“Christmas Lullaby,” by Jason Robert Brown, eavesdropped after dinner early December last year. [Ed note: Once you start the video, double-clicking the image expands it to full screen, a decidedly mixed blessing since then you get more jostled by my improv'ed lo-tech iPhone cinematography.]
I couldn’t help but re-run this sweet gem which I first posted a year ago. Still sweet, still–with the exception of the diapers on the boy–true. Love to all who reads and listens here.
I got a note this morning from my kids’ “grandbaba” Sandy, herself no stranger to Salon, alerting me to a piece by Mary Elizabeth Williams there: A homophobic mayor’s lesson in love.
Michigan mother Amy Weber addresses Troy, MI’s proudly heterosexist mayor with the kind of loving, measured, dead-on appeal to decency that any of us would want to make, on our best days:
“I always like to think of challenges like this as opportunities to grow,” she said, introducing her children to the assembly. Weber went on to explain that in her family, “We talk every day about different families and different types of people, and teaching respect and kindness. That is the heart that beats in our home. It’s about being kind, about choosing love over everything.” She then showed drawings that the girls had done for Daniels with the words “love” on them. Weber even added, “I would love to see you at the next gay pride parade, leading the march, saying … these are my brothers and sisters just like everybody else.”
Here’s her brief testimony:
Check out Williams’ post for more.
A brilliant two minutes of film from GetUp!, a multi-issue progressive Australian organization (along the lines of Courage Campaign here in CA).
The Advocate posted about it right after Thanksgiving
From the text on its YouTube page:
Please share this with friends and loved ones. Donate to put on Australian tv: http://tiny.cc/gkuwp Sign petition: http://www.getup.org.au/marriagematters
A Texas gal wants to send 100,000+ signatures on a petition to the senior advisor to the CBS CEO to get this aired at the upcoming Superbowl. Even if popular demand doesn’t ordinarily determine what shows (or doesn’t) at the Superbowl, why not ask?
Today, a Day of Action, called by popular vote at the General Assembly the night of November 9, was held. An “Open University”
Please forgive the advert that precedes this 17 minute clip from Robert Reich’s historic–yes, it’s not even a day old yet, and it’s clear it will be looked back upon as historic–speech to 10,000 gathered at Occupy Cal tonight (Tuesday night, Nov 15). It was the 15th Annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture, long scheduled for this night, though previously located indoors at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union, which faces the administration building at the other side of Upper Sproul Plaza.
Lest this movement be misunderstood as rudderless or aimless, note that 10,000 were more or less rapt with attention, laughing at side jokes about the Koch brothers.
Here’s the link to the KGO of most of the whole speech on their own page.
Highlights of Reich’s speech:
Footage and interviews of participants in the General Strike in Oakland last Wednesday, November 2, sent by a chum, Lisa Denenmark, who helped shoot it. I couldn’t go, but I am proud to say my mother-in-law was there, and took my nephew, who racked up hella stories to tell his chums in middle school about how thrilling it is to stand up and be counted for what you believe in.
(Not like it’s anything new to him: he was among the youngest people phone banking at the Berkeley campaign headquarters for Obama several years ago, and has been to several rallies for immigration reform and the Dream Act in the past several months. He’s a regular with us at Pride; here he is a couple Prides ago, navigating the treacherous combo of MUNI vents and streetcar tracks on rollerblades, no less, with our rainbow flag as superhero cape. Yeah, I’m not worried about the next generation.)
If you are curious what participants had to say for themselves about why they were there, take a listen.
[Added note! It was totally viewable last night, and is marked private now, and I can't even get to see it via the link in the email my chum sent. So. My apologies; I'll reinstate it if I can later. You'll have to take my word for it that it was great. Yay! It's back! Except that the soundtrack is drowning out the voices. Check back in again, 'cause I'm sure this is getting tweaked, too.]
Made by LeftBay99 Media Team (a loose coalition of Bay Area social justice and community-based organizations) & Making Change Media.
Halloween trick-or-treating peanut, Berkeley, CA (2010).
Visual coda to yesterday’s post, in which I mentioned our boy’s Halloween costume choice of last year. I wrote a few words about it at the time, here. If I were to have to guess now, I’d say there’ll be a long gap ’til the next such outfit makes a Halloween appearance, though of course I could be wrong. In the intervening year, his haberdashery pace car has shifted from Big Sister to Main Boy Chum at Preschool. For all the complex reasons that are behind such evolving self-understandings. Advancing years, increased exposure to peer groups, push of culture, pull of self, survival instinct; you name it.
The costume above met a glowing reception throughout the neighborhood last year, though, and not just because there were blinky red lights underneath the tulle (yes there were). I mean, really. The kid looks better in that outfit than I ever could. Also? At least the grown-ups in our neighborhood love kids unconditionally and clearly share our conviction that the best thing we can do for them is clear the runway ahead and help them take flight.
Re: clearing the runway and helping kids take flight (into a world they’re in the process of making) – below, I’ve collected a smattering of nifty resources by and for parents of gender nonconforming kids. Halloween’s pretty much the primo occasion for this, since it’s the one day of the year kids have a wide(r) berth to explore performing different identities.
I got the video below in my inbox this morning, and thought I’d share. It’s from COLAGE, the organization for people with a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer parent. A nice counterpoint to the fright-&-lies video circulated by the hate group Family Research Council as an opening salvo in their war against the FAIR Education Act in California. The fight to defend the FAIR Education Act is going to be the Prop 8 battle, Part Deux, basically: more big money bigotry pushing ballot-box backlash to a landmark win for civil rights. Brace yourselves for another ugly election season out here in the Golden State.
But bigots aren’t the only ones who know how to operate a video camera or get a message out. Here’s how Kyle introduces this video:
Thanks so much for watching and sharing this video about my family! I’ve heard the terrible things Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and others are saying about families like yours and mine. It’s a form of bullying, and I think one of the best ways to respond is by sharing our stories. I’m proud to have two gay dads and a lesbian mom.
Director Dee Rees on the job, one of the most beautiful images I’ve seen in a very long time. [Source: Pariah: The Movie blog.]
*[Update: They did it! And now that they're fundraising in excess of their $10k goal, they're donating half of remaining money to the Ali Forney Center, a New York City homeless shelter for LGBT youth. Dictionary definition of walking the talk.]
Pariah! This film has to get to Sundance in the best possible shape, and its whole bodacious film-making crew has to be there along with it! Â I found out about it this morning from my handy-dandy Frameline e-newsletter (thanks, folks), and am all inspired to do my wee part in boosting its support.
Here’s what Frameline had to say:
Dee Rees and Nekisa Cooper‘s feature adaptation of their Frameline Audience Award winning short will be finished just in time to world premiere at Sundance. The film is about a Bronx teenager forced to choose between losing her best friend or destroying her family while she juggles conflicting identities and endures heartbreak in a desperate search for sexual expression. If you would like to help Dee and Nekissa finish their film and make it to Sundance for their world premiere please check out their Kickstarter page.
Writer/director Rees’s bio on the Kickstarter page notes the following:
Voting open 'til Feb 19, 2012.
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