What a week! As I said in my last post, I was headed to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Annual Power Summit in Los Angeles. The summit was truly amazing and challenged all who attended to become better activists and leaders in the LGBT equality movement. The first workshop that I attended trained us to have strong conversations to voters in order to explore their hesitation to support marriage for same sex couples. What I have learned is that the most powerful tool in helping influence a person’s opinion of marriage equality is to tell your own personal story as to why this human rights issue is important to you. So I guess I will share to you how I became to work on this civil rights struggle. As a gay man I want my parents to be able to enjoy being able to see me marry the person that I love. I’m fighting for this no just for my rights, but for my parents’ rights as well. It is my hope that my story is something that many parents can identify with and I hope it makes them think how they would feel if their child was not allowed to marry the person they love.
After this training, we had the opportunity to put what we used to work. We canvassed the neighborhood of Maywood, which is in East Los Angeles. We canvassed for 3 hours and I had the opportunity to talk to 6 voters, all who supported marriage equality. While this may seem really nice, I was a little disappointed that I was not able to talk to any Yes on 8 supporter and try to move them from opposed to supportive. Overall the canvass was really inspirational and gave me hope that the work that we are doing is really changing the hearts and minds of whole communities who have in the past been unsupportive of marriage equality. The other part of the power summit focused on fundraising and how to make strong asks of people that we know and need to help invest financially in our campaign to win marriage back. We have grown up in a culture that frowns upon asking for help and money. However, once we are able to get over this initial fear of asking for help we tend to have a strong response from those around us. Another tool that I learned is to personalize the money ask as much as possible by making the donation amounts significant. For example, the first ask that I make is for $173 which symbolizes the number of days that marriage equality was legal in the Golden state, then I use $80 which is how old Harvey Milk would have been if he was still alive today, I then move on to $51 for the percent that we need to win marriage back in 2012. This method has proven to be extremely successful for me and is something that I will definitely continue with future fundraising and money asks that I do for this campaign and more.
I also had the opportunity to meet a lot of amazing and inspiring people who not just work Equality California but for other LGBT rights groups across California including The Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Courage Campaign, and Marriage Equality USA. In total there were over 250 people who attended the conference. I had the opportunity to meet an amazing Stanford grad named Laura who co-founded an organization based out of San Francisco called the National Marriage Boycott. The goal of the organization is to rally straight allies together to boycott the institution of marriage until all people can get married no matter who they are. To learn more about her organization visit marriageboycott.ning.com.
Following the Power Summit, Equality California sent me to work in San Diego leading up to the primary to support Democrat Mary Salas who was in a tough race for the State Senate. A fierce supporter of the LGBT community, Salas was facing an anti-gay politician for the Democratic nomination for the Senate. It was a long day checking the polls in the various precincts and knocking on doors reminding people to vote. After the close of the polls, we all headed to a small Italian restaurant in Chula Vista, CA (just 7 miles from the American-Mexican border). The feeling in the room was tense as we awaited the election returns. Unfortunately, the vote was going to be too close to call and we would not learn the results until the next morning. I then stayed overnight at my friend JP’s house in San Diego and the next morning when we woke up we learned that Mary Salas had won the election! It felt amazing to see all of Equality California’s hard work pay off.
After working the election and attending the Power Summit, I was exhausted and needed a few days to relax and spend time with my family and friends in LA. I hung out in Hollywood and some of my favorite places on the West side and in Santa Monica.
I have learned so much and am realizing how lucky I am to have been given this opportunity to work for California’s largest LGBT rights organizations. I look forward to the rest of the summer and everything else that I will learn!
With regard to personal stories, we saw a powerful film on Turner Classic movies last night: "Word is Out." It was made in 1977 and 20+ people share their stories. It was remarkable because of their openness and humanity in the context of the times in which it was made. I'm thinking about buying an institutional copy so that Clark's "Open" group (I dislike that name sooo much) can show it. I need to wait to find out if they already have a copy though.
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