DAY 28: Today was a bittersweet day. You'll see that we ended in a very supportive and encouraging environment, but the beginning part of the day was pretty devoid of support. We had been told to expect great things from this area of our state - "oh, once you start going up the peninsula, you'll have SO much support." Well, we had more support in Atascadero, and most people's response to that is "where is Atascadero?" We figured one of 3 things must be happening: 1) there's some type of "no honking" ordinance that we don't know about or 2) everyone was grumpy because it was raining or 3) people here are not outraged enough about the passage of prop 8.
Something we have noticed in our travels is that in the smaller, more oppressed communities, we were typically welcomed very enthusiasically. In larger, seemingly more progressive communities, we were often greeted very luke warmly. It seems that those of us in more progressive areas have grown somewhat complacent in the fight for equality. Just an obsevation.
Here we are on day 28 ready for rain. We had to change in and out of our rain gear several times throughout the day.
We entered the city of Palo Alto, home to Stanford, today. A woman from Pennsylvania stopped us to sign our petition and give us some lunch money. A man from Santa Cruz came out of a restaurant to talk with us and to sign our petition.
At 2:30-3pm we arrived at Embarcadero and El Camino for a rally with the Raging Grannies! They were a blast! We sang Revoke 8 Christmas carols. They gave us the gift of "equality" wrapped up nicely with a bow. Several tv news stations were there NBC, CBS and the local Spanish station. And a Raging Granny Groupie gave us some wonderul rings that she'd made. The Grannies welcomed us VERY warmly and enthsiastically - Thank you Raging Grannies!
After the rally, we were treated to coffee by Sandy and Melissa (2 friends who drove down from SF) and they delivered us to our next destination. We spent some time swapping stories and very much enjoyed getting to know them. Melissa also came bearing presents! Thank you Melissa and Sandy!
it was great to meet y'all the other day! i posted some pictures from palo alto here if you'd like to see them... please feel free to use them if you think they'd be helpful!
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Raging Grannies are proud to announce:
ReplyDeleteChinese language publicity for Val and Tracie!
This is from World Journal, a Chinese language publication for US residents. Here is the link:
http://www.worldjournal.com/wj-sf-news.php?nt_seq_id=1818162