Paul Ryan rushes past us and disappears into his office, not noticing the 30 Muslim youth standing in the corridor. While he didn’t notice us, we knew him from seeing him in the news. Suddenly the importance of us being here and the significance of the Senate building sunk in.
On the thirteenth of July last year, at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) third annual Muslim Youth Leadership Symposium (MYLS) training in the Rayburn House Office Building, I had the opportunity to look behind the doors of our nation’s Congress. While in Washington, DC, we received tours of the Library of Congress and the US Senate building along with opportunity to watch the proceedings of the House of Representatives.
I was astounded to find that the Library of Congress is not just a building but also a symbol of the United States becoming a power in the spheres of math, science, and English. Built mostly by immigrants, it establishes the precedent that immigration into the United States helps with innovation and inventing. The Library of Congress was the first building in the United States to be built with electricity throughout. The coolest part of the Library of Congress is the pneumatic tubes that the librarians have in the main reading room. Librarians put book requests into a series of tubes that the tubes that take the request into the stacks. In the shelves, there is a pulley system that can retrieve the books from the shelves. The people in the stacks then put the book into the tubes and send it back to the desk. The tube system also goes to the House and Senate floors and the response time is usually 10 minutes.
The tour of the Senate was also fun. It was on a tour of the Senate building we saw Paul Ryan. The Senate building has a stone in it, which is the center of the street system in DC. We saw the old Supreme Court room in which the slavery case of Dred Scott Case, condemned as “the U.S. Supreme Court's worst decision", was decided.
The original House and Senate room, which now stage the closed-door meetings of today’s legislative branch, still hold the spittoons of long ago. In the House of Representatives, we saw them debate whether the head of military operations must send a report on the climate in an area and wait for an ‘OK’ before starting an attack. As we were leaving they started a debate about letting athletes from the Armed forces schools play professionally instead of having to go straight into service.
Throughout the Senate building each state has two to three statues. Out of the 100 to 150 statues not even one is Muslim. Furthermore, there are more Confederate statues than Native Americans and Hispanics combined. More than 75 percent of the statues are white males. This is inexcusable. This is supposed to capture the history of the US and not containing any Muslims is overlooking a big part of The United States. It is easy to change the statues; you just need to send a letter to your representative in your state government. The historic figures of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali are two names that come to mind.
This was a fun event. The speakers that talked to us about working on the Hill and the importance of creating connections were amazing. They talked about keeping up to date with legislation in the House and Senate and writing to our Representatives and Senators about issues that concern us. A speaker from a Senator's office who handled these letters said that every single letter and email received is read. While there we got a picture with Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, a Representative from Maryland. We also saw Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in the House of Representatives who was sworn into office on Thomas Jefferson’s Quran. The theme of the day was "Introduction to Congress in a New Era of Politics." and this event helped us understand how our Government works and that to protect our rights we must contact our Congressmen and women.
Most importantly we realized that we are the next generation of Congressmen and women and there is no reason we can’t achieve this.
Registration for the 4th Annual MYLS is going on now. This year MYLS is headed to Annapolis.
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