparing for lobby meetings and advocacy-related presentations on top of my schoolwork is combining assignments whenever I can. Over the years, I've given speeches about calling Congress , debated foreign aid, and written Model UN resolutions about issues I advocate for in real life as school projects. It saves a lot of time, and I enjoy the work more when it's a topic I'm passionate about! 7th grade social studies included a Model United Nations project, and my friend and I wrote our resolution about climate change.  This year, my school's winter exams look very different because of the virtual format. For Latin, our "final" is in two parts: one is a translation test I'll take on Monday, and the other is a persuasive essay in English  using a list of figures of speech we've observed Cicero's First Catilinarian Oration (which was in Latin). Since our essay could be any topic, I turned mine into a chance to practic...