Funna Create Some Change...

29 October 2005

About seven years ago...before the sun had even thought about coming up...Coya showed up at my doorstep in her Volvo...you know the one with the glove box door that wouldn't close...and the boombox in the middle of the front seat that substituted for a car stereo (that's Volvo spelled GHETTO). We got our shots from the international travel clinic and made the dangerous journey across the Mississippi River to St. Paul (you never know what kind of strange diseases you'll pick up over there) to grab our pal Eric (aka Panda Chaser..aka...The Minister...really...the freakiest Lutheran you'll ever meet)...and we began our 15 hour vehicular adventure to Pittsburgh to attend our first Creating Change conference. More than perhaps any other singular social/political event that has taken place in my personal world...Creating Change has radically altered my life and my politics.

That first Creating Change was a doozy. I thought I was Mr. Hot Shit College Queer...until I walked into a building with 3000 GBLTs (pronounced GIBLETS)...including some of the leading dykes and faggotry of the time. During that conference...I got into a shouting match with Barbara Smith (yes....THAT Barbara Smith...and if you don't know who she is...I didn't either when I met her...then I found out when a women's study major friend of mine asked me if I were still breathing with all my bones in working condition...Google her if you don't know her...it's worth it). I was drafted into a movement to create a national progressive people of color queer organization (still waitin' on that one...)...and finally oh finally for the first time sat in a room...the People of Color Institute...where I could be brown and queer...all at the same time...without apology or explanation. And all that was just in the first day at the conference. By the time we headed back to Minneapolis...I'd fallen in love...been party of a pepper spray incident by an angry drag queen at a night club (turns out several years later...in Minneapolis...I would get into a fist fight with said drag queen...)...and started on a path to really take a look at the disparate pieces of my identity...how I had viewed or ignored them...and started trying to put together the 10,000 piece puzzle of who I am. Coya and I literally held hands...I was in the back seat...she in the front...we are flexible...and we cried...quite forcefully...for the next two or three hours...until we could wipe away our tears with some chicken fingers and fries from Perkins. And Eric...that man who introduced me to the Yeasty Girls...was an awesome white ally...and drove along...more or less in silence...and let Coya and I celebrate through saline that new sense of self and community we'd been blessed to find.

Since that first conference in 1998...I have been to every Creating Change since...except 2002...in Portland..cuz I was unemployed and broke. Each and every Creating Change has been filled with deepend friendships, celebration, personal and political growth...and straight up drama. I can't tell you how many times youth...or trannies...or colored folk...or old folk...or basically anyone but the middle class white folks...have brought out their pitchforks and stormed the stage during one plenary session or another to demand better accountability from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (it's their conference...and to be honest...NGLTF has generally been very responsive).  Every conference also has at least one major issue that centers around something fucked up (it's gotten to the point where there is a national office pool to guess what the issue du jour is gonna be)...like the year the white upper class dykes held a workshop called...How To Steal You a Brown Baby from the Third World (ok...so maybe that wasn't the name of the workshop...but if I see one more university lesbian couple with their "rescued" Guatemalan baby...I am going to go Lee Harvey Oswald on somebody).  The mentioned workshop was attended by several people of color who were adopted...many of whom that had been internationally adopted...and they attempted to interact with the lesbo child stealers (hey...it's my blog...I don't have to be fair) and to bring up some of the issues that center around international interracial adoption. The organizers of the workshop weren't having it. NGLTF actually gave the workshop organizers space at a plenary to defend their workshop, and when some of the POC folks with concerns asked to also have time to address the plenary gathering...conference organizers said no (bad move NGLTF).  Several years later...when I was applying for a job with the Freedom to Marry Coalition...I was told by my friend Mandy Carter that I was being talked about negatively as an instigator of the POC Adoptee Revolution of 2000...now...I have surely been part of all kinds of drama on the national queer stage at Creating Change...but for once...I wasn't...just goes to show...you support justice...and somebody is bounded to get pissed off.  Don't fuck with the white power dykes...or their right to serve in the military, get married, or buy a hand made Chinese baby...cuz that's America!  (Please note...my fellow fagatrons are not exempt from criticism around this issue either...but...overwhelmingly...it's been the lesbian community that has decided to rescue children that have no need for rescuing).

The best part of the conference always takes place after the workshops have ended for the evenings. Sitting around, drinking overpriced cosmos from the hotel bar (except my friend Ingrid...who I once found sitting in the hotel bar...in her pajamas...ordering cokes from a disgruntled bartender and adding rum from her personal bottle of Bacardi that she was carrying around like she had just adopted it from Puerto Rico...but she's Puerto Rican...so that's ok)...talking shit...talking politics...and laughing non-stop. Did I mentioned the sex? Oh yeah...hot boys with great politics...it's the ultimate aphrodiasiac (funny story for those of you that know my Jewish Mom...Beth Zemsky...I worked for her when I attended my first Creating Change...Beth was a CC vet already at the time...she called Ana and I into her office...sat us down...looked at us seriously...and said that she insisted that we go to Creating Change...and get laid...I've only been doing what Mom told me to do!) And then...to cap off the weekend...is Russell's now famous annual CC party...where some person is honored...forced to wear a ridiculous hat (the first one was a cheesehead hat in Milwaukee...last's years was a beer bong hat with the St. Louis arches over it)...and then...once the honoree is nice and drunk...he or she must lead a parade of all the party goers through the hotel lobby. Priceless.

I am definately looking forward to this years Creating Change in Oakland. It is rare that the conference goes to the same city twice... but it was in Oakland in 1999...and that was...to date...the best CC I have attended. So I'm packing my bags...buyin' some condoms...and heading to the Bay. Coya will be there...as will all the friends that I have made that have...whether they know it or not...transformed my life and helped to make me who I am...please don't judge them too harshly ;-).

P.S. If you are interested in the conference...check out the conference website at www.creatingchange.org. Also...I am a big fan of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (www.ngltf.org). They do work the right away...cognizant of building power from the ground up...addressing systemic oppression...and celebrating our history of diversity (in the broadest sexual, political, racial, etc. terms)...unlike our more Republican-minded, conformist based, I wanna be just like the people that oppress me national organization...the HRC (all that money...and they've never had...in decades...one single political success on their federal lobbying agenda...go figure...one day maybe they'll realize that liberation is different than equality...and liberation always has and always will be made from the ground up...by radically shifting the hearts and minds of people...not the members of Congress).