Jonas Karlsson“Go upstairs and take a picture of the Leader with Mohamed Karzai” was the command my boss gave me on my second day interning for former House Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, who now is the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Mohamed Karzai is the president of Afghanistan. President Karzai wasn’t the only foreign dignitary I got to take pictures of with Pelosi; there was also British Prime Minister Tony Blair and South African President Thabo Mbeki.
As the Leadership Press intern to Speaker Pelosi’s communications director, I was exposed to world leaders and global media. Within a day, I watched Barbara Walters interview Pelosi, helped coordinate the speaker’s Vanity Fair photo shoot, aided her Italian press photo op and assisted in press conferences broadcasted live around the world.
I appeared in a New York Times photo that depicted my office’s press conference the day after Election Day which informally designated Nancy Pelosi as the new Speaker. I was seen on CNN, MSNBC and FOX News while I was helping my bosses set up the Democratic Leadership press conference.
A single day in Washington, D.C. is like a lifetime everywhere else.
On Election Day, I worked at the Democratic Congressional & Senatorial Campaign Committee’s party at the Capitol Hyatt. At the Hyatt and throughout the country, there was a revolution and America’s vote for change allowed Pelosi and the Democrats to make history.
A woman, a grandmother, a Californian – Nancy Pelosi is two heartbeats away from the Oval Office. Never in American history has a female come so close to the presidency.
When President Clinton’s former chief of staff – my professor for the fall semester – the honorable Leon Panetta took my fellow Panetta classmates and I into the West Wing, we were told by President Bush’s chief of staff, Josh Bolton, that the White House experienced a “thumping” on Election Day. Mr. Bolton asked which one of us was interning for the woman that caused the thump. I raised my hand.
As a student intern in Washington, I learned how important it is to take action and to get involved. D.C.’s age demographic – excluding politicians – is 25 years old. The world’s most powerful city is run by kids a little older than you and me.
When I studied abroad in London and traveled through Europe last summer, I was exposed to the differences between Europe and America. When I lived in D.C. and traveled the Eastern seaboard, I was exposed to the differences between the East and West coasts. What bonds Europeans and bicoastal Americans is the need for change. It’s the need to believe in our leaders again. It’s the need to believe in our future again.
During my study at the Panetta Institute, a political researcher made a peculiar comment: the American democracy could be a failed experiment. And our generation could see America topple.We will pay off a historic debt from the Bush Administration. We will no longer be an economic superpower as long as China and India grow. We will live with the ramifications of global warming and the Iraq war. We’ll inherit a different America.
But today is the future and change is possible. Speaker Pelosi’s inauguration has opened up the 2008 presidential races for a woman, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and an African American, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to run as top Democratic presidential contenders which will bring the last of the republic’s old barriers to come tumbling down in one big, exciting race.
And it doesn’t matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. We’re still a young generation that’s in the process of defining itself. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. Trying to gain a realistic perspective on life; trying to gain an authentic perspective on your own self; trying to make your contribution to humanity.
In the Capitol I met foreign dignitaries, American politicos and media superstars. But they were just people grinding out something they believed in.
What do you believe in? Pelosi didn’t devote her life toward political celebrity. She devoted herself toward the advancement of human rights and the fight against AIDS.
If the world is looking for hope, the time for our generation to give them faith is now. Are you a born engineer? Were you put here to be a writer, a doctor, a businessman, a professor or a social worker? The question can only be answered by action.
We can do better than our parents and grandparents. We have a country to run, starting today.
Colin Rizzo is a journalism senior who served as the Leadership Press intern for Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill as Cal Poly President Warren Baker’s appointee to the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy.
Colin is a former intern for the California State Assembly and for Gov. Schwarzenegger.