Let's start from the beginning

In the spring semester of my junior year, I put together an Earth Day Conference with keynote speaker Art Haywood. Haywood, in turn, asked me if I would join his campaign, running for the Cheltenham Township Commissioner position in the fall of 2009, which I agreed to. Since then, I’ve been finding Arcadian students to recruit to help the campaign and pledge to vote on November 3rd with rides provided. I’ve been asked why I’m supporting Haywood in his campaign and what compels me to stay on board. Quite simply put, I believe in him. Haywood is new to politics and is an honest, family man. I proposed that he use or advocate smart growth policy as one of the promises he makes for his platform. And, after I sent him a few links and put together a few power point presentations online, he took my advice and added it as one of his key promises for his campaign. One often wonders if people pursuing environmental policy writing or any genre of green work has genuine intentions. Regardless of where you stand on the eco-issues, America has made environmentalism sexy. I’ve been interested and actively involved in the environmental movement since I was seven years old. I started my involvement by contacting a few companies on the Potomac River at the Washington Harbor if I could clean up the river. I said that there were far too many dead ducks and that it made my best friend cry, and that I had assembled a crew to assist me with the clean up session. One company wrote back and informed me that they already had cleaning crews to do that. A month later, the Potomac was clean and since then I have never seen another dead duck. From then on I had secretly pledged to keep actively improving my communities. I am twenty-two now and have developed my sense of activism and applied it into a political scientist mind frame. To be continued...