And there, in that kitchen, I became determined to start Ignite. |
Eventually, this may mean we actually get college students to run for state and local office. There have definitely been instances of college students being elected to public office before. And, to my knowledge, they didn't have one capstone social justice issue like this to run on. |
Honestly, I was so amazed -- they were doing far more powerful things than we were doing in Kentucky. How could we not pull all these groups together and fight with one voice? |
I had this pile of documents that exposed how this industry was trying to hook people to killing themselves and to make a profit, and then I was seeing this incredibly tangible way to fight back and prevent the tobacco industry from leading people to their deaths. |
I have never felt God more in my five years of fighting the tobacco industry than in this experience. I absolutely couldn't believe it. We both actually found the business cards our parents had exchanged and we both carry it in our wallets as good luck charms. |
Ignite is definitely still in humble beginnings. We are completely student-led, and we're all volunteers. Because we work after class, out of our homes or dorm rooms, it can sometimes be hard to move as fast as we want. |
Ignite just held our first annual National Day of Action, on which, for the first time, students all across the country simultaneously pressured politicians to stop looking the other way. |
It dawned on me that we didn't have any national meeting, much less an organization, for youth that were fighting the tobacco industry. |
It just so happened that I was going to be her advisor for the Presidential Scholars program that summer. |
This is why this fight is really a social justice issue for me. In the end, millions of people are addicted to killing themselves and multinational corporations are profiting from it. |
Tobacco companies wouldn't spend $4.2 million per day marketing in the U.S. if advertisements didn't change the way people viewed their product. |
Tobacco kills more Americans every year than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. If I'm going to work on any issue in public health, then this is the one. Fighting the tobacco industry is honestly just part of my identity -- it's who I am, it's what I do. It embodies so much of what I want my life to be about. |