Renjie Butalid

Opening Keynote, Global Young Leaders Conference
Washington, DC  - July 12, 2010

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Thank you very much for the kind introduction, I appreciate it.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, most especially to the delegates of the Global Young Leaders Conference. My name is Renjie Butalid and I am from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, a city that is home to one of the most famous and recognizable products in the world: the Blackberry smartphone produced by Canadian company Research In Motion. Now for my own curiosity, how many of you own a Blackberry? Well then, I actually own an Apple iPhone myself, but please don’t let that information leave this room, since I do have to go back to Waterloo after all.

It is my sincere pleasure to be with all of you here in Washington, DC this evening.

On a personal level, my presence on this stage is extremely humbling. You see, back in 2002, I was a 17-year old teenager who had just graduated from high school in the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East. That summer soon after finishing high school and before I went off to the University of Waterloo in Canada to eventually earn a degree in Economics and Political Science, I found myself here at the Global Young Leaders Conference as a delegate. At the opening keynote, we were in a room much similar to the one we are in now and I was in the audience surrounded by a group of exceptional young people from all over the world, just like all of you today. Many of the people I met back at the GYLC, I still call friends to this very day.

And just so everyone knows, when I was a delegate at the GYLC eight years ago, I was a delegate representing India. Where are the Team India delegates in the audience this evening? Namaste.

And I remember all I could think of when I sat quietly and reflected, after having traveled thousands of miles to get to this conference, which was also my first visit to the United States of America, was,

“What am I really doing here?”

“Am I really a leader?”

“I don’t even know what it takes to lead, let alone, know what it takes to be a ‘global young leader’.”

Now, if you find yourself asking these very same questions at this particular moment in time, I will let you in on a secret that has taken me a while to discover.

That it is OK to be scared and uncertain, not knowing what to expect and to not have all of the answers all the time. At times, it is ok to even question whether you have the capacity and makings of a leader. I know that I’ve certainly questioned myself in the past, especially when I was a highly involved student leader at the University of Waterloo, where at one point, I had the responsibility of overseeing a budget of over $1.2 million dollars on behalf of 24,000 undergraduate students when I was on student government. I’ve also questioned myself on numerous occasions, most recently as a community organizer involved with a number of local community events back in Waterloo. But I prevailed.

What I have learned throughout my own leadership experience is to let that feeling of self-doubt and uncertainty motivate me and I would encourage all of you to do the same; there is after all, only a very small difference between excitement and fear of uncertainty. Instead of being scared, tell yourself that you’re excited to be here and open yourself up to the possibilities that exist out there in the world. There is a reason why you are all here in Washington, DC and will be in New York City, attending this global conference on youth leadership over the next ten days. This is an opportunity of a lifetime and I really hope that you make the most of it.
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(Above: Somewhere in Michigan – Road trip across the USA – February 2008 Edition with
Kevin Royal, Shawn Grover and Adam Halpert)

Building on an earlier blog post, I intend on making my way across Canada solo at the end of the month, all the way from Toronto, ON to Cranbrook, BC. I will be traveling from July 26 to July 30 and will be covering approximately 4,400 kms.

The long drives each day should provide me with a lot of time to think and reflect, and on occasion, sing along at the top of my voice to the loud music blasting from my car speakers. Of course, I plan on downloading a number of audio books and comedy podcasts as well to keep me company and would be open to any recommendations. Please feel free to leave them in the comments section of this blog post.

Below is the tentative schedule of my road trip across Canada, alongside the embedded Google map that showcases the route I intend to take in order to get to Cranbrook, BC.

View Larger Map

Monday, July 26 – A. Toronto, ON  to B. Sault Ste. Marie, ON

Tuesday, July 27 – B. Sault Ste. Marie, ON to C. Thunder Bay, ON

Wednesday, July 28 – C. Thunder Bay, ON to D. Winnipeg, MB

Thursday, July 29 – D. Winnipeg, MB to E. Regina, SK

Friday, July 30 – E. Regina, SK to F. Cranbrook, BC

Six Degrees of Separation – Perhaps YOU Can Help?

As I make my way across Canada, I would certainly be open to anyone wanting to show me around their city or town as I am passing through. (Anyone have a friend in Wawa, Ontario for example?)

For the cities highlighted in bold scheduled on the tentative dates above, it would be great if it also came with an offer to crash on your couch for the night.

(Above: Sigma Chi House, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas -
Road trip across the USA – February 2008 Edition with Kevin Royal, Shawn Grover and Adam Halpert)

If you or a friend of a friend would be willing to help me out with this favor, please do get in touch with me via email – renjiebutalid (at) gmail (dot) com, Twitter, Facebook, or feel free to leave a comment at the end of this blog post.

If you are able to help me out, what you would get in return is great company and lots of laughs, and a new found friend who would be forever grateful. Thanks so much and I look forward to hearing from many of you.

The case below, involving a gay elderly couple who were together for 20 years before they were forcibly kept apart by government officials when one of them fell down and was hospitalized, makes me really angry that I felt the need to speak up about it and be heard.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes. Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold’s lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property.

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O’Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O’Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

If say for example, Monika and I had been living in the United States in the early part of the 20th century, based on our race (i.e. Filipino and German-Portuguese), our relationship would have been looked down upon and in some cases, we may have even been thrown in jail if we decided to get married.

Anti-miscegenetion laws, otherwise known as miscegenation laws, were laws that prohibited interracial marriage. From the 19th century into the 1950s, most US states enforced anti-miscegenation laws. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional, overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

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