Board management, community and campus organizing, advocacy at the town and state levels, and recruiting, training and electing young people to office. I worked with all the Democratic chapters, and all the school campuses, to help them turn-up students to vote. Some of the bigger issues I was working on at the time were voting rights. In New Hampshire, there's a lot of attacks on voting rights, specifically targeting college students. A law passed in New Hampshire that restricted voting rights, so I did a lot of work around that. Due to the law, the League of Women Voters and the New Hampshire Democratic Party sued the state. I actually ended up having to be a witness in court, which is probably the most terrifying thing. You just don't know if you're going to mess up what you say. I was deposed, which is when a lawyer takes you into a room, and they slid emails I’d sent across the table, asking me my intention. It was just organizing emails to students, but scary nonetheless.
I think, starting the AMA Club, which was something that I was initially hesitant to do. Another student, Kelsey Pelletier, OMS-III, in the CUPS program had tried to start the AMA club on campus and had trouble getting it off the ground. She asked if I would help. Another positive impact is bringing people into positions of leadership and developing and training them in political skills, empowering them to know they can be political advocates; instilling that no matter their age, their experience, where they come from, whether that's a privilege or disadvantaged background. Every student of every creed can be a political advocate. One of the perceived barriers that young people have to entering politics and getting involved is feeling that their voice doesn't matter. If nothing else, that's the most important thing I want medical students to know and take from this- that their voice is important no matter what.
It started the end of spring semester, so it pretty much just took off this year. Part of the reluctance to starting the group, in working with SGA, was there are already so many political advocacy clubs on campus. So where does the AMA fit in? I think where the AMA fits in specifically, is that it's a professional organization. They are one of the largest healthcare lobbying organizations in the country and medical students who are a section of the AMA, can write resolutions utilizing their resolution writing process and have a voice. If the resolutions go up and are passed, then it's an official stance of the AMA and potentially lobbied for by them. The AMA hasn't always been on the right side of history, and hasn't always come out on issues that I think the majority of people support, but I see a large part of the role in advocacy as being part of these organizations that have power to help influence individuals in the right direction.
Amelia Keane, COM '24 speaking at the 2017 Women's March