This Weekend--Miami Pride Festival

Confetti flies as drag queen pulls down man's pants on stage--'11

 

The annual Miami Beach Gay Pride festival will be exploding with rainbow confetti this Sunday afternoon. The city closes off Ocean Drive to traffic and people celebrate, dance, sip on mojitos and later hit up the SoBe clubs. It's one of the largest Gay Pride festivals in the country with a parade, food vendors, prizes and concerts all day long to support the LGBTQ Community.

Parade-goers share a warm hello--'11

Ready to be star-struck? As the festival grows bigger each year, so do the stars. This year, they are proud to welcome Jessica Sutta from the Pussycat Dolls, JoJo , Frenchie Davis from The Voice and Inaya Day. Two separate concerts bookend Ocean Dr so you can decide which one is more your scene. 

Parade cars drive slowly as this drag queen pouts--'11

If the festival is definitely for the whole Miami community--not just those who are part of the LGBTQ one. Young adults from nearby colleges, nuclear families and puppies alike all are among those attend. The parade begins at 11:00 am and the festival ends at 9:00 pm on Sunday.

For the entire schedule or more information, visit the Miami Beach Gay Pride website here.

The Uterus & the Beach Umbrella

          I was told to hold an 8’ beach umbrella and advised not to speak to anyone holding a picture of a mauled baby. It was my first time at what the people in the business call Clinic Defense. What it meant, essentially, was that we were at A Choice for Women clinic in Kendall shielding the visitors from the displays of Jesus statues and a full-grown babies covered in blood. It was quite the job for 8:00 am on a Saturday morning.

            Immediately, the first thing I noticed was that the “opposition” was composed primarily of older men with gray hair. One older woman, who tried to hold her nose above the level that the young women in pink stood at, was there holding a sign about murder. They had a monstrosity of a display set up—a white outdoor party tent, a few Jesus statues, blue coolers and big sticks holding protest signs. Our beach umbrellas had quite the view to block that day.

            I asked the leader of the Miami Access Clinic Project, Julia Dawson, if it was always like this. She was along side us in a neon traffic vest and visor with a clipboard and beach umbrella in hand. She said that it usually was on the weekends, and that many of their clients aren’t able to get time off from work for their procedure. “Actually,” she said, “many of our guests are just here to pick up birth control.”  

            When the clinic opened, a car began to slow down quite a ways down the road and put their turn signal on. As if a secret code, that was the signal for the beach umbrella ladies to get into formation. We stood side-to-side in a tight line forming a wall with our umbrellas. The car drove slowly, giving us enough time to block out every last grossly misrepresented dead baby sign. The man driving the car waved to us and the woman in the passenger seat smiled.

            I was not emotionally prepared for this—seeing the extreme system MCAP had to devise to protect the emotional well-being of the clients and seeing how familiar the car was with it made me want to cry. The visitors were quite aware that every time they came to the clinic old men were going to try to yell at them through their car window and flash signs saying that they were going to Hell.

            When the first car left the clinic, our umbrella routine changed. Cars must exit to the right, and that’s where the “circus tent” (as the MCAP ladies call it) was set up. Jesus statues, men, and rosary beads galore. Our umbrella wall stood on the curb, waiting until the exiting car had a chance to go.

            When it did, it drove slowly and Dawson yelled, “Keep moving! Keep moving!” We all side-stepped quickly and the car stayed close to our wall. We kept side-stepping until we had blocked every last protester. At that point, the car quickly accelerated and honked goodbye to us.

            After a while, I was switched off of umbrella duty and moved across the street. Here, we were to hold matching circle signs that read “Keep Abortion Legal” and stand straight across from the exit of the clinic. This way, the clients know that they have supporters—not only haters—out there. 

            To my right, a young woman was wearing pink sunglasses and listening to her iPod, just holding her sign and smiling. To my left, four women were chatting above the noise of passing cars.

            An older man and the one protesting woman, who appeared to be his wife, noticed us on the other side of the street. They brought their misrepresented fetus signs and crossed the street to join us—noses still to the sky.

The man tried to talk to us—asking if we knew what we were really doing. He talked to us like we were five instead of adults. “You’re going to go to Hell,” he said, “do you really want to burn eternally?” The woman next to me, turned her head away from him, softly said “What if I tell him I don’t believe in Hell?” and grinned.

We didn’t respond to this man, like we were advised, but kept holding our signs and smiling straight ahead at the umbrella girls across the street. The man was clearly getting agitated with our lack of response. 

He took out his cell phone, held it close to his face and while peering over his glasses he hit the buttons. He put down his sign and walked closer to us. Inches from each of our faces, he began to take individual photos. The women I was with looked very uncomfortable with this—but I turned around, put my hand on my hip, and smiled when it was my turn. I knew that he was just trying to intimidate us, and figured the worst that would happen would be my pixelated face going on a list of people denied access to their church. Unless these men of God are into sending out hitmen these days.

“When I told my parents about it, I didn't necessarily ask them and they were worried,” Hali Cohen, 21 and standing beside me said. “The anti-abortionists are irrational in their beliefs, so it's hard to know the lengths they will go to to preserve their protest.”

Seeing that his threats of Hell and photo shoot didn’t phase us too much, the man began to yell.

“You girls are so pretty,” he yelled over to us. “Aren’t you glad that your mothers didn’t abort you?” Our feathers still weren’t ruffled.

New protestors began to pop up as the morning went on—first a man with presumably his son, who was about seven or eight years old. By 11:00 am, a whole nuclear family—Dad, Mom, three small children and cooler of snacks—had arrived.

I was taken aback at first. I had expected protesters. I had expected fake “photos” of mauled babies on signs. I hadn’t expected the protesters to be mostly old men, but it didn’t surprise me. But I definitely did not expect to see a five-year-old in OshKosh B’Gosh jeans and Disney cartoon sandals holding a sign that read “They murder here.”

I wondered how these parents explained a complicated topic like abortion to a young child. Do you tell them how the poorest demographic in America is the young single mother, because she usually needs to drop out of school when she discovers that she is pregnant and then never sees a penny of child support? Or do you tell them that behind the shrubs is a scary place where people in lab coats murder babies—so we’re going to go stand a few feet away from that and hope that they don’t catch you?

My best guess is that the children aren’t old enough to read yet, so they didn’t know what the sign they were holding said. I still don’t know how you explain the grotesque “photos” to them though.

As I stood there, I decided that my beliefs were stronger than ever—each woman has the right to decide for herself if she is pro-life or pro-choice. Whatever she chooses is best for her and I will support her in that.  However, things get complicated when people try to make decisions for others. I have a right to my own body, just as I have a right to choose my own religion, and I have a right to decide on my education and career.

A 60-year-old man waving rosary beads in my face and yelling at me would never change my religion.  My Sunday school classes always taught me that I can form my own credo and decide what I believe. And this man, and thousands others like him, are working to change legislation so that it correlates with their religious beliefs. Unfortunately for them, America is comprised of a vast variety of religions.

My thoughts were interrupted by the protester children. The boy in OskKosh had abandoned his “They murder here” sign. His parents were busy waving signs at the oncoming traffic, and the little boy was running around with a stick pointed towards his little sister.

“Bang, bang!” He shouted. “I just shot you! You’re dead!”

The little girl responded by taking her “Life is Precious” sign and repeatedly hit her brother over the head with it.

South Miami Rotary Arts Festival

Preston Scott positioned a five-foot agave flower stalk under his mouth, and  began to blow into it. Agave flowers, which grow primarily in the deserts of Mexico, were unfamiliar to many of the South Floridians who stood in a small crowd watching him. The stalk was hollowed out and intricately carved and painted in reds and whites.

“It’s a didjeridoo,” Scott explained, blowing into the stalk, which he had turned into a clarinet-like musical instrument. “See, it sounds like a motorboat.”

Scott’s tent was just one of the many that lined Sunset Drive this past Saturday. Small groups and people by themselves stopped at the first few tents of clay orchids, paintings, photography and the finer arts.

The South Miami Rotary Arts Festival has taken place every year at this time for the past twenty-eight years. Children pulled their parents quickly past the paintings towards the tents that displayed hand puppets, bows and arrows and fairy princess wands. Dogs pulled their owners past the toys to the food booths—pursuing the smells of hamburgers, hot fudge and Argentinean wafting food through the air.

But off to the side to the tents, tucked within the entrance to the Sunset Place Mall, there was a different kind of art. Three middle-aged women in black spandex and whittled waistlines that would make women half their age cry stepped in sync to pop music playing. Legs kicking, they threw in the occasional hoot.

The women were promoting Jazzercise—dance classes designed to help women get in shape. But their precision and energy made them worthy of being at the festival as a performing art.

“We’ve been here for 35 years, and it keeps changing with the times,” said Cheryl Wiggins, the first instructor in Miami. “We bring in a little bit of everything in the music.”  

Jazz dance began in America at the turn of the 20^th century, originally reflecting the whole-body movement and free flow of African dance. But the modern forms of it, which began in the 1950s, evolved from Caribbean dances, hitting much closer to home in South Florida.

Also under the influence of the tropics, was painter Eileen Seitz, who began setting up her booth at 5:45 AM that morning.

“I paint on location,” Seitz said. “I travel to Antigua, Fiji, Key West, the Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. A man in George Town saw my painting of an island house and asked if he could build it.”

Seitz uses bold pinks, leafy greens and hot yellows in her watercolor paintings—shouting tropical paradise before you even approach them. A resident of Coconut Grove, she has presented her work at the Rotary Arts Festival for almost 15 years now.

Over the years, Seitz has expanded from paintings to pieces of fabric, pillows, puzzles, coloring books and cards. She said that her paintings are bought and hung in local hospitals and doctor’s offices to bring cheer to patients.  She says her second biggest customer is the hospitality sector, so her paintings can bring the tropic feel of their vacation hot spot.

One of Seitz’s biggest aspirations is designing the fabric to make and sell clothes and she sees promise of it happening in the near future.

“At a show last week, a woman approached me asking to team up to have a clothing line,” Seitz said. “I can sew for me, but I can’t sew for others. That’s my dream.”

Seitz was wearing a tunic made of fabric that she herself had designed—streaked with warm oranges and yellows on a black background, recalling a similar feel to the bold colors of Lily Pulitzer, who was also a Florida entrepreneur.

Storm clouds rolled in by the afternoon, leaving Seitz and her fellow artists scurrying to crowd all of their works under their tent. A few fat raindrops threatened to cut the day short, but as Seitz whipped out her iPhone to check the weather forecast the rainclouds kept moving.

Down the street, Scott kept playing his didjeridoo, not phased by the clouds. He helped a teenage boy position it correctly and play a few sounds.

“Very good man, yeah! You can play!” he said. “What I like about it, is that you don’t have to spend a hundred years learning how to play it.”

 

A Man, A Message & his Motorbike

         Puffs of exhaust hung in the humid air as downtown Miami traffic stayed still. Elbows leaned on horns and pedestrians slinked around cars—people just trying to complete their days. Below the skyscrapers, a man in an orange shirt and a sign around his neck waved and smiled. He was accompanied by a few others standing beside him, splitting the hot frustration of traffic, stretching his arms up to hold another sign. Written in careful red marker, it read, “U R Awesome.”

            Kemy Joseph, 24, has made it his mission to spread happiness around the community. Upon his graduation from the University of Miami, he launched U R Awesome Inc., a non-profit organization, to start a chain reaction of kindness in the world.

            “People think I’m [giving hugs] for the girls or they think I lost a bet,” Joseph said. “When I explain I’m spreading kindness, some people get it and some people still say ‘what the heck?’”

Joseph started at his quest to feel good at the University of Miami, dispersing free hugs, high-fives and peaceful pounds. He became well-known among the college students for years, and later among the Miami community. To some, he’s just the random guy who was encouraging them on at the ING race. To others, he’s just a face that they’ve seen on the news. To the homeless community of Overtown, he is the man who raised thousands of articles of clothing, hot food and personal care kits and gave it all away to them.

Starting next week, he’s taking his mission across the world.

“Seeing so many things that are happening around the United States and around the world, kindness is needed now more than ever,” Joseph said. “It was like, alright, you have to do it right now, because the stars are coming together.”

            Joseph launched the World Kindness Tour earlier this week in Key West. With nothing but a motorbike, a small bag, the trademark sign around his neck and arms for hugging, Joseph plans to weave his way north across the country and into Canada. He will be staying in North America this time around, but hopes to be able to travel the rest of the world in the future.

Along the way he will telling his story to people that he encounters—reminding them all not to forget what life is really all about. He has also sent in applications to go to schools across the country as a motivational speaker. Whether it is a smile or a hug, or doing a random act of kindness, Joseph reminds that that spirit is what’s most important.

 “I have construction paper with me, so I’m making signs every day,” Joseph said. “The idea is that I’ll wear the free hugs sign on the front and then the sign of the day on the back. Construction paper won’t be that heavy to carry.”

He has not booked any hotels and doesn’t plan to. He is setting off on his red Genuine Buddy scooter plans to stay at the home of anyone willing to take him in for a night and maybe offer him a meal.

“So far, I’ve had a few couch-surfing hosts and they were complete strangers,” Joseph said. “They were great hosts and they gave me hope for the whole tour, that there’s a lot of great people who will let me go and just be a part of their house environment for a day or so.”

But in case he finds himself stuck without anywhere to stay, U R Awesome does have a bank account with some money and Joseph is asking for donations on his website and travel blog.

Joseph is planning on the tour to take about a year. “I’m hoping to be back with my family for Christmas,” he said.

“It's become obvious to me that he looks up to figures like Ghandi and Mother Teresa and tries to emulate them,” James Clinard, who has held up signs with Joseph during rush hour traffic, said. “He also makes a very strong effort to avoid all types of violence, profanity, and many things associated with that such as alcohol. He even goes to the extent of preoccupying himself when people in the room are watching mixed martial arts on television or playing a first person shooter game.”

Joseph’s younger years started with run-ins with the law and trouble back in his hometown of Homestead, FL. He says that those times inspired him to really do something more with his life.

“There have been situations when people haven’t been nice to me,” Joseph said. “And back in the day, your boy would’ve done something about it.”

 “I’ve had a lot of people ask me if Kemy really was a bad boy,” Kenid Joseph, his older sister said. “And he really was. But it’s great seeing him grow and change. Today, he embodies everything he says.”

Eventually, the kindness that his mentors through high school had shown him began to encourage Joseph to change his path in life. “I don’t think I’d be here without kindness. I was on a very self destructive path when I was younger,” Joseph said.

Helping other teenagers that may be experiencing something similar is on U R Awesome’s agenda for the World Tour. Vice President of U R Awesome, Ruben Rodriguez, also known as Mr. Sunshine, spoke at Pinecrest High school earlier this month. Rodriguez heard about U R Awesome when dating Joseph’s sister and wanted to take on a leadership position.

“The speaking event was a phenomenal success and we’ve had a tremendous response,” he said. “Just check out my [Facebook] wall to see student responses.”

Students did indeed leave many comments and post many pictures to Rodriguez’s wall, with many thanks, anticipation for U R Awesome’s return and photos snapped with camera phones.

Alongside Joseph and Rodriguez, many of the leadership positions in U R Awesome Inc. are currently held by students at the University of Miami. Most of them met Joseph in the campus club Random Acts of Kindness, where he was club President. U R Awesome has similar initiatives as Random Acts of Kindness.

U R Awesome Inc. has sold or given away hundreds of t-shirts that are modeled after the inspirational signs Joseph has worn around his neck every day since September of 2008. These shirts share the same happy messages like “U R Unique,” “U R Amazing,” and of course, “U R Awesome.”

The shirt sales serve to raise money for the Great Giveaway. This charity event raised thousands of articles of clothing and so many boxes of pizza that they needed a Hummer to transport them. On the service day in Overtown, impoverished and homeless citizens of Miami could come and take anything that they needed. Because the shirts were sold to University of Miami students for $10, twice as much as they cost to make, U R Awesome was able to buy a second shirt for every one sold, and give a complimentary inspirational shirt to the event attendees.

Traveling with U R Awesome and not having a definite roof above his head is not completely new to Joseph. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Joseph camped out in a tent in the middle of the University of Miami for weeks, raising money to fund a trip to Haiti. When he got there, he spread kindness, a helping hand, and hugs to the crestfallen citizens.

“We need everyone’s help to make the world a kinder place or change the world one kind act at a time,” Joseph said. “And you know, anybody will be able to help the Tour—even if they don’t specifically join us with the tour—they can help by just being kind to themselves, to others.”