I went to the West Village on June 24, 2011, right after same sex marriage was passed in New York State.
I arrived at about midnight. Walking west on Waverly from the West 4th Street subway stop, the celebration was rising. Amusing to watch the obvious tourists get caught up in the excitement. Empathetic joy.
Then I arrived at Sheridan Square, just outside the Stonewall Inn.
There were several hundred people in the street. I decided to wade through the crowds; a big decision for me, since I’m normally pretty crowd averse and I get a little panicky. But the mood was jubliant, and not overwhelming, so I felt safe.
“Joy” was certainly the main emotion in the crowd, but there was another feeling just underneath that.
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The biggest feeling, after joy, here outside Stonewall: relief. #ssm |
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I wandered back through the crowd, taking some pictures and tweeting a few thoughts. (I clearly had no other word available but “joy.” Heh.)
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It seen like ppl are getting engaged every 10 ft, haha #ssm |
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OH: “Everyone deserves hugs and kisses.” #ssm #stonewall |
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Also a common theme outside Stonewall: random reunions, inspired joyous serendipity. #ssm |
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I’m also loving the diversity of genders, ethnicities and identities. Everyone deserves this joy. #ssm #stonewall |
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Spontaneous song breaks out: “Going to the chapel” #ssm #stonewall |
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Then I had the pleasure of running into
Jeremy Heimans — Ford Foundation Visionary, co-founder of
Purpose NYC, co-founder (with my amazing pal
Andre Banks) of
AllOut.org — and his boyfriend, Brock. It was late and dark, but I asked them how they felt. Brock sums up his needs right at the end.
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@randomdeanna LOL! KitchenAid Mixer Artisan series. Good call. Have a blast celebrating at Stonewall! |
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I poked around for a few more minutes and decided to go home. So glad I had the opportunity to go and share in person the empathetic experience of a whole group of people finally getting the rights they have been owed for a long, long time.
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In case you’ll be at SXSW Interactive this weekend, and in case you want to see me and some pretty amazing folks doing some killer speaking and workshopping… Monday is the Day o’ DZ:
- Monday, 9:30am. Hyatt TX Ballroom 1.
The best donuts you’ve ever had in your life will be served!
People Power: Leveraging Personal Stories to Build Influence.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7037
With: Twanna Hines, Jean Russell, Cheryl Contee and Andrea Miller.
Now, social is personal. From finance site Mint.com’s anti-immigration blog post gaffe to YourTango CEO Andrea Miller’s “How to Date an Indian (Advice for the Non-Indian),” social media fuses personal with public in a way never seen before. Whether sharing taste in hiphop, dating preferences, provocative political ideas, or insider information about a soon-to-be-launched business, social media strategically develops personal and professional reputations. Stories can build audiences, grow support for campaigns and change mainstream ideas about social issues. They can also alienate various communities, compromise business information confidentiality or damage brands. If social media has shown us anything, it’s that stories still matter. This panel will be a concrete conversation on how successful online personalities have managed their personal and professional lives using social media: telling authentic stories about our experiences, and using those stories to build powerful, engaged communities.
- Monday, 11:30am. SXSW Bookstore — ACC Ballroom Foyer D
Book signing! I’ll be there till 12pm.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_OE00561
- Monday, 12:30pm. Icehauers, 83 Rainey St.
Twitter for Good at SXSW and Beyond
http://claire.us.com/twitter-for-good-at-sxsw-and-beyond/
The lovely Claire Diaz Ortiz, who leads philanthropy and social innovation at Twitter, is hosting this lunchtime discussion and workshop to answer the question: “What 1 THING could Twitter, Inc. do to better help non-profits, causes, and anyone trying to make a difference in the world using the platform?” More details at Claire’s blog post.
Just a quick FYI: I’m writing weekly now for SheWrites.com — a column called “Countdown to Publication,” where I’m sharing my marketing experiences and expertise leading up to the launch of my book on June 14. Yay!
I wanted to share with you an amazing worldwide conference that I’m participating in next week. It’s called “Women Who Tech,” and it brings together hundreds of women who leverage their technology savvy to inspire change and transform the world. And it takes place all online and on the phone!
Women Who Tech
When: May 12, 2009. Panels are 50 min long and run from 11AM EDT to 6PM EDT.
Where: Everywhere via phone and web
http://womenwhotech.com/
A mere $10 for a whole day of goodness
I participated last year, and at first I thought the distance thing was going to be strange– but it’s absolutely incredible, and I highly recommend joining in the fun. What’s great is that this is really not just for women who currently tech– if you’re interested social media, launching a startup, learning about new tools… this is *the* place to be.
I’ll be moderating this panel:
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“what is it about birmingham? / what is it about buffalo? / that the hate-filled wanna build bunkers / in your beautiful red earth / they wanna build them / in our shiny white snow” — ani difranco, “hello birmingham”
There is the obvious tragedy of the dead and wounded in Binghamton, NY. The anger and despair, the terror of knowing that a gunman can walk into a building in a relatively small city in rural, industrial upstate New York and massacre people at will.
Then the other layers start piling on top of the fear and the rage: the layers that make the story just a little cloudier and darker. Yeah, there’s an inside joke in there– I grew up there, and Binghamton is the seventh cloudiest city in the country. The cloudiest east of the Rockies. No doubt that the lack of direct sun contributes to a sense of malaise in town, but it’s likely the overall economic decline over the last 20-25 years that makes Binghamton just a very sad city in many ways.
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Friends, colleagues, New Yorkers, Americans:
Below is a call that went out earlier in the week for us all to gather at Wall Street tomorrow (Thursday) at 4pm to protest the inanity of the $700 billion bailout. Seven. Hundred. Billion. Dollars. For what? For them to screw up again and rob us blind? Please!
My big question in all of this is: who’s going to bail out Main Street? What happens to the over a million people with foreclosed homes this year alone?
And hey, I’ve got a buncha useless crap around that I could use some money for– thanks to the folks over at BuyMyShitpile.com, there’s an idea to bring it all down to Bowling Green and see if there are takers. Even WIRED Magazine is in on the fun: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/outrage-online.html
So, heed the call– the unions, the grassroots organizations, the media… everyone’s in on this one. Come on down. Bring friends. Forward this on. I’ll see yas there. Full details below.
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This week the White House is trying to push through the biggest financial theft in world history with nary a stitch of debate. They're asking for a blank check for over 1 trillion dollars to bail out George Bush's Wall Street cronies who created this economic crisis in the first place.
If this passes, we can forget about any money for environmental protection, to counter global warming, for education, for national health care, to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.
This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence the debate.
Let's rally against this bailout in the heart of the financial district! Gather at 4pm, this Thursday, Sept. 25 in the plaza at the southern end of Bowling Green Park, which is the small triangular park that has the Wall Street bull at the northern tip.
What: Say NO to the Wall Street bailout
When: Thursday, September 25: 4pm
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area, by the bull statue
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.
Do whatever you can for this historic event and contact all your groups and friends. This proposed financial bailout is without precedent and we have to stop it!
Since Wall Street is asking us to give them money for their worthless investments, some folks are planning to bring their OWN junk to Wall Street and see if they'll buy it. Bring your collectible mugs and limited edition Thomas Kinkade prints and add em to the pile! This action inspired by Buy My Shitpile – (http://www.buymyshitpile.com/)
I was interviewed for an article about the Internet and the campaign season for LinuxInsider:
“A lot of little folks are being empowered with tools and communications in ways that were previously unavailable,” Zandt told LinuxInsider.
This, she said, is “a huge paradigm shift, from a small number of people controlling communications to everyone having the power to communicate with everyone else.”
I feel so hardcore!
Lots of things have been happening and hence the absence of actual updates here, haha. Sorry about that. Where to begin?
- Over at Hightower Lowdown, we’ve launched a new weekly video series featuring America’s #1 Populist. What more could you ask for? 2 minutes of Jim talking to you every single week! You can also watch it on YouTube, or subscribe to the show in iTunes.
- And for AlterNet.org, we relaunched the front page to be snazzier and brighter. Design was done by Design About Town, engineering by the ever-smarty Shawn and project management and OCD tweaking by me. Whee!
- I redesigned and launched the website for best-selling author Amy Bloom, who has been an absolute riot to work with. I haven’t read her newest, but Come To Me was highly recommended to me by Bitch Magazine co-founder and feminista-extraordinare, Lisa Jervis. And it rocked.
- Lots of photosets from the last couple months.
- Um, I upgraded to Leopard last night, and so far so good. One thing that I called tech support about because I couldn’t find an answer anywhere else: yes, Time Machine will wipe your external drive the first time you use it, but then you can continue putting other things on it after. It doesn’t have to be a dedicated Time Machine drive, whew.
That’s pretty much it. Holidays are a-comin’ and I’ll be up in Bingotown for a while, hanging out with the fam, and then back in NYC for New Year’s. Hope all’s well in the land of not-my-apartment!
Well, well, well… it’s all the rage for these 15 seconds, but Time has basically crowned “Web 2.0″ the official whiz-bang-iess thing out there right now. It’s all about you and me, and what we do with ourselves online these days. I read a really great post over at Read/Write Web dissecting what Time got right, and what they got terribly wrong… man, this is such a strange media moment.
Brian Williams, the darling of NBC, had this to say:
We work every bit as hard as our television-news forebears did at gathering, writing and presenting the day’s news but to a smaller audience, from which many have been lured away by a dazzling array of choices and the chance to make their own news.
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