Then, after Challenge Day a girl named Autumn started the Williams Lake Gay/Straight Alliance on Facebook.
Enter myself and Riley - it was, what, January? First semester was just ending and we'd seen signs posted in the halls about the GSA, so we were interested. The first meeting was a little on the bare side. If I remember correctly, there were three students besides Riley and myself, and then the sponsor teachers. I think Jo was there, but that might have been the second or third meeting. We talked a bit about where we wanted to group to go, and decided our first task was a poster campaign.
We had one meeting where tons of kids showed up, including Autumn and some of her friends from WLSS. This was exciting, because we wanted the Williams Lake GSA to be composed of youth from all over town rather than just CSS. We all made posters that the sponsor teacher later photocopied, and we posted them all over the school. They had slogans like "Homophobia is a social disease", "Closets are for clothes!" and "Disapproving of homosexuality is like disapproving of rain." They're still around the school if you look hard enough, mostly in dark, forgotten corners of classrooms - the poor ones that we left in the hallway to fend for themselves were ripped down by certain students (you guys know who you are - thanks a lot, it took a lot of time to colour those in, you know!)
We had another heart-to-heart meeting when Phil was in town (Phil lives in Calgary, used to live here, he is pretty much awesome and one of my favourite people ever) where everybody could talk about their personal stories to do with homophobia, discrimination, coming out, etc.
Next, we realized that, since we live in a capitalist society and all, we were going to need some cash if we wanted to do much of anything. We organized a rainbow-themed bake sale that was pretty successful. Riley and I baked all of the preceding Sunday! ... well actually Riley baked and refused to let me touch any of his precious kitchen equipment or ingredients because I am prone to ruining anything edible the moment I touch it. I was lucky enough to decorate a few cookies and wrap things in plastic wrap.
See those pretty heart-shaped, rainbow cookies? They're pride cookies! I decorated them!
Straying off-topic, sorry. Anyway, lots of people who came by the bake sale table seemed sort of confused, and we were asked "What is this for?" an awful lot. When we said "The Gay/Straight Alliance", we were met with even more confusion. I think the general population of Columneetza was going "Huh?". Homophobia was an issue that had never really been addressed there before. We were starting to realize that we had a loooooooooong road ahead of us.
(Just as a side note, this one kid tried to pay with a banana - like actually seriously wanted to trade a banana for a cupcake. I still love that kid, whoever he is)
So, now we had a bit of money in our treasury, and we wanted to do something HUGE and MEANINGFUL, damnit. Our initial plan was a pride dance, but after a meeting with the student council leader, we decided it would be too expensive and there were too many security concerns. That's how the concert idea came up. I don't even remember whose idea it was, it just sort of...came up one day and we were like, "Yeah okay we could do that." We never for a minute even entertained the thought that it would be a huge success.
I'm going to do a whole separate post about Get Loud (From The Silence Comes The Noise).
So, yeah, that was the beginning of the Williams Lake Gay/Straight Alliance.
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