This weekend, I attended Power Shift '09, the largest "youth climate convergence" ever. It was not what I had hoped, but about what I had expected. There were a TON of people there (the last number I heard was around 12,000) so it was just huge in every way. The organizers got the DC Convention Center for the weekend, which is a whale of a space. There were thousands and thousands of young, passionate, slightly lost people wandering around looking for their friends and workshops. The workshops and panels were also enormous-- there were between 30 and 50 per session, which means that a lot of them had around 300 people attending. That's not a workshop. That's not even a panel. That's a lecture. I feel like there was a lot of potential for conversations and building on the ideas of other organizers, but there were just so many of them around that it was hard to build a relationship with any one of them.

I got to see a bunch of my friends from Sprog, which was great. I especially liked running into Daniel, Valerie, and Jesse B. Good people. I recognized a workshop facilitator and we spent about five minutes figuring out how we knew each other. It turns out we met at Twin Oaks.

A lot of the attendees seemed new to the movement, or like they'd been isolated either in their issue/focus or their networking. So the workshops were probably great for them. A lot of them were on broad topics, tying issues together, etc. There weren't that many specific topics or specialized skills being offered, which I think is a shame. Also, workshops filled up and you couldn't get in. I really wanted to hear about the steps that DC has taken to be a greener city, but the workshop had filled by the time I got there.

I volunteered to be a trainer for lobby day. (Monday/yesterday was a huge lobby day. We unleashed about 5000 folks on Congress to demand a just and sustainable future. Neat.) I was expecting a free T-shirt because all of the volunteers were supposed to get volunteer T-shirts. Evidently they forgot that trainers were volunteers, because they didn't have T-shirts for the 300 of us. Bummer. (Not that I did it for the T-shirt. I just like free stuff.) They gave us silly plastic leis to mark ourselves instead. The training for trainers was the best-run thing I went to all weekend. I didn't even need to take notes because they'd put together such an extensive info/schedule packet for us. Excellent.

The training itself (you know, the one that I conducted) was a mixed bag. Training folks to lobby is always fun. I mean, all you really have to do is remind them that elected officials are just people and they're answerable to YOU, goddammit. It's pretty easy and empowering people is great. I ended up combining training groups with the trainer next to me because we both had small groups. She wasn't really into sticking to the schedule, and she also didn't seem that into training people how to lobby. I sort of doubt that she's ever lobbied before; the advice she gave was pretty woo-woo. She threw us off schedule a lot by going on tangents that didn't lead anywhere. When the training was done and I gave the "you rock and they have to listen to you" pep talk before letting them go, she decided that then would be the best time to ask what sort of actions their local groups were doing. Really? Really? Whatever. My job was done so I left.

And then the skies opened up. We got a whole bunch of snow. I decided that the government was probably going to shut down because DC is whimpy like that, so we stayed up late and watched three movies at T Street. Surprisingly, the government was open on Monday and lobby day happened. I slept in a bit and was feeling too uninspired to get up for what I hadn't missed.

I lobbied last year and it was awesome. I ended up being the spokesperson for our group of five or so, and I talked with a congressional aide for about half an hour. Empowering, awesome, yadda yadda. This year, though, most of my Congresspeople were expecting at least 20, if not 200, people to attend each of their lobby meetings. I'm not a state-level organizer and therefore wasn't going to be talking. I didn't feel like showing up just to be in the room. I stayed put and made pizza. Elizabeth went to the Capital for a civil disobedience action and missed out on the pizza, but seems to have had a good time protesting coal.

Except for Flynn, Elizabeth, and I, all the St Mary's folks came back to school yesterday evening. We stayed at T Street until early this afternoon. Driving back was a breeze. I'd been nervous about it because my snow/ice driving experience is extremely limited. Luckily, Route 5 is a snow emergency route and was completely clear. School was canceled yesterday and today due to snow and power outages, so I didn't even get behind by being gone since Friday afternoon.

Basically, I like the crowd I am wiggling into in DC. I'm also trying to wiggle into living with some of them. Cross your fingers.

I'm also trying to wiggle into getting a job, but that has nothing to do with these people. (It does have to do with paying rent to live with them, though.) Jobs, jobs, jobs. I need to apply for more of them. I want it to be warmer so I have fewer excuses for being lazy.