There’s an old adage that I’m just making up: the sound of an avalanche is the sound of one man clapping.

Well way back in October, in a world of memories I barely remember, that clap began. And boy, has it been gathering speed. For those of you unaware, google Will Phillips. I mean, hell, the kid has his own wikipedia page. In such a simple act as not standing for the pledge, because, face it—we aren’t a land of liberty and justice for all—he tapped into a vein that just about everyone has some opinion on. He’s quickly become a spokeskid for the LGBTQ movement, traveling around the country with his two wonderfully supportive parents, Jay and Laura.

Being a board member of the organization closest in proximity to Will (the NWA Center for Equality), I’ve had the fortune of getting to work with the “Phillips Phamily”—planning protests, organizing fundraisers, even being on the Center’s kickball team together—and having that cooperation turn into a friendship. Anyone who knows the Phillips will tell you that Will isn’t some anomalous, rebellious child. He’s the child of two of the most wonderful and supportive allies I’ve ever met.

This past Sunday, an article was published on the front page of the NWA Times, talking about All OUT June, the Center’s month of activities. We were, naturally, elated at the publicity and exposure. Our elation, however, was soon tempered; not only was the article somewhat dismissive of our community (rather than saying “LGBTQ,” the article merely used “Gay;” while seemingly innocuous, the verbiage swiftly alienates a whole swath of our wonderfully diverse community and denies them of the identity they’ve worked their whole life for) but it raised several misconceptions about the event.

For, you see, All OUT June received $4,000 in funding from Fayetteville’s Advertising and Promotions committee, for the exact purpose of that commission—advertising and promotions. The commission is overseen by several community members who are all part of the hospitality industry—restauranteurs and hoteliers—and awards grants from taxes levied on their own industry. To the best of my knowledge, the grants are awarded to organizations and events in the hope that they will use said money to draw people to events within the city, which will, in turn, bring in more than what was awarded.

But that’s kind of a complex matter to explain, especially to sensationalized crowds who see that “THE MAYOR IS FUNDING SODOMY;” a charge more or less levied every day since that article came out. Being one of the most stereotypical and publicly visible embodiments of Pride, the nay-saying community has turned to the Pride Parade to be held this Saturday, June 26th, at 10 AM, and have sensationalized it by claiming the city is throwing the parade for us. First off, this is a complete fabrication. The Parade is organized by NWA Pride, an organization separate (though no less important) from the NWA Center for Equality. They received no money.

Furthermore, the money we received from the city was not voted upon by the Mayor nor the City Council, and was not intended to promote any agendum—gay or otherwise. Its purpose is to bring money and business to the city. Today, however, the American Family Association has started an email bomb to the Mayor and City Council, with, I believe, the word “GOD” all in caps and something about vengeance. The Mayor, however, has indicated he still supports the parade, and will still issue us a proclamation. (For more information on how to contact the City Council and thank them for their support, see this post on the Center’s blog)

Of course, this all comes around full-circle. We couldn’t forget Will Phillips. He did the grand tour; now he’s doing our tour: he’s the Grand Marshal of the Parade. Begin the onslaught of claims of horrid parents brainwashing their children. And this is, of course, evidence of that most insidious of gay plots—to recruit children. But among all of the hatred spewed at Jay and Laura, none of them seem to acknowledge that, perhaps, Will made this choice on his own and is standing by it. Because they don’t believe that a ten-year-old can have thoughts of his own.

Every morning, I wake up, and the first thing I do is check my email, on my iPhone. Because that’s the world that we live in. Usually, I have three or four, but this week it’s been 12 or more each weekend, updating me of the latest streams of vitriol and hate directed not only at the LGBTQ community of Northwest Arkansas, but at Will Phillips and his family. And why at them? For the audacity of supporting the rights of others.

It’s been kind of stressful, and there have been a few moments that brought me to the edge of tears. But I’ve only received the secondary brunt of it. And I’ve received it because I have to: I’m gay; this is my battle. Jay and Laura, though, have no stock in this: they’re being called horrible parents, daily, by people who do nothing but shout hate. Why? Because they stand up for us, and for their son. Because they stand up for what is right, even though it doesn’t have to affect them.

This whole week has just been going crazy. Lots of mudslinging. Thankfully, they’re mostly all groups far away, and we’ve got tremendous local support. This year’s Parade promises to be bigger than ever, and it’s all because people are willing to stand up. We’re getting stronger, and they’re getting scared.

Let’s use this trouble to become stronger as a community; they’re afraid of us, so let’s be a lot to be afraid of.

I make this claim not to be outrageous, but because it affects the way I go about my daily activities downtown. I met someone for lunch today, on Dickson. I was lucky enough to catch a parallel parking spot right in front of our restaurant, so I didn’t bother going to the WAC lot. The only difference between those spots and the WAC one? They have a two-hour time limit.

After lunch, we decided to go to the library. Now, normally I’d just walk to the library from Dickson, as it’s only two blocks. But I had my car with me. So I got in my car and drove the two blocks to the library’s parking garage. I mean, sure, I could have just moved to the WAC lot, but what’s the point? It made more sense to drive to the library.

I’ve had the same problems with the square before. Free parking on the square, two hour time limit. What would otherwise be an on-foot excursion is limited by the fact that we have to move cars every so often. This was especially an issue when I hung out at the square a lot during the summer of 2007.
Thankfully, these aren’t usually issues on Saturday, when most pay parking is free. You can just dump your car and walwk around at will. Of course, this leads to another problem: congestion.

I’m not really sure what the best option is, I just know that not having a consistent place to park downtown where I won’t have to move my car (the WAC being one, of course, but they frequently fill up and are flirting with going for-pay) reduces the distances I walk and increases the ones that I drive.

Granted, I’m about to move to Center street, so I’ll be downtown. My car usage should decrease by about 80%, and I couldn’t be more excited.

This past Saturday, Fayetteville, AR, held a local event as part of the Great Nationwide Kiss-In. I know this not only because I attended, but because I coordinated it. I had never planned a protest before, and didn’t quite know what to expect. It was pretty easy. I made a few phone calls (the City, the Town Center, and the Farmers’ Market), let them know about the event, and asked kindly for reservation. The City called proved superfluous, as I was not asking for any roads to be shut down. The Town Center just needed a heads-up on the use of their plaza, and the Farmers’ Market gave us a booth for free.

Being affiliated with a 501(c)3 really helped out. As the event was sponsored by the NWA Center for Equality (dues paid member, represent) I had a built-in net of help; the booth at the Farmers’ Market used their tent, table, and members. Our ribbons and other supplies were purchased by the center. I didn’t buy anything, just planned. A friend wrote our press release, and sent it to all of the news outlets. I made the facebook invite, and invited some friends. They invited some others, who kept the process up. Last time I checked, 1014 people had been invited. 101 had confirmed their attendance (these numbers never pan out, and we never got a full count, but the paper estimated 100 people showed). I sent out emails asking for volunteers, gave them all a couple of hours to work at the booth at the Farmers’ Market, and planned on being there the whole morning.

The night before the protest was spent mostly cutting ribbons and decorating our poster. That morning we set up at the market and began to wait. Eventually Saundra, an Avon lady, dropped off the box of lipstick samples she had promised us, and the real fun began.

Boyd Logan's kiss

The samples were in response to a question many people had raised on the facebook invite: “how can I participate if I don’t have someone to kiss?” We threw some ideas around (a kissing booth), and eventually I had that “A-ha!” moment: we’ll get a poster and some lipstick, and people can show their support by kissing the poster. This turned out to be very popular, and a lot of people at the market came to our booth and kissed our poster. My favorite kiss was by Marley, an 18-month-old whose (straight) parents encouraged her to kiss. A lot of people picked up our rainbow ribbons, too (we ran out!), and some of them gave us donations for the ribbons! Not once did we ask for money, but we ended up making $34!

People started showing up about 30 minutes before the protest. And with the people came the media; all three local news stations sent cameramen, both papers sent reporters, and a CNN iReporter drove down from Bentonville to cover the event. I had a couple of TV interviews before the event. At 5 till, I got everyone to congregate around the steps—where we had placed a pride flag—and I took the “KISS” poster with quite a few kissprints on them. I did a countdown using my watch, and saw everyone smooch for a second. I walked down into the crowd asking where my kiss was until the boy appeared out of nowhere, pecked me, and let me get back to interviews.

After the kiss proper, I was questioned by both papers. I gave pretty simple information—I’m doing this cause I feel safe to be gay in Fayetteville, and I want everyone to know that I feel safe. Right as I was winding up, Barbara Rademacher, the CNN iReporter, asked me for an interview. By now I was familiar with what to do—I spelled my name and repeated my spiel (somewhat quickly) about why I planned the event. I helped take down the booth, then went home, napped, and caught myself on the 6:00 news. The night was filled with celebrations—Casey Willits congratulated me on a good first protest, saying that I really got the numbers out.

Front Page of the Times, baby!

But it was Sunday morning that I was waiting for. I got copies of both papers and took them down to the center. There were a few of us there, and we looked over the articles together. The NWA Times had put us on the front page, with a nicely-sized article and a kind of obscure photo. The Morning news put us a few pages in; no article, just some captioned photos, but they actually showed two women kissing (a same-sex display of affection was not to be found on any other report). We were all pleased by the coverage. A few hours later, we found the CNN iReport, and felt that that gave a good depiction of the day’s events.

On Monday morning, I awake to a text message from Casey Willits: “Fwd:The Fayetteville kiss-in is featured on CNN.com today.” My only response: “Holy shit.” I quickly ran over to CNN.com and, lo and behold, found a link to MY interview. It’s not just any Kiss-In that’s featured on CNN, it’s the FAYETTEVILLE event. By this time, I’m getting pretty damn excited. I pimp it out to everyone I can think of—Twitter, facebook, text messages. Random friend requests start coming in on facebook, with messages like “Jonathan, I saw you on CNN and as a gay southern man who has a home in Little Rock, I am so proud of you and I hope that we can become facebook friends! Hugs! Michael” attached to them.

In my excitement, I call my mom. “I MADE THE FRONT PAGE OF CNN!” I tell her. Her response: “your grandfather is pissed off.” She doesn’t share my elation at the success of the event. This has been the only negative reaction I have received so far. Overall, the iReport has been viewed almost 30,000 times. Combine that with everyone who reads the paper and watches the local news, and it’s probably safe to estimate that I was outed to around 45,000 people. And damn, it feels good. All of the reactions, save the one from my mom, have been incredibly positive and really inspiring. My favorite reactions are as follows:

• While staffing the booth at the market, I ran into my 8th grade guidance counselor, with whom I was very close. She told me she was proud of me and donated $20 to the center without being asked
• The next day, Karla Caraway—practically a surrogate mom due to the amount of time I used to spend at her house during middle school and jr. high—told me “Saw your pic in the paper this morning.  Good going–proud of ya!” on Facebook
• Karla’s husband, Steve, works at the Morning News, and emailed me a copy of the photo of me they ran
• All sorts of showings of support on twitter and facebook poured in. Lots of texts from friends telling me how awesome the CNN front page was

A lot of the comments the CNN story received went along the lines of ‘I didn’t realize how open-minded Arkansas had become!’ While this isn’t necessarily the case for the whole state, it certainly is for Fayetteville. Practically the whole city now knows my sexual orientation, and not a single bad thing has happened to me because of it. As far as protests go, I can count the Fayetteville Kiss-In as a smashing success. It did exactly what I wanted, by showing that Fayetteville is an open, safe, and accepting place.

Take Your Kids to Dickson was wonderful! It was great seeing so many families come out yesterday. I spent a few hours reading to kids and playing finger puppets with them. All in all, a great day. Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen!

This summer, I’m all about volunteering. Helping out in areas I should be already (Pride Week ’09), areas I always try to help out in (Democratic Candidates), and other random things I can do to help out the city of Fayetteville. A friend told me that it’s awesome that I care that much about Fayetteville to want to make it better, but to me it’s just the no-nonsense obvious choice. I really do love Fayetteville and want to give back to the town as much as I get.

The whole ‘darker side’ of Dickson comment really upset me, and a whole bunch of other people, too. One of them is Heather Kendrick-Gerlaugh, who, unlike me, did something about being mad, and organized the first annual Take Your Kids to Dickson. Last night, because of a tweet she made, I had the opportunity to help her out in the final planning stages, and I sure am glad that I did. I helped paint a few signs for the event, and it was worth it to see into the planning behind the event.

It’s just her, a few of her friends, and her mom doing it. It’s so inspiring to see it happen, too. I love Fayetteville to the extent that it pains me to be in any other town in Arkansas. Most of my volunteering has been orchestrated through twitter, and all of it through social media. People complain that social networking sites divorce us from the real world, but for me, they’ve been a tool that has helped me make lots of new contacts in town, and helped my drive to make Fayetteville a better place.

I’ve got an idea for something big, hopefully, and I’ve met with a few people about it so far. Here’s hoping it works out. And for all of you with kids, make sure to take them to Dickson Street at 3 pm today.

So its no big secret that I’m starting a new radio show over at KXUA. My pitch for the show was something like “interview people on campus and off. Get all sorts of people in on it—students, business owners, etc…. Just showcase Fayetteville.”

That’s a pretty big plan, though. Not to say that I’m daunted. Excited, really. But it’s still a lot a lot of work to go through. I’m sitting on about two hours worth of interviews with the Mayor, Alderman Petty, and Alderwoman Lewis. I’m not quite sure how to edit it together, though. I’ve come up with a rough plan for how it should be organized.

I’m assuming that I’ll get a standard 2-hour KXUA slot. I want to try to fill this with two hour-long shows. They’ll be hard to produce but if I can get 5 or 6 done this summer then I can rotate those out as I make new ones periodically during the semester.

3 sections per episode:

What I’m debating is the order that these things should take. 20 minutes of Section 1, then Sections 2 and 3, then back to Section 1? 15, 10, 10, 10, 15? 40, 10, 10?

Photo by Jon Schleuss

Header on accessfayetteville.org

I was looking at a map of the city parks system tonight when I noticed something praiseworthy about http://accessfayetteville.org. In the upper right-hand corner of the header is a link to the city’s respective pages on Twitter and Facebook.

If you read this post, I detail a bit of the controversy about the city of Fayetteville adopting social media as a technique for information distribution. It’s nice to see those links there, even if the matter is a bit undecided as of yet. If I were planning on visiting Fayetteville, I would definitely check out those links to see what was up in the area.

Supermarkets in Italy are very different from supermarkets in America. My supermercato in Italy would fit inside of one of the main aisles of Walmart. I would go every day, and buy, at most, 5 things. It was located down three flights of steps and across the street from where I lived. And at the end of every transaction, the son of the elderly couple who ran it would ask me the same question: “borsa?” And every day, my response was the same: “no.”

“Borsa” is Italian for “bag,” and the reason why they ask you is because the bags aren’t free. Usually they cost €0.05. They were almost always unnecessary because my carton of blood orange juice, bottle of chianti, box of penne, jar of sauce, and can of Fanta (my splurge—European Fanta is to die for) would always fit in my messenger bag, and, even if I didn’t have it on me, would balance in my arms for the one minute walk back upstairs.

Beginning January 1st of this year, Seattle enacted a bag fee of 20¢ per bag. They also banned styrofoam take-out products. Los Angeles is banning all plastic bags in 2010, and charging 25¢ for paper ones. These approaches are slightly different from in Italy—there the bags are a luxury, here they’re a taxed commodity—but they both have the same net goal of reducing the amount of bags that get used and wasted. I’d argue that, in Seattle’s case, it’s even more beneficial, as it is a tax and not a store charge—the stores gain nothing by selling the bags, so they’re inclined to convince you to not use bags, you don’t want to use the bags, because they’re a financial waste, and, when you do use the bags, the money goes to the city, who hopefully will use it for enhancing their recycling programs.

Such a program could be enacted in Fayetteville, though I’m sure it would cause ire. I would support it. Hopefully the city council would, too. Seattle and Los Angeles are much bigger cities than Fayetteville, and they’ve enacted these regulations without fear of being voted out. I hope that Fayetteville can, too.

Last night, after the preview of MacHomer, a friend and I walked to Kosmos for a late dinner. Operating on the promise I received earlier in the day on free lunch today, I used the last of the money in my wallet to make my stomach very happy—I purchased a Kosmos gyro, with fries and a drink. Those Kosmos fries, man. They deserve all the acclaim they get.