It all began with the passage of Prop 8 which sent me into a tailspin for most of the next week. I drove 2 hrs down to San Francisco to protest in the streets along with thousands of other people. Marching down the streets defiantly chanting did make me feel better.
But I was ready to fight, really fight, put all my time and energy into fighting. If it seems weird to you that a straight married woman was this affected by the passage of prop 8 then read my other diary. So I signed up for every organization and volunteer opportunity that I could find. Equality Action Now (EAN) was the first to get back to me and invited me to participate in their online organizing chats. And that is how, earlier this week, I ended up in charge of a religious outreach group for EAN. Below is the story of my first week as a community organizer, I thought it might be helpful to other activist newbies who are getting their feet wet.
From the initial online chats there were three of us, two atheists and a shaman, clearly a highly qualified group to be leading the religious outreach group. But we were all motivated by what we saw as a real need for the movement to reach out to religious communities. One of the groups that overwhelming voted for Prop 8 were people who said they attended church regularly.
My first idea, hatched in those chat rooms, was to gather the GBLT-friendly churches for a town hall style meeting. That lead me to post this, which led to people suggesting that I contact marriage equality USA, who suggested I contact California Faith for Equality, who apparently already have a data base of all the GBLT friendly churches and organizations. And who, just the day before, had held a faith based town hall meeting to discuss what went right and what went wrong with the No on 8 campaign and faith-based outreach.
So two days in and my idea already exists and had been executed. Sad. I felt like my little activist balloon had been burst. Particularly because a lot of the emails I received were a bit patronizing. I understood that lots of people are working on this, which is great. But I also felt that the same people who orchestrated the failed No on 8 campaign were continuing their failed strategies. So like a good little newb I posted my feelings at street prophets and received a lovely bit of support and the suggestions that I read Kos's book, not give up, and keep plugging. The next day one of the leads, Mary, of CA Faith for Equality called and just warmed my heart with her welcoming spirit. She wanted us to be involved and invited us to attend the next meeting in December and also asked if she could come to our first small group meeting this morning. She offered all of her resources, lists, contacts for us to use. Of course I still had very little idea of what we were actually going to do, but her generous inclusive enthusiasm really helped me feel like there must be something I could do.
I took the next three nights to read most of Kos's book and chat with few friends of friends who have been politically active for a lot longer than me. The one theme that seemed to arise from my research was the bias of the media and the power of the internet. "Viral" marketing, you tube videos, blogs were discussed a great deal. So it was with these things bouncing around my head that I met my little group at a Sacramento coffee shop called (no joke) Butch & Nellies. The name alone made my morning.
I think all of us were a bit nervous at the beginning, me especially, as the supposed "leader". I think everyone thought I had a master plan and had done this before. Or maybe it just felt that way to me. Anyway, it was a stumbling beginning to be sure. Slowly, with the help of some coffee, we began talking. We shared our personal stories a little bit and I brought everyone up to speed about the trail of organizations that had led me to speak to Mary at CA Faith for Equality. We discussed what this organization did, what they had tried to do, and the potential to help them organize workshops for communities of faith struggling with this issue using the "living lovingly" curriculum that was developed by the CA Council of Churches.
I will break here to make a few important (perhaps obvious to others) points:
1-Using the world religious is apparently frowned upon because it excludes certain traditions and people, spiritual or faith-based is preferred
2-Faith based organizations work best when people from their organization are involved in the workshop process
So while assisting in the workshops would be helpful, as a mostly atheist group, this would be probably not be the most helpful thing we could come up with. So what the heck was our little group going actually do? (the answer in part II)