Worker Justice DC Participant Emily Oehlsen Speaks at New Student Convocation

Posted in Student Leaders Worker Justice DC

Emily Oehlsen, a participant in the Kalmanovitz Initiative’s 2011 Worker Justice DC Alternative Spring Break Trip, spoke at Georgetown University’s New Student Convocation on August 26, 2012. Olsen shared about her experience on the trip, highlighting the time students spent on a picket line where she “fell in love with labor unions.”

She said, “With ten other Georgetown students, I participated in a social justice trip in Washington, D.C. During our lunch break one day, we came across a picket line at a downtown hotel. We joined the line, and I walked between two room attendants, Anita and Alma. […] My admiration for these people–who were fighting on behalf of their families and their coworkers for wages and benefits that I and many Georgetown students would never have accepted for ourselves–gave me access to a less self-conscious, more powerful part of myself.”

Emily is currently a senior in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, where she majors in International Political Economy. Watch a video of the 2012 New Student Convocation here (new window).