The Harry Potter Alliance

By Andrew Slack

October 23, 2009

CALLFOREQUALITY.org

I was just in the middle of phone banking tonight through callforequality.org – just started, and I was nervous. At first I thought I didn’t know how to work the system – but Mass Equality’s Andi Wheeler guided me through it and it’s easy (tomorrow Andi can help guide you – as can our prefects, at any time Then I started making calls (something I hope everyone on here can do tomorrow as part of our Wrock 4 Equality! ). Let me talk about how this went for me – to remind you to go in there bold and not to get discouaraged!!!

FIRST FEW CALLS

I got a lot of voice messages and kept hitting ‘next call’ thinking, “well this is easy. I’m scoring a lot of points for Gryffindor this way” – though I was hoping to actually reach people.

SORT OF UNDECIDEDS
The first woman I got said she was for Civil Unions but against gay marriage – however, when we started (gently and politely without me trying to force her) I said to her, “So I can hear you’re not totally sure – any way, I have a form I need to fill out and I’m not sure what to put you down as – will you be voting ‘no’ or should I put you down as undecided? She said, “oh. Well I’ll be voting no.” After all that, she’s still on our side!

HANG UPS
After a series of voice messages I finally got another person. Well she hung up on me. Then an elderly man put on his wife, who hung up on me. Then another person hung up on me. I was disheartened: was the phone system not working or is every single one of these people hanging up on me?” I called Andi. It’s not the system. They ARE hanging up on me.

Here’s the thing: be ready for that. But you need to know that you’re doing the right thing. That we are on the side of the truth – and the truth is that everywhere where same-sex marriage is legal it’s not done any damage to heterosexuals and nothing has fallen apart. And we should be proud of ourselves!

Andi said: “It’s really important, REALLY important to think of those people as having the worst week of their lives. If they hang up on you, rather than get down on yourself – think of them as if they had just lost a loved one or their house just burnt down. And then move on to the next call.” It’s really important that we don’t lose momentum. We keep going.

A POSITIVE HANG UP
Then I reached a guy who said after my first question if he supported same sex marriage, “Well let me put it to you this way: I WON’T be voting for the referendum.” And then he hung up on me! So he’s on our side, BUT he didn’t want to talk with me. Andi said this is great. What this means is that the closer we’re getting to the election, the more hang ups there are. And the reason is that folks from both sides are reaching some people constantly – and that’s probably why this guy hung up even though he knew we were on the same side.

So people should realize: the LIVESTREAM is our supportive ROOM OF REQUIREMENT where we can chat (Twitter #wrock4equality is too) – it would be so much more fun for me right now if I knew I was doing this with people all over the world. And you should also realize, that even though you should be as polite and friendly and feeling great about yourselves – going out there phone banking is the Battle of Hogwarts. And at first, it may feel rough. And that’s OKAY. It’s normal. And then, Andi said, you get someone who is totally with you (hasn’t happened yet for me but I only just started) and all the other stuff goes away and you feel great!

And REMEMBER: if you get one person to vote. One person with polls being the way they are. That one person may be THE person who decides the fate of marriage equality and the momentum of the LGBT movement. It’s not always easy but it becomes fun and we’ll be doing it together with Harry and the Potters and Draco and the Malfoys and as one community, one world, working together for the rights of humanity.

So let’s get rockin’ and Rowling for Jo, for Dumbledore, and for every single person who has ever fought for equal rights and every single person who has ever felt unequal because of their sexuality.

The Weapon We Have Is Love!