Our inter Dulce Valencia penned this blog about her experience hosting her first rally!
Father’s Day Rally: What we as Interns learned.
So, last Friday we interns hosted our first event: A rally. Earlier, Chris had shown us some letters about undocumented immigrants and we saw how many of them didn’t have their fathers with them because they had been deported. We decided to host a rally in honor of Father’s Day and here are some things we learned on what it takes to host and plan an event.
Number 2-Social media isn’t the only way to go at it. Sure it’s always great to tweet and post stuff on Facebook, but you also have to tell people yourself. It helps if you can tell them face-to-face, but a phone call can also make a difference. That’s how we got Blanca and Elba to come. See, it seems like people are more motivated to do something when they see the person go out of their way to inform them.
Number 3-We can actually get things done, we just have to maintain our optimism. Things didn’t start out great, let me just say that. It was just Alma, Dulce, and her sister. Then a reporter from Univision came, but she left after it seemed no one would show up. Alma and Dulce started calling people like crazy. (That’s how we got Elba and Blanca). Then, when it seemed like we would have an unsuccessful event, two people we didn’t know showed up and they had this amazing huge banner! They were so nice. Then Laura and Astrid showed up, we changed our location a bit and then an entourage came! I was so excited! We passed out signs, we chanted, cars honked in support, and Dulce talked to a newspaper reporter who told her she was going to feature her in a story! She was such a nice person to talk to. Finally, we wrapped up and Laura told Dulce if she wanted to do the circle thing, and she did! She called on the guy who had brought the great banner. He told us his story about how he came to the U.S. when he turned 19 to pay for his sisters’ education. He married a U.S. citizen, but he said that even though people believe that as soon as you marry someone who’s a citizen you get papers, that’s not the case. It was a great story.
Overall, we’re really happy with our event, and we think we made everyone at PLAN really proud. Also, as interns we learned valuable lessons that will help us when we organize future events.