Tuesday evening, I went tabling: stood with four or five co-workers (none of whom I'd met before in person, but one, D, I'd exchanged email with) at the Mountain View CalTrain station, holding up a No On 8 sign as the trains arrived. I got there late, around 6ish p.m. I think, and we only stayed 'til 7.<\/p>\n
Most of it was an exhilarating experience. I didn't have to say anything, just walked around with the sign, smiling at people.<\/p>\n
Quite a few people hurried past, with that sort of \"if I look like I'm in a hurry maybe they won't try to talk to me\" kind of thing that I too sometimes do when I think someone might be about to hit me up for contributions to or participation in their cause and I don't want to deal with them. And some stared blankly out the train window, possibly not really paying attention to what was outside; I've been there too. And others looked out at us with poker faces, not giving away whatever they might've been thinking.<\/p>\n
But a remarkable number (quite a lot more than I expected) made eye contact, and many or most of those smiled, and quite a few of them said things like \"Thank you for doing this.\" Several people sitting on the trains, looking out the windows, smiled and gave us thumbs-up signs. One guy wearing an \"I voted\" sticker came and joined us for a while. A few people asked for lawn signs and\/or stickers.<\/p>\n
One guy walked straight up to D and engaged her in an animated ten- or fifteen-minute discussion. I drifted close to listen to part of it, just to make sure things were okay; but he was clearly paying attention to what D was saying, and the bit I overheard was him repeating it back to her in detail to make sure he understood. He wanted her to explain to him why same-sex marriage should be legal. We later asked D what the deal was; it turned out the guy was deeply conflicted, because his libertarian beliefs told him that same-sex marriage should be legal, but his religious beliefs told him that homosexuality was wrong. She said that she thought his mind was made up from the start; but it sounded like it was a good conversation anyway, and I'm hoping it gave the guy some food for thought.<\/p>\n
Shortly before 7, we decided to close up shop, but then one more train arrived, so we grabbed our signs again and I walked down the platform toward the front of the train, holding up the sign so the people getting off and the people staying on could see it. I got several more thumbs-ups, and either a peace sign or a V-for-victory, I'm not sure which. I was grinning steadily by this point--the whole time I'd been there had been really energizing. I had worried briefly, early on, about how I would react if anyone said or did anything hostile, but everyone had been in the range from neutral to enthusiastic.<\/p>\n
The train started to pull out, and I headed back to our table. And then the train stopped, and the doors opened again, and they started operating the wheelchair lift, so I figured I'd do one more pass all the way up to the front of the train, where I hadn't quite made it before. I went up there, and got a grin and a thumbs-up from a passenger, and started walking back as the train began to pull out again.<\/p>\n
And in the second or third car back, a guy sitting on the upper level of the train scowled at me, and carefully and deliberately flipped me the finger.<\/p>\n
I kept grinning, more out of reflex and surprise than anything else, and kept walking. I didn't tell the others when I got back to the table; it had been such a good evening that I didn't want to bring down everyone else's moods. And it didn't upset me all that much; I'd had a solid hour of positive interactions to cushion me.<\/p>\n
But it still threw me a little.<\/p>\n
Still, overall the evening was a really good experience; I'm glad D sent out a note asking for others to join her. I may try and do it again sometime in the next couple days.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tuesday evening, I went tabling: stood with four or five co-workers (none of whom I’d met before in person, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-samesex-marriage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}