This week, I continued my lobby
experience by attending a meeting with representatives of the U.S.
International Council on Disabilities (USICD). Here, I learned more
details of the Convention on the Rights of people with Disabilities and the
importance of getting it ratified. We discussed our game plan and went
our ways to lobby to the legislative assistance and interns of various
senators. This week, I got to lobby with a really cool person named,
Rachel. She is just a few years older than me, but is doing so many great
(like the awesome, greatness of great) things like teaching special education
and training teachers abroad how to better accommodate their students who have
special needs. This summer, she is headed to Lebanon. How
cool!!
Oh yeah, back to the story.
Lobbying is fun mixed with challenges, which I'm not complaining because I
could always use a challenge. However, it's kind of discouraging and
frustrating when the people you're talking with don't seem to be on the same
page as you, and when you try, they just seem uninterested. But we won't
let this keep us down. We will keep on fighting for the rights and
equality for those with disabilities here and abroad.
Aside from the terrible heat and
humidity on Saturday, I had a wonderful time trekking to the FDR Memorial and
learning more about the great works of this great (grand, cool, awesome,
remarkable, all the good stuff). He
really paved the way for rights of those with disabilities. It was fun seeing the replica of the “wheelchair”
he invented himself. It only went
straight and he had to have people push him.
I wonder if I would have had that patience…. Probably not!
It's so cool to see how far we've
come in terms of disability rights in our country. Now, we need to get
this treaty ratified, so we can pave the way for other countries to
follow us on this trek of equality for persons with disability.
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