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Out door activities like canoeing, whitewater rafting, sailing, inner tubing and other water sports will be on an ad hoc basis of weekend spontaneity. If interested FMI: 241-2500
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At this writing the e-mail enrollment is at 100 people. That's a come down from the snail-mailing of 340, but it's a start.
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IS THE UNITED A STAGNANT AGENCY? The United's annual awards dinner will have the mayor as their speaker this year. Sue Bauman is a sweet heart as is Kathy Falk, our County Executive. These people have repeatedly demonstrated their friendship to the GLBTQ community.
However, when nice folks like that are asked to be speakers, especially by our more visible agencies, we throw away a golden opportunity to challenge other people who have high profile offices and leadership positions to demonstrate that they are in fact supportive of the gay community. People who are supposed to be supportive are Anthony Brown, director of the EOC (the city's equal opportunity commission), Kirby Mack.......and Clarence.....the School Board's lawyer. However, the grapevine has it that these folks might be gay-sensitively retarded, ooooppppps!, challenged. When an agency like The United has its annual dinner (fund-raiser and awards), their featured speaker should not be someone who is already our friend, because that is like preaching to the choir.
This event needs to put to the test those folks who hold a job in public trust. People who function as high profile leaders to their own minority communities. The three mentioned above are all Black, so I'm not suggesting we ask either Steve Brangan or his twin, Judge Higgenbothim, because that would once again be preaching to the choir. I'm suggesting that we don't throw away a golden opportunity by trying to get high profile people like Feingold, who have already demonstrated their loyalty to the GLBTQ community, to speak at our events. He's already on our side.
I 'm suggesting we get people who we see as POSSIBLY MARGINAL supporters, i.e. supporters when" a gun is put to their head". We need to put their feet to the fire and their butt on the line. Of course, this whole thing might be re-phrased in a positive way by saying, "Let's give lower profile tax paid civic leaders an opportunity to show their support for the GLBTQ community, so they might function as "bridges" between minority communities."
Anyway you want to spell it, let's have smarter decisions made by the leadership of The United.
Secondly, is The United ready to enter the 21 st century? If so why, then, doesn't The United have a web page and an e-mail address? Jeeeesus! Talk about retarded.
And speak about a lack of OutReach! Why aren't they open on Saturdays for working people? Why don't they have a table @ Farmer's Market on Saturdays on Capital Square?
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As every town has its village idiot, so we have...
1) The Pope: here is a male who is considered infallible in faith and morals saying, "it is not easy to know God's intentions." This answer was within the context of answering the question, "We all need redeeming, don't we? with reference to reporters asking if AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuals (Wis.Light, June 4,'98, page 2, story by Jack Nichols). If the Pope were female, I doubt if there would be any equivocating.
2) The Southern Baptists: who predictably put their foot in their mouth during each annual convention: "women are to graciously submit themselves to their servant husbands". (Ephesians 5:22 ff & Colossians 3:18 ff) How does this square with Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Yes, folks, even the New Testament and St. Paul himself speak out of both sides of their mouths. So much for consistency. Ah, shucks, who's perfect?
3) The Rev. Pat Robertson commenting on Gay Day at Disney: "...we will be struck by a meteor!" (What are the co-ordinates of Robertson's house?) "Ding, dong the witch is..."
4) Republican Senator Lott's statement Monday that homosexuality was like an addiction, drew this reaction Tuesday from White House spokesman Mike McCurry:
"For over 25 years, it's been quite clear that sexual orientation is not an affliction; it is not a disease; it is something that is a part of defining one's sexuality. And the fact that the majority leader has such views, apparently consistent with some who are fairly extreme in his party, is an indicator of how difficult it is to do rational work in Washington.''
5) Scott Evertz's remarks that the Republican party is THE TRUE leader in gay politics is a manifest lie. (Ignorant is when one is uninformed; dense is when one doesn't even try to be informed.)
The Associated Press reported that "Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (Republican) said Monday that he believes homosexuality is a sin, and that gay people should be assisted in dealing with it 'just like alcohol...or sex addiction...or kleptomaniacs.'" And as you already know, Newt Gingrige (the Republican leader in the House of Representatives) is not exactly a gay supporter, either.
Scott brags that Republicans in the State Senate prevented the anti-marriage bill from coming up for a vote. Well, it was a Republican in the Assembly (that "busy ditch", Lorraine Seratti, from Spread Eagle) who sponsored the hostile bill in the first place.
As for the State Senate, Scott's thinking is not unlike children who think the sun rises each morning just for them. (But, then, Scott, is politically challenged in his politics.) Lacking a wider perspective, Scott does not see that this bill offered no benefits to any of the senators if it were brought out for a vote, and the Senate rule is that a bill does not have to have a hearing to be taken up for a vote. Surely, State Senators are not about to go out of their way to irritate an electorate on a hot potato issue. The reason Scott did not notice this, in all probability, was that his stock and trade is wedge politics, and State Senators are smarter than getting involved in one more contentious issue in an election year where the margin of majority is so slim, like one vote.
It should be remembered that Wisconsin's former governor, Dreyfus, as well as the current governor, are on record as having stated that upon reflection they would have never signed the state's gay right's bill. This is the same "supporter" (Tommy) who took away Gov. Earl's gay council to the governor its paid liaison officer (Earl Bricker). Right on! With support like that, Tommy is a sure-fire candidate for THE vote-getter in the GLBTQ community in this fall's elections. NOT !!!
And as to Jim McFarland's gay leadership on Madison's City Council, the domestic partners ordinance gives coupled folks no benefits other than they can say they are registered. WOW ! You see, once again, it is all talk and no substance. Poor Scott: 5 pounds of hot air in a 2 pound bag.
The reason most gays are not Republican is thanks to the speeches, writings and ideas of Noam Chomsky (who teaches at MIT) which have filtered down to us. He's revealed the real enemy, and it is exactly who President Eisenhower said it was: the military industrial complex (only today we can add medical, media & communications). In a word, it is high tech rich who want to privatize in order to avoid accountability (hide), and, thus, get even richer at the expense of the masses' taxes: pigs at the trough of government.
The reason Republics want less government, is that they want less over-sight of their dealings of screwing the public: recall the hammers and toilet seats scandals ?! Now that the cold war is over, why have the Republicans given the Pentagon $ 7,000,000,000 MORE than they asked for??!! Yes, that was Billions, baby, and it's your tax dollars. And you sit back and do NOTHING about it ?! The Democrats are not any better. Both parties are corrupted beyond redemption and the Socialists are just as classist as the other two, only it's just a different social class. (Have you considered The New Party? In Madison it's called Progressive Dane.)
Like the cartoon character, Pogo, said, written during the Viet Nam war, "The enemy is us !", i.e. capitalists. (Note the last item at the bottom of this newsletter). The enemy is who it has always been. Even in War World II, the Secretary of State phoned the head of General Motors to ask permission to bomb their plant in Germany. Or as we learned from Watergate, "Follow the money."
The rich are screwing us without a hug, smile or a kiss. And the main job of the capitalist system in the USA is to hide this reality behind public relations and the propagandistic creation of new enemies, like 3 rd world nationalists, indigenous peoples, true democracy, even the USA government, whatever; however, they have to have scary names, like THE RUSSIANS, The Communists, Cuba, THE YELLOW PERIL of North Viet Nam or Korea, The Comer Rouge of Cambodia, the Sandanistas of Nicaragua, Iraq, Islamic Fundamentalists, etc. (That most of them are as out of control as Ollie North misses the real issue. Remember Ollie? That's the scam where the US Government was involved in selling drugs to fund the Iran conflict. Indeed, we have recently discovered that the money the USA was giving foreign countries to fight the drug problem went into a military attack against the democracy-seeking indigenous peoples of the third world.) The list is almost endless.
You see, we sell a goodly % of high teach weapons to the world, and that MARKET is what is the ultimate in what is SACRED to Republicans, and if you do not believe me just do a little investigative research into Gingrige's constitutes down in Georgia. Like Scott, Gingrige is so full of himself that he hides the fact that it is HIS district that gets most of Government tax money for high tech and related companies. Yes, dear citizen, it the Republicans who are the BIG spenders, but that money goes to the rich rather than to the people, and that's the bottom line. The House of Representatives and the Senate are Republican controlled and we now have the biggest federal budget ever. So who are the real big spenders? The real issue here, is that Republicans whine when money is spent on the poor, but they never complain when the money goes to those who are already rich, rich, rich. When Republicans refer to "the people", what they mean is the RICH people, not ALL the people, and lest of all the poor and vulnerable.
Republicans are elitists; they do not give a rat's ass about the public. And that's true to their philosophy as far back as you go, even to Adam Smith (Scottish economist, 1723-1790). In this sense, Republicans are NOT conservatives; among scholars and historians they have always been identified as radicals who exploit and rape the planet at your expense to fill their own greedy self-indulgent desires.
Scott Evertz is a "Mr. Dis-information" of the capitalist system, a raw propagandist for the elitist cause of the Republicans. Thus, his job is to turn our language on its head; it's just one more shell game. Since most Americans are not seriously interested in politics and, thus, are not exactly rocket scientists or brain surgeons when it comes to politics, they are very vulnerable to hucksters like this, and that's why Scott is very dangerous. Like a vampire, he feeds on the unsuspecting, innocent and the uninformed. I'll have even more mis-information that he is spreading for next month's issue.
And, now, another propagandist to turns language (and the Bible) on its head:
6) "The Rev." Ovadal" & Ronny Greer Subject: Billboard "paired" with anti-gay board is now gone
The Wisconsin Christians United-sponsored billboards in Madison, and there's been all sorts of hand wringing ever since in the GLBTQ community.
The sub-text: what's really going on is that both Ovadal and Greer are businessman, i.e. when they scream and holler on conservative issues at the local level, it opens up all sorts of conservative money pouring in from the national level. It is reported that Ronny Greer now has over $ 600.000 for his legal defense fund. No wonder he is a candidate for the Republican Primary this September in a list of about 6 other candidates. The Republican Party is not a happy camper about this, for they fear that with the current habit of low voter turn out, Greer has a chance, i.e. even local Republicans are in a panic. Ahhhhhhhh, poor things. Most of agree that Greer is stupid, but even he is not that stupid to think he can win the Republican primary; that's not the issue. The issue is to have a stage and platform to mouth-off. He will get media coverage, because commercial media is not about news; it is about hiding and distracting the public from the real news that could be useful for them to take charge of their political lives. FMI about this check Rita's interview with Mark Pocan over NOTHING TO HIDE on August 5 @ 9 pm, channel 4
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 4, 1998 229 W. 43rd Street, NY, NY,10036 (E-mail letters@nytimes.com) (http://www.nytimes.com) Journal: Cross-Dressing Kickboxer Is a Big Hit in Thailand By Joseph Kahn
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Mohammed Ali floated like a butterfly. Mike Tyson bites ears. Parinya Kiatbusaba, Thailand's kick-boxing sensation, pecks on the cheek. In one recent bout, Parinya, 16, overwhelmed his rival with the swooping kicks, flying elbows and stinging uppercuts that make up the Thai kick boxer's arsenal. Then, arms raised as he pranced around the ring, Parinya planted a victory kiss on his opponent's sweaty cheek, lipstick gloss lingering there for a moment before the panicked victim's fingers scraped it away. "It is hard to fight beautiful men," said the tall, big-boned boxer, whose dyed hair is a few shades shy of his blazing red fingernails. "I can easily knock them out. On the other hand, I want to hug and kiss them."
That kiss sealed Parinya's status as Thailand's best-known kick boxer. His prowess in the ring is one reason. He has won 20 of 22 matches, all but two by knockout. But most people know Parinya for another sort of conflict. He is a kick boxer who cross-dresses, and that attracts attention and a few heckles even in a country famed for its tolerance. Unlike most of its East Asian neighbors, Thailand is not a closet society, and people have no problem with transvestites. Men outfitted and adorned as women are hosts of talk shows, live in all-gay housing projects and march in military parades.
Parinya's success has become a cross-dressing cause celebre. Transvestites packed the stands for his recent Bangkok match, giving the prestigious Lumpini Stadium a record crowd of 12,000. His rise has helped erase the memory of a slight two years ago, when two cross-dressing volleyball stars were barred from joining the Thai national team, on the ground that they would give country a poor international image.
But it seems that even Thais are fascinated by the specter of a transvestite competing in kick boxing, a no-limbs-barred martial art that requires such flexibility and fearlessness that few who have aged beyond their teens dare climb into the ring.
It is Thailand's ultimate symbol of masculinity. Baseball and basketball in one, kick boxing is a year-round pastime that offers provincial boys a chance for modest wealth.
It is also at the core of military culture. The sport was derived from 16 th-century hand-to-hand combat techniques, and combatants usually leave the ring bloodied. The Royal Thai Army remains its official custodian.
Parinya (pronounced pah-REEN-yah) revels in the contradiction. "I have the body of a great fighter," he said, fingering a purple pendant during a recent interview. "But in my heart I am a woman."
Between fights, he retreats to Chonburi, a gritty industrial city along Thailand's southeastern coast, where an ex-Olympian has set up a kick-boxing camp. Parinya is one of 20 trainees, all in their teens.
On practice day, a group of boxers, shirtless and dripping under a tin roof in 100-degree heat, have begun their workouts. Sparring, they thrust pointed bare feet at the necks of trainers, who use heavy-leather mitts as shields. Grunts fill the air. Boxers hop on one leg while the other thwacks the mitt in flurries of five or six. Coaches command "Again! Too soft Again!" until the boxers fall back, exhausted.
Parinya arrives late. He is wearing several rings, a black T-shirt and a clasp to hold his clumpy hair down. He sashays over to a full-length mirror where others are measuring bobs and weaves. Parinya preens himself, dabbing his bright lips with a tissue, smoothing his eyebrows, neatly tucking in his shirttails.
In the ring, his kicks are tireless, his punches sharp. "Some boxers have just one or two weapons," says his coach, Shane Muangchon, standing ringside. "Parinya has all the tools -- the kick, the elbows, the fist -- all strong." The young boxer's specialty is a long, sideways kick that rises a bit above the neck, then hooks down for extra force.
After practice, Parinya sits impatiently for an interview, flipping through a comic book and answering questions in shy monosyllables. Do fellow camp members harass him? "No." Why does he wear makeup to sweltering workouts? "I like to look beautiful."
He brightens when speaking of his family. His parents grow litchi fruit on a farm in the north, where he received a basic education and helped in the fields. Not an obvious environment for a cross-dresser, perhaps, but no matter.
By age 7, Parinya says, he was trying on his older sister's rouge and jewelry in private. A few years later, he started applying blush and lip gloss before school.
Parinya insists that his parents are relaxed about his cross-gender experimentation. But his father often took him -- he was initially a reluctant spectator -- to day long boxing matches at the county fair. And instincts aside, Parinya developed a boxer's lithe build. Standing 5 foot 7 inches tall and weighing 142 pounds, he is classed as a heavyweight by wispy Thai standards. "I think my father always dreamt that I would be a boxing star," he said.
It was cross-dressing that finally made him one. Though Thais are on the whole easygoing about transvestites, farm boys found bejeweled Parinya easy to ridicule. He was lured into more than a few fights, and soon learned how to win. "A person teases me only once," he boasted.
But Parinya's boxing skills alone would not have qualified him for the attention he has received of late. His first match in Bangkok, scene of the consolation kiss, was replayed on local television for days, earning him attention that even top kick boxers can only imagine.
Not surprisingly, he has doubters. Rivals suggest his success has been hyped because promoters covet the crowds he attracts.
But his streak of victories continues. Earlier this week he took on his first foreign opponent, a 19-year-old Danish fighter, Dennis Koebke. He sent the bigger Dane to the canvas three times with leg sweeps. The fight ended after Parinya unleashed a series of flying elbow attacks that left his opponent's face splattered with blood.
And for his critics, he has a simple answer. "Don't be distracted by my looks," he said. "This smile has knocked out 18 boys." ................Thanks to Rory H. in San Francisco for this tid bit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Follow-up on last month's emphasis on grassroots politics: Simply put, there's not that much PRO-active political things happening at the local, grassroots level, and the only way to get things activated is by getting people excited to do something by the state and national marches being planned for 1999 & 2000, i.e. the spin-off thing is the real issue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Follow-up on the on-going saga of the Sodom & G. story of the Old Testament -conclusion By now we have established the big possibility that for the most part it is not a true story but only a tale to explain the incident of the destruction of these two towns, i.e. there was no original true story of any coherence, only a fragment at the end: the destruction of the world story as a justification for what Lot's two daughters did to their father, so a story had to be created. How else to explain the destruction? Picture a "box" of stories (the Old Testament) from which you will draw your literary material. Recall how Old Testament writers have a style where they use parallels and/or pairs. So the writer hits upon the idea of using part of the book of Judges, chapter 19, verses 1-30,m i.e. very nasty stuff, like really bad. So the writer (later editor) takes a little from here and a little from there and stream-lines it, note the similarities between Genesis 19 and Judges 19. This is where the gang rape scenario comes from, i.e. Judges 19, and it's not even the same town. It's a near genocide attack on one of the 12 tribes of Israel (Benjamin) by their fellow Israelites. Check out Jonathan Kirsch's book mentioned last month: The Harlot By The Side Of The Road, page 224 ff.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SOCIALISTS AND GAY LIBERATION by Colin Wilson...yet, another installment
INTO the 1980's
In 1970 the Tories were elected after the betrayals of the 1974-9 British Labor government. The following ten years saw attacks on virtually every group of workers, from nurses to steel workers, many of them ending in victory for the bosses. They also saw attacks on lesbians and gays-most notably the Tories' Clause 28 in 1988 which aimed to stop local councils from supporting gay organizations or schools from teaching that homosexuality was normal.
Throughout the 1980's people fought back against the government's attacks. In the Great Miners' Strike of 1984-5 hundreds of thousands of men and women in the mining communities fought the government for a year. Lesbians and gays also fought back, organizing big and angry demonstrations against Clause 28. But, as before, defeats for workers and for lesbians and gays went together. As a result gay groups largely turned away from any idea of fighting for change. Separatism now meant not just organizing politically apart from straight people but living a life as separately from them as possible too.
The gay commercial scene grew massively in the 1980s in this climate of working class defeat and demoralization and became the focus for many gay men. The pubs and clubs of the scene offered an apolitical environment, which reproduced the sexism and racism of society in general. Increasingly lifestyle and fashion became all, with gay men judged solely in terms of their appearance. For lesbians lifestyle politics meant withdrawing as much as possible from any contact with men. Lesbian feminists developed increasingly right wing attitudes to sex. They argued for censorship of pornography and demanded that sadomasochists and bisexuals be banned from gay groups. Lesbian feminism fell into decline after its increasing moralism provoked a series of bitter arguments. The positive side of this was an increase in lesbians and gay men campaigning together - a development encouraged by the AIDS epidemic.
Some lesbians and gays joined the British Labor Party during the early 1980s as a way of fighting their oppression. The Labor left grew enormously in this period with much of it committed to fighting against the oppression of women, Black people, and lesbians and gays. When the Labor left won control of a number of local councils in the mid-1980s, it seemed as if real change was possible. But hope was short-lived. As Labor councils-right and left-implemented Tory cuts throughout the decade with virtually no resistance, the question of fighting oppression dropped off the agenda. Ten years on the Labor left and its strategies are in tatters.
The miner's strike The year long miners' strike of 1984-5 deserves special mention since it showed how links could be forged between gay an d workers. Though the strike was defeated the mining communities showed a determination and heroism which inspired everyone who believed that workers could be made better world. Sexist and anti-gay ideas were prevalent in many mining communities before the strike. But through the year long struggle those ideas were broken by women and gays becoming actively involved in supporting the miners.
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners in London collected thousands of pounds for pits in South Wales and brought the miners a minibus. Gay people from the group visited mining communities an d discussed gay oppression with the people there. They were not welcomed automatically- Mike Jackson, secretary of LGSM, writes that, when the group first wrote to South Wales miners, 'some...were openly hostile and suggested that they would made a laughing stock of the Valleys.' The experience of the strike changed this. In the words of Sian James, Secretary of the South Wales Women's Support Group:
"We turned our backs on lesbians and gays, we didn't have anything to do with them...We might have felt sorry for them, but what could we do- for years this was our attitude. But suddenly we were up for grabs. We were being attacked by the police, the media, the state."
Miners came to see that lesbians and gays were attacked just as they had been during the strike. Sian James explained the extent to which anti-gay ideas faded away:
"When you say to people in the [mining] communities that the gays and lesbians have been [treated badly], they say, "Oh! How are they; did you have a good time?' Some of my neighbors have said, "Why haven't you brought me to meet them?"[ a reverse Sodom & G]
The solidarity lesbians and gays had shown the miners was returned when a delegation of miners led the Gay Pride march in 1985, and when NUM delegates' lobbying at the 1985 TUC and Labor Party conferences led to the adoption of policies for lesbian and gay rights.
The example of the miners' strike completely undermines separatist politics. It reveals as nonsense the idea that lesbians and gays have to organize by themselves away from straights who are inevitably bigoted. It shows that workers with sexist and anti-gay ideas can be won to support lesbians and gay men when it becomes clear that both groups have a common enemy in the Tories and the bosses and a common interest in fighting them.
To be continued in the August issue.
Colin is certainly correct when he says that coalitions (the collective approach) are the name of the game. Since no one minority in the USA or anywhere can get what they want by playing the Lone Ranger, the only other possibility is in the joining with others who share a common interest. Who will we work with to build a bigger constituency? That means we MUST REACH OUT and extend ourselves to our minority peers. Where could that begin in Madison?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I just discovered where you can see movies for $1.75 any time: 5604 Odana Road in Market Square (back side). Tape recorded message of various venues: 833-1500. (Thanks, Greg Converse)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Confrontation We speak of both ends of a problem. In our GLBTQ situation we have support agencies which are what I term re-active politics, a term often used pejoratively, but it's not my intent to either label or trash. Re-active politics is.......what it is and it is desired and needed. Single issue, separatist, identity politics is a starting place. Some white gay men need their own space; lesbians need their space, and each ethnic / racial group needs theirs, too. It is a logical place to begin and, yes, to continue, too. However, it is not a strategy that will win us our civil and human rights.
Cleaning up the mess at the front end of our GLBTQ human rights quest needs to be seen as tied, connected and running tandem with the tail end of our need for broad mainstream community acceptance (votes and support). Unless we engage positively with the main stream, we will not be able to remove the stigma they lay on us. There is nothing wrong with building relationships with the broad main stream as long as we don't sell out or get sold out. If there is to be an assimilation, we are not to be sacrificed. Assimilation is on our terms. And our terms are not just the gay issue; it's the larger issue of ENJOYING diversity. Fear of the unknown evaporates when it is WELL known. And how else to be known than to get involved with straight folks in tasks which foster the self interest of both parties.
Working only at the tail end of the problem is not a holistic way of solving the problem. Hoping that the support agencies can carry the load of the front end of the problem is not a viable solution. Hope is not a method. There is a need for front end politics, i.e. pro-active political action. However, this is where we confront a serious problem. Most of us are middle class people, which (and hope I'm not too reductionist in this statement) means most of us in service / support agencies are by social class training non- confrontive. My guess is that this is not likely to change.
On the other hand, SOME of us (yes, even middle class folks) have been brought up in a social context where it is appropriate behavior TO BE CONFRONTIVE. Forbid I should use stereo-types, BUT, we New Yorkers ARE accused of being pushy, precisely because that's our "nature", the social construct of our parental and social programming.
We need both scenarios: the full spectrum of PRO-active & RE-active politics.
Bullies will continue to tag us, unless they are successfully confronted. Unless bullies see their behavior as unrewarding, they will continue doing it. Thus, the need for confrontation.
But confrontation also has the likelihood of a counter-productive backlash. How to minimulize the backlash? Use humor as your weapon of choice in the most public of contexts: embarrass your enemy in front of the widest possible audience. Humor usually make the enemy defensive, i.e. he pulls himself down even further, which is the icing on the cake.
The problem: it takes BRAINS to use humor as a weapon. We are so eager in our anger to lash back in emotion that we are not willing to do the hard stuff: mentally struggle for a clever "military" plan of attack.
How to do this? There are many ways.
A starting place is the need for a model to emulate, and one of the best was the late Saul Alinsky, a non-violent community organizer home based on Michigan Ave. in Chicago, The Industrial Areas Foundation. When you ask around to people who are the outstanding organizers of this century and inquire whether they knew of Alinsky, the acknowledgment is given almost with reverence: our own Robin Tyler, the late Representative Bella Abzug (D-NY), the late Board Supervisor Harvey Milk (San Francisco), the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the late Caesar Cevas (California grape/lettuce unions), on and on.
This is more than plugging in a computer function to accomplish a task. These people, Alinsky, Tyler, Abzug, Milk and others, had this confrontive characteristic as part of their personality, their being, their essence. It's not like a course you can take to be that way, although reading Alinsky's REVEILLE FOR RADICALS will help you understand what and why he did what he did. To get the attention of Chicago's mayor, Alinsky had his people sit in all the toilets at O'Hare Airport for 24 hours. To get the alderman to provide better garbage collection, he organized a community parade which was a clean up party where everything from trash to dog droppings was put in a dump truck and unloaded on the alderman's front yard. To get Kodak to integrate, Alinsky told the Board of Directors that he had just purchased a block of 200 tickets for the Eastman Rochester Symphony's summer season which were going to be distributed to the Black community after a bean dinner five hours before performance time. To get the administration of Wheaten (a conservative religious college near Chicago) to seriously listen to the complaints of students, Alinsky got the kids to chew gum and then throw it on the door steps of the administration building.
I'm sure there are variations of this theme which can be concocted out the particulars of each situation, whether they are responding to hostile billboard signs by the Wis. Christians (sic) United with air plane sky writing ("Surrender Dorothy" or "Judge not, lest you be judged") over Ralph Ovadal's house or a counter demonstration to the KKK where we give the main stream a chance to donate to a college / university scholarship for some minority gay kid. Not much humor in the last, but the right wing extremists would see that THEIR action leads to a broad community of support actually doing something against their perspective: a constructive confrontation.
The next step - build a movement We laugh when the word community is used, because, at best, we know that all we have is a few scattered groups and networks. That is neither a community nor a movement.
Look at the nature of our situation. Like the mistaken expression that "the USA is a melting pot" of minorities (it is really more like a tossed salad), so, what we need is a much greater number of small groups that are a mixture of gay and straight folks focused on areas of common interest. We might expand on the mini-models of PFLAG, GLSEN and High School Alliances. How about Black PFLAGs, Hispanic PFLAGs, Asian PFLAGs, Tribal PFLAGs as well as Queer Quakers teaching conflict resolution in after school programs as well as the NGLTF teaching Alinksy-styled political tactics to college / university aged students beginning with weekend conferences? Target the young. Target the grassroots. Target mixes of gay and straights. Target the health professionals who would focus on a larger perspective than only HIV, like smoking, drinking and drugs. What might queer lawyers contribute?
The long standing issue of community and parental neglect of the young plays a big role in why there are so many problems with kids and crime. Target mental health professionals to be active in the service agencies counseling groups like Madison had during the early days of the Gay Center (Will Handy). Professionally trained white folks, like pastors, need to do more than make written affirmations of ideological solidarity for queer coupling. They need to take the next step and make connections with their counter parts in minority communities in order to come together in their common task to "light candles" and "build bridges". What ever happened to the concept of ecumenicalism? Get banks and credit unions involved with sponsoring college and university scholarships for minority kids. Note the good work of the UW-Madison GLB Alumni Association in providing scholarships for gay students. Why UW-Madison only? Why not UW-WW, UW-Milwaukee, etc.?
Building a movement is made up of many, many little clusters of common interests. The end result does not have to look like the double helix of a DNA chain. That would be an image that is too tightly knit together, which would distract from the personal and the grassroots focus. The focus needs to be on the specific needs of each small group. The larger thing, a mass movement, a united front, will take care of itself if we do our homework by building a huge power base of little groups which deal with specific issues.
No one minority has the power, the votes, to get what they need. Within little over a decade the USA will no longer be a white majority country: let the GLBTQ community reflect that reality. Only by cooperation, coalition, a united front, and collective connectedness are we about to solve the problem on the front end. But how can we tie together what does not exist? We need more small groups that share a common interest. Is it possible to connect gay labor, gay women, gay Blacks, gay Hispanics, gay Asians, gay Native Americans, gay elderly, gay poor, gay youth, gay single payer national health care advocates (for people, not for profit), etc.? Am I asking a cat to be a tiger? Maybe it can be if we have enough kitties. The movement will create itself spontaneously if we, first, lay the proper ground work: getting involved in and creating a wide range of small groups from PRO-active to RE-active agendas with human rights for all.
Earlier history shows us how we were pushed out of the mainstream community, but our history for the past 40 years is one which puts the emphasis on the process of how we are gaining entrance into the mainstream straight society on our own terms. This means that as we push to get in, we are unseating those of privilege who not only cling to the past, but cling to those values which justified their privilege. Power is NEVER given away; power can only be TAKEN away (Alinsky). We have somehow forgotten that one of the main features of Old Testament stories was not only that what was divine was the struggle that would not give up no matter what the odds, but also the clever taking advantage of the possibilities in each situation. ------------------------------------------------ "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."
- U.S. Supreme Court in Loving vs. Virginia
Thank you, Matthew Alexander, for that tid bit; however, on C-span 2, Kevin Govern (Asst., Bureau of Indian Affairs) commented about the Supreme Court's new subjectivity (not his term) where the Court now sees things from the perspective of the insider rather than the outsider, and this is especially true of the Clinton appointees. (Sunday, April 19, 1998). *************************************************** POLITICS RULES OVER GOOD JUDGMENT June 25, 1998 The Federal Supreme Court decided today that the decisions of grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts have to cater to local morals and values. Here is an example of "Equal Justice Under Law" (the legend carved on the front of the Supreme Court) failing to give weight to the tax money and opinions of those who might know a thing or two about art. The Court has allowed the tail to wag the dog. The decision came down the day after National PBS broadcast of the recent restoration of the Michelangelo paintings in the Sistine Chapel (Vatican, Rome).
Michelangelo's work totally outraged the church conservatives of his day to the point that a few years later (shades of the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation) painters were hired to cover over the offending parts of bodies and the Church Council made a ruling against nudity in public church art. These "artists" were dubbed "the britches" painters. But the recent restoration has removed those rags. The TV show did not hide that fact that Michelangelo was homosexual. Likewise, there have been no reports of any one going uncontrollably wild in the streets now that the restorers have unveiled the "privates". (Like, who has even noticed?!)
The recent court decision echoes 16 th century Church morality (is O'Connor Catholic?). The decision throws a block in the way for government support of some types of serious art; indeed, for the PURPOSE of art, which is to break boundaries, provincial limits and perspectives, i.e. to broaden people's limited views. Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote the opinion, and her peers in this decision, don't get it. She has reduced the granting of awards to the lowest common denominator. These jurists are appeasers and ball-less in mind as well as in courage.
This decision encourages only trite agencies like the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater to get government support for providing stale and sentimental entertainment in their new auditorium; stuff that rots the mind in the heart of academia, but then what can one expect with a Chancellor (Whitewater) who marginalizes the arts curriculum for general studies? (And then they wonder why bureaucrats, even with Ph.D.'s, lack credibility.) Little local venues like Madison's Broom Street Theatre and Brave Hearts have more integrity and claim to our serious attention over the likes of reactionary policies sent down by the Supreme Court. It is the Court which has made itself obscene and in doing so, has trivialized our respect for the institution. Can you imagine the judges of ancient Greek plays to have behaved in such a shabby way?! This Supreme Court decision is yet another item to be added to the list of government meddling in areas that are none of its business, not unlike the decisions made between a woman and her doctor.
How are awards made? The selection process is made by a "jury of peers", i.e. fellow artists. This is the normal and professional way art prizes and awards are made all over the USA. (I ought to know; I was the Director of the Crossman Gallery @ UW-WW, so I have first hand knowledge of the process.) No one in the right mind will defend the proposition that this is a perfect system; however, you certainly don't want people with no certifiable training and education in art to be making the decisions. As I said, it is not a perfect system, but the alternatives look a lot worse.
The result of the Supreme Courts' decision is that tax paying artists and serious art supporters on the cutting edge of their profession have been neutralized, since money, funding and grants play a big role in the arts world. The Canadians have a much better system, just like they do with their single-payer national health care system: for people, not for profit.
~~~~~~~~~~~ In the August publication we will explore the political issue of what politicians, especially gay politicians, are doing for single folks. We hear all this talk about benefits for couples, which is a convenient bridge to connect with straight folks as something they can relate to more easily, but what about the idea that ALL people are to be treated EQUALLY in America? (We know that's a farce.) I can remember back when one member of the nuclear family had a salary which could support a family, but today wages have been suppressed (while company profits have soared) to the point where both adult members of the family have to work to make ends meet. Indeed, I can recall the words of the former Chancellor, Jim Conner, of UW-WW telling us faculty that the salaries we were making when we entered the employ of the University in 1968 had MORE value than our current salaries which included promotions, cost of living increases, etc., over the years. You can bet with the up coming elections, we'll be asking every candidate that question in our interviews in NOTHING TO HIDE - TV, where both former Assembly Person, Midge Miller, and former Interim Mayor and City Council Person, Rita Wlodarczyk, will be doing the interviews. Check in on Cable 4 , Wednesdays from 9 pm to 11
~~~~~~~~~~ Dear Exalted Campus Free-Speech Defender,
Thank you for signing onto the Defense of Campus Free Speech statement in conjunction with the Associated Students of Madison. As many of you know, we have been playing a waiting game for the last year -- awaiting the decision of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on the Southworth vs. Grebe case which threatens the very core of students' rights to democratically govern ourselves. But the time to organize approaches quickly -- we are expecting a decision on the Southworth case in August.
The fate of this lawsuit in Wisconsin is considered to be the litmus test for the future of campus free speech at a national level. The freedom to govern ourselves to provide for a more free, open, and diverse campus climate is something which our predecessors accomplished only after many struggles a generation ago. Now, at the height of the attack against democracy and free speech for students, it is essential that we defend these past victories vigorously.
It is time to start planning the long term strategy to protect campus free speech. As you know, this particular battle seems to be occurring with increasing frequency at the campus, state, and federal level. That is why we are inviting you to help us strategize with Robin Hubbard, the director of the Center for Campus Free Speech, on July 2, 1998 at 2 pm (TITU).
We are asking that your organization sends at least one person who can represent your group to coalition. Please let us know the name and phone number of the participants from your group by June 29, 1998 -- you can RSVP via email (ASM@macc.wisc.edu) or call 265-4ASM.
Please feel free to email me with any questions or comments.
In solidarity, Eric Brakken ASM Chair
P.S. So far, the following UW-Madison student organizations have signed on to the Defense of Campus Free Speech Statement. If you know of or are a member of any other organizations that should join the coalition, give me a call to get a copy of the statement.
> Adventure Learning Program > Alliance for Democracy > Alliance for International Students > Amnesty International > Asian-American Student Union > Bi? Shy? Why? > Campus Women's Center > Civil Rights Defense Coalition > Distinguished Lecture Series > Hillel > International Socialist Organization > La Colectiva > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Graduate Student Group > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Campus Center > Madison AIDS Network > Model United Nations > Progressive Student Network > Student Leadership Program > Students of the New Party > Ten Percent Society > UW-Madison Knitting and Craft Guild > Union Puertorriquenia > Wisconsin Black Student Union > Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group (WISPIRG) > Wisconsin Union Directorate > Wunk Sheek
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Alaska Ruling Supports Gay Marriage
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - A judge ruled Friday against Alaska's ban on same-sex marriages, ordering the state to show why it should be able to regulate who people marry. The ruling does not legalize same-sex unions in Alaska, but forces the state to prove a compelling reason why such unions should be illegal. Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski said choosing a partner is a fundamental right and the state Constitution protects both the ``traditional choice and the nontraditional choice."...