2011 New Thing 6: One Weekend, Two Road Trips

I've been to both Boston and Washington, DC lots of times before, but never via road trips on the same weekend.  It all started out when two Saint Michael's College clubs -- the Student Global AIDS Campaign and the Dear Hilary Campaign for the Congo -- decided to join forces and take a bus down together to Washington DC so that we could spend Friday doing a rally at the state department ("Joining Hands for the Congo") and some lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Late Thursday afternoon 55 Vermonters -- about 30 students and faculty from Saint Mike's, the rest members of the local Congolese community (and a few, like my friends Cleophace and Pierre, who are both) loaded up the bus and headed out for the 10+ hour drive to the Nation's capitol.  The next day we held a big noon-time rally directly in front of the state department, complete with drumming, a song in Swahili that Naweza patiently taught us on the bus ride down, speeches, and most importantly, an appearance by a number of state department officials working on African issues who came down and asked to meet with some of our leaders.  One of the chief demands they discussed was our call for a special envoy to the Great Lakes region.  Given that the Congo is (and has been for 15 years) experiencing the greatest devastation caused by conflict on the planet (more deaths, rape and murders than Iraq, Afghanistan and the Sudan combined), we believe that the focused attention that a special envoy could bring to the conflict is obviously warranted, and in fact, long overdue.

One of the best things about being political in Washington DC is the chance to see some of my favorite alumni.  Here I am (complete with rain-soaked hair and a Michelle Duggar-esque t-shirt and long skirt ensemble) with Kelly and Siham.

Sam, Alexsis and Alyssa -- we thought we were early, but actually we were just waiting on the wrong side of the state department building. (Alyssa has her own blog: get her version of events at http://alyssasmc.blogspot.com/)

After the rally ended, a team of us headed over the Senate buildings to lobby on global health spending and issues in the Congo.  Our group, pictured here talking to a staffer for Senator Kerry, also met with staff from Senator Leahy's office, which the other team visited the offices of Senators Collins and Shaheen

The trip to DC was the epitome of speedy.  We left Burlington on Thursday afternoon and arrived back on Saturday morning. For me, that was pretty necessary, because I also had a plan to spend part of the weekend in Boston, visiting my beloved niece Tigist and her parents, Katrinka and Brian, who were in town for a conference.  It was a lot of driving for a single weekend, but some things are so completely worth it.  Here's some pictures featuring the cutest three year old in the world (that would be Tigist).

Tigist and mom (my sister Katrinka) hanging out at the New England Aquarium.

Siham joined us for dinner Sunday night.  She and Tigist share an unusual hobby, namely finding the teeniest tortilla chips in the basket to eat.

Although Tigist was too little to appreciate it, we had dinner at the Border Cafe in Cambridge because it has special significance to Katrinka and Brian -- it's the place they met.  Here they are with Siham, Tig and Brian's colleague, Kell.

Saying goodbye to Tig before heading back to Burlington Monday morning.

Serendipity 10. Spend Columbus Day Weekend in Washington, DC with 29 Students

So, it's been a couple weeks, and I really want to make sure that I get to share some of the cool things (lots of new ones, too) that the 30 of us MDG class and Social Justice Leaguers of Saint Michael's College did in Washington, DC. The whole trip was the suggestion of students from my Global AIDS course last year. I told them that I was thinking about starting a new class in fall 2010 on the Millennium Development Goals, and they gave me all kinds of great ideas for the new course. Mae suggested that the class should incorporate a trip to Washington, DC over Columbus Day weekend to do advocacy on the issues we were covering in the class, and that seemed a great idea, so now we've done it.

We left on Saturday, October 9, and since Saint Mike's takes off both Monday and Tuesday of that week, we were able to spend both days in DC. We attended an environmental rally in front of the White House called by the Vermont-founded organization 350.org on Sunday afternoon and spent Monday morning doing a training on the issues we'd be speaking about with Hill staffers. Monday afternoon was a fabulous teach-in with Maurice Carney, Executive Director of Friends of the Congo and two of his staffers. One of their offices is upstairs from a wonderful bookstore-coffeehouse adjacent to Howard University called Sankofa, and after our teach-in, we were having drinks and snacks outside, and the actor Danny Glover dropped by to visit the cafe and FOC office. It was great to chat with him about issues affecting the Congo, and he even posed for pictures with our group and some of the individuals.

Of course, everything led up to Tuesday morning, which was our actual time for lobbying. We split into teams and were able to visit 6 offices: Senators Leahy and Sanders and Representative Welch from Vermont; Senator Gillibrand and Representative Lowi from New York; and Representative Hodes from New Hampshire. We talked to them about fully enforcing Public Law 109-456 which has already been passed on the Congo; providing more money for global AIDS and global health spending; and our recent environmental action at Saint Michael's College.

Along the way, we managed to get in some sight-seeing (at museums and monuments, including as you see here, the Lincoln Monument at night) and new food (Ethiopian) and lots of exploring different parts of the district. I've posted more pictures than usual, mainly because there were so many things we did and so many people involved. There's a picture of Olivia, Samantha C. and I asking Danny Glover a few questions. Although Josh got to chat with him about labor activism, an even prouder moment is captured here when he got to meet one of the heroes of the environmental movement, James Hansen, the early scientific voice of warning about climate change in the United States. There is a shot from our Ethiopian eating adventure (almost everyone at the table had never tried it); photos from the hotel lobby getting ready for Hill lobbying (that's Sarah, Matt, Jerry and Mia sitting on the floor strategizing, and I'm waving around a photo of our recent 350 action on campus we brought to give to our Congressional delegation); and pictures of Rachel and Claire helping Maurice with his presentation and then all of us outside with him. On lobbying day Team Leahy passed Team Gillibrand in the Senate office building, so I forced Ben, Connor, Tim, Chris, Tim, Ellen, Claire, Olivia, Katerina, Samantha H. and Alexsis to pose together. And finally, you can see something our class and advocacy organizations have become quite adept at -- what we call the Kindergarten Circle. It doesn't matter where -- class, outside our hotel, on the grass of Lafayette Park in front of the White House -- when it's time to get ready for something or analyze what we've just seen we "circle up" and talk it out.

When 30 people take a trip, everyone takes home different favorite memories. But for me, my favorite memory is a shape -- our circle-- that we made all over Washington DC, whenever we took some time out to learn and prepare and talk together. I am lucky to work with fabulous students and student-activists who came to Washington to learn and advocate for issues they believe in. Not a bad way to spend a four-day weekend.

47. Visit the Walter Reed Museum

So, this New Thing is actually attached to a much bigger four-day trip with 29 students from my Millennium Development Goals class and several of our student organizations within the Saint Mike's Social Justice League. There's all kinds of fun activities and pictures to report on for that, from lobbying in the halls of Congress, to meeting Danny Glover outside of Sankofa, an awesome cafe-bookstore next to Howard University where we got a briefing from the organization Friends of the Congo. But this post is strictly about the the museum, which is technically my New Thing from this trip.

The idea to go the museum came from my good friend Lilly, who suggested it last spring, when I took a group of students to Washington, DC (and that time our new thing wound up being visiting the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial at night). But I just knew that now was the time to hit it ("it" is officially the National Museum of Health and Medicine) for two reasons. First, it would square the circle on a bizarre habit I picked up in Jordan this summer of visiting museums dedicated to tumors and three-headed babies and every other kind of grotesque medical thing you can preserve in formaldehyde. This summer in Jordan while we were visiting the University of Jordan, our very gracious hostess, Inas, took Siham, Connor and me on a tour of the medical school's museum, where I committed my most memorable international faux pas when I screamed when I saw a particularly startling specimen. So, since Connor was also along on this trip, I told him we just had to go. On top of that, another student and New Thing veteran, Will (who did my spring Camel's Hump Hike with me), has a personal connection to the museum, since his great-great grandfather's femur bone from an amputation during the Civil War is prominently displayed. Of course, we all learned that Will's great-great grandfather, General Daniel Sickles, was not only a Civil War hero who took his friends on an annual pilgrimage to the museum every year to visit his leg bone, but also first successfully used the temporary insanity plea in the United States when he killed the son of Frances Scott Key (composer of the Star Spangled Banner in case you forgot), who was having an affair with his wife. Too bad there was no reality TV in the 1860's.

All in all, I convinced six students, all seniors, to come with me, and now they are slightly horrified to have shared this experience with their professor. In the group picture next to the tubercular lung you can see Josh (who would clearly go in the 52 Hall of Fame if I had one since this is about the 20th new thing I've strong-armed him into doing), Amanda (who is one of my highly-talented rock climbing instructors), Tim and Ben on the top row, and on the bottom, Connor, Will and me. There's also shots of Will standing proudly next to his famous ancestor; Connor and I posing next to a tumor for old time's sake to show Siham; Tim, Josh, Ben and Connor learning what they'd look like as tall men without the flesh; and Ben and Amanda intently examining bits of Lincoln's bone fragments from his skull (really, I'm not making any of this up).

After staring at medical oddities for a couple hours we re-joined the other groups (who I had not managed to convince to come with us because they had to do boring things like check out the Smithsonians on the Mall) to start our political activities at an environmental rally in front of the White House. We had lots of other great adventures, and I'm definitely going to write about them, but for me, I'll always fondly remember our trip to the Walter Reed Museum. It's actually got some very fascinating exhibits about the evolution of battlefield medicine as well, and I really would recommend it -- unless you have a weak stomach.