As day two of the march to sacramento winds down the United Church of Christ building in Antioch is buzzing with all the left over and newly created energy of today.  We began our morning thanking our supporters at the Mt. Diablo UU church and walking off into Walnut Creek. After marching for sometime on grassy dirt paths the group climbed our first hill of the day. As we crested its gentle summit we came upon a seemingly endless field of flowers. At that point no one got to comment on its beauty before we were all running through the flowers. All puns aside, this was an amazing example of how we ALL want freedom to do what we are passionate about and what motivates us. As we proceeded through Walnut Creek and Concord we were met with honks from well wishers and excited energy. If anything, what I will remember about walnut creek were all the people who had seen us in the papers and took the time out of their day to say hello.
Another great story from today was at a point when we reached out to a passerby for a bit of navigation assistance, needless to say we were a bit lost. The woman, named Cindy, that stopped and gave us some pointers had also seen media coverage of our efforts. She said she was proud of us, which was the best energy boost we could have asked for. Kip “Twitter Toes” Williams, one of our organizers and Tweeters, immediately  tweeted a story about our encounter. About an hour later Kip checked his computer to find an email from Cindy describing how she saw her picture on the website and had then made a donation so that we may travel more comfortably! Freakin’ awesome! Cindy was a diamond in the hills!
As we neared Antioch, the hills seamed to grow with us and our spirits. We were practically floating as we left the paved streets for the mountain trails, unaware of how far vertically we wold be traveling! Shortly into the trails we were all grounded when one of our beautiful pace setters, affectionately name “Thing 1″, was greeted by a rattle snake. I was reminded we are just passing through these lands and we are the guests. We continued onwards and upwards for over a mile before we took our first hill side break. We sat, shaded by one of the many Oak Trees that give name to this area of California. We all spoke about activism and rested. At the sound of a distant moo, we started up climbing the slopes of the last mountains between us and Sacramento.
We had been spending sooooooo much time walking from the top of one hill, down to the bottom and back up again; all the while repeating that we can only walk to the always nearing tippy tops of these hills and that would be the last peak we ascend. As we approached the second and tallest of our peaks I blindly slurred the phrase “We are not just marching straight to Sacramento, we are going to touch the sky first”, not quite knowing the implications of what that meant.
We may have physically touched the sky much earlier in the day, but for many of us the highlight of today was a touching and teary “story share” involving our marchers and our host family at the United Congregational Church of Christ in Antioch. I can’t do justice to explaining what really happened to night but I know what people initially took from this meeting. Healing, sharing and insight  were some of the many take-aways tonight at our meeting with a church that is very freshly scarred by the fight for gay rights.

Our most important hope for this march was to build bridges between the LGBT community and the religious/ spiritual community that was blamed for the passing of Prop 8. This constructed conflict and others like it perpetrated against communities of color and other marginalized people is a way to fuel oppression. We got closer to the sky this evening then ever before, I am proud to be a queer person who can connect with a group of church goers who have been equally affected by LGBT rights and the struggle for solidarity and community.
If you see us in the streets keep the love coming!

I am also proud to say it is all up hill from here!

Maya, 16
Santa Cruz, Ca

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.