Community Engagement

I realized that perhaps I was supposed to write a blog devoted entirely to my community engagement, rather than writing it as snippets in other blogs. So, just in case, I'm going to re-document it all here, and talk about my most recent experience as well.

I spent 2 hours volunteering for Hank Eng (CD6), and another hour at an event for him. I spent 2 hours volunteering for NARAL's No on 48 campaign, and a couple of hours at the Cable Center on Election night.

The latter two were my favorite activities. Especially after seeing No on 48 get trounced the way it did, tabling for something that I believed in so strongly made me feel like I'd done something important. Election night was extremely exciting because of all the energy in the room (it didn't hurt that Barack Obama won, either).

Finally, this Saturday, I spent an hour at the No on Prop 8 protest downtown. I'd never been to a protest before, but it felt wonderful to be involved in something that I hope will be historic. Someday, I hope people look back on Nov. 15, the day LGBTQ people and their allies rallied and marched throughout the country, and see it as the beginning of a larger movement to bring equal rights to the LGBTQ community. Either way, I saw a lot of great signs (and made one of my own). There were only a few counter-protesters, and while their signs and the attitudes that went along with them were very disturbing to me, it was wonderful to see that there were very little of them. By contrast, the capital was filled with people protesting for our rights. It gave me hope, and a sense of comradery, to see that so many people were willing to come out and say that Prop 8 was not okay.