Hardcore

That’s what Becky Flynn kept calling us, everyone who was standing in the rain for Basic Rights Oregon‘s Rally to Defend Equality. Here’s some background on why we were out there.

I don’t go to a lot of rallies. I once read an interview with Alison Bechdel wherein she confessed that her Dykes To Watch Out For characters are way more activist than she is. I can’t tell you how much that comforted me. Rallies, no matter how worthy the cause, always make me remember school spirit pep rallies. What do I want? Not to chant! When do I want it? Now!

But sometimes it’s what needs to be done.

Standing there in that crowd, I remembered the very first march and rally I attended. It was my senior year of high school. I’d made friends with a girl named Marcia, who was in the Spanish class I was taking at the U of M.

Marcia told me about Take Back The Night. I asked my parents if I could go, and they said yes. I marched, chanted, stared, smelled what I would learn was a typical mix of patchouli and sweat.

I remember there was a dance afterwards. I was too shy to go.

But I also remember how proud and glad I was, and how I suddenly understood the power of being part of a crowd that shared my beliefs about something. Of being visible and being heard.

Tonight I was that proud, and that glad, again.