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 On the Saturday after the Presidential Election, Geo Bustamante, 22, received a call from singer Pepper Mashay. The dance music artist who is best known for her “Let’s get soaking wet” chant on the hit Barry Harris track “Dive in the pool”, was calling from California. “What are you guys in Florida doing about these discriminatory statutes being enacted into our laws, Baby?” Mashay asked the young writer.
Bustamante had been working on an upcoming story for GaySoFla.com on Mashay’s new release and he thought the artist was calling to follow up on scheduling an interview. Bustmante was caught off guard by such a question from left field. The online magazine’s associate editor was also chagrined to admit that members of the Florida LGBT community seemed indifferent to the recent passage of Amendment 2. Or at least they didn’t seem willing to declare their anger and disappointment in as public a fashion as the California street protests that had materialized overnight.
“Baby, you all need to take it to the streets,” Mashay told Bustamante. “The Florida GLBT community needs to get off their collective ass and tell the powers that be that they aren’t going to take it anymore!”
After he hung up with Mashay, Bustamante and other magazine staffers started making calls to local community leaders and began searching the internet to see if anything was being planned to protest the recently enacted anti-gay constitutional amendment.
 Across town, at the University of Miami, seniors Brenna Munro, Lorena Fiori and Kelley Tighe saw television coverage of Proposition 8 opponents protesting in the streets of cities across California. The trio wondered why members of the gay community in Florida weren’t following suit. After all, the state’s citizens overwhelmingly voted for Amendment 2, a similar measure that enshrines LGBT discrimination into the Sunshine States constitution.
After several days of futilely searching the internet for information on planned Amendment 2 protests for the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area, the three students stumbled across the website http://jointheimpact.com and learned that scores of protests were being quickly put together by members of social networking groups like Facebook and MySpace.
“We set up an email account and created a Facebook page and within hours were getting messages asking what was being planned for Miami,” said Munro. After realizing there was a tremendous amount of interest, Munro listed Miami Beach as a designated city for protest and began working with Fiori and Tighe to organize one of twelve protests planned at city halls across the state.
By Wednesday, exactly a week after the election when voters in Arizona, Florida and California decided that gays were 2nd class citizens, Bustamante and the UM students had connected. Email blasts were sent out, MySpace Bulletins had been posted, city permits had been filed, lawyers had been consulted, and media inquiries were being fielded.
In the apparent vacuum of post-election leadership from the leaders of Florida’s Amendment 2 opposition groups, a grassroots movement sprang up in Miami Beach. At the helm of that movement are four passionate college students who were willing to step in when no one else would.
The efforts of these young people are being multiplied, as similar small groups of organizers plan simultaneous protests and rallies at the steps of city halls throughout the state and across the country. The events will take place this Saturday, November 15, beginning at 1:30. Though planned as peaceful protests, organizers hope their message that LGBT inequality and intolerance is unacceptable in American society will be a strong one.
Buoyed by the camaraderie of working together on something bigger than themselves and challenged by the exhortation of a Circuit Party Diva to “get off your asses”, Brenna Munro, Lorena Fiori, Kelley Tighe and Geo Bustamante are leading the way in South Florida as the Civil Rights Movement of the 21st Century gets underway. Let's hope the rest of us will follow!
For more information on finding a protest in a city near you, please visit http://jointheimpact.com
Select your state and city then click the link for all contact information.
CLICK HERE to sign up for the Miami Beach Event.
 David L. Wylie is the Senior Editor of GaySOFLA Magazine. Wylie is passionate about creating an online media outlet that will encourage, entertain and educate the south Florida LGBT Community. Wylie hopes that GaySOFLA serves that purpose. He can be reached at David@gaysofla.com
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