By Miriam Hernandez, Student Leader with Californians for Justice in Fresno and Senior at Roosevelt High School.

As I wake each morning, I tell myself, “Thank you God for another day, may I encounter smiles on people’s faces.” I walk to school and I run into a lot of students. Sadly, I can tell some are hurting inside. I wonder about their story and if they receive help at school rather than just being taught.

Lately, there have been many articles in the news media about school dropout and truancy rates. Schools have improved, but some issues remain. Programs are also being implemented to solve the problems, but what about the students’ opinion? After all, we know what it’s like in school, what is and isn’t working. Rather than just hearing us out, why can’t actions include our opinions?

I have been in the shoes of these students, wondering and asking myself questions daily. In elementary school, I wondered why students were given different resources and why some didn’t receive any at all. I also wondered why some students would constantly get in trouble and suspended continuously, and why there wasn’t much done to help them stay in school and improve.

Years passed as I transitioned to middle school. The issues and disagreements became physical, harmful fights. The faces of students I once knew in elementary school drifted away. I had no clue who my old classmates had become. I wondered if they were OK, if they attended school and if they were accomplishing their goals.

Now, as a senior in high school, I have seen a great number of students drop out for various reasons. Watching this happen not only affected me, but it made my community unhealthy.

I see so much talent in these students. Some students are unable to know their talents in school because they feel there is no point in going to class if they are just going to be sent out of the classroom. Of course, it may be reasonable to send out a student for acting up, but it is also reasonable to find out why the student is acting up in the first place.

Since freshman year, I have been involved with groups like Californians For Justice, a racial justice student-led organization working for better schools and lower dropout rates. I have also become involved in Building Healthy Communities, a campaign of the California Endowment whose goal is to support the development of communities where kids and youth are healthy, safe and ready to learn.

In BHC, I participate in Project S.U.C.C.E.S.S. (Students United to Create a Climate of Engagement, Support and Safety) where our focus is to ensure that schools provide a supportive environment and reach out to help students stay on target to graduate. Whether it is listening to the issues happening at home, hearing the reasons that lead students to fight or helping students think of better ways to solve conflicts, we should see more students staying in school, not more students suspended or expelled. We need to keep students in school and see them move on to graduation instead of watching them fail.

These programs have helped me build the skills I didn’t know I had inside. Most of all, they help my voice grow and be heard.

The youth voice is worth listening to. We are the most affected by these issues, and we must build a voice with several ideas to find solutions.

We might be portrayed as just “kids,” but they always leave out the fact that we are “just kids with answers.” Why else would we give up our Friday nights, our weekends and even our holidays to discuss how we can help improve education and keep our peers in school? Our voices must be heard, too.  

November 4th was a bittersweet day for our LGBT brothers and sisters in California. Even as we made history for electing a young black man named Barack Hussein Obama to the White House, a narrow majority of California voters chose to take away their right to legally marry. For them, it was one step forward, two steps back.

But here’s the thing, rather than accept defeat, they took to the streets. Not only in California, but nationwide. New LGBT leadership grew out of the ashes of thefailed “No on 8” campaignand taking a page from Obama, began a organized from the bottom up.

In Los Angeles, former Obama organizers (including my partner in the campaign, Mike Bonin) teamed up with the Courage Campaign to create “Camp Courage” – weekend workshops on marriage equality that borrow heavily from the “Camp Obama” model and the teachings of Marshall Ganz.

After taking the concept out for a successful one-day test drive in West Hollywood, the organizers took the show on the road: First stop, Fresno.

(Camp Courage Fresno! – promoted by Julia Rosen)

In preparing this post, I can’t but help use the first-person perspective because the impact that Camp Courage in Fresno had on me personally as a facilitator is so profound that distancing myself from it would, not only be difficult, but wrong in how I should communicate what needs to be told about the amazing change that is happening in Fresno, CA.

For the sake of time in telling this story, I first need to direct you to my Op-Ed on the first Camp Courage in LA so you can know what Camp Courage is and what it’s about.  This exact same model was brought to Fresno, but effectively expanded upon over the course of two days.

On Saturday morning, we facilitators anxiously waited for our pre-assigned group to arrive through the conference room doors, excited to know who we would be working with for the whole weekend.  The expected 160 and more attendees were randomly divided into groups to help mix it up, and I was curious to see whom I and the rest of the facilitators would get.  Many of us had either been to the energized Camp Courage in LA or had worked at several Camp Obamas, whose model Camp Courage has adopted.  So we were expectant of the same amount of energy.

The attendees, many from Fresno and the large surrounding Central Valley, trickled in and quietly sat down.  Immediately, we could feel that there was energy, but it was definitively different from what we experienced before.  Trying to put my finger on it, I observed my amazingly diverse group – a lesbian in her 70s, a middle-aged gay man, a lesbian in her 20s, a straight woman (yeah, straight!) and a bisexual girl of just 16.  Though we were talking, you couldn’t miss the initial impression – “What do I have in common with these people?  What have I done by coming here?”  As the Camp kicked off, it hit me what the energy was – “Caution.”

As I grew to learn, these residents of the Central Valley had been let down so many times before.  Fresno, CA is practically the capitol of the Bible belt in California (and yes, there is a Bible belt in California), and the local LGBT population has continually and constantly experienced discrimination and hate from their own city.  But worse, they have reached out to their own LGBT community in other cities, raising their voices that they needed help only to get no response.  (Fresno doesn’t even have a center for the LGBT population to meet at, let alone organize.)  During the No on 8 Campaign, they cried out that they needed help, that they were prepared to act, only to receive a few yard signs to put out in response.  And even more, they have witnessed the burgeoning movement blooming in their neighboring urban cities only to be forgotten about.  Again.

No wonder they attended Camp Courage with caution.  “Who are these urbanites coming to our town?  Are they going to let us down again?  Are they going to “train us” only to take off, yet again, to forget us?”  Many probably came only to see their opinion of us, which up to this point was correct, validated.

When we opened the camp, Lisa Powell, the amazing head facilitator, asked the attendees, “Who here is uncomfortable?  Who here doesn’t know anyone?  Who here is wondering, ‘What am I doing here?'”  Quite a few hands went up, and I could tell by the faces of others, they wanted to raise their hands, too.  One 16 year old had been dropped off by their mom, to come to the camp all alone, not knowing anyone.  A sure sign of the desperation and the need for community in the area.

One of the first exercises at Camp Courage is for each member of each group to answer one simple question about themselves.  This easy exercise slowly began to break the thick layer of ice.  It began to dawn of everyone that they’re not just going to sit around listening to a droning speaker talk down to them – they were going to be engaged.

But what was the turning point?  What melted the ice wall?  The brilliant but difficult exercise, “The Story of Self.”  This exercise asks the camper to distill their story of how they came out, about how they overcame a challenge that put them on the path of equality, a story that is extremely personal, a story they may have never told, down to two minutes.  Why?  Because the Story of Self is a powerful tool in connecting with people emotionally, and to help bring them into the movement, to connect even with those who oppose us.

I heard stories about the mistreatment from hospitals keeping partners apart while facing fatal circumstances, about children not relating to their gay parent, about a teenager rising above her difficulties at her school, about a straight woman raised in a religious environment who came to realize that her stance in support of the LGBT community could cost her, about a woman and her partner who can’t get full coverage for their daughter ‘s disability.  I heard more stories about a trans woman who went to school and had to wet her pants everyday until she was allowed to use the woman’s restroom, how others were spit in the face by their fellow Fresno residents simply for being who they were, and so much more.

As I was sitting there, listening to these stories, not being able to keep the tears from welling – it hit me.  I’m not here to facilitate.  I’m here to learn.  I’m hear to listen.  I’m here to show these amazing people that they are not alone.  They have truly been on the front lines, the real soldiers, facing hate in a town in which the residents are not ashamed to show it, actually proud of it, literally spitting it in their faces.  I live in the cush bubble of LA where, if someone does hate me, they’re not about to fling it in my face.

I knew so little.  But I walked away knowing so much more.  And not just that, I left with a greater sense of community way beyond the Los Angeles city limits.

After these brave campers told their stories not just to their groups, but to the whole convention, the ice melted.  These people, many of whom didn’t know each other until this day, exposed their hearts and realized that they were not alone.  They had a community that had shared experiences, not only from far away cities, but within their own neighborhoods.  This was the turning point.  The energy transformed from “caution” to “trust” and “community.”

Over the course of two days, with campers driving miles and miles to return, with speakers like Cleve Jones and Dolores Huerta of the union movement to add to the inspiration, with the Story of Us bringing everyone even closer together, with solid friendships between people who were recently strangers developing, with commitments to change and action being made, the sense of community building was tangible.

The recurring them of Camp Courage Fresno was, “I thought I was alone.  Now I know I’m one of many, and I never have to feel that way again.”

But here’s the amazing thing about Fresno.

They’re not alone simply because we urbanites came along and said sincerely, “We’ll never make the mistake of not listening again.”  The truth is, these amazing people are not alone because they have each other.  They have strength from each other.  They’re planning outstanding events and actions (which I will talk about over and over and over in many posts to come – hello MeetintheMiddle4Equalty.org!!!).  They have built their community.  And the movement is headed their direction!

And if there’s one thing I can take away from this experience this past weekend, it’s the sense that I too am a part of a greater community that’s driving an even greater movement.  It’s not just an LGBT community, it’s not just an LGBT movement.  It’s a community of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, intersexuals, queers, straights, union workers, African Americans, Latinos, Asian and everyone in between.

It’s a movement of change.

And I have Fresno, CA to thank for that.

The story of the 2008 election is going to be the epic collapse of the Republican Party in traditional strongholds.  

The Republican Party, which overtook Valley Democrats in voter registration totals eight years ago, is losing ground for the first time in at least a decade.

After peaking just ahead of the 2004 presidential election, Republican registration numbers are down in Fresno, Tulare, Kings, Madera, Mariposa and Merced counties.

The GOP’s decline is most obvious in Fresno County, where the losses have turned into an avalanche, even as the party gears up its efforts to keep the White House in GOP hands by electing Arizona Sen. John McCain as president.

The most recent voter registration numbers show the Democrats are closing the gap and are now fewer than 9,000 voters behind the Republicans.

At the peak in 2004, GOP registrations were ahead by more than 23,500 voters.

This will obviously help in AD-30, where Fran Florez is facing Danny Gilmore to keep Nicole Parra’s seat in Democratic hands.  But this is a nationwide and statewide shift that is generational in nature.

In Riverside County, Republicans have lost close to 34,000 voters since October 2004; in Orange County, an 18 percentage point Republican Party lead in 2004 is now at 14 percentage points.

Bob Mulholland, campaign adviser to the California Democratic Party, points out that Democrats picked up almost 75% of the more than 411,000 new voter registrations statewide between voter-registration reports filed Jan. 22 and May 19.

During that same time, close to 21% of new registrations were decline-to-state. Republicans picked up just 3.6% of the new voters.

I think that in particular, failed conservative policies have most adversely impacted Republican areas.  The collapsing home market as a result of “inmates running the asylum” in the lending markets has hit the exurbs hard.  Job loss is most keenly affecting the areas where jobs are newer to arrive.  And of course high energy prices hurt those with long commutes.  The exurbs, the fast-growing counties, the greatest strength for Republicans in 2004, are massively turning to the Democrats.  That leaves Democrats with a noticeably bigger tent, and we have to recognize that as an issue moving forward, but for now, this cratering of Republican numbers is truly a sight, as stark a picture as it was right after Watergate in 1974.