This past Saturday I was the guerilla sound girl at St. Petersburg's instantiation of the Join the Impact National Day of Action for GLBTQ Rights at Mirror Lake Park. If you were there, perhaps you saw me frantically running extension cords through the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist church across the street from the rally. (The City of St. Pete wouldn't hook us up with power for the PA so the Unitarians picked up the slack). Or maybe you were one of the hundreds I inconvenienced by blocking off an entire street with my wimpy little PT Cruiser and my big freakin' attitude. (If you were, I'm sorry. I didn't want you to drive over my mic cables. I need those!)
Whether our paths crossed or not, if you were there, you witnessed quite a spectacle: Karen Doering, former senior counsel for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, kicked off the event with an impassioned, and by impassioned I mean I couldn't keep her mic channel from redlining, enumeration of all the totally unfair aspects of Florida's Amendment 2 and California's Proposition 8.
The high point of the rally for me was a statement read by Yasmine Jones, a 19 year old African American lesbian who spoke of being raised on her grandmother's stories of the civil rights movement of the 1960's. She was taught and she truly believed that she was the heir of that legacy. November 4th, 2008 changed all of that. On that day, when most Americans were celebrating the election of our first black president, young Yasmine was watching anti-gay ballot initiatives all across the country undermine the equal citizenship that her Grandmother had struggled so hard to one day bequeath to her. (If a story like Yasmine's doesn't get you riled up, you should really start checking your pants pockets and digging through your sofa because you've lost your soul.)
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2008.