In 2020 I will hopefully working as a lobbyist in Washington, DC. In a perfect world I would actually get to participate in government as a state legislator, but unfortunately the political climate doesn't create spaces in which extremes can exist. Apparently human rights and social justice are too extreme for the US these days. Maybe in 2020...
Anyway, in my perfect world, I wouldn't have to lobby for human rights at all, but I don't think that this is realistic at all given the current situation. I live in a country where we don't have equal protection under the law as LGBT citizens. I will say that life for LGBT citizens of the US is far less dangerous than in some other countries, but by no means is equality a guarantee. I hope that I will be able to hone my skills as an activist and an organizer to begin speaking with the key players in the government to make great social change.
I'm working on it now though. Becoming an influential lobbyist for the US government doesn't happen in 9 years without serious effort. I'm doing what I can now to learn about the US government system while also making serious efforts to ACT. Conveniently, I'm deeply entrenched in the culture for which I'm doing activism, so the idea of listening before acting is a part of my everyday life. Now, instead of just listening, I am focusing on asking the correct questions. That's a bit trickier.
For the time being though, I'm working on a state-wide campaign to create a coalition of Queer people in VA in order to confront injustice and inequality. The contacts have been made for the colleges, and our actions are gaining attention in the media, so it's clear that we're having some kind of impact. Now we need to continue networking to get the movement off the college campuses and out into the broader public. I think we're working with a message that can be very popular if we use the correct rhetoric: Queer rights are human rights.
In 2020 I hope that my connections grow to the point where I can speak for organizations like GetEQUAL in order to change the way US laws work and to change the way US society thinks.
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