Story By John Mann
The Marshall County Democratic Club held their July meeting on Tuesday, joined by special guest speaker and president of the North Alabama Young Democrats Zoie Roberson who spoke on the importance of getting younger people involved in politics and community service.
“People often say that young people are the future and I agree with that,” Roberson said. “But it’s also time we realized that young people are also the right now. We are out there getting involved, volunteering, helping with campaigns and serving our communities.”
Roberson boasts an impressive resume. Originally from Decatur she graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Boston at the age of nineteen before going to study abroad at Oxford in the United Kingdom. Besides being the president for North Alabama Young Democrats she is also chair of the Madison county Democratic Executive Committee’s youth caucus and the national committee representative for Alabama Young Democrats, representing Alabamians ages eighteen to forty on a national level.
She says that after returning home from her studies she had a deep sense of purpose to take an active role in her community and in Alabama as a whole, seeing not just a community in need of help but family as well.
“When I think about north Alabama I don’t see neighbors I see a big family,” she said. “When you start viewing your community as family it changes everything. Think about it, would you want your sister, who is a mother of three, to lose the assistance she needs to put food on the table and make sure they are full and healthy? Would you want your father or grandfather facing a medical emergency and denied care because they can’t afford it?”
Roberson continued. “When you start serving a family and not just a community you become your brother’s keeper, your sister’s keeper. Their problems become your problems; their burdens your burdens and you begin to treat everyone in your community like their wellbeing is personal because it is.”
Joining Roberson were several county chairs from the newly formed Alabama Democratic County Chairs Association which as of last month now has representatives from all sixty-seven Alabama counties. Chairmen from Blount, Cullman and Dekalb county showed up to hear Roberson speak along with Blueprint Alabama founder Josh Coleman and District 11 candidate Alex Braswell.
The rest of the meeting consisted mainly of updates for what the club had been up to in the month of June which included their Juneteenth litter pick up in conjunction with Marshall County People Against a Littered State.
“I’m so proud of all the volunteers,” PALS member Micky Hunt said. “Even with the heat we had thirteen volunteers show up and together we picked up seventeen bags of trash in under an hour. It was the first time we’ve been able to weigh the bags and we had ninety-three pounds of garbage.”
The Marshall County Democratic Club meets monthly at the Guntersville Public Library on the first Tuesday at 6 pm. The next meeting will take place on August 5 and meetings are open to the public.
