Sacramento Camp: The Story of Now!
| By Rick Jacobs, Courage Campaign - Nov 8, 2009 12:09:08 PM PT |
| Also listed in: Courage Campaign Staff |
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Tags: Barack Obama, California, camp courage, Courge Campaign, Dan Choi, Fresno, Initiative Reform, Lisa Powell, Maine, Mike Bonin, Prop. 8, Question 1
Tags: Barack Obama, California, camp courage, Courge Campaign, Dan Choi, Fresno, Initiative Reform, Lisa Powell, Maine, Mike Bonin, Prop. 8, Question 1
(Closing speech I delivered at Camp Courage Sacramento at 4:45PM today. Camp Courage Sacramento burst forth with warmth, embrace and power. What great folks!)
This past Monday morning, I found an envelope in my front yard. It was addressed to “Courage Campaign.”
A year ago, in the wake of Prop. 8, I was afraid to open some of those envelopes, not sure if they’d contain hate mail or something worse.
People on the other side were unhappy that we had called them to account for their lies during the campaign.
But this note was very different. Let me read it to you:
“Courage Campaign,
I just turned 3 and I told my friends that I didn’t want any presents. Instead, I asked them to make a contribution to you. My Dad tells me that you give a voice to those people that don’t have one and what you do changes the world. I hope that more of my friends contributed on line. Love, Libby.”
That was six days ago, and it gave me a fresh perspective on an otherwise tough week and year.
It’s clear as a bell that the next generation, the folks younger than me, the folks that the sponsors of Yes on 1 and Yes on 8 fear will be taught in school about “gay marriage,” already know that everyone is equal.
Think about Libby. One day, she’ll be surprised that a white man can be president.
She knows that families come in all shapes and sizes, two dads, two moms, one of each, some in united households, some not, just so there’s love.
Libby will never live the way I did, when I grew up in East Tennessee.
I went back home to Oak Ridge, Tennessee in August of this year to close down and sell my parents’ house, the house in which I grew up, the house we had for 46 years. I was there with my sister and brother and my partner Shaun, the brilliant talent who did that Fidelity video. And because I’m really a lesbian, I was there with my ex-partner, David, who came in from West Virginia to help out.
If you have not gone through this phase of life yet, you won’t know the overwhelming and unpredictable flood of emotions that hits while sorting through and throwing out lifetimes of paper and memorabilia. I found, in my childhood room, letters exchanged with a straight roommate at college on whom I had more than a crush, but for whom I would never be “good enough” because he was, well, straight.
On our first full day home as we looked at the boxes and the pictures and the growing “shred” piles strewn about, a seventy five year old man, his fifty-year-old son and daughter-in-law arrived from Oliver Springs, the tiny town in the valley behind our house.
They had come to arrange the “estate sale,” to sell all the detritus of a lifetime so valuable to us, just objects to them. They were nice, kind people. And there I was, with my brother, my sister, my loving partner and my ex- and I was embarrassed. I was afraid to come out to them. In my own house.
I’m 51 years old, but being back in that house in which I grew up, back in that small East Tennessee town, I was again a child who was not at peace with being gay, afraid of being found out.
I never, ever want that to happen to anyone else in this nation again. Ever.
And yet it continues to this minute, right here in Sacramento, all over California, just as it does in Tennessee as relayed in those poignant, powerful “stories of us” told by Anna and John and Catherine and every one of you.
As I said yesterday, I founded the Courage Campaign four years ago to help make this state more progressive, more governable. We are clearly not governable and we cannot be progressive if people can vote to take the rights away from each other.
We have our work cut out for us. All of us do.
When we walked in here yesterday, many of us still bore the sadness and quiet anger of the loss in Maine. Another loss. Another rejection.
I commemorated the anniversary of the passage of Prop. 8 bookended by the passage of Maine’s Question 1, at a mock New Orleans-style funeral in LA that was meant to “bury hate.” Would that we could bury hate, but we cannot—at least not yet. I think that funeral was really about something else. That funeral was about taking a pause to mourn the last year.
Remember? Barack Obama won. We jumped up in the air so high we could reach the clouds. Our feet were off the ground. We screamed and shouted and cried tears of joy, but just then, just when we knew we’d finally won a clear progressive victory, a neighbor came by and punched us in the gut and the air came out of our lungs. Where did THAT come from?
But did you stop this past year, even once, to reflect and to grieve? I never did, not until this past week.
A year ago, we were beaten at the ballot box, but as so often-in history when “they just can’t do that” actually happens, we came alive. As Anthony said, we stopped relying on someone else to do the work for us because we found out that we have to do that work ourselves.
Last November, we marched.
We reacted.
We demanded.
And then we organized.
For our part, we trained 1,350 people at six and now seven Camps Courage in California and DC. And if anyone thinks that the movement has slowed in the slightest in the face of another loss at the ballot box, look around you right here in this elegant hall.
Do you feel like you are ready to stop?
NO!
And We Met in the Middle.
We canvassed new neighborhoods.
We formed teams all over California that are part of the permanent progressive infrastructure that will win back our rights and rebuild our state.
We marched on Washington.
We celebrated new heroes, most particularly our own Dan Choi who never stops, never stops, never stops.
We learned that even when we win in local and state fights--and we must win-- we only finish the job when we win federally.
And yes, we fought amongst ourselves.
While we absorb the loss in Maine, as Mike said yesterday, we celebrate victories in:
Washington State,
Kalamazoo, Michigan,
Akron and Canton Ohio,
St. Petersburg, Florida,
Georgia
North Carolina
and
Houston, Texas.
Today, right here in Sacramento, we recommit. And although we must always hold our colleagues and ourselves accountable, today we also stop fighting amongst ourselves and focus all of our energy on smart, strategic fights to take us to full victory.
Today, once again, we thank the dozens and dozens of volunteers who left their homes in California to work in Maine.
We thank the thousands who made phone calls from home to Maine.
And we thank the 267,785 good people of Maine who worked and voted for marriage equality and for love.
Today, we look to Judge Walker in federal district court in Oakland to hear for the first time a case that can end the Prop. 8s and the Question 1s forever.
Today, right here, we promise each other that we will tell our personal stories to our family and ours friends, our coworkers and our neighbors.
Today, we embrace the progressive movement that will make our state work again, that must change the initiative system so that people may not vote to take rights away from others.
Today, we demand that our president and the Democratic Congress and Democratic Party speak up for us as we have for them.
But today, we also accept our president’s demand of us, that we organize, that we push Congress, that we give our president the opportunity to sign legislation from Congress.
Look, President Obama made healthcare reform his priority and it took until nearly midnight last night to get the House—dominated by Democrats—to pass historic although imperfect legislation.
And we’ll have to be there with the president if we want anything decent from the Senate.
That’s why we’re building this grassroots army right here , so that the president has the votes to eliminate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, DOMA and do so much more as we march toward full equality.
Courage has grown up. To win, we know we have to build progress ourselves. As Lisa said, we need to be effective in order to make the change we want to see.
And today, we promise little Libby that her world will not be our world. We promise Libby that by organizing, by working smart and by working together, we will win so that the world she already knows will be the world in which she grows up.
One year from today, we’ll have more victories to celebrate.
Ten years from today, discrimination against people who love each other will be a distant memory, just as twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall seems almost a myth.
Let’s pause to grieve when we lose.
And then let’s organize so that our voices and our power are heard and felt from San Diego to Eureka, from Los Angeles to Bangor and especially in Washington, DC.
And let’s celebrate the culture of Camp Courage. This is your movement. I have been at all seven of these camps. From January in Los Angeles to March in Fresno and onward to San Diego, Oakland, East LA and Washington, I have been energized by the growth of Jasmine and Anthony and Jakki and JT and Sarah Beth and Ben—the new leaders that are the gift called the Prop. 8 generation.
I know one thing: never again will we sit idly by and watch as transgender,lesbian, gay, bisexual people or any member of our progressive movement gets left behind.
Progress is here, in this room.
And together, we shall win.
This past Monday morning, I found an envelope in my front yard. It was addressed to “Courage Campaign.”
A year ago, in the wake of Prop. 8, I was afraid to open some of those envelopes, not sure if they’d contain hate mail or something worse.
People on the other side were unhappy that we had called them to account for their lies during the campaign.
But this note was very different. Let me read it to you:
“Courage Campaign,
I just turned 3 and I told my friends that I didn’t want any presents. Instead, I asked them to make a contribution to you. My Dad tells me that you give a voice to those people that don’t have one and what you do changes the world. I hope that more of my friends contributed on line. Love, Libby.”
That was six days ago, and it gave me a fresh perspective on an otherwise tough week and year.
It’s clear as a bell that the next generation, the folks younger than me, the folks that the sponsors of Yes on 1 and Yes on 8 fear will be taught in school about “gay marriage,” already know that everyone is equal.
Think about Libby. One day, she’ll be surprised that a white man can be president.
She knows that families come in all shapes and sizes, two dads, two moms, one of each, some in united households, some not, just so there’s love.
Libby will never live the way I did, when I grew up in East Tennessee.
I went back home to Oak Ridge, Tennessee in August of this year to close down and sell my parents’ house, the house in which I grew up, the house we had for 46 years. I was there with my sister and brother and my partner Shaun, the brilliant talent who did that Fidelity video. And because I’m really a lesbian, I was there with my ex-partner, David, who came in from West Virginia to help out.
If you have not gone through this phase of life yet, you won’t know the overwhelming and unpredictable flood of emotions that hits while sorting through and throwing out lifetimes of paper and memorabilia. I found, in my childhood room, letters exchanged with a straight roommate at college on whom I had more than a crush, but for whom I would never be “good enough” because he was, well, straight.
On our first full day home as we looked at the boxes and the pictures and the growing “shred” piles strewn about, a seventy five year old man, his fifty-year-old son and daughter-in-law arrived from Oliver Springs, the tiny town in the valley behind our house.
They had come to arrange the “estate sale,” to sell all the detritus of a lifetime so valuable to us, just objects to them. They were nice, kind people. And there I was, with my brother, my sister, my loving partner and my ex- and I was embarrassed. I was afraid to come out to them. In my own house.
I’m 51 years old, but being back in that house in which I grew up, back in that small East Tennessee town, I was again a child who was not at peace with being gay, afraid of being found out.
I never, ever want that to happen to anyone else in this nation again. Ever.
And yet it continues to this minute, right here in Sacramento, all over California, just as it does in Tennessee as relayed in those poignant, powerful “stories of us” told by Anna and John and Catherine and every one of you.
As I said yesterday, I founded the Courage Campaign four years ago to help make this state more progressive, more governable. We are clearly not governable and we cannot be progressive if people can vote to take the rights away from each other.
We have our work cut out for us. All of us do.
When we walked in here yesterday, many of us still bore the sadness and quiet anger of the loss in Maine. Another loss. Another rejection.
I commemorated the anniversary of the passage of Prop. 8 bookended by the passage of Maine’s Question 1, at a mock New Orleans-style funeral in LA that was meant to “bury hate.” Would that we could bury hate, but we cannot—at least not yet. I think that funeral was really about something else. That funeral was about taking a pause to mourn the last year.
Remember? Barack Obama won. We jumped up in the air so high we could reach the clouds. Our feet were off the ground. We screamed and shouted and cried tears of joy, but just then, just when we knew we’d finally won a clear progressive victory, a neighbor came by and punched us in the gut and the air came out of our lungs. Where did THAT come from?
But did you stop this past year, even once, to reflect and to grieve? I never did, not until this past week.
A year ago, we were beaten at the ballot box, but as so often-in history when “they just can’t do that” actually happens, we came alive. As Anthony said, we stopped relying on someone else to do the work for us because we found out that we have to do that work ourselves.
Last November, we marched.
We reacted.
We demanded.
And then we organized.
For our part, we trained 1,350 people at six and now seven Camps Courage in California and DC. And if anyone thinks that the movement has slowed in the slightest in the face of another loss at the ballot box, look around you right here in this elegant hall.
Do you feel like you are ready to stop?
NO!
And We Met in the Middle.
We canvassed new neighborhoods.
We formed teams all over California that are part of the permanent progressive infrastructure that will win back our rights and rebuild our state.
We marched on Washington.
We celebrated new heroes, most particularly our own Dan Choi who never stops, never stops, never stops.
We learned that even when we win in local and state fights--and we must win-- we only finish the job when we win federally.
And yes, we fought amongst ourselves.
While we absorb the loss in Maine, as Mike said yesterday, we celebrate victories in:
Washington State,
Kalamazoo, Michigan,
Akron and Canton Ohio,
St. Petersburg, Florida,
Georgia
North Carolina
and
Houston, Texas.
Today, right here in Sacramento, we recommit. And although we must always hold our colleagues and ourselves accountable, today we also stop fighting amongst ourselves and focus all of our energy on smart, strategic fights to take us to full victory.
Today, once again, we thank the dozens and dozens of volunteers who left their homes in California to work in Maine.
We thank the thousands who made phone calls from home to Maine.
And we thank the 267,785 good people of Maine who worked and voted for marriage equality and for love.
Today, we look to Judge Walker in federal district court in Oakland to hear for the first time a case that can end the Prop. 8s and the Question 1s forever.
Today, right here, we promise each other that we will tell our personal stories to our family and ours friends, our coworkers and our neighbors.
Today, we embrace the progressive movement that will make our state work again, that must change the initiative system so that people may not vote to take rights away from others.
Today, we demand that our president and the Democratic Congress and Democratic Party speak up for us as we have for them.
But today, we also accept our president’s demand of us, that we organize, that we push Congress, that we give our president the opportunity to sign legislation from Congress.
Look, President Obama made healthcare reform his priority and it took until nearly midnight last night to get the House—dominated by Democrats—to pass historic although imperfect legislation.
And we’ll have to be there with the president if we want anything decent from the Senate.
That’s why we’re building this grassroots army right here , so that the president has the votes to eliminate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, DOMA and do so much more as we march toward full equality.
Courage has grown up. To win, we know we have to build progress ourselves. As Lisa said, we need to be effective in order to make the change we want to see.
And today, we promise little Libby that her world will not be our world. We promise Libby that by organizing, by working smart and by working together, we will win so that the world she already knows will be the world in which she grows up.
One year from today, we’ll have more victories to celebrate.
Ten years from today, discrimination against people who love each other will be a distant memory, just as twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall seems almost a myth.
Let’s pause to grieve when we lose.
And then let’s organize so that our voices and our power are heard and felt from San Diego to Eureka, from Los Angeles to Bangor and especially in Washington, DC.
And let’s celebrate the culture of Camp Courage. This is your movement. I have been at all seven of these camps. From January in Los Angeles to March in Fresno and onward to San Diego, Oakland, East LA and Washington, I have been energized by the growth of Jasmine and Anthony and Jakki and JT and Sarah Beth and Ben—the new leaders that are the gift called the Prop. 8 generation.
I know one thing: never again will we sit idly by and watch as transgender,lesbian, gay, bisexual people or any member of our progressive movement gets left behind.
Progress is here, in this room.
And together, we shall win.
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