Kathy puts her heart into it | Photo Credit: Ian Grey

Last week I painted the world, and that weekend I attended the Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade 2010.
This parade, the largest in Texas, has been held for the last twenty-seven years, and is Dallas’s annual gay pride parade.

This year, as in others, NTAUUS (the North Texas Association of Unitarian Universalist Societies) had a float for the parade. This year’s theme was “One Heart, One World, One Pride.” We began creating the earth a month before the parade. Using a very large balloon, the students and teachers from the UUCOC Religious Education program built a four-foot papier mache’ globe, and painted it blue. Once the blue paint had dried, my job was to add the continents. I first tried to draw them freehand, but that was less than effective. Instead, I chalked the equator, prime meridian, and other latitude and longitude lines for reference. I used the lines as if they were graph paper, and with a smaller globe nearby for reference, outlined the continents. A week later, the continents were all in place, and painted.

At the same time I was charting the world, my mother was constructing the giant yellow heart that we all recognize from the “Standing on the Side of Love” campaign logo. The heart would also be part of our float. My mother and I arrived at church every morning, and stayed until late in the afternoon, for a solid week completing both of these projects.

On Saturday, the day before parade day, my mother and I went to the church early, to meet Marcia and the rental truck. Carefully, we loaded the globe onto the truck, and secured it as well as we could. We drove to First Church in Dallas together, with Marcia driving the truck, me in the back protecting the globe, and my mother following us in her car, with the heart. Parts of the ride were harrowing, but we managed to get everything there in one piece.

The next step was to figure out how everything would go together, test it, take it apart, and then rebuild it all outside later that day, so it would be ready for attachment on Sunday.

Lifting the Globe | Photo Credit: Kathy Grey

On Sunday, we spent three hours making the float ready for the parade. In addition to the actual float, which included PVC tower adorned with banners, the globe (which sat atop the tower) and the heart, there were more 200 people representing almost all of the NTAUUS-affiliated churches, all carrying signs, and bursting with pride, Pride, PRIDE! We found later that we were the largest delegation from a religious organization.

Officially, there were 92 entries in the parade, and we were number thirty-one, which meant it was nearly an hour of impatience and exhaustion before we actually marched anywhere. I confess, that once we were moving I was terrified that the globe I’d spent so much time on would topple off the tower, but it didn’t, which left me free to help pass out hundreds of fans to spectators and fellow marchers alike. In fact, I was so energized by everything working as it should that my exhaustion evaporated, and I was able to actually run the fans from the truck to the people.

Several hours later, after the party had ended and the float had been dismantled, we regrouped at First Church where Daniel Polk (NTAUUS president and our group’s parade leader) showed off the trophy we had been given as our award for best social commentary.

And the winner is... | Photo Credit: Ian Grey

In the play, just a few students (three of them) were able to organize and have the courage to maintain the walkout to gain equal rights and opportunities for 85% of the population of the city.

The students, my age in fact, were able to rally the other students to get their families involved so where other protests had failed this one succeeded. A previous walkout had failed in 1963, and the students were drafted and vocal protesters were sent to the front line. Out of the soldiers sent, 9 out of 10 were Hispanic students, and almost all of them didn’t return home.

The 1969 protest succeeded because they got the entire community involved: the students in the high school, their siblings in the elementary school and their working parents. This was not without risk; the leaders were taunted and sometimes brutally beaten, and their parents would risk being fired if they dared join their children and leave work.

After the play the narrator said that if we wanted to stay and discuss it, we could. Most of the audience stayed we broke up into small groups of about three, and one of the actors came over to discuss the play with us. Still absorbing the play, I listened quietly as they talked about being around when this was happening. Then I started on how amazing I thought it was hat three students my age could change so much in so little time, and how these problems still exist in our society today. Although some of the players have changed, the game has not: there is still discrimination and hatred and there will always be groups scape-goated.

When I finished, the actor we were talking to looked at me and asked how old I was. “Sixteen,” I said proudly, and he just looked me over and said, “You don’t speak like a sixteen-year-old.” That sent a tingle down my spine, and I thanked him.

Then the director got on to the stage and asked us (the audience) if anyone wanted to share their thoughts on the play and any personal experiences.

Several people spoke about how they became bilingual teachers, because at that time students were beaten if they were caught speaking Spanish in class. After one of the leaders was sent to Washington, one result was that bilingual and bicultural education could be taught in schools.

One man, who was sent to Vietnam after the 1963 walkout, shared that if he had been more vocal he would have been sent to the front lines where he believes he would have been killed.
One woman found it very interesting that after the Chicanos won and had gained seats on the school board, in the next set of elections the men were not including the women in the discussions, and the women weren’t going to have any of that. You’ve seen what happens when Chicanos banded together: they were then included in the conversations.

Several people who were there at the 1969 spoke about being the in the walkout, which was quite moving, and then I raised my hand for the mic. I was one of the last to speak, and I wasn’t quite certain what to say.
I was one of the last to speak when I got the mike I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say.

I stood up with the mic in my hand, and started talking: I said what I had said to the actor about how people will always find someone to blame and someone to discriminate against, and how programs like this are so important so that we learn how stop injustice. Trying to keep my voice steady, I explained how inspired I was by the fact that three students that were my age could really make a difference. Then I said that people like me are already making a difference – that my teen group at church had invested in Kiva microlending and had helped over 70 people in the developing world. I concluded with how important plays like this are so that we remember the past and we can change the future and that people can change the world.