I made my small sacrifice this afternoon to give up a time in the beautiful sunshine to watch four hours of speeches on C-Span from the National Equality March on Washington broadcast from the west steps of the U.S. Capitol today. However heartfelt the speakers were, most were amateurs and not polished orators. They were genuine in their enthusiasm, but the hours dragged on anyway with only one short musical break. Not exactly the strategy for a party. The only luminary to show up was Julian Bond.

The cameras didn’t reach beyond the reflecting pool so it was impossible to judge the numbers of people who showed up. The effort to be inclusive stretched the limits of time and endurance for a public event. In an effort to appear mainstream, I fear the organizers lost some of the joy of the pride parades and lacked the slick commercialism of television to effectively get their message across and to make the emotional connection with their audience. Let’s face it, C-Span reached far more than the numbers of people gathered on the mall. It was a coup to get that coverage, but the presentations were not geared to TV.

I agree that GLBT issues can be the focus of progressive politics that also include immigration reform, health care reform, and many other pressing but unresolved issues of social justice in this country. We want to provide a big tent, but we also need to learn the art of pragmatic politics to be able to achieve anything at the national level.

If that sounds like sniping from the sidelines, I guess it is. As a sometimes activist for 30 years, I’m afraid I’ve aged out and leave it to the younger generation to carry on. It was heartening to see the number of young people who were some of the most articulate and savvy included with some of the old warhorses who rambled on. If you missed the broadcast, you can see it on C-span 2 tomorrow beginning at 8:30 am.

I have been silent for several months hoping for some sign of direction for RUM-NC so I was surprised to learn that an anonymous source in California purporting to represent us had set up a page on Facebook. That remains something of a mystery.