Saturday, November 8, 2008

Apologies

You might have noticed that I haven't said "boo" about Wednesday's candlelight vigil at City Hall or last night's march from Civic Center to Dolores Park.

Unfortunately, I've got some exceedingly severe work deadlines next week -- more than usual -- plus I've had a sinus infection and cough all week.

And those two things just exacerbate each other -- I can't afford to take time off work to self-medicate and get over this faster, and working while being sick just generally seems to take longer than usual. It has only been in the last couple of nights that I have actually slept all the way through the night without waking up every two hours from coughing.

We went out onto Castro Street for about an hour Tuesday night, and that turned out to be too long, and I was fairly miserable at work the next day because of it. So I skipped the other two events in hopes of not extending this illness any longer than I need to.

I left work at 6:30 last night, so as I was walking up 18th Street, I was passing crowds of people leaving Dolores Park. In our apartment, I could hear crowd noises coming from the park, and I could hear them much better when I opened a window.

At this point, I have to say that I want to see some clear, centralized organization, though. I have been completely swamped with groups and causes on Facebook -- "1,000,000 Million Strong Against Newly Passed Prop 8," "Proud American, Disappointed Californian," "Californians Ready to Repeal Prop. 8," "Make Pride a Protest March Again," "Restore Equality to California in 2010" and on and on and on and on and on. So I hope that a clear and organized response starts to emerge soon.

I am aware that three lawsuits have been filed to stop the enactment of Prop 8. I hope that they work. But those things happen out of sight, and people want to see something right this minute that says they shouldn't lose hope. So would someone please, please, please come up with something more unified than the scattershot responses I've seen so far?

On the plus side, I'm very proud that there has been no rioting or destruction of property in response to Prop 8. Not that I'm against such things on principle. Rather, I feel that since the overwhelming majority of San Francisco and the Bay Area voted "No" on 8, to get destructive here would be reaching out to hurt our friends and would achieve nothing constructive.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wish I could have been there! And hope your infection clears up soon. I recommend hot and sour soup--is there a place near where you work?

pk

Anonymous said...

Here's the message on the Equality California website...not sure if it is the kind of unified response you were looking for, but at least it's something:

http://www.eqca.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=kuLRJ9MRKrH&b=4061207&content_id={A9A274A1-41D2-4309-BCD3-FE5B14B064EB}&notoc=1

pk