From Joe My God

Go to Join The Impact for information about the protests near you. Protest times are staggered by time zone, making this the very first time in the history of our nation that LGBT people will be standing up for ourselves in every major city in every state at the SAME TIME.

www.jointheimpact.com

Make your voice heard, join with others across the nation who support the fight for equality this Saturday, November 15th at 11:30 am at Phoenix City Hall. Find more information (and details for your state and city) here.

If you want some great sign ideas - visit our flickr group or the Join The Impact Sign Gallery

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
~Martin Luther King Jr.

Don’t be silent. Tell the world how you feel. Now more than ever we need to join together and let our voices be heard loud and clear. We want equality, and we won’t stop working and fighting and talking and protesting until we get it.

There are so many things that I could say to go along with this video, so many things I felt while watching it for the first time - but I think, with a message as powerful as this, it is sometimes best to let it speak for itself.

This fight for justice and equality will not be won by the gay community alone. It is going to take our allies, allies like Keith Olbermann, who are willing to speak from their heart, to call injustice when they see it, and to speak loudly on our behalf.

Tell the world how you voted…feel free to grab these images from our flickr pool. Just click on the “all sizes” link above the images and download the file. Use it on your myspace, facebook or blog…heck - make a t-shirt if you want to!

Elie Wiesel said

“I swore to never be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides, Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim, silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Don’t be silent. Take Sides. Get Loud.

I hope you’ll join us on the corner of Camelback and Central tonight for the vigil. Tonight is not just a night for the gay community - it is for everyone, all our allies in all communities, and of all backgrounds, to come together to stand up for equality. Please come stand with me.

Prop. 102 Candlelight Vigil
Date: Monday, November 10, 2008
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Camelback Rd. and Central Ave., Phoenix, AZ
Assemble on the Southwest Corner of Camelback & Central.

Meg Sneed and Luis Garcia [Echo Magazine] state:
“The community needs an outlet, somewhere to come together and feel as though they are being heard. A venue where the tears can flow, for the ground we lost on Tuesday. But after those tears it will be a place that will be filled with hope, a place that will allow us to come together and speak of where we will go from here. The upcoming road may be harder, longer, and steeper, but we shall overcome. I feel at least we need to have a community gathering to recognize the people and families that our state constitution now does not, along with infusing some hope about the future into the mix. Something to make the community feel embraced and heard, to give them hope and the strength to continue the battle for equality.”

I promise you not a moment will be lost as long as I have heart & voice to speak & we will walk again together with a thousand others & a thousand more & on & on until there is no one among us who does not know the truth: there is no future without love.
~storypeople

This week we simultaneously celebrate victory and mourn defeat. Around the country queer and queer-allied communities cheered as votes were tallied and the US elected a man who once gave this quote:

“Too often, the issue of GLBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. I look forward to working with HRC to end discrimination against GLBT Americans and to ensure that all of our citizens are treated with dignity and respect.”

But while we were lifted by our inclusion in Obama’s acceptance speech and by the potential for change created by a LGBTQ friendly White House, here in Arizona (and in California, Arkansas and Florida) we watched as propositions that sought to limit or remove our rights, status, and equality were ahead from the beginning and remained that way through the night.

How do you process so much joy and so much disappointment at the same time?

I can tell you how I’m going to do it. I’m working today, working hard, on transforming all those emotions - conflicting, heightened, and very real – into hope. A powerful, mind-blowing, consciousness-changing kind of HOPE. We’ve got to move now, before apathy and defeat set into the community. Now, while people are still buoyed by the tides of change that are set to sweep this country. Now, while the emotions are still fresh in our hearts.

Harvey Milk said:

“…know that there’s hope for a better world, there’s hope for a better tomorrow. Without hope not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s…without hope the us’s give up. I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living….you, and you, and you; you’ve gotta give them hope.”

For the past few days I have talked and listened and read and watched as the LGBTQ community across the country express – sometimes utterly unexpected – feelings of sorrow and grief and rage and betrayal at the losses we experienced on Tuesday. There is no doubt; we are feeling this at our very core. There were four states where our equality was on the line, and we lost in every single one. There is no way to avoid the repercussions of those losses. I know that personally I feel very different now than I did prior to election day, the knowledge that the majority of the citizens of this state consider me less than, not worthy of equal rights is a bitter pill to swallow. But it’s dangerous to wallow in those feelings, because they can so quickly turn to hopelessness – and that is the one thing we cannot afford.

Civil rights battles are not won quickly, or easily - they are won over time and with great effort and sacrifice. They are won with a million tiny, infinitesimal shifts far more often than they are won with great seismic changes. The ultimate success of this movement does not hinge on one election, or one act of discrimination, or a single protest. Just as the battle for racial equality did not begin or end with Rosa Parks, the Gay Rights movement that began with Stonewall does not end with Tuesday’s election results. We don’t slink off in defeat now, with our tails between our legs, letting the Christian-right dance with glee on the 18,000+ marriage certificates of same-sex couples in California.

Not a chance.

As Matt Coles, ACLU Director of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project says:

“If you run up an unbroken string of victories in any battle for civil rights, that simply means you waited too long to get to work. Change that matters is never smooth or easy.”

The writing IS on the wall. This IS going to happen. Our community IS going to succeed. But it’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to happen if we don’t lay ourselves on the line and work with everything we have to achieve it. True, we don’t have a Harvey Milk figurehead to rally around, there’s no one person to pin our dreams to – the way the nation did with Obama during this campaign. But this only means we have to take it that much further. We have to rally around each other, we have to create that movement, that wave, that sea change that we so desperately need.

As President Elect Obama himself said – in his masterful speech on race last March:

>“What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part–through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk–to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.”

Make no mistake, the gap that Obama spoke of - between the promise of our ideals and the reality of our time - widened this week. There is not point in glossing over the truth – we took a huge step backward in the path to equality, and our hearts and spirits took a beating along the way. But because we were pushed backwards, it is more important than ever to be sure that we are not knocked off the track, that we keep pushing forward, that queer and queer-allied people across the nation stand up, dust off, link arms and keep on walking, and writing, and talking and demanding change.

As Milk famously said “Hope is Never Silent”.

So let’s get loud folks. Let’s get real hopeful and real loud. Everything depends on it.

Check out this slideshow of all the amazing photos submitted to our flickr group:

Allen, whose photo is featured below, sent me a link to his blog Random Fragments, and I wanted to share some of what he wrote regarding Prop 102:

"The bottom line…same-sex couples will exist in the world and will raise families just like "traditional" couples do. We can either embrace them with love and equality and share in the joy of their families or we can shun them out of fear and ignorance. We can grant them equal treatment to encourage a stable family situation or place a stumbling block to their ability to live the American dream of liberty and justice for ALL. Let’s focus on initiatives that truly strengthen families of every kind instead of dividing people into unnecessary subclasses."