"The police say they arrested 211 of us this morning for civil disobedience. I'm angry and brokenhearted that the Court upheld Prop 8, but I'm also touched by the community who came out to take action. On a day like today, words are not enough." - Kip

Yes. That. I'm not going to be able to articulate this well, but i'll give it a shot.


beautiful interfaith service and Blessing of All the Crazy Homos About to Be Arrested at sevenish, then marched down market to the state building... there were like ten bigots and then US... ginormous mob.

waited, waited, waited. checked phone every ten seconds.

i got the text from kip and shouted it to Janine and Sam and. Kip and Seth were at the front and worked their way back through. over about twenty seconds this angry ripple shot through the crowd and the screaming was defeaning. everyone was crying, but there wasn't time. the clergy and everyone from OSOF formed the line and we damn near ran to Grove & Van Ness.

in the blink of an eye, the blockade was formed. i mean, really, it was so fast i don't even remember it happening.
sam was our police liason and let them know about me... at which point Sgt. Frazer begged me not to get arrested. I said no way. She said fine, but they'd have to isolate me and process my paperwork at the end and arrest me completely by myself. okay, fine. we sang, we chanted, i screamed myself hoarse. there was one couple in the middle who danced and another who just held each other and cried. we were there for over two hours.

at one point i looked around the blockade it hit me that the most beautiful part of what was happening was that this was ALL OF US. every letter of the whole goddamn queer alphabet, every race, every class, over fourty clergy members of different faiths. and most of these people joined on the fly and somehow EVERYONE kept the action in the spirit of nonviolence... and we were all actually relating to each other in an age when interaction occurs mostly through a screen of some kind.

there were several moments where, after months of not crying, my face was streaming with tears. and i looked at will on one side of me and brendan on the other and they were crying too.

we've been planning this for months.

we were hoping for MAYBE thirty people.

in total, 211 of us were arrested.

they arrested me after everyone else, away from the wagons. i was in a solo copcar. a bunch of the non-arrestable peacekeepers ran up to the car and asked what the hell was going on, why i was seperate, what the fuck.

it's cause i'm trans.

they were all livid. so was i, but i knew it was coming.

when we actually got to the county jail they had one pen set up for men and one pen set up for women. after searching me, they led me to a tiny makeshift pen. i can't describe how i felt... fucking OTHER, is what. and it hurt deeply to be cut off of the people who, for that morning, were as good as or better than family.

out of everything that happened yesterday, i think the image that's going to stick in my head more than anything else was Kip running up to the edge of the pen and shouting at the cop who was leading me off to the side: "ARE YOU REALLY GONNA KEEP HIM SEPARATE JUST BECAUSE HE'S TRANS?!" all of the other men got as close to me as they could and told me that i should be in there with them, that this was so fucked, etc etc etc. after most of them had been let out, i let myself cry again. that kind of love and support meant so much more to me than the fact that i was being isolated.

 was among the last to be processed. two misdemeanors. court date june 25th.

i got out and there was flick and sam and robert and janine and seth and frank and brendan and everybody was either clutching someone else or slumped against something. seth was sobbing, body totally limp from exhaustion. janine held him and kissed his forehead and robert was sunburned even worse than me, still wearing his suit and his Elder Robert Moore tag from when he was a missionary, and frank was chain smoking and crying and crying and crying everybody was crying.

i've never been held the way we held each other. so so so so tight. i hugged seth last. he's six something tall and the second my head hit his chest i lost it completely and cried until there was absolutely nothing left. and he was crying but smiling too and we both had still had glitter all over our faces from where the Sisters blessed us and i poked his and he said he cried glitter and kissed me on the cheek before sam shoved my in the car.

i kinda couldn't deal with the march- mostly because i can't deal with MEUSA. but by that point i was beyond exhausted and a little delirious but apparently after i left OSOF took the wheel and there were marches and sit ins and general amazingness.

i am so proud to be a part of this, and to be a part of a community of people who respond to the violence against us (and yes, prop 8 is violence) with passion and integrity. yesterday was this community at our most beautiful .

we lost at the ballot, and at the courthouse. but honestly, we won in a much bigger sense.

my heart is exploding. overloaded with feelings.

i can describe the events- but none of it even touches how any of this actually felt.