From left: Evan Terry, Dani Ryan, Heath Tucker, Carrie Harrington and Shalini Shah organized a Nov. 15 rally at City Hall for gay rights issues. A few days after announcing the event, called Join the Impact, on Facebook, more than 4,000 people had RSVP’d.
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By Trenton Straube
Friday, November 07, 2008
Editor’s note: Read our feature story about Prop 8 protests in New York here and an article about criticism of the LGBT movement in California here. In addition, Prop 8 opinion pieces are here, here and here.
New Yorker Corey Johnson was “disgusted and distressed” over the Election Day defeats of gay rights in California, Arizona, Arkansas and Florida. So he did something about it: He created a Facebook page.
The page—posted on a free Internet networking site—announced a peaceful protest Nov. 12 at a Manhattan Mormon temple. Within three days, 5,000 people RSVP’d. And they all showed up—with posters, banners and guests.
Welcome to the age of digital grass-roots activism.
When City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has a history in ACT UP and street protests, was marching in the Mormon rally, she noted how technology has affected the LGBT movement. “It’s exciting to see so many people show up so quickly exclusively through grass-roots organizing,” she said. “I’m very excited about that.”
Another Internet-based protest—called Join the Impact—will be held Saturday, Nov. 15, at City Hall in lower Manhattan. Join the Impact is a national movement against Proposition 8, the California ban on gay marriage, and other anti-gay legislation. At 1:30 p.m. EST and 10:30 a.m. PST, activists across the country, in every state, will rally in support of LGBT equality.
The movement was started by 26-year-old Seattle activist Amy Balliett, who launched a web site jointheimpact.com a few days after the election. The idea is that people across the globe can use the site as a clearinghouse for information. The site includes press releases, downloadable posters, contacts for each city’s rally and much more.
The movement has no national spokesperson, no board of trustees—it’s just a bare-bones system of Internet sites connecting like-minded individuals.
“That system worked for Barack Obama, it can work for us,” said Carrie Harrington, a New York University junior who is spearheading the local event along with Evan Terry, Dani Ryan, Heath Tucker and Shalini Shah.
Find them on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, or visit their site at theimpact
innyc.devinguinn.com. As of Wednesday morning, more than 4,000 readers RSVP’d.
While expressing respect for the rally at the Mormon Temple, Harrington stressed that Join the Impact takes a more secular outlook. “We want to send a message of inclusiveness that includes people of faith,” she said. “We’re renouncing Proposition 8 in California and relating that to the marriage bill that’s in the New York legislature. We’re also trying to get information out about gay adoption [the Arkansas ban’s target] and other issues.”
Three days before the City Hall rally, Harrington’s main concern—aside from the logistics of a last-minute, large-scale event, such as acquiring a speaker system—was that an Internet-based movement would leave out segments of the population, particularly minorities and those who didn’t grow up online.
Veteran activist Ann Northrup, who helped organize the Midtown Mormon march, sees the week’s rallies as a passing of the torch of sorts. “We’re at a new point in history—with new technology and new people who haven’t been through the previous wars and who are getting a taste of [activism],” she said. “Those of us who are older are just thrilled to see the new generation take over.”
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