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Losing One’s Voice While Fighting for It
and
It’s Just So Much More Fun When Everyone Joins In
I’m not really a yeller. But I lost my voice during this year’s campaign.

I lost my voice because I was yelling. A lot.

Standing out in front of Café Flore in the Castro and handing out the Alice slate card, it was pretty easy for me to end up yelling. I was mad. And I don’t usually get mad that much. But after Arnold’s veto of Assemblyman Leno’s marriage equality bill, I just got mad. And then this whole right-wing power grab that he launched through his ‘Special Election’ just got me more mad. And then his blatant attempts to rile up the right-wing voters of California through his veto of us and his support of Prop. 73, well, that just got me mad as hell.

And like I said, I don’t get mad. And I don’t yell.

But I did this campaign.

And, honestly, it was kinda fun to be mad and yell during this year’s campaign. Because everyone else in the state was mad and yelling too. Every time I yelled in the Castro about vetoing Arnold, people yelled with me. I didn’t even have to explain what or how to vote, everyone was already there with their own big ‘NO’ vote. This made it real easy to hand out our endorsements.

And what a ‘special’ campaign this turned out to be.

Everyone was so riled up and angry that turning out the vote, and turning out the ‘NO’ vote, just turned out to be so simple. I’m not saying it wasn’t a ton of work, but the work itself was made that much easier when everyone was with you already.

So, as I said, I lost my voice a few weeks before the campaign. But you and I didn’t lose our political voice this election. Let’s keep it up and get rid of Arnold and the anti-gay initiatives next year. We can do it! Even if we have to lose our (talking) voices once in a while so that our political voice will never be silenced.

P.S. A special ‘thanks!’ to IRV (instant-runoff voting) or RCV (ranked-choice voting) or whatever you want to call it. On Thanksgiving Day, as I sat to dinner with Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, I toasted to his victory, and to the greatness and wonderfulness of our new voting system. Otherwise, even though he had a solid lead among the three candidates, if we were still in a December Runoff scenario, you and I and the rest of Alice would not be able to rest right now—we would still be out campaigning for him in a Runoff election that would find that race the only one on the ballot. And we can all be thankful we don’t have to worry about that this year! So here’s to Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting winning in November, and deservedly so!