I’m involved with the Dallas Peace and Jutice League Center. We wanted to make it intersectional—we’ve reached out to dreamers, the BLM movement, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, etc.— to form the group to bring to Spring Lobby Weekend, to eventually help build something sustainable back in Texas.
It’s been amazing to watch relationships form within the larger group of young people—Muslim and Hispanic kids hugging. Comparing words in Arabic and Spanish and realizing many are the same. Just getting to know people you normally don’t hang out with. It goes beyond lobbying into forming lasting friendships.
I’m not Quaker or religious at all. And I didn’t realize until this weekend that Quakers are such social justice warriors.
I hope that we can stay organized and bring this training back home so that we can teach these lobbying skills to others in order to reach our local elected officials. I want it to be a sustainable thing—to be able to do it forever and ever.
Naylee lives in Dallas, Texas and works as a public-school administrator designing early childhood programs. Naylee attended Spring Lobby Weekend for the first time in 2018.