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Essay earns local girl on-scene political look

Jade Miller, of Huntington, poses smiling outside the White House during the trip she took with the Fort Wayne Urban League to Washington, DC.
Jade Miller, of Huntington, poses smiling outside the White House during the trip she took with the Fort Wayne Urban League to Washington, DC. Photo by Rebecca Sandlin.

During one of the most divisive and confusing moments in American politics, Jade Miller, of Huntington, was given the opportunity to experience and gain insight in the political spectrum of the nation’s capital.

Miller, a sophomore at Huntington North High School, was selected by the Fort Wayne Urban League for an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, DC on July 6.

When Miller was in eighth grade, she had the opportunity to go to DC with her school, but the cost was too expensive. With the Urban League, students had to submit an essay explaining why they wanted to go to DC. Miller’s essay was among those selected.

“You had to type a 240-word essay on why you wanted to go,” Miller says. “In history, you just fall asleep when someone’s teaching it, but to actually go and see it is different.”

During her tour, Miller and her group visited the Capitol Building and got to sit in on a filibuster on gun control policy.

“That’s a hard one for them to decide on,” Miller says, “because not everyone’s a bad person. So they have to figure out what’s best for everybody.”

Miller says she learned that politics is not as straightforward as people in the civilian word make it out to be.

“When people have to make decisions, like the congress people; we think it’s easy, but it’s not,” she says.

One of the more sobering moments of her trip was taking a tour of the Holocaust Museum.

“That was sad,” Miller says. “When you walked in, it actually looked like buildings from the Holocaust.”

Miller’s group also ran into a group of people staging a rally for Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“We were walking past, and there were all these people chanting and holding signs, chanting,” she says. “Come to find out, it was a Trump rally, because Trump was going to be right across the street.”

Miller’s group was waiting on a taxi ride to take them to their hotel. Figuring it would be at least an hour before he arrived, they decided they would go down and get a closer look.

“A lot of us aren’t for Trump,” Miller says. “That was an experience. They were actually nice, but, because they were chanting, and they were off, you really couldn’t understand what they were saying. Sometimes they say things that probably aren’t true.”

Miller says she would highly recommend visiting DC just for the sake of learning about U.S. public policy.

“Meeting all the congressmen was an experience, because you don’t see people like that everyday,” she says. “It was cool to hear them talk about the things they do.”