YP4 will be posting pictures from the 2008 summit on our online profiles all week, go check it out and tag your beautiful self. (Why stop there? tag your friends too!)

You can get the pictures at

Our facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Young-People-For-YP4/6167589425

Eventually you'll also be able to see them in our facebook group, future5000 page, flicker and rethos.com

 
EDITED: Apparently tagging isn't working on the Page albums. Soon as we fix that we'll let you know.

Watch for plenaries and official Summit videos soon on the YP4 YouTube channel.

Well I thought I'd try this blog thing out on here. First of all, I gotta say that I learned a lot more than I ever thought I would in DC ~ it was all pretty awesome. So... if you didn't know, though I live in S. Dak now, I grew up in Cali... and I was like, the token Indian that whole time. Always felt so great to be at a Pow Wow and be around my other natives ~ because chances are they were like me... the token Indians on their blocks, lol. Some of them were, now that I think of it... not a whole lot grew up like me... then I moved here... and only my cousins loved me, lmao! They didn't care or hold it against me that I was a damn "city Indian" ~ they never called me an apple... it didn't matter that a wasn't a frickin' full blood or didn't know all the retarded party people who lived here. My cousins didn't get mad because I wouldn't drink with them and they thought it was cool I wanted to go to school and take care of my parents. Most of them anyways. I never complained about the others either... never was in my nature... I was always thought I was better than that... I knew who I was.

Hey ya'll!!!

I'm just trying this blog thing out, I dunno if anyone will read this, but I'm so excited now that the summit is over! It's a bitter sweet feeling. I wish I was back in D.C. but at the same time, I'm so stroked to be back in El Paso and ready to make a change in my community!

I'm just wondering if everyone showed up to the conference. I definitely was thumbing through the facebook and realized that some of these faces didn't look even remotely familiar. Maybe some people used pictures that made them look radically diferent. But, part of me, feels like not everyone was there.

I had my first meeting for my Amnesty International group on campus and although we had at least 15 members that were fully committed, there were only two people that showed up and no one has responded to any of my posts or emails. This is so discouraging and I don't know what else there is to do to revamp this group. We want to do so many things but with so few people (like three) there is hardly anything we can do that would be large enough to raise an eyebrow. Students at University of Houston just don't seem to care, at least on the surface.

Hey guys I have like 4 albums worth of pictures from the summit. I'm gonna post the links. If you guys have some up...please post them:

http://howard.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069892&l=bfb12&id=8907295

http://howard.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069895&l=809f0&id=8907295

http://howard.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069897&l=c8f14&id=8907295

http://howard.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069904&l=af305&id=8907295

Toms River, a large suburb in central New Jersey that happens to be my home, is not a left-leaning town. It is not a moderate town. It is not even right-leaning – it is, if election results are to be believed, a deeply conservative town. It is the kind of town where explicitly starting your desire to ban all abortion gets you elected and re-elected to Congress. The kind of town whose elected officials viciously fight a resolution that would give a dying cop's pension to her partner, because that partner happens to be of the same sex.

The 2008 YP4 Summit was amazing! I had a lot of time to reflect on everything that I had the opportunity to observe and experience. One of the first impactful events at the summit for me was the Power Shuffle exercise. Here was MY reaction: