reading response #2

so, i wrote this a while ago when it actually happened & never posted it. yay, here it is:

This weekend’s events still feel like they’re happening, in all honesty. Staceyann Chin isn’t boarding my flight with me right now, but she was just at my gate out of Dulles after an insane weekend of a hundred thousand queers marching on the capitol for equal rights under the law.

I wouldn’t call Staceyann’s speech on Sunday so much of a poem as I would a performance. I’m sure you can find it on youtube by now, but seeing her face surrounded by microphones and news cameras just might ruin it. I heard her speech from 50,000 people deep and could not see her at all. Just her voice. Just her voice over the pa system and even then, sometimes the cheering drowned her out. There had been about fifteen speakers before her, including Judy Shepard, Lt. Dan Choi, Julian Bond and a number of young transfolk who spoke about the importance of education, visibility, endurance and conviction.

By the time she came to the podium, the crowd had become well-versed in the language and cadence of protest. All of us had marched for nearly three miles, screaming, singing & chanting. Staceyann and I, along with the other poets performing at smaller events throughout the day were hoarse before we even passed the White House. The speakers before Staceyann, even the young folks, all had that predictable rhythm and shift of volume in their voices when speaking. They knew when the crowd would erupt, they knew when to speak softly so that the entire mall strained to hear.

When Staceyann came to the mic, everybody woke up. Several people around me stood to up to listen. When she talked about her coming out story in Jamaica and the trauma that followed, there was a sense that everyone was holding their breath. In the face of all the criticism this march has received since its planning stages, I felt like that moment was exactly what made it worthwhile. Yes, absolutely, the whole thing was an important demonstration of community and the power of grassroots collaboration. But in light of Obama’s speech the night before, and all the promises he made, when Staceyann was on stage it seemed as if she enacted a turning point for the crowd. Change was not only possible, but inevitable. She talked frankly about the “places we [queers] are always fleeing” and that in order to create spaces that refused that, it was all about the breath and the repetition. BAM!

post-script 11/09: this event & the things that staceyann said about marriage and the fight for equality have sparked some interesting debates. i went to the march as a supporter of the repeal of prop 8 & came away with really different views and a fuller understanding of the ways that we, as poets (and as queers), buy into and aid what may end up being the wrong side of the fight. i'm not saying that i don't support equality (i do! i do! i do!), but that i have really different ideas now, after hearing staceyann talk, about the ways in which we might all root for equality (and by all, i mean ALL, not just the queer folx).

xomegday