Dallas

– Zach Shapiro

The day started out with a long 5 hour bus ride to Dallas.

Our firsts top was the Sixth Floor Museum. The museum experience was very powerful for me because it is one thing to just read about the assassination and see the Zapruder film, but is entirely different to see where everything happened. Additionally, we watched a simulation of the events while looking out the window where the shots came from. As someone who knew a good amount about the assassination, it was still extremely informative to be where everything happened physically and to drive over the road and understand the sheer speed that the path of America changed.

We then drove over to where we were supposed to meet with Pro-Life Texas, but unfortunately, the speaker we were supposed to meet with contracted Covid. Despite this, however, we had a very insightful conversation about marriage equality, where I gained insight of different points of view. I love it when we have these framing discussions because no matter how much I know about the topic going in, I always come out with something new. Whether that be a different point of view, a different counterargument, or just a deeper understanding of how the other side of an argument feels. We also reviewed some anti-marriage equality points and talked about those for a while. This will prepare us for our discussion with the anti-marriage equality speaker on Tuesday. 

Finally, our day took us to Beth El Binah synagogue, an LGBTQ+ Reform Judaism temple. We had a very nice dinner with the members and then had services. The services were expedited, but you could still feel the heart of the people coming through. After we finished the beautiful service, some of the congregation members came up and talked about marriage equality. What shocked me most was how long most of the congregates were married to their significant other and some of the stories of their (usually numerous) weddings.

We finally wrapped up our long day with a 1.5-hour ride into Atoka, Oklahoma.