I HAD THE MOST AWESOME WEEKEND. - long post, really, don't bother, no, trust me, you don't care.

This weekend I want to the amnesty international AGM in Swansea. It was an incredible weekend that really inspired me. We started off with a youth meeting to talk about procedure for the weekend and to break the ice a bit. I met some very nice people.
The first official event was a workshop on the Stop Violence Against Women campaign, i was amazed at how much amnesty is able to argue with itself, everyone felt totally free to say, this is wrong, we've failed to do this, we should never have tried that. It was good that the people there weren't just cheer leading amnesty, they were actively seeking to make it better, even if that did mean roasting the poor guy up front.
Official AGM business started with a bit of controversy, a woman went up to the front to complain that the board hadn't followed up on the resolution last year to do more work about Iraq. The first vote was to agree with her. After that the controversy kept up when we discussed this year's resolutions, there was a very heated debate about resolution to condemn Israel and another to consider a boycott of Israeli west bank products, many people getting angry that we should never be biased and others saying the whole war was biased and we needed to reflect that.
We had a brilliant keynote speach by Ed Hussain, a former islamist who now works with amnesty and other organisations to help prevent terrorism. He was talking about his amazement when his friend was unfairly arrested in Cairo that amnesty protested and wrote letters, he had only a few months before tried to break up an amnesty event in a mosque. This made him and his friend thing about amnesty in a new light and changed his worldview. It was very inspiring to think how much Amnesty changes people.
The exhibitions were very useful, they had lots of free goodies (always a bonus) and lots of friendly people there to help out and offer advice. On the basis of little comments and suggestions we came up with a few idea of what the Calday group could do when we got back home: get a facebook page so people can see what we're doing online, get into local primary schools and see if they'd be happy to let us take assemblies etc and show films in school at lunch.
We had a big solidarity even with the people of the deep sea community (a slum) in Nairobi, Kenya. We made a slum out of cardboard and sang songs and shouted slogans as a JCB attacked us. It was a brilliant community experience.
After that we finished up the less controversial resolutions, including the last one which finally gave youth groups like ours the right to vote. The whole room burst into applause. It was a great feeling to have our little school group recognised as a real part of the big national organisation.
The panel discussion was fantastic. Jenni Williams from Women of Zimbabwe Arise led us in a chant and told us that our campaigns had been so effective that the police now never answer the phone if she is in prison because of all the amnesty calls they get. Mahendra from Indonesia moved me a lot, he was asked about his roll as a human rights defender and said "I'm not a human rights defender, you people are, I'm just some guys who got sent to prison". At the end of the talk the audience was so moved by the courage and strength of the people who we had worked to help that I took part in my first ever standing ovation.
The whole weekend was amazing, so many brave and wonderful people. And everyone was so friendly, it was like i'd known them all for years. I made many contacts and took home enough free resources to keep the group happy for some time. I was absolutely blown away by the experience. Utill now Amnesty seemed like this big distant thing that i never really had any involvement in. But now it's a group of real people who we've really helped and who we can do more for. The next few months are going to be fantastic.

Sorry that was long but i did warn you.