It’s Official: Gay-Rights Organization Can Protest Outside Target

In the David vs. Goliath story of the year, the grassroots gay-supporting organization called Canvass For A Cause won their case with Target.  This is awesome!

Target sued the small organization from San Diego because they canvassed outside Target stores.  According to the Associated Press, “Target Corp. is suing a San Diego pro-gay marriage group to get it to stop canvassing outside its San Diego County stores, alleging its activists are driving away customers.”

Canvass For A Cause refer to themselves as “strictly progressive, occasionally queer.”  [EDITOR’S NOTE: LOVE IT!]

On their own site the Canvass For A Cause folks write, “In the Beginning Canvass For A Cause was founded by a group of pissed off activists that wanted to make a difference. One week after Prop 8 passed, 25,000 people were willing to march down the streets of San Diego to demand their rights back, yet only a fraction of that were willing to spend the time actually volunteering for the campaign.  The founders of our organization were committed to changing that, one by one having the conversations that would get people involved at the grassroots level. Our organization started off as a bootstrap organization with two fulltime volunteers working out of an old moldy building that was donated space. We had $20 on a credit card, and the passion to make a difference. In the beginning we had no idea what we were doing, often times charging into battle only to completely fall flat on our face. Each time we learned what to do, what not to do, and how to be most effective. We would rather make a mistake and risk actually getting something done, than spend a week in a room debating about how we were going to move forward.

Looking Ahead: The Canvass For A Cause group has grown from a ramshackle cluster of activists, to a family of three separate organizations all fighting at the grassroots level to help build a progressive future. In the last year alone Canvass For A Cause has identified 12,500 supportive voters on the issue of marriage equality alone. Our volunteer driven door-to-door called Knock 4 Equality uses targeted voter data along with our partnership with the Voter Action Network to perform strategic persuasions of voters with a 22% success rate. This means for every volunteer we send out we get one vote back. In the next year we have a goal of identifying or persuading 30,000 supportive voters by December of 2011, and help in the fight to win marriage equality.”

Well it looks like Canvass For A Cause will be back in action at Target post haste; yesterday Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Barton ruled can continue…er…uh…canvassing for a cause outside of Target stores.  Sure, the group has to stay 30 feet away from the store’s front door and canvass at just one door at a time, but this is a heck of a win! Canvass For A Cause: 1, Target: 0!