I received an email today from Dana Elmendorf, a Pittsburgh activist who has been very active for some time in issue advocacy. Not only is she a wealth of knowledge about advocacy work, but she has been at it for some time, and this history gives her a unique perspective. She was commenting on a letter she had received back from PA Senator Costa concerning PA SB 707. She wrote:

I am acutely aware of the work that was done with Senator Costa over the last four years.  Personal meetings and outreach happened with him and clearly that is now paying off.  There is, at times, a sense of impatience with advocacy work by the general community.  Change is like throwing stones in a pond.  A ripple starts and one thing leads to another.  Senator Costa’s clear support of our community is an example of that.

Many of us may get involved in advocacy work because of a specific situation or event. Like the November 2008 election where Obama won, and Prop 8 passed in California. These two votes happening at the same time galvanized a new generation of gays and lesbians to get involved in the political process and want to fight for equality. For me, the event was the 1987 March on Washington and seeing the AIDS Quilt display there. But as Dana suggests, change comes during the reverberations of events and situations, the ripples as it were, and it is seen over time.

Last week, Daylin Leach, the PA Senator who sponsored a Marriage Equality bill in the PA Senate (SB 935) was a guest speaker for the GLEC meeting here in Pittsburgh. We brought him in via conference call, and he stressed developing relationships with your elected officials. That translates into what Dana was referring to as “outreach over the past four years.”

We may start that relationship with a personal letter to our elected official, and follow it with phone calls, and then meeting with him or her. And over time, we keep contact. I don’t know here Senator Cost was 4 years ago, on issues of equality, but I know where he is today because of that ongoing contact- not by just one constituent, but by a number of folks.

I also received this in an email message from a someone who had attended the GLEC meeting:

This ia a new thing for me, I’m almost ashamed to say, but everything in its own time, I guess. But I do feel the time is now to be actively interested and attentive politically.

It is never too early to start this relationship if there is a specific issue or bill that is important to you and others. But real change isn’t about one legislative bill or one issue. So, it is never too late to get involved in issue advocacy work if real equality is important to you. We need to find a balance in a pursiut of urgency for individual parts of the whole and endurance as we seek the whole of equality.

For me, PA SB 707 is at the top of my list of issues, followed closely by PA HB  300. At the top of the blog are buttons that lead to pages with info of what you can do about these important issues.

I want to close this with another quote from Dana, which sums it all up:

I want people to know that advocacy work happens by everyday people just doing everyday things like having a conversation.