Camp Courage San Diego closed with an amazing speech from the legendary Torie Osborn. In the grand tradition of Marshall Ganz, this is the California marriage equality movement's Story-of-Now.

Please share widely and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Here is: "It's Time to Make Hope and History Rhyme" by Torie Osborn as prepared for Camp Courage San Diego April 19th.

You probably think this weekend is about marriage equality. That's why you signed up. Left your weekend plans, your partners and family to come here.

Sorry. You've spent the last 36 hours at Camp Courage under false pretexts.

This is not about gay marriage.

What is being launched at Camp Courage is about something bigger. As enormous as history. And you are the force for change.

We're in a battle for very high stakes. For decades now, our Right Wing opponents have used divide and conquer strategies. Prop 8 wasn't simply the latest anti-gay initiative. It was part of a long and often successful strategy to block movements for justice and equality. They have wielded the shield of the culture wars in one hand and the sword of free-market fundamentalism in the other. Anyone who didn't have their fair share was told they simply weren't working hard enough. Women were denying their "true" path in life. Gays were defying God and nature.

The people who brought us Prop 8 are the same people who cut taxes on the wealthy to decimate the safety net. They are the people…

who took California schools from first to worst in one generation.

who filled our prisons beyond capacity with people whose only crimes are poverty and addiction.

who sent to war working class sons and daughters who have no other path to citizenship, college or an economic future.

These are the people who turned the American economy into a game of chutes and ladders - ladders for those who could pay to play. Chutes for everybody else. Last year, compensation for the top 50 hedge fund managers averaged $588 million each, more than 19,000 times what typical U.S. workers earned. This, while the middle class evaporates and working poverty and homelessness skyrocket.

The American Dream is on life support.

Although we in LGBT communities haven't stopped to realize it, our anger at being denied our equality is shared by millions whose dreams have also been stolen.

But now, in this still-new century, in this brand new Obama era, we have a chance to trump this force that stifles equality and hope for me and you, for the poor, for young people who want to get ahead and for many millions of others.

We have a chance. But it is only a chance. And whether it succeeds or not depends on us. It depends on what we do right here at Camp Courage. It depends on what we do tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

On one thing, Rick Warren and I agree. We are at a hingepoint in history.

It hinges on us.

A new spirit has risen in America. We saw it animate hope across the nation last year. Barack Obama was its focus. But he did not create the spirit that catapulted him to power. He tapped into it. Across the country, there is a profound moral hunger for a return to America's higher path toward liberty and justice for all.

Last summer when I dropped my life and joined the Obama campaign as a fulltime volunteer, I felt that moral hunger. I felt it as deeply as I did in 1963 when I was 12 and saw those dogs and firehoses set on children in Birmingham. I felt it as deeply as when I learned about our government's lies about Vietnam and worked nonstop to end that war. As deeply as when I came out as a lesbian at 22, was kicked out of my family, and still knew telling my truth was worth it - and then dedicated 20 years to this movement.

Last summer I felt that moral hunger rising once again. In forty years of social activism I have never seen and felt anything like the intensity of passion and involvement on the part of diverse everyday Americans that I saw daily on the Obama campaign.

I was not a leader; I joined a team who worked 24-7 organizing Latino and African American voter-to-voter outreach -- Los Angeles to Nevada. In the LA Obama office, pipefitters union members worked side by side with elementary schoolteachers, hotshot young lawyers, retired firemen and Hollywood executives' wives. (….and Mary Kay saleswomen and healthcare professionals and grad students and high school counselers - A shout out to my team-sistahs, Ciji and Bev and Deb and Angie and her daughter Marilyn, all here as facilitators)….We were every color and age; gay and straight and bi and trans. Many had NEVER been involved before, but they were now, and we were all proud new community organizers hellbent on taking back our country.

It was an unstoppable and loving uprising. People had taken leave from their jobs and were being supported by prayer groups from their church, wonderful spouses who didn't get to see them for weeks, grandparents from Nebraska who pitched in to pay the rent. I've never seen as much of both sacrifice and service. Our motley crew soon formed a bond of mutual mission and responsibility, where political and demographic differences evaporated.

Now, I've experienced that egalitarian, empowering social-movement culture before -- in the '60s with other young people fighting racism and the Vietnam war -- and then in the lesbian-feminist community of the 1970s at those magical women's music festivals - and then during the agony of AIDS when gay men and lesbians came together and circled arms around bedsides, at funerals, in the streets in protest. But, I'd never felt a 'beloved community' - in Dr. King's words -- with the full spectrum of Americans. At Camp Obama - just like here this weekend -- we learned to talk to people who don't agree with us; better yet, we learned to listen to them. "Respect, Empower, Include" was the living mantra of the campaign. A free and democratic space was created that engaged, energized and changed people forever. From the individual empowerment that bred leadership skills never known before, and beloved community that came from it, we forged a powerful social movement - make no mistake about it, that was not a mere political campaign. California's field operation - the most successful in America's history - made 10 million phone calls, 55% of ALL those made nationally, to battleground states…18,000 people made 2 million calls on election day alone….4000 Camp Obama trained volunteers who oversaw a network of 790,000 volunteers; 16,000 people went to Nevada, and we turned it blue by 12%!

It was thrilling.

And we won. Boy did we win. But Barack Obama's election was not the answer, just an opportunity. It was not the end; it was an opening.

We do not yet have liberty and justice FOR ALL. But we do have a magnificent opportunity to wash away - once and for all - policies that deny us our humanity and deny others' full place in America. As Bev Rowe says about overturning Prop 8: "Let's get this done. We got other work to do!"

The movement for marriage equality, for LGBT freedom, is one beautiful current in what could be and should be a mighty wave carrying last fall's hope forward into real, permanent policy change.

But can those currents come together as they did in November to win equality and opportunity across the country? And, will those who leapt to action last fall join us in GLBT communities in the months and years to come?

In two months, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. (I LOVE that our movement was born of a riot against police abuse by transfolk!) For these 40 years, LGBT activists - and I've been one of them - have pressed for our rights as a single social current.

We've been superb activists. We led the most successful civil rights movement of the last 25 years.

We built a network of thousands of community organizations to meet our political, social, and spiritual dreams.

We educated our own community about AIDS when the government refused to act.

We won many legal rights across the country, including our right be safe on the streets and in the schools here in California.

We defeated Anita Bryant, John Briggs, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

We elected our own leaders.

We even got our own TV shows.

We won laws to protect our right to raise families, to visit our partners and make decisions for them when they were sick and dying. A mere nine years ago Civil Unions seemed radical in Vermont. Now it's retro and we have marriage in four states. FOUR STATES!

But here in California, will we win next time? Will all those who can, be ready to join us?

YES WE CAN! But only if we continue to transform our movement as we are doing here this weekend. The temptation for us to do what we've done in the past instead of what needs to be done will be strong. But what worked 30 -- even 10 -- years ago is not what's needed now.

We cannot carry a single agenda forward anymore and win.

The words that galvanized the country last fall were "YES WE CAN! SI SE PUEDE! - was a recognition that the time has come to set aside I in favor of WE. YES WE CAN! swept aside the culture of identity politics and its mentality of "I WANT MY RIGHTS TOO," or, "I'm more of a victim than you are."

But it's hard to leave what you know. We need our tribes. The pain of coming out leads us to create alternative family and safe spaces. We build support networks. But sometimes those spaces become just a little too comfortable. We end up talking to ourselves. We isolate ourselves.

Prop 8's passage exposed the fault lines and limits of that isolation. It revealed that our established organizations had lost touch with the grassroots. They had become too focused on institution-building and forgotten about movement-building. Prop 8 revealed that our major organizations had become disconnected from the rising tide of poverty and despair that engulfed our natural allies in communities of color. Prop 8 revealed the ugly racism just under the surface of our successful movement. Prop 8 revealed that our work reaching the hearts and minds of Californians is far from done. It shocked us. Many of us were living our lives in the false assurance that in most Californian eyes we were equal. We are not. Our work is not done. We need fresh leadership, new thinking.

To win, we need to change from a culture of mere activism to a culture of organizing - connecting with others. We need to change from a culture of building individual institutions to a culture of movement-building. We need to look in the eyes of those different from ourselves -- whoever we are -- and find our common heartbeat, our shared belief in the American promise. The call to Fresno for the week of the court decision is a metaphor for this change: Meet in the Middle. We need to go where people are, literally and figuratively. That's what organizing is. As Harvey Milk used to say, We want to recruit you.

Because our cause is not fundamentally about economic gain, we lost touch with the economic divide that was slashing to smithereens America's dream. And we lost touch with the inescapable web of mutuality between all struggles for equality. The YES on 8 people beat us at what should be our own game: they bill a grassroots army of 100,000 that went door to door, and they built a powerful multi-racial coalition. It's our turn.

For our fates are linked with other communities. Prop 8 showed us we MUST link arms with others to win, and, in the process, we can beat the common enemy that has kept America from her higher purpose for generations. There has always been a well organized minority who want to stop progress, from the American revolution, through abolitionism, suffragism, the early labor movement, Civil Rights, feminism and environmentalism - and more. And the past three decades the Right has been more powerful than ever in American history - and they have had vast political power to advance their agenda of inequality at home, imperial arrogance abroad, and environmental destruction globally. But Americans rose up this past year and the spell is broken. Now we get to see what we can do with this opportunity before us.

In California, a majority-minority state, victory for marriage equality at the ballot box is inextricably tied to the success of the new America that I saw flower so brilliantly last year with the Obama campaign. Our equality is linked to a broad commitment to caring for all people, sharing prosperity, providing equal opportunity. This new American movement emerging from the Obama phenomenon has a set of shared values built around inclusion, mutual responsibility and connectedness. In this new movement, I becomes we. E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, One. Greed suddenly is so yesterday. Yes We Can! solve our huge societal problems if we face up to them and we all do our part - and let humanity and sanity reign. Fear is becoming faith once more in America. "Let America be America again", as Black gay poet Langston Hughes cried out.

Today, we face a very simple, very profound choice: between inequality and equality. Between separateness and connectedness. On the one side are the forces of fear and separation, violence, and inequality. On the other side, the forces of responsibility and respect for each other, love for the children, for the earth.

We're on the threshold of a true revolution of values that would make unacceptable the kind of economic inequality that has deepened and widened over the last two generations for the majority of Americans. And that revolution of values will make injustice against LGBT people also unacceptable.

Marriage equality no longer belongs just to the LGBT community. It's an all-American justice issue. It belongs to the new America.

We are on a new path. There is a new readiness to stand together. We see it as hundreds of Camp Courage volunteers knock on doors and tell their stories. And the light of human connection begins to brighten people's eyes.

We have alliances and history to build on: In 1979 - that's 1979! -- at the first march in Washington for LGBT rights, Cesar Chavez stood with us. Dolores Huerta, his UFW co-founder, joined Camp Courage, Fresno. Just this week, an unprecedented public statement by major immigrant rights groups, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and the Central American Resources Center, issued strong support for marriage equality in Vermont and Iowa. A few weeks ago, Julian Bond - an iconic figure of the Civil Rights movement -- riveted a standing-room-only audience at the LA Human Rights Campaign dinner as he obliterated every religious argument against marriage equality and reaffirmed the NAACP's unwavering support for us (….check out that speech on YouTube).

Over the years, we have been there for others too. In the late 1980s as the US-backed wars in Central America were destroying millions of lives, even as AIDS decimated us, ACT UP stood strong with refugee organizations. The film "MILK" showed the importance of the gay community to the Coors labor boycott in the 1970s. And, of course, lesbians have been the leadership backbone of every part of the women's movement.

There is a deep connection between human rights struggles and economic opportunity - and this time in history will present chances as never before to link arms. Today, blending our current with others to form a mighty wave will mean advocating prison reform, marching with immigrants, and joining with Organizing for America, Obama's grassroots army - working to support the President on health, energy and education, his policy priorities. It's why Camp Courage is linked to the Courage Campaign and not an LGBT group. This -- the Courage Campaign -- is the place in California for progressive change-making, for blending the currents into that mighty force for change. Right now, right in front of us, we have the opportunity to stand with the labor movement on their most important issue, passing the Employment Free Choice Act. EFCA would reverse the repressive Right-wing anti-labor measures of the past quarter century that make it impossible for workers to have free choice about unionizing. Just this week, I attended an amazing meeting of several hundred service and advocacy organizations of every stripe learning about EFCA - I was so proud that among the most eloquent and creative voices were young lesbians of color from Pride at Work talking about a national campaign to link tightly together United ENDA (the LGBT federal job equity bill that includes gender identity as well as sexual orientation) with EFCA. This is a new effort gaining momentum to deliver organized labor for ENDA and the LGBT movement for EFCA. That's what's possible in this new American movement moment. Now that's fabulous!

Indian writer Arundati Roy says: "Another world is not only possible. She is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing."

I hear her too -- at my dinner table when my friend Audrey, an African-American woman well into her 70s, tells me how she and her church friends went out to work for Obama but she stood alone against Prop 8.

But since Inauguration Day, Audrey told me, something's changed "right here" [pat gut]. For 40 years, since Dr. King was murdered, Audrey and her church friends prayed every single day that a black person would be elected President. They prayed with faith, not hope.

Audrey says that Barack Obama's victory last November gave her friends more room in their hearts. Now, she says, they are listening better. They're open. They asked to see pictures of the lesbian wedding Audrey attended last October. She promises me they wills stand with her - with us - the next time on marriage. And I believe her.

In every culture across time, gay lesbian bisexual and transgendered people have been the artists and creatives - and the cultural transformers -- the two-spirited ones -- who bridge cultures and communities. We are everywhere and America needs us as we all leap together into this wide-open opportunity. There is no roadmap for navigating this new historic space before us. We only have hearts hungry for justice and freedom. Hearts hungry for this second American revolution of democracy and patriotic progress. We are all co-creating it together. It must continue to grow in strength. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Democracy is rising up. Marriage equality is one of the first issues that is challenging this new era. It is our chance to lead not only our own tribes into the light, but to help the nation finally realize its promise to the world.

Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet and Nobel laureate wrote that "Once in a lifetime, the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up. And hope and history rhyme."

This is that moment. We are that tidal wave. Rise up, with hope, to meet history at last! SI SE PUEDE!