Blind Prophecy

What a day!

I only got about 2 to 2 1/2 hours sleep before my alarm was going off and I was dashing down into Chelsea to catch the bus. While I was waiting for our 6am departure one of the local news stations interviewed me. I don’t know which one and I can’t find it online, so if anyone happens to stumble across it, let me know.

I got a bit of random homework done on the bus, but mostly dozed.

As soon as I entered the Metro system in DC I ran into fellow Fordham student Matt and his friend from undergraduate school. After many delays, eventually a group of about 12 or so Fordham OUTLaws members and friends formed together for the march. There were so, so many people that the whole thing seems like a blur, but I remember walking past the White House. That was a proud moment.

You probably got a better experience of the rally than I did by watching it on C-SPAN. Police were bottle-necking the crowd to get onto the lawn, so the audience took forever to really settle in and pay attention. When Cynthia Nixon, Judy Shepard and Dan Choi spoke, that was the most intense and somber part of the day. If you want to hear the speeches, there are better videos, but this is what it was like from my vantage point.

Before the rally was over I had to leave to a) find a place to pee where I wouldn’t be arrested and b) get back to my “leaves at 5pm NO EXCEPTIONS” bus back into the city.

It was an inspiring day. I don’t know that we accomplished anything particularly great in immediate political gains, but I’m not sure that was the point. Nor do I think that firing up the base was the point. I think that the National Equality March was the culmination of a year-long effort to shift the discussion away from being satisfied with incremental state-by-state success and onto an aggressive federal agenda. Utah State Senator Scott McCoy made an excellent point (and I say that because I’ve made this same point numerous times) that change will happen in DC a lot faster than it will happen in Utah, so if we ever plan on helping the Utahns gain equality, we have to put the pressure on Capitol Hill.

Anyway, I won’t embed all the photos, but check out my Flickr set from the day. Here’s a sneak preview:

Filed under: DC, queer rights by Jere Keys