After the usual flight delays that come with flying in and out of the Midwest in February, our GLAAD team has arrived home to NYC and LA. Though it's nice to be home and have a minute to catch your breath after a week of interacting with 2,000 amazing LGBT and allied activists, I believe we all left with a bit of sadness that the experience is over, but also with a lot of inspiration and plans for our future work, which starts right now, today!
At the opening plenary, the Task Force recognized and honored the organizations that formed at past Creating Change conferences. Both SONG (Southerners on New Ground) and the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals are among amazing LGBT organizations formed at the conference in years past. Not every Creating Change participant leaves the conference with a brand-new organization, but we do all leave inspired to act, to change hearts and minds.
We honored the work of our movement. We were inspired for present and future work. We made connections. I know we all created new ideas, new collaborations, and new work plans. I left Detroit with so much. And I'm not just talking about all the business cards I've collected over the weekend :) I left not only with concrete plans for media work and spokesperson trainings in my region, but also with ideas to help my work of changing hearts and minds through media advocacy. The activists honored by the Task Force spoke messages of hope, of our struggles, our successes, and the intersections of our lives: orientation, gender identity, ability, ethnicity, race, class, age, geography. I believe all of the work we have done in the past week will profoundly affect the work the movement has ahead this year. The track of media workshops GLAAD led at Creating Change helped develop future spokespeople and communication experts in the LGBT movement. I'm proud to know that GLAAD's work is part of this movement.
Sarah Kennedy is GLAAD's Central Region Media Field Strategist
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