Activate your activism.

Sure, activists are generally upset about something. That's the point. Most injustices would sit there unchallenged if it weren't for all the determined, upset people pushing back with everything they've got.

Yes, I know the joke about how if you remember the '60s, you weren't really there. Well, sorry, but I was, and I remember. I was at the University of California, Berkeley, and the whole world was exploding. In fact, I like to think we invented the words campus unrest. My mother certainly said we did.

The real joke for me was that all I wanted to do was graduate. This was not easy because the entire campus was in orbit over something known later as the Free Speech Movement. The UC administration had attempted to tell students what booths could and could not be set up outside the cafeteria to distribute leaflets about everything from Birmingham to Vietnam. The students freaked. By the mid '60s we'd all listened to far too much Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger to let something oppressive like this go by without knowing how to fight back, act out, and protest. In fact, this particular outcry ignited what soon came to be called the "protest movement." It was historic and exhilarating and changed the landscape of America

I, however, just wanted that piece of paper that said I could get out. I was ready to begin my life in the world. I had my guitar, my attitude, and plenty of songs to sing. Then one morning, as I was rushing across campus to get to class on time, the late Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement, was hanging out of the second-floor window of the administration building, screaming. The school was expelling people like him for trying to shut down the campus. He yelled out to me in disgust: "Where are you going? Don't go to class, you idiot. Join the student strike. We have to fight this injustice." I looked up at him but kept going. What an unpleasant man, I thought to myself. How dare he yell at me--just because he's upset. I'm busy too.

In retrospect, Mario may have been my first experience with an activist. When he later brought Joan Baez on campus to sing some sense into people like me, I became one too. For playwright David Drake, it was the night Larry Kramer kissed him. For me, it was the day Mario Savio yelled at me. It doesn't matter how it happens. It's about waking up.

At one time or another, most of us have felt someone's anger roll over us like a train, startling us and calling our attention to the pain we don't want to feel. Sure, activists are generally upset about something. That's the point. Most injustices would sit there unchallenged if it weren't for all the determined, upset people pushing back with everything they've got. And when we realize that whatever is bothering someone else will soon be bothering us, a human connection is made.

Activism can arise from many different circumstances, but often it's born out of personal pain and loss--like Judy Shepard's or Elton John's. Grief and anger are transformed into action and education. And that action, that activism is healing because it has a purpose: to keep others from suffering the same pain. It's comforting to know our hard times can give our lives meaning if we find a way to turn that energy outward, where it can do some good.

The activists on the following pages of our special summer double issue have all found their way into this journey. Something in their personal lives became the catalyst for their dedication to furthering the fight for gay and lesbian civil rights. They have changed things around them for the better, and in doing so they too have been transformed. Here are their stories.