19 May 2008

The Beginnings of an Activist - Though I Use the Term Loosely

After finally seeing Ask Not I can very honestly say I am thoroughly pleased with the final product.

For the many of you who might not yet be aware of Ask Not, the film tracks DADT - and those who fight it - through 3 viewpoints: those trying to serve, those currently serving, and those who have served already. Servicemembers United, of course, represents the last viewpoint, which chronicles a full two years of our work. Incidentally, the filming began two weeks before I ended my term of service in the Army, so watching the film returned a certain nostalgia regarding the surreptitious excitment surrounding the beginning of the project.

About July of 2005 I was at a friend's moving away party in Seattle. This friend, Michael, was a Coast Guard veteran heavily involved in the local chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER), many members of whom were attending this particular cocktail party. I was for the most part unfamiliar with these veterans and the organization, so I spent a good part of the party attempting to cure that ignorance.

Through those conversations - combined with past knowledge and experiences with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) - I quickly discovered two items of interest: a) there didn't seem to be much in the way of public outreach on DADT, particularly in areas most needing that outreach (such as the South); and b) very few young veterans seemed to be involved in the issue, even though it is those youths that bear the most relevant information as to the most current enforcement of and experiences under DADT. Both of these points I relayed to Michael, if hesitantly.

It seemed Michael had been waiting eagerly for someone to raise these exact concerns for quite a while, and for the rest of the party we excitedly laid out plans for a mass, media-driven campaign exposing the reality of DADT through the eyes of young veterans. The main idea was to have a single day in which young veterans throughout the country held a city hall meeting describing their experiences under DADT, the media impact of which would force a mass national discussion of the issue and encourage reexamination by Congress.

This plan never came to fruition - though it is an idea that may find itself expressed in 2009 (nudge, nudge). Nevertheless, the conversation did set the stage, personally, for my future involvment in the issue, and it was with this now established subtle excitement that I received that initial invitation to become involved in what is now Servicemembers United.