Join the Impact

What we accomplished on Saturday was the first step of one amazing journey. Many people have asked me why Proposition 8 has caused such an uproar in our community. Honestly, this movement has been forging for many years, but Proposition 8 was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many have called this Stonewall 2.0, and I won’t disagree. Stonewall awoke a wildfire in the gay rights movement and Saturday’s world-wide protests showed this work just how strong a wildfire can be!

As everyone knows, Saturday’s protests didn’t solve the problem overnight, but what they did was raise awareness across this world about the problem. Thanks to all of you, this conversation is no longer between “us and them.” This conversation is occuring all over the world in living rooms, coffee shops, airplanes, offices, college campuses, and even retirement communities. The worst thing we could do right now is let this conversation fizzel out! Help us keep this conversation going. Share your stories, your videos, and photos with us. Help us record Saturday’s history making initiative, help us spread the word, and work with us for full equality! We can never let people forget about what Proposition 8 did to 18,000 marriages. The word DOMA needs to be in everyone’s vocabulary. In a world where so many children need homes, people must know how a vote in Arkansas took the right of adoption away from unmarried and gay couples.
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Last week, some felt angry. Last week, some felt defeated. Last week, some felt hopeless.

Today we have shown the world that we will not be victims anymore! Today, our community has risen and shown our opponents that we are MUCH MORE THAN 1 MILLION STRONG! We brought the world’s attention to the outrage that is Proposition 8. We brought the conversation of equality into the living rooms of America and around the world! Today, we took a gigantic step into the next Civil Rights Movement. We have brought the conversation to a national stage. Now it’s time that we keep it going. Join us in a challenge over the next 10 months that will make an IMPACT. 10 months – 10 lives changed. Everyone in this movement must help keep the conversation going. We are asking each and every one of you to engage in 10 conversations with someone who does not understand our struggle and help them to see our point of view. We are not asking that you try to infringe on or disrespect their beliefs. Change can not occur with insult, it will only occur with respect. If all of us work hard to positively affect 10 lives, we can change this entire nation! To help keep the conversation going, we will work with you to launch (at least) 10 national demonstrations of equality outreach. We have already begun taking the steps toward our next big event: Day Without A Gay on December 10th. It is now time we work with our nation to help them see who we are: citizens of the USA who deserve equal protections under the law!
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Tomorrows events will turn out over 1million people organizing across 300 cities in all 50 states and 10 countries world-wide! Please get the word out to all of your friends. This has grown beyond a national event – this is HISTORICAL! Read the Press Release Here…

I’m sitting on a plane flying from Vegas back to Seattle, WA. I have been in Vegas for 3 days for a work-related conference and have spent my nights into early mornings in my hotel room, sifting through emails, answering phone calls, and getting the word out. You know how sometimes you sit on a plane and end up in a nonstop conversation with the person next to you? And since their proximity is so close to you, there is no real way to stop the conversation without being rude. And none of us want to be rude to the person we are going to sit next to for the next 2-3 hours. Well the people behind me are in this predicament. They first started talking about what is truth, then shifted to truth in politics, and then I heard it… the statement that made me wake up from my attempt at sleeping, open this computer, and start writing: Someone asked “Have you heard of this protest thing happening? Have you heard of Join The Impact?” I must admit, I have now been rudely eavesdropping as these people continue the conversation. On a plane ride, flying across the country, two perfect strangers are talking about our rights!! Ladies and Gentleman, we have started something huge! Saturday is fast approaching and it’s time I share with you what we plan to do next.

It is the wish of the JoinTheImpact team to keep working with and for our community. Over this week, we have been contacted by multiple organizations and fellowships who want to work with us to continue this conversation, to drive this movement, to work harder than we’ve ever worked before and make a gigantic difference in this world! JoinTheImpact is about unifying as one and working together to bring about positive change. On November 4th, our opponents thought that they won. They thought we had fallen. On November 7th, a call to action was made and on November 15th our community WILL RISE! Moving forward, we will not step down, we will not be silenced, and we will not compromise our rights! JoinTheImpact will team up with other grass roots organizations like MillionGayMarch.com and other like-minded organizations that share our same goals – We will band together for rapid movement and ultimate coverage. Together with these organizations we are forming OFFER: the Organized Fellowship For Equal Rights. JoinTheImpact and other members of OFFER will help guide this movement, but we need you in the drivers seat! As I said on November 7th, we can not do this alone! This community is unifying and we need to act with one loud, proud, and strong voice!
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This is what we are fighting for. We have created a mission statement to help stear our cause and keep the conversation going.

Please view our other posts as well:

Critical Updates

Prop 8 Protest: A Call to the LGBTQ Community, Friends, & Family

The past three days have seemed like an eternity. So much has happened, and I realized that in all this, we never gave you any background about JoinTheImpact. On Friday morning, November 7th, I (Amy) received an email from a good friend, Willow Witte (our Cleveland protest coordinator). Willow like many of us, was fired up about Proposition 8 and seeking a way to mobilize. She had put up a post on her blog with an email template for people to write their local LGBTQ organization and ask for help planning something – anything. I responded to Willow’s email saying that we shouldn’t wait, we need to mobilize now and we need to on a national level, at the exact same moment, throughout the country. We have allowed our opponents to take our issues and make them local. Once they have divided us, they take their national movement and attack our smaller state-wide or even city-wide one. JoinTheImpact was forged as a way to give our community a national stage. We all must work towards equality in our state, but we need to know that every member of our community, across the nation cares about what happens in every state. California, Arkansas, Florida, and Arizona should not stand alone in this fight. We must all stand with them and for each other. These ideals are what spawned JoinTheImpact. That is who we were on November 7th at 9am PST.

Now, 4 days later, we are more than anyone could have imagined. Look in the mirror. We are you. We are your family. We are your loved ones and your allies. JoinTheImpact has not just gone national, it has gone international! Here’s the timetable so far:

1. November 7th – Launch
2. 5 Hours post launch – First 10,000 visitors
3. Midnight on November 7th – 20 cities organizing
4. November 8th (Afternoon) – Thanks to the help of organizers, we made CNN’s iReport.
5. November 8th (Evening) – Our site hit 35K visitors
6. November 9th (Morning) – 30 cities organizing
7. November 9th (Afternoon) – We got the attention of ParezHilton.com
8. November 9th (Evening) – The tipping point – Traffic jumped to 50K visitors/hour. With the help of Hostdango.com, we immediately switched to a new web server (Generously donated by Hostdango!)
9. November 10th 8am PST – Our initiative goes international! Now there are protests being planned around the world for the exact same minute on November 15th!
10. November 10th 11am PST – WetPaint.com enters the mix of local Seattle based companies donating time and services. Thanks to WetPaint, we now have an amazing Wiki to upload contact information and protest locations for every single city! They created a social site just for us: http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com.
11. November 10th 11pm PST – 49 states have local organizers in over 80 cities!!!
12. November 11th – 1am PST – We reached 1million visitors!!
13. November 11th 8am PST – Hostdango shows even more generosity by upgrading us to an amazingly robust dedicated server to ensure that we can handle the traffic!
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