AKA William

I went to the New York City National Day of Protest. I will be posting pics and my take next, but I wanted to get this up now. Above is a compilation video of some of the speakers. There were a lot of inspiring speakers, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, U.S. Rep. Anthony Wiener, Assembly member Danny O’Donnell, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Marriage Equality New York’s Kathy Marino Thomas, Miss America 1998 Kate Shindle, former contestant on “America’s Next Top Model” and out lesbian Kim Stoltz, poet Emanuel Xavier and others.

But, for my money, the best speaker was Miss America 1998 Kate Shindle. Yup, Miss America gave a smart, moving, exceptional speech that, in effect, reminded us to that reason and tolerance (and I do mean “tolerance” – meaning “you don’t have to like it, but you do have to put up with it”) are required on all sides of this battle and will go a long way in winning the war because, as she said, “This is no less than the greatest civil rights battle of our generation!” You can hear part of her speech above. The full audio can be heard here (about 4 minutes long).