Innovative Advocacy

Today, my campus' Queer organization had it's sophomore GSA conference for the local High School LGBT organizations. Our keynote speaker was Christopher (err, something) from Campus Pride in Connecticut.

In the informal Keynote Speech, Chris talked a lot about the theme of being an advocate for the Community. Specifically, he stressed that one can be an advocate without being an active advocate. In other words, to be an advocate, one need not lobby Congress, and stand on picket lines and make his/her entire existence a political dry-erase board. In my understanding of Chris' point, to be an advocate is to use whatever opportunity one sees to spread understanding of what it means to be a Queer person and why change is so important. It is also making these opportunities whereever possible.

This speech really got me thinking about the nature of activism, and how it can pervade multiple scenes. This thought occured to me once before when researching Stacey Ann Chin http://www.google.com/search?q=stacey+ann+chin&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLR_en , whose career as a slam poet/poetry performer is her activism; it is how she is an advocate.

So what new ways of Activism can we (yes, we) think of? Slam Poetry contests and performances? ...Yes. Blogging? ...okay, that was easy. What about song-writing? What about Facebook status' (sparingly)? What about on occaison wearing a shirt voicing support of same-sex couples? What about in painting?

One thing that I've been really thinking about for myself is being a comedian. (yeah I know, but bear with me). I'm a pretty humorous guy. I mean, I'm part of three systemically marginalized and stigmatized demographics... I need sarcasm to survive. With my ability to manipulate the English language, and my ability to relate to people regardless of discrepancies in life experience, I think that being a comedian would be a great field for me as well as a great opportunity to make people think critically. EVERYONE loves to laugh. And, incidentally, humor also works as a great way to approach subjects that people are sometimes afraid to be confronted with. As a matter of fact, the more I think about this, the more I like this plan. I may have to think about it some more though.

--TAHS