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Reflection from Annah Sidigu, class of 2002
Awakening the Social Critic in All of Us: The Positive Impact of SpiritHouse

When I arrived in Washington, DC in May 2002, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the internship I had landed at SpiritHouse: The Jonathon Daniels and Samuel Younge Forum for Social Justice. However, with such a long title and because I had met the director Ms. Ruby Sales, I was fairly certain that I wasn’t going to be bored. And I wasn’t. At SpiritHouse, I joined other student interns in work that was relevant to contemporary social justice issues, and yet as timeless and, perhaps, historic as the Civil Rights bus boycotts, Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid speeches, and other examples of persistent and non-violent struggles for justice.

Our primary concerns at the time were the USA Patriot and Homeland Security Acts. We recognized that our government was reversing the gains of the Civil Rights Movement by stripping immigrants of color of their rights to privacy and due process. We would not allow ourselves to be stifled by the climate of fear that the Bush administration was using to persecute Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern people. We saw through the vague language of the USA Patriot and Homeland Security Acts and recognized that these legal encyclopedias really stood for the consolidation of a vast array of powers in the hands of one man: Attorney General John Ashcroft. As generations before us have done, and as people all over the world continue to do, we spoke out against unchecked power and for peace and progress.

The task before us was a monumental one. We were only spokes in the wheels of the speeding SUV that was the U.S. empire. I was sustained by the knowledge that as we came together and joined other individuals and organizations, our voices would merge into a collective voice, which would then grow in volume. I remember the long hours spent in the office and the countless drafts and rewrites. Sometimes, I was ready to go home and submit to apathy. I reminded myself that I was not just an individual—that I was part of a larger, global community, and that many of this community’s members could not dismiss U.S. domestic and foreign policy. They were forced to live its consequences daily.

Since my time at SpiritHouse, the situation has become more critical. Our government is accountable to no one – not even its own citizens or the United Nations. The Bush administration recently announced that it has given up its search in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, and new evidence that the administration planned to invade Iraq even before the September 11 attacks has surfaced. Meanwhile, the death toll continues to mount in Iraq. And from the current administration’s foreign policy agendas, new terrorist organizations are created and established. But where is the outrage? Where is the uproar? Where, as Ms. Sales would ask, is our “intellectual curiosity” on this matter? Not in the universities. Not in the media. Not in the town hall, city council, or Congress.

Following the 2004 Presidential Elections, however, some of us have stayed wide awake. It is up to us to join SpiritHouse and other truth-seekers in continuing the struggle for justice everywhere and democracy at home. We must not surrender our right to know the truth or deny our responsibility to tell it and live by it.

Even as I write this, I will admit that I have struggled to make activism a part of my daily routine. As the child of Kenyan immigrants, I grew up in a culture that promotes submissiveness in women. For me, the most difficult part of being an activist and a leader has been speaking out.

When I arrived at SpiritHouse in May of 2002, I was sure that all I would ever do was write about injustice. I did not think that I possessed the talent to speak in front of large audiences, even though I knew that that is what would be required to actually accomplish large-scale change. By the end of my internship, however, I was able to actually speak at a nationally televised press conference. Since then, I have led a vigil against the war on Iraq and participated in public forums on such topics as the death penalty, child poverty and sweatshops. I do not think that I would have been capable of these things had it not been for my work in D.C. I thank SpiritHouse for this and for the work it is doing in awakening and nurturing the serious and critical social voice in all of us.