This weekend's Camp Courage in Sacramento was a good tonic for the loss in Maine and part of our collective path forward to restoring marriage equality to California. The heart of Camp Courage is learning how to craft your "story-of-self" a personal, emotional version of who you are and why this issue matters so much to you. The goal is to empower activists to use their personal narrative to bring about political change. Stories-of-self can be used to recruit volunteers, to inspire a crowd or to change a persons' vote one door at a time.
It isn't easy to have people open up and share the most painful, scary, raw parts of their lives. But those are the stories that are the ones that need to be told the most. The power of Camp Courage comes from people risking sharing their stories of pain thus forming community and strength.
Adam Bink over at Open Left quotes Harvey Milk's famous "come out come out" speech and writes:
The same tactic Milk used for school employees everywhere must continue to be used in these communities. We have to encourage people in these towns to come out of the closet and say they want the right to marry. State Representative Mike Carey, who represents heavily Catholic downtown Lewiston and voted in favor of marriage equality in the legislature, pointed out to me that in these kinds of votes, the default vote is for fear, and it is a huge barrier to reach one's conscience if they have no personal knowledge of the issue. For all the "gay marriage will be taught in schools" ads our opponents ran in Maine and will run in other states that tap that fear element, we have to counter with people who can give voters that kind of personal touch on the issue.
It isn't just gay people that we need to come out and tell their stories, it is all of our wonderful straight allies. No, there is no application to become a straight ally, just start telling everyone you know your personal story of why you support equality for all.
One of our amazing volunteers that helped put together Camp Courage Sacramento Chris Huack brought his parents to Camp. He blogged about the experience at the Courage Campaign. Here is Chris relaying the three reflections his dad had about Camp. (more on the flip)
1 - He had no idea the pain that LGBT people had felt over discrimination and losing initiatives like Proposition 8 and Question 1 until he saw people speaking about them openly and honestly at the Camp. See, I have always been a more stoic, let's "focus on what we can do in the future" type of person, so for my Mom and Dad, they had never truly appreciated the pain this had inflicted on our community until they heard the stories of personal pain from others.
(I added the report FOX 11 (LA) ran on the event to Unite the Fight's crossposted piece. Note: I work for the Courage Campaign; "Unite the Fight" does not. - promoted by Robert in Monterey)
Of the countless meetings I've attended after the election, focusing either on the postmortem of the No on 8 Campaign (including Saturday's Equality Summit), brainstorming strategy, figuring out how to build coalitions, planning events and actions, and trying to determine next steps for the movement, I have not been to one meeting that was as effective, inclusive, practical and educational as the Courage Campaign'sCamp Courage.
Held in West Hollywood and knowing that it was going to last from 8:30am-5:30pm, I thought spending my whole Sunday at the event made the whole thing seem daunting. And I was skeptical. After feeling let down after so many attempts to do what the Courage Campaign was attempting, I was prepared to get bored, lose interest in the speakers and eventually tune out altogether. But amazingly, they held my attention the whole time, and I learned a lot. Borrowing the mantra, "Respect - Empower - Include" from the Obama campaign, Camp Courage succeeded in doing just that.
(Due to my having to write the Equality Summit report, I missed the kick off reception the night before, where many told me Cleve Jones gave a riveting speech. Unfortunately, I can't report the details, but if any of you were able to make it, please write me and tell me about it, and I'll post it. Also, I hear there is video of this - please let me know when it is up!)
