so let me just state, off the bat, i am not a protest kind of person. i think a lot of them are pretty counter productive, pretty unorganized, and (i swear, i used to be less cynical) i honestly think most people are there for the wrong reasons. almost like they want to protest so they can say they protested, instead of actually having strong feelings behind what they are protesting. i think that a lot of people, after they protest, go home and stop thinking about what it was they just did. and i think this is a fairly recent phenomenon, because i actually think at one point people were really passionate about issues, and when they protested, it didn't stop when they went home. they fully believed in making a change. i just don't think people today have that same passion. i think they feel that if they want something, they can get it just by being loud. and if the change is slow in coming, or doesn't quite fit what they wanted, they pout about it. but that is it.
so, with that said, i went to the "national" protest against proposition 8 (and against it's passing in CA, along with the other ballot measures in other states that passed prohibiting a group of people from getting married or adopting children, which frankly, is the bigger injustice to me). as my friend keeps pointing out, the protest wasn't (or shouldn't have been) about not being able to get married, it was about equal rights, which i can get behind. to be honest, i would be happy if domestic partnerships or civil unions carried the same weight a marriage, in terms of rights and laws. i don't want to get caught up in the words, i think that is a mess that can be solved after the larger issue has been taken care of.
so i dragged myself to the reflecting pool and stood with thousands of people (reports vary between 5000 and 6000, but i can't find solid numbers) and marched with them for miles (seriously, miles) through rain and wind. i will say, it wasn't the worst thing in the world. and as someone who has decided to become a student of humanity, someone who studies people and the things around us by using my lens, it was pretty cool to see the passion in some of the faces.
i would be lying if i said that i still think some people were there to socialize. and when the rain started, there were a lot of people that took off and went home (no real judgement, just observation and confirmation), but the majority of people stayed. the most impactful thing to me was the support of people in their cars, driving around the city, trying to get places. they weren't honking to get people out of their way, they were honking to show support and to give a thumbs up in solidarity. which is a change that i don't think people would have seen in the old days of protesting. so it isn't all bad. people actually do care about things, even if the like to do it from the dry interiors of their cars.
MARCH FOR EQUAL RIGHTS
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