Tiffany McClain attended the Creating Change conference last week in Denver. In this guest post, she describes the diversity of activists, the inspiring setting, and the lessons she brought home for Alaska’s LGBT civil rights movement.

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Sponsored by the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force, the annual Creating Change conference is 5 days of inspiration, nuts-and-bolts training, and a little entertainment for campaigners, grassroots organizers, service-providers, faith leaders, community center workers, teachers, and artists who are dedicated to advancing the rights and quality of life for LGBT people in our country. 

I attended a workshop with someone who serves LGBT youth with wilderness-based therapy, people who directed the LGBT center at their local universities, a young woman who is training the children of lesbian and gay parents to be advocates for LGBT families, another who honed her organizing skills by moving from state-to-state working on campaigns to fight anti-gay marriage initiatives, and queer youth of color who are fighting gentrification in New York City. During our closing brunch, we were entertained by The Kinsey Sicks, a drag a capella group that blends comedy and political commentary in their performances.

The diversity of individuals at the conference was a reminder that the future of the LGBT movement will be the collective success of people with different skills, talents, and passions. Not just the lobbyists and vote-counters but the teachers, not just the grassroots organizers but the artists, not just the people who see marriage as the ultimate goal of the LGBT movement, but those fighting the displacement of poor and working-class families from their neighborhoods. Creating Change is an opportunity for us to learn with and from each other, and to take these lessons back to our communities and places of work.

What was inspiring about attending Creating Change was not only the opportunity to train and brainstorm with other activists, but also the world that the Taskforce created for almost a week: a world where gender neutral bathrooms were located on every public floor of the hotel, where every downtown restaurant and even the Denver airport greeted LGBT people with welcome signs, where queer people of different races, ages, classes, abilities, gender identities and religions found common purpose and were comfortable enough to challenge each others’ prejudices. The organizers of Creating Change inspired conference-goers to continue advocating for change in our communities by showing us what change feels like.

“Get Knocked Down 7 Times, Get Up 8”*

If I were to sum up the theme of this year’s Creating Change conference in one word, I would say “resilience.” There were a lot of activists from California still grappling with what could have gone wrong with the Prop 8 initiative and trying to heal from the weeks of unfair back-biting and blaming that followed the election. But the disappointments of these last few months have not discouraged them from continuing the fight and working on the next strategy to advance the rights of LGBT people in California and across the country. 

I sometimes hear LGBT Alaskans cite past defeats and the power of conservatism as a reason not to push for civil rights in our state. At Creating Change, I was reminded that very few LGBT communities and activists tasted victory before they tasted defeat. (And some defeats can be victories: 52% to 48% in CA is not a landslide. That’s a lot of people who believe that gays and lesbians should be able to get legally married!) My point is, if we want to live in a community as welcoming as Denver or Seattle, we have to be willing to build it ourselves—even if it means risking defeat along the way.