11-15-08 -- How Was Your Rally?
HOW DID YOUR PROTEST PROP 8 RALLY GO?
Share your thoughts, experiences, photos, videos, stories, songs, poems ANYTHING from your city's rally against proposition 8 yesterday!
I'll start off with a condensed summary because I'm still really exhausted from yesterday, which was not aided by our upstairs neighbor playing music until 2am and then rough-housing with his ILLEGAL puppy at 7 in the morning.
So I started a facebook event for my club on campus on Sunday or so. By Friday morning, over 500 people had RSVPd to attend and 500 more were maybes. I was so surprised and pleased by the incredible outpouring of support!! I'm straight, but I'm black (I don't look it, everyone asks if I'm mixed or latino and I'm like no, I'm just...lighter than normal) fighting for equality and civil rights is something that is really important for me. Because it's not just those who are being oppressed that should have to face it alone, and I always take the mantra that in the 1960s and earlier, decades and decades and centuries back, someone fought for the rights of my ancestors and relatives, and I am proud to fight for the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, queer, the whole community.
By the way, I think they should rearrange the acronym and make it GBLT. IDK, it was funny at the time.
ANYWAY.
One of my roommates and three of our friends left our college at 11:45 to made the 45 minute-ish drive to Columbus. It was in the 30s and rainy when we left, and started to snow a little as we got on the highway. It wasn't freezing though, so it melted right away. Anyway, uneventful car ride other than the fact that we jammed to S Club 7.
We drove past the City Hall building to get to parking and it was about 1:15 and there is already a REALLY big crowd.
Lots of umbrellas for the rain. We started with a lot of chants, and there was a woman who sang, which was really nice. The guy who helped me organise it, and by helped me, I mean I helped him, because he was the one who got the permit to protest in front of City Hall and he led the rally and he is pretty much AMAZING AS HELL. Anyway, he read a poem that he wrote and it was really beautiful :')
he's amazing and i love him<3
At one point, there was a woman who was talking about straight people and it was kind of awkward for me because I'm straight, and some of the stuff made me feel horribly guilty. Then a family came up, two women and their daughter and they were talking about how difficult it is because they are not recognised as a family, and that in the eyes of the law, only the biological mother had any sort of legal rights over their daughter and how her other partner was just her mom's "roommate" and that if the mother died, her partner couldn't gain custody of their daughter. and their daughter spoke (she was about 15) and she was saying that she couldn't understand why people were discriminating against HER family.
They asked for more people to volunteer to speak and my roommate Roxie and our friend April volunteered. I took pictures of Roxie until I realized "Ooh, let me take a video" but then she stopped talking. But you can hear April :)
Click to view
me and april<3
Around 3, the crowd started to scatter, but there were about 30 to 50 of us left who wanted to stay, so we moved from in front of the courthouse to the sidewalk and waved at passing cars and there were lots of honks, lots of confused and curious looks, lots of O_O faces, but surprisingly THERE WERE NO ANTI-GAY PROTESTERS.
Not one.
Not a single negative protester during the rally or in a car. It was amazing and inspiring. We finally left at exactly 4, feeling fulfilled and happy. My fingers and toes were freezing, and I'll probably develop a cold sooner or later, but it was SO WORTH IT. Especially after we treated ourselves to Bob Evans afterwards. There's nothing that satisfies me more about a day than standing up for something I strongly believe in, and enjoying a stack of delicious pancakes as a reward.
Hopefully soon, that reward will be even greater :)
Oh yeah, some crazy guy came up when were all on the sidewalk and was like "HEY WHAT WAS THE SCORE?!?!" and we were like "what?" and he said "Is that what all these people are here for, the OSU game?" and we were like "umm, no this is a gay rights protest." and he was like "o thats cool......." and walked away. strangest thing that happened all day, i swear it was fucking hysterical though.
More pics of the good signs:
so share your prop 8 rally experiences!! anyone else at the c-bus rally? what'd you think?