I'm From Driftwood is a 501(c)(3) non-profit forum for true lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer stories. Earlier this year, founder and Executive Director Nathan Manske and two companions successfully completed a four-month, 50-state Story Tour collecting LGBTQ stories from towns and cities across the country. They're pulling some of the most relevant, important and sometimes just enjoyable stories from their archives and sharing them with HuffPost Gay Voices.
On election night in 2008, countless new LGBT activists were created with the passage of Proposition 8, the law that overturned marriage equality in California. Activist Dave Valk was one of them.
Basically what happened was, the day after Prop 8 was passed, I, like thousands of other people, was in the streets. We were in front of the big Mormon temple down on Santa Monica Boulevard. I think I was most impressed by the sheer number of people that were flooding into the streets.
In his story, Dave remembers many details of the events immediately following election night.
People started marching around the temple, which was kind of interesting, but with so many thousands of people in one place, it got riled up and people started to break away. ... With thousands of people marching down the street, moving onto Westwood Boulevard, it was just complete chaos.
After seeing a "Yes on 8" sticker on a vehicle stuck in traffic, another man in the crowd yanked the sticker from the car, causing an ugly turn of events.
A construction worker sitting in the bed of the truck came up and clobbered him right in the face. And I remember seeing the blood just flowing out of his face and thinking, "Holy shit, I can't believe that this is happening and this is happening right here."
Dave went on to explain how the passage of Prop 8 was the moment that changed him forever and turned him into the activist he is today.
You have to be involved. You have to be engaged. Another thing that really impressed upon me was, as we continued to move up the hill and traffic was completely brought to a stop and the sun was setting and the lights of cars were starting to come on and it made a path of light and you could see all the 3,000 people marching up this hill. And I think everyone had that same feeling that I did, that, "My God, if we can do this, we can do anything." And that's how I got started.
WATCH:
Submit your own story at ImFromDriftwood.com.
Follow Nathan Manske on Twitter: www.twitter.com/imfromdriftwood
~Henry Clay