Hezo Kittie

To Sacramento... and Beyond

For 360 days of the year, Sacramento is a very shady place, with very shady characters, two security guards in a giant Carl's Jr., and shady politicians. But for five days in the year, we owned that city, and it was simply insane.

It's hard to explain what made Youth and Government such an awesome program and amazing experience, but I'll try to put it into words as best as I can. A quick-as-possible summary is that 2,000 kids from all over California take over every position in the state government and get a hands on experience on the bureaucracy that runs our state and country. But it's much, much more than that.

Weekly meetings, two weekends at Camp Roberts, and five days in Sacramento later, Fuerza Unida has become more than a bunch of Cal kids. And I've always been the one to live in the moment, to take every second for what it's worth, but in doing so, it can be easy to forget what happened in the past.

So we're sitting in a room, with the people we never realized we got so close to, and we're winding down from the late nights, intense sessions, and general mayhem, just to look back. Look back at who've we met, look back at the hilarious events that occurred, look back and see what it really meant to us. And what ensued, to reiterate my constant cliches, transcended everything that happened over the past year of Youth and Government, and seriously rivaled any moment that has happened to me in recent memory.

No bullshit honesty is hard to come by, harder than I thought it would be. But everyone in FU laid their life on the line and spoke without any fear of prejudice. I don't think I've ever heard the things aloud that I heard people say about each other.

It's easy to joke and laugh with (and at) your friends. It's nearly impossible to tell them what they mean to you.

Especially relatively new ones. So, Fuerza, thanks for all the good words. If I could think of the saddest thing, it would be losing touch with all of you. And even if we try and recreate our own Sac and fail, if it's even a tiny fraction of the coolness that Sac was, then it was well worth it. I <3 FU, I really do. So long, Sacramento