By Sarah Gilbert
We woke up a little groggy from the full day we had yesterday. It had been a hard and fast day that had worn us down. I prayed that I had gotten enough rest for this day.
Our first meeting was with the ONE Campaign. They are an organization that fights poverty and disease in extreme third world countries in places such as India or Africa. One of the most important parts of the ONE campaign is that Bono, of U2, fronts the organization in the media. In the elevators on the way to their offices we whispered (maybe even yelled) about how exciting it would be to meet Bono. We decided that we probably would meet him. We didn’t. But it didn’t matter. Instead we met with Kim Smith, the Deputy Field Director of ONE. She explained that ONE is not like other organizations where people physically build wells, schools, etc. Instead, ONE acts at a higher level by building up a “grassroots army” to raise awareness and petition their representatives to devote a larger portion of the nation’s budget to helping these countries that need it. At this point in time, our government has devoted less than 1% of our budget to poverty relief in other countries. Actually, ONE accepts no donations of any kind but trains people to organize others to reach their congressional leaders.
After this we met with Folabi Olagbaju, the Mid-Atlantic region Director of Amnesty International. Amnesty International is all about upholding the rights that were made legitimate in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UDHR was sparked by World War II and the Holocaust and the need for that to never happen again. Eleanor Roosevelt fronted the movement of the UDHR which was legitimized by the UN and signed by many nations in 1948. Peter Bereson, the founder of Amnesty International, was reading a newspaper and read about Portuguese students who were arrested for toasting freedom. This didn’t sit well with him so he asked people to write letters to the Portuguese government and got the students released. Amnesty focuses on individual human rights violations as well as bigger scale issues. Some of their campaigns are: abolish the death penalty, women’s rights, to abolish torture, and end the genocide in Darfur. Folabai also explained to us how people in the West thought that rights are something we own but in indigenous areas people think rights are your responsibility to the world.
After lunch, we met with Carinne Luck, the Chief of Staff for J Street. J Street is a brand new progressive lobby that is pro-Israel and pro-peace. They are searching for a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and aim to have a dialogue with Iran. J Street just celebrated its being in existence for 100 days. In fact we were the first school group they met with. We understand that J Street is not anti-semitic, they just wish for peace and promote democracy and diplomacy.
After that we met with NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. They would like for marijuana to be legalized. We met with R. Keith Stroup, the legal counsel for NORML. He made a lot of good points. The main one is that since marijuana is physically non-addictive, cannot be fatally overdosed on, and is not more harmful than cigarettes, why is it illegal while tobacco and alcohol are not? Think about it. He also brought up the question of what role should government have in our private lives?
After this we went to Temple Beth Sholom, the synagogue that Etgar member Hannah Goldstein goes to, for Friday night services. It is a modern Orthodox congregation so the men and women were separated. Other than that it was not so different from other services we had been to.
We then went to Hannah’s house afterwards for an amazing home cooked dinner! Afterwards, we did our wrap up at their house. While speaking about our response to NORML, Hannah’s grandfather, who is a judge, stood up and told us what he thought about our meeting with NORML. We realized how controversial many of the topics we have discussed on this trip are. It seems that everyone has an opinion about them. I hope this trip will help us form an opinion about many other issues we will face in the future.
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