Voices of America Ambassador Profile: Colin Brown
BattlePACs profile of a Voices of America Scholarship winner.
What are your personal and career goals and ambitions?
My dream has always been to work a labor of love – and for me, loving a job means loving what it accomplishes. I want to make a difference in the world, and given that I have a talent for capturing it in words, journalism immediately sprang to mind as a way to do that. My aim is to become a columnist or political correspondent; that way, I can make a living pursuing my passion. I'll explore the ins and outs of an oftentimes inscrutable system, fight against the corruption lurking within it, and, above all else, discover and illuminate hidden truths.
How do you plan to use the scholarship funding to achieve change in the world?
As passionate as I am about my future, I can't deny that journalism is a deeply competitive field. Much of the work is freelance and the pay is roughly 18% below the national average. Compounding this is the fact that I come from a working-class family. I have little to my name, so any debt I incur from student loans will eat directly into my livelihood. Through the support of BattlePACs and other scholarship programs, though, I can cut down on these expenses and eliminate the financial pressures pushing me to stray from my course.
With that burden offset, I can then pay that money forward to the next generation. I'll use my degree to build a platform and use that platform to advocate for common-sense, data-driven solutions that will uplift society as a whole. By bringing attention to policies like Medicare for All and universal basic income, I believe I can help facilitate the creation of a social democracy: a system that will put people first and meet their needs through smart, strategic allocation of federal and state funds.
Can you share a little about your Story?
I come from a family of four. I'm the son of two warehouse workers and the sibling of a genius younger brother. Both of us were viewed as prodigies by our peers and teachers, albeit in different respects. He is logos, whereas I am pathos; he deals best with math and computers, while I thrive with the humanities and a pencil. Literature, history, and philosophy are, and always have been, my bread and butter. And politics too has always been an important subject for me. My interest in it first started to emerge around 2012. Hearing about the struggle for marriage equality awoke a spark in me: a passion for justice and debate, one that I hope to share with the world.
What are you most passionate about?
I love ideas, but more than appreciating them for their own sake, I think I love them as reflections of people. My greatest passion, then, would have to be humanity. I'm gripped by a deep and profound humanism. I feel an intense drive to help others and, even more than that, a desperate need to know them. On all levels—philosophical, psychological, and personal—I yearn to understand people, and I relish the opportunity to learn about them and their beliefs.
What do you like about the BattlePACs community?
I appreciate how it stimulates meaningful debate and conversation. I especially feel this is important for younger generations like mine, which are often politically disaffected. By encouraging them to think about the issues and speak their truth, BattlePACs is combating the pessimism and apathy that's proven so corrosive to our democracy.
Colin’s Video contributions so far:
On what freedom means:
On whether educational institutions have the right to limit peaceful student organizations:
On affirmative action in college admissions:
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