The Meet in the Middle Rally
I headed out of Denver early yesterday morning to Fresno for the Meet in the Middle for Equality rally and Leadership Summit.
The rally was a truly inspiring event, with thousands of Fresno residents and out-of-towners converging in the geographic center of California to make the symbolic point that the gay-rights movement must extend beyond the enclaves of San Francisco and West Hollywood.
The event took place right in front of City Hall (that's me in front of the sign):
The organizers thought of everything, including a make-your-own sign booth...
...and they even brought the actual flag from the Castro in San Fran:
Here was a particularly creative sign (that clearly didn't come from the booth above):
Met Eric McCormick briefly; gave him my card, but he was a bit distracted with so many photo requests:
And, here I am with Julia Rosen, Online Political Director for the Courage Campaign. Julia was a helpful insider guide throughout the weekend.
These dedicated volunteers were out raising money to cover event costs. I later found out the organizers raised $17,000 on Saturday.
And, now for the speakers. The program was plentiful, but tight--with some truly inspiring speeches. I was most impressed wit the show of solidarity from the faith community, obviously a key and difficult constituency for marriage equality. Here is the head of the CA Southern Christian Leadership Conference who gave one of the best speeches of the day:
Rick Jacobs, director of the Courage Campaign:
Robin McGehee, who they call the "Gay Mayor of Fresno" provided the inspiration and energy to create "Meet in the Middle." She is clearly loved and revered by the local GLBT community, and I can see why. She was thrilled to find out that I had come all the way from Denver to the event and excited to work together moving forward.
Cleve Jones, who worked closely with Harvey Milk, closed out the evening--he even brought Harvey's bullhorn.
Heading out for the Night
After the rally, my friend Nick and I headed out to some fundraisers at local Fresno gay bars. We started at "the Den" and then headed to "The Red Lantern" before calling it a night. Here's Nick in front of the Red Lantern:
Leadership Summit
On Sunday from 10am until about 3pm Meet in the Middle 4 Equality and Yes on Equality hosted a "leadership summit" to talk about next steps for the marriage equality movement.
There was a fascinating (but confidential) polling presentation by Amy Simon and David Binder, and lots of discussion about how to move forward. The meeting was originally supposed to be for about 60 people, but ended up having more than 250 attend.
As you can imagine, this presented a challenge for the organizers to keep the discussion moving productively. But, it was great to see that so many people were willing to spend their whole weekend on equality, and were obviously deeply committed to building an inclusive movement that values diverse voices moving forward.
The key question facing leaders is how to channel the obvious energy into an inclusive but efficient decision-making process that can get buy-in from lots of groups and individuals and create a cohesive campaign moving forward.
From meeting some of those leaders this weekend, I'm confident they're up to the task.
Onward for equality...
