The bus routes have been announced! The route for the East Bus can be found here and the route for the West Bus can be found here! If you have any friends or family along one of these routes and you think that they would be willing or able to help in some way, please let me know. Their are many ways that people can help (including just being a friendly face), so please e-mail me and I can send that information off the correct person!
Love,
If you feel inclined to do so, which I hope you do, you can visit this website to sponsor me. The Equality Ride is a very expensive journey to complete and any sort of help would be greatly appreciated! Knowing that other people are out there, supporting the other riders and my self, if very comforting and I hope that you will decide that this is a worth while cause to donate to.
Love,
Goodbyes have happened and I, along with the other riders, have a lot to think about and a lot of soul searching to do in the next 1.5 months. I am ready.
Thanks to Matt Comer, here is a link for a song that was adapted for the Equality Ride, called “A Mind Stayed on Equality“. It was a very powerful thing to see and hear in person, however I think that the message is delivered pretty well through a recording.
I have uploaded photos from the Training, and they can be found here.
Already missing all of the Riders,
-Adam
Today, we worked more in our bus groups and I now feel very close to all of the East Riders. Tonight, I realized so many things for the first time. I realized that I do, truly, have so much love for the advocacies that we will be talking to at these schools. It just hit me tonight, that with all the Bible passages and rhetoric, they are people who are following a journey; a journey that is not unlike mine. I am glad that I finally realized this, as I am not sure what I would have done without it.
Being around all of these very spiritual people, hearing their stories and speaking to them about Christianity, I feel much more comfortable with the concept of organized religion. I have been purposely distancing my self from these organized religions, as I did not understand religion and what it was about. I understand now what it delivers people and how that is so important for many people’s journeys. Keeping up with the Queer news, it’s easy to forget that religion is a wonderful thing, and I have been reminded of that.
To tie up the training, we had a de-briefing/conclusion/summary. I had no idea that I could cry as much as I did. Everything just started to click. We are doing something amazing and I now know this for sure. I learned so much about my self and about everyone else in the room during those 3 hours.
Also, I have realized that I won’t be able to talk about Training, at all. I have encountered so much and I have had so much to process, I wouldn’t know where to begin. The past days have been a blur and I wouldn’t be able to do it justice, so I won’t try. I think silence will be the best way to describe the experience.
With more love than I thought was possible,
Adam
Today we worked around the problems we were having yesterday with our presentations. My main presentation will be focused on the Civil Rights movement (the specifics have yet to be determined. It will be something comparing the Queer Rights Movement with the Civil Rights movement) and a possible side Trans presentation. I am most excited about the Trans presentation, as the Transgender population is often (almost always) left out of the Queer Rights Movement.
Today, we opened the day with a presentation by Mel White (please read more about him here. He is am amazing person). I wish I had a good way to explain how much his life has impacted myself and the lives of hundreds of thousands people who have read about his story. He showed a video/slideshow and it has been a while since anything has made me that emotionally unstable. The video seemed to move everyone in the room and he said that he would send it to all the Equality Riders, which I can’t wait for. It will always be one of those videos that always have the same effect on me.
We spent a lot of time in smaller groups today and I think that was really helpful for me to understand what is going on and get to know the members of my bus group better.
It is going to be hard to leave all these people for Jan. and Feb. It will be even harder to leave the 30(ish) people who are not on my bus, after the final training.
With all of my love,
Adam Britt
Today (actually, yesterday) was an incredibly long day for us all. We had to just stop what we were doing and agree that we would pick it up today, as none of us were alert (emotionally or physically) enough to make any more decisions. We had a Transgender 101 presentation and a lot of really good questions were asked and it opened up the floor for future Trans talk. I think this was something that we all benefited greatly from. Today, we also had a very long conversation about what presentations we wanted to do for the schools. At times this was a bit rough, however I think that it was very constructive for us all and it helped us remember that we are still living in a world that we can’t control. It made me remember that we still lived in a world of reality. We will finalize theses presentations tomorrow, which will be a much-welcomed thing to get out of the way. After we were done with presentations/lectures/training, we watched “Call me Malcolm”, which was a very good way to end the day.