This blog is a bit off-topic and not inherently related to my time in Bolivia. However, today is a really big day back in the states! This afternoon a film I made last fall Social Notworking (Watch Here) is screening at a student film festival in Hollywood. Luckily, my awesome friend/assistant director/screen writer Vicki and our stupendous leading actress Dana are able to attend the festival since I cannot! Additionally, Dana is up for the Best Actress award at the festival. I'm so proud of our team and I hope everyone who reads this is sending good vibes their way!
Secondly, this weekend is Pride in San Francisco and it's the first time since I moved to San Francisco that I have not attended. Thinking about the Pride festivities makes me really reflect on the status of human, social, and civil rights around the world. Living in San Francisco can be such a bubble of acceptance and tolerance. Sometimes I forget to appreciate the beauty of the San Francisco community and the luck I have experienced in being able to live there.
Here in Cochabamba I see the huge disparity in rights between the queer community and the cis-gender, heterosexual community. In Uganda, people are being killed for being Gay. In most of Latin America, there is no word for 'heteronormativity' because there is nothing to oppose it. It's hard to define something when it appears to be part of the very fabric of our being.
I was watching Harvey Milk's Hope Speech today and feeling very inspired. Because I do have hope. I have a lot of hope for the future of Latin America and the ability for tolerance and respect to develop. I have hope that marriage equality will become a reality in the United States. I have hope that every year, fewer and fewer gay youth will commit suicide, until finally, a year goes by where no gay youth commit suicide. We are not there, yet, though. Suicide is a reality, hate crimes are a reality, and second class citizenship is a reality in 2012.
I hope, though, that I am contributing to making 2013 a year of progress.
Happy Pride <3
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