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Equality March on Capitol Demands Action on Promises

Thousands of LGBT people and their friends, families and supporters marched from the White House to the Capitol in Washington, DC this Sunday in the National Equality March. The event was organized to coincide with National Coming Out Day, and was intended to put pressure on the Obama administration to fulfill campaign promises of action on a variety of gay civil rights issues, prominently including Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. While organizers proclaim the event a huge success, the lingering question remains: will things now change?

Estimates of the crowd’s size are not yet accurate, but organizers were expecting lighter attendance than for the more celebrity-centered marches of 1979, 1987, 1993 and 2000, which drew crowds in the hundreds of thousands. This was more of a grassroots event, reflecting a younger generation impatient with slow governmental progress on issues of civil rights, and giving this march a sense of energy and political empowerment (for photos of the day, see Equality Across America’s photostream, or this spread at the Huffington Post).Of course, there were some celebrity speakers at Sunday’s event—actress Cynthia Nixon, for example, who told the crowd, “We are gathered here today from all over the U.S., and back home many of us are deeply embroiled in the particular local battles that we are fighting, but today is a national rally and when we walk away from here tonight, we need to walk away with a common national resolve.”

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