After graduating from DU, I packed my bags, quit my job, bid farewell to long time friends and took an unpaid internship in our Nation’s capitol. My friends thought I was crazy. My family thinks I am going to go broke. Taking into consideration that I am already broke and slightly crazy, I figured, what’s the worst that could happen? At least I knew there was one guarantee, I would learn. Rather than search in Timbuktu for an entry-level job as a reporter, I figured I might as well get to know American politics from the city that does it the most. The first thing I learned was just how many pre-conceived notions can be ill-conceived illusions. Let me explain.
Before I left for an internship with C-SPAN, I employed a notion of our nation’s capitol as a place where protesters swarmed the streets and military presence was more recognizable than the clouds in the noon day sky. Since I was a child I longed to drudge my way through the heart of this American marketplace and talk to people ne’er found in the lonely streets of white America. Then I got here and my notions gave way to reality. The Washington I had envisioned was not the place I found. The bustling political atmosphere I longed for is not an every-day-outdoor event. It seems the crux of important political events are locked inside boardrooms, echoing down corridors, kept inconspicuously inside the phone lines and in the whispering eateries. There are no information flyers swirling social concerns, nor are there rebellious organizations trumpeting their values on every street corner. The rebels, it seems, have retreated into cyberspace, coffee shops and concerted coalitions. There are cameras patrolling the scattered streets and walkways. There are no tanks or m-16’s or armies in sight. For a nation in war, the capitol is eerily quiet, at least in the daytime. There are places I am warned not to tread and neighborhoods I will never go back into and places that I will only visit on the map. The urban crime is very real and warrants an entirely different story, yet it does not permeate throughout the city. Instead, it seems to be confined to the boundaries declared by drug-lords and economic injustices.
To my delight, most streets are clean, monuments are grand and plenty, and much of the concrete jungle is laced with an overgrowth of trees and a myriad of flowers. People from all cultures color the city canvas congruent with the American ideal-from the Embassies that crowd Massachusetts Avenue to the fountains of the waterfront. From the French feel of Georgetown, to the clean carpets that line every metro, D.C. is more an example of American stability than it is the decrepit Mecca of Babylon I had assumed it to be.
I sulked at the lack of soapbox politics. I searched parks for the organized anger. I even tried to ask the man at the hotdog stand about my faulty pre-conceptions. His words were simple “times have changed…. Revolution will not come by force; it’ll come by vote”. In between bites I said ‘what happened to the hippies?’. The older Indian man smirked and jibed “The hippies were then.. The television is now”. Then as relish tumbled its way to my tie, I realized where I got my ideas of this place. I assumed that I learned how to think critically. My shock is a reminder that it takes constant attention.
