Equality week was insaaaane!
The decision came down Tuesday morning, and though it wasn’t a surprise, we were pissed.
First stop, the Latino Equality Alliance rally in East LA. Hundreds of people showed up in the middle of their work day to express their anger and disappointment.
Next stop: the night rally starting in West Hollywood. Speakers included the amazing Dan Choi, Reverend Eric Lee, Drew Barrymore, and Kathy Griffin. Celebrities, gays, and straights marched together down Santa Monica and stopped at the Matthew Shepard square for a moving tribute to the victims of hate crimes. Marchers stopped in their tracks and went silent as they examined the faces of the victims of homophobia and took the time to lay down white flowers in front of the memorial.
Thousands of us marched from there all the way to Hollywood and Highland stopping traffic along the way. We took some time to sit-in and grabbed some chalk and wrote out our messages and feelings about prop 8 and made our way back to West Hollywood.
Saturday was the day we had all been waiting for as people actually looked forward to traveling to Fresno. The morning began with a symbolic march from Selma as hundreds marched the 16 miles from Selma all the way to Fresno including Reverend Eric Lee.
The marchers came just in time for the start of the rally and were met by a deafening roar of support from the awaiting rallyers. The crowd of 5,000 were honored with speeches by the leaders of this movement and was capped off by an emotional and motivating speech by Meet in the Middle organizer Robin McGehee followed by Cleve Jones.
Sunday morning’s Leadership Summit provided some informative and helpful polling information to use in the fight ahead. The room was packed with over 250 leaders.
Sunday evening, the “Still Standing in the Middle for Marriage” group had their counter-rally at city hall. We headed there for a “loving witness”. I took pictures since I can’t pretend to love them and I didn’t want to go off on the fuckers. Our people held signs like, “I love my gay parents” and “Straight Christian for Equality” and “God Bless You”. We killed them with kindness and bubbles and had some very meaningful conversations. Though we didn’t expect to change any minds, we were visible and sent a certain message that we’re not going to disrespect you (because we’re better people than you) but we’re not going away.
Unfortunately there were a group of rogue reactionaries who ran around screaming “bigot” and being disruptive thus undermining our message. Poor form. Then our car got keyed with “Yes 8”. That was not cool.
All-in-all, we came together and expressed ourselves and fueled up on each other’s energy for the fight again. Viva la revolucion!
