Brie Phillips's blog

A year ago I was a young person looking for opportunities to gain job skills, find adventure, and serve my community. Theoretical discussions and the occasional protest wasn't enough — I wanted to be doing something that would make a difference in a concrete way. I was ready for physical and mental challenges, and to be tested in ways that I never had been. That's when I signed up. Six months, a physical, screening and few tests later, I was in. My life would never be the same — I had joined my local emergency response fire and rescue department.

Amongst peace and justice- oriented folks, it's fairly safe to say that your first choice for a resolution to any conflict is calm, rational dialogue, right?. Many people reading this might even say that an open dialogue is the ONLY solution to conflict — why should we need war, aggression or threats to work out our differences? But what about in regards to conflicts with your parents, siblings, children if you have them, signifiant others, or the occasional annoying stranger? Are we able to hold ourselves to the high standards (and really hold ourselves accountable) to the grand ideals that we have in place for others?

It was a regular Saturday a couple of weeks ago — I was sitting in my class like usual, wishing I were outside and enjoying the DC springtime, when I felt my phone vibrate, meaning I was receiving a text message. Trying not be noticed, I snuck my phone out of my pocket to read the message. "Do you want to go see Lady Sovereign tonight? I can get tickets," it said. For those of you that don’t know, Lady Sovereign is a British hip-hop artist that has enjoyed some commercial success here in the States. She’s not especially political, as far as I can tell, and her lyrics don’t seem to be very profound. (For all the die-hard Lady Sovereign fans reading this, I admittedly don’t know her music very well, nor is this the point of this posting.) At any rate, for once I didn’t have class the next day and was looking forward to a night out, so I said that yes, I’d love to go. Tickets to the show were bought, and the evening proceeded from there.