(Northampton, MA) The organizers of the first New England Transgender Pride March and Rally invite community organizations to sign up for the June 7 event in Northampton, Massachusetts. "We invite the participation not only of transgender and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) individuals and groups, but also of schools, businesses, labor unions, religious and civic organizations, and anyone else who supports the equal rights of transgender people," states Marie Ali, one of the coordinators of the march.
Interested organizations throughout the region can register free of charge as a contingent to march with their banner by going to the New England Transgender Pride March website at www.transpridemarch.org.
The march will begin at noon on Saturday, June 7 from Lampron Park/Bridge Street School in Northampton and proceed to a rally downtown from 12:30 to 5:00 p.m. at the Armory Street lot behind Thornes Marketplace. The rally is free, open to the public, and will feature a range of transgender and transgender-supportive speakers and performers.
Ali adds that people can also support the New England Transgender Pride March by giving financially, becoming a sponsor, or volunteering to help at the event. More information about donating time or money is available on the march's website.
Today is primary election day in Kentucky. Over the last 72 hours there's been a burst of frenzied activity as candidates walked blocks or shook hands with people at various events, volunteers delivered yard signs, and phone banks were cranked up making calls to sway those undecided voters.
Hillary had an event here at the Fairgrounds last night while Michelle Obama stopped in three cities including Louisville for some last minute events. While he has a large statewide grassroots organization here, and had a rally Sunday at Shawnee Park that featured my gospel singing Houston homegirl Yolanda Adams, this state's going to go for Hillary. It's 90% white, and 47% of those voters are her prime vote getting demographic, white working class non college peeps.
I got up early to cast my ballot for Obama this morning at my precinct, which is housed at the 100 year old Crescent Hill Baptist Church. It's a good Baptist church BTW, not a Southern Bigot Convention one. I beat the crowd because at the time I arrived at 7:10 AM I was only the 15th person in the precinct to vote, but I'm sure there will be far more Democrats voting before it's over. My Crescent Hill area precinct has a 2-1 Democrat/Republican registration ratio. The Republicans are mostly Southern Baptist Seminary students.
Dawn is our chief election judge, so she bounced out of the house a little after 5 AM EDT in order to get the polling place open at 6 AM. I'm gonna crash for a while because the polls here don't close until 6 PM and she's stuck there until they close. I have a feeling I'll be making some lunch runs before this day is over.
Speaking of over, even though Hillary's projected to win here, the script is flipped in Oregon. Whatever delegates she gets here will be cancelled out by the delegate haul Barack gets in Oregon. The best news is that after tonight Barack is going to clinch the majority of pledged delegates despite what Clintonian fuzzy math and her protestations that this race isn't over.
You can't spin math or this large crowd that showed up at this rally in Portland, OR.
It's over Hillary. The obese singer began singing arias when John Edwards endorsed Obama even after you won by 41 points in West Virginia. What you're doing is akin to a basketball team making three pointers late in the fourth quarter after you couldn't buy a basket in the first half, and are hurriedly trying to make the final margin of defeat look palatable.
Even Bush and McCain acknowledged the obvious and have started tag team attacks on him. In the meantime Sen. Obama just keeps campaigning and connecting with all segments of the US population, like he's doing at this Montana event with the Crow Nation.
Besides the battle between Obama and Clinton on the Democratic side, we're also choosing who will be our nominee to oppose Sen. Mitch McConnell. On the Repugnican side Anne Throwup (oops Northup) is trying to make a comeback after her failed challenge to former governor Ernie Fletcher last year. She's in a four person race to see who's is going to be the Republican candidate to take on Rep. John Yarmuth. Rep. Yarmuth, to progressive Louisville's great delight, ousted her in 2006 after she held this 3rd District seat with a 2-1 Democratic registration advantage for ten years.
Her secret recipe for holding on to it was shoveling faith based bucks at two local Black megachurches, Canaan and St. Stephen. I was astounded and disgusted after I moved her to discover that this woman had 30% support in the Louisville Black community despite an anti African-American voting record.
Well, time to get some beauty sleep. Looks Like I'll be up for a while tonight watching CNN, KET (Kentucky Educational Television) and the local news stations as well.
Yesterday I received an e-mail from my old friend Melinda Bogdanovich concerning the impending graduation of her son Alexander from his Austin area high school on May 31. It triggered memories of my own high school graduation that happened on this date 28 years ago.
Put your calculators down. My 30 year reunion is coming up in 2010.
Although I'm Class of 80, in reality my high school years covered the tail end of the 70's. We only spent a grand total of five months in the 1980's
So when I looked at Alexander's handsome face on his graduation picture, it took me back to that magical month when I (and his Aunt Melanie) were about to hit that milestone day. I'd turned 18. I'd just gotten my license after driving around on my learner's permit for two years. The All Night Senior Party at Astroworld had come and gone and I stayed until the park closed down at 6 AM. I was still pondering who I was going to take to the prom since two of my top five candidates now had boyfriends.
I had mixed emotions at that time. While I was happy on one level that my time in high school was coming to an end and was excited to be moving on to college, there was sadness as well on two levels. Those of us who had spent three years bonding together as 'The Class With Class' were about to go our separate ways and pursue our various dreams. For some peeps, that meant college. For others it was off to the military. And for others they were still trying to sort things out in terms of what direction they wanted their lives to take.
I will never forget seeing all of us in the caps and gowns in our school colors as we excitedly awaited the start of our ceremony at 7 PM. All 700 of us marching into the then Astroarena (now Reliant Arena). The choir singing and the band playing as part of the ceremony with the senior members participating in their caps and gowns.
Listening to our graduation speaker Judge Thomas Routt. Hearing the shouts of joy from the relatives and friends of people when their baby's name was called as they crossed that stage. Tearing up as we started singing our class and school songs. My classmates and I tossing our caps in the air after the benediction was said to close out our ceremony. The endless snapping of photos with various clusters of classmates before we turned in our caps and gowns.
Unfortunately, since ours was on a Tuesday night, we still had to go to school the next morning. (The school year didn't end until the first week of June) The only thing many of us did was go straight home and to bed. We still had other Senior Week events to go through including the prom that Saturday.
It's also ironic when you think about it, the world of May 1980 and the world of May 2008 have some interesting parallels. We'd just had the winter games in Lake Placid, but there was talk of a boycott of the Moscow Games because of the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Gas prices had spiked to a horrible $1.49 cents a gallon. We had inflation as a result of the gas spike and President Carter's popularity was plummeting because of the economy and the Iran hostage crisis. We were facing a crossroads presidential election with a charismatic candidate in November that I was going to be eligible to participate in. Texas had an unpopular Republican governor. The 'Disco Sucks' movement was gaining momentum.
Hmm, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
So to the Class of 2008, congratulations. Whether you're moving on to the next level of your educational careers or leaving college for the working world, may your dreams come true and you have a smooth and relatively pothole free road to success.
And the other issue that was bothering me at the time? Well, you know.
