It was awesome.

The camp really kicked off the night before with a Saturday night evening reception with inspiring words from Rick Jacobs, Torie Osborn and the incredible Cleve Jones. Jones highlighted our need to build coalitions and the need to keep fighting. I hope I get to see him speak again.

I have to admit, I did not have the highest expectations for Camp Courage when I saw the word "training". I was pleasantly surprised throughout the day as we went through trainings that were not condescending or rigid. They split us up into random groups and met new people and taught us that our biggest weapon was our own stories (which is exactly what we were trying to emphasize in our pre-election rally emphasized).

We did ice breaking activities, told our stories, heard other people's stories, learned how to recruit others, and learned how to make baby steps with the opposition. I would usually hate these activities but the way in which they were run was surprisingly empowering even though they were sometimes tough.

The lessons learned from Camp Obama are too late for prop 8, but will be an incredible resource for 2010. We went away from the day's activities refreshed, excited, and confident for the tough road ahead. I highly suggest you check out the next Camp Courage whenever it is scheduled and check out their new equality hub.

Today we went to the Equality Summit at the LA Convention Center hosted by EQCA.
The meeting started with a room full of hundreds of highly energized leaders which was exciting to see. This movement is not going anywhere with this type of talented energy behind it.

The agenda started with an election summary going over what happened in the No on 8 campaign. The panel included Geoff Kors and Lorri Jean who both went through the dry nuts and bolts timeline of events leading up to the election. Booooring.

There was interesting data presented by David Binder who did a post election voter survey. What I got out of it was that people basically voted against us because of their religious beliefs, people were much less likely to vote for 8 if they had a gay person in their lives talk to them about it, and that phone banking didn't work (duh).

The party really got started when they collected a pile of questions for the panel. The discussion quickly degraded into a lynch mob who wanted the heads of Kors and Jean while the latter kept blaming the hired political consultants without taking a lot of responsibility for the oversight of those consultants.

The keynote Eva Paterson was spectacular and reminded us not to create a "circular firing squad." She reminded us we're all on the same side though personally I'm still waiting for some modicum of accountability on the part of the leadership.

The rest of the day consisted of break out sessions that accomplished pretty much nothing (at least the ones I was involved in) and involved just a rehashing of the usual broad ideas ie. We need to reach out to people of color. At least we met some pretty cool people. Another highlight was the surprise arrival of Antonio Villaraigosa.

In summary, this summit was EQCA's way of reaching out to grassroots and non-"establishment" people in the movement. It also served to bring people in the movement together in the largest forum yet post-prop 8. Whether it was just a gesture of appeasement to the angry masses or a real effort to take our input and resources seriously is yet to be seen.