Week 6: Virtual Town Hall Meeting

This week, my site hosted a virtual town hall meeting in order to give district residents a chance to meet their candidates for office. This was my first real community interaction with anyone outside my site. My job was to help set up the meeting: I walked my boss through the Zoom interface and helped her choose all of the meeting settings that she wanted. We then coordinated with other nonprofit organizations to plan the format of the meeting, and my final job was to help facilitate and keep track of time. There were several judicial candidates as well as people running for state representative, including Shri Thanedar who ran for governor in 2018. I found it interesting to see the passion that both the candidates and residents had about issues in their communities. Multiple residents asked questions about specific properties within the City of Detroit, and the candidates were able to give specific answers which surprised me. Detroit is a big city geographically, but its residents are familiar with and concerned about the same issues. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to interact with the community in this way, and I’m looking forward to voting for some of the candidates I met there.