WRITING
This memo was written for my GOVT-210 “Political Power and American Public Policy” class with Professor Keith Pemrick. Throughout the course of the class, we were assigned different memo writing assignments to strengthen our concise writing skills with topics that varied from member of Congress, votes on specific bills, and interest group involvement in specific bills. This memo was written to reflect the involvement of one such interest group, the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, in the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
Read the four page memo here.
VIDEO
On November 12, 2019, the Supreme Court heard the oral arguments for three decisions that would determine the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and American University students joined with masses of others to make their voices heard on the steps outside. As an AU student and videographer with a passion for immigration justice, I knew I needed to capture the movement for American University’s investigative journalism magazine, AWOL. I spent the day following the AU coalition of students and student organizations who marched from our quad to the Metro right down to the steps outside of the United States Supreme Court to tell their stories, make their voices heard, and support one another. My video of the experience was posted by AWOL alongside former Editor-in-Chief Zach Vallese’s article about the impacts of the Court’s decision on AU students.
I would be honored if you took the time to watch my video here.
Through my experiences with the student leaders, immigrant students, and activists throughout the course of that day, I was reminded the importance of listening, the importance of a story. That experience has reminded me time and time again, as I aimed to exemplify through the video itself, that the best kind of leadership is guided through listening to and engaging with others. With this video, I was able to use my platform to lift up the voices and stories of others to inform my future action and the future actions of others. Through this video, I hope to play one more portion of my part towards creating comprehensive and collaborative coalitions of leaders and activists who work together, listening to one another, to achieve our common goals.