[danielextra]

BOOK TRAILER: Anatomy of Want is Daniel W.K. Lee’s debut collection of poems published by Queer Mojo, an imprint of Rebel Satori Press. Order your copy here or through a local, independent bookstore!

[liberalsarecool]

Keep in mind, Amazon workers rely on food stamps while Amazon posts record profits.

[usrnemo-deactivated20190914]

At a Pink Floyd’s concert somewhere in Europe, June 2018.

[staff]

🚨This is a Red Alert for net neutrality 🚨

Last December, the FCC voted to to kill net neutrality. If we do not take action, this will kill the free and open internet as we know it. The internet needs you—all of you—to make sure your voices are heard NOW.

We need all hands on deck for this one. It may be our last chance. If you’re feeling under-informed and overwhelmed about why net neutrality is so incredibly important, we have this handy guide just for you.

Here’s what you can do to save the internet:

In mid-May, the Senate will vote on a resolution to overrule the FCC using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). We only need one more vote in the Senate to win. Write or call your Senators or Representatives. You can also text BATTLE to 384-387 to get more information on how to write to your reps. You can do this, Tumblr.

Join us and dozens of your other favorite companies like Etsy, Vimeo, Reddit, and GitHub to raise awareness with the Red Alert campaign being run by Battle for the Net. Just add this small widget to your Tumblr to let your followers know how they can contact their reps. It’s as easy as copying and pasting the small line of code right into the customize theme page on the web.

This is important. This matters. It’s up to you to help. 

[staff]

The FCC has announced that they will end net neutrality on June 11. 

You can help stop them.  

The Senate is voting on a resolution to maintain a safe and open internet. Contact your reps—let them know you support net neutrality. This is it, Tumblr. Now is the time to act. Go, go, go! 

[danielextra]

Hugh Hunter Takes a Knee

It’s taken me a few moments to digest gay porn performer Hugh Hunter’s recent declining of his nominations for the resurrected GayVN Awards and calling attention to racism in the gay adult film industry. As a long time sexworker activist, person of color, queer, and cultural critic, I’d like to resist any knee-jerk reactions to his stance, which to my surprise, has come with side-eye from some queers of color. Hunter’s full letter can be read here, but I’d like to highlight a few parts that make his stand against the GayVN Awards a potential catalyst to an important self-interrogation that gay men need to endeavor if we earnestly care about a more just world.

Hunter writes:

As I browsed through he GayVN award nomination categories and its endless list of nominees I noticed a category which immediately struck my sensibilities as wrong and, quite frankly, turned my stomach. GayVN has created a category titled BEST ETHNIC SCENE. This category features, exclusively, the works of black, Latin, and Asian performers. It is a category designated specifically for minority gay adult performers. GayVN has chosen to segregate these models and create a category unto themselves.

Why? Why were these scenes not just included in the best scene category? Why would a gay porn company choose to separate minority groups into their own race at an event that is supposed to celebrate the gay industry in its entirety? Why would this category be created in 2017 when the political climate is so thick with racial divide in this country?

In his mind, the separation of an “ethnic” category is an antiquated division that unjustly puts performers of color in a different critical sand box. If we look at other major awards like the Oscars or Tonys as an analog, the suggestion to create a separate performative category for people of color would certainly be outrageous. But the racism which exerts itself in the mainstream film industry is not the same as the one that resides in the adult film industry. Sexual representation of queers of color is far more marginalized and our invisibility is not fixed by removing a category which brings attention to work that highlights performances by people of color. A separate category remains and retains an important political function in the same way Black History Month, LGBT History Month, etc. are relevant tools to counter a culture bent on erasing queers and people of color from history. This isn’t to say the category of “Best Ethnic Scene” isn’t problematic, but Hunter’s sentiment is not wholly incorrect either. We ought not have separate performative categories, but we don’t live in a world that consumes nor sexualizes bodies equally. Plainly, viewers simply don’t watch or react to white bodies the same way they do to non-white ones.

If, as Hunter writes, “starting a movement to eventually end racism and biotry in this beleaguered industry” is the aim, then we have to look at how white supremacy informs our personal desires, for it is what we have construed as ones “innate” libidinal reactions to specific bodies (usually white or white-looking ones) that creates the demand for them to be shot, edited, and delivered to your computer/television screens. Refusing to acknowledge how our visual (including porn) culture, how the racialized constructions of sexuality and its prioritization of whiteness, and how our “preferences” could very much be a product of these forces, is to ignore the real, multi-valent power of institutional racism.

Have you ever thought about the color of the bodies that populate your sexual fantasies? Are they almost always white ones? Even if you consider yourself thoroughly anti-racist, this question—if honestly answered—can elucidate how the desire for white bodies has been ingrained in so many of us. What about the diversity of your sexual partners? Has it been the colors of the rainbow or pretty much single palette? While we rightfully call attention to the racial make-up of the decision makers at the studios and how they do or don’t embrace diversity in various levels, the product they create responds to not only their personal tastes but also to the demand from their customers. Want to see more brown bodies reflected in the award nominations? Then brown bodies can’t be exotic/marginal/specialized tastes of the connoisseurs/racial fetishists, but part of the broader definition of “sexually desirable.” Dialectically, we need more representations of queer, brown, sexualized subjects to intervene against a visual culture fundamentally organized along a racialized sexual hierarchy.

Gay porn intersects race, sexuality, labor, visual culture, and consumerism in potent but often uncritical ways. Hugh Hunter may not have been the first to urge the industry to call into question its modus operandi with respect to race and racism, but his star power hopefully draws us into more frequent discussions and actions that need to happen for us to embody a truer sexual diversity. Doing away with “ethnic” categories does nothing to problematize how we understand racism in the construction of our desire (“preferences” if you will). But I’m glad that Hunter has leveraged his white privilege to co-opt the awards into a critical target zone. It’s a starting point and I hope broader issues like labor and compensation practices get scrutinized and challenged as well as the work toward a more just industry gets done. As with all things which require transformation, you can both be complicit to the status quo and refuse to see the problem, or awaken yourself to be a warrior of change. Or at the very least, get out of the way for those of us who choose the latter.

[danielextra]

by Daniel W.K. Lee The notion of gender performativity or how toxic Western male masculinity is to the psyche isn’t exactly new information here, but there are a couple of details in MTV’s Look Different Creator Competition-winning short film that I love how are rendered. One such is the “homosocial triangle” moment at the dance party that clearly develops the idea that the woman becomes the conduit to channel homosexual desire in a socially acceptable manner. Also, I like the subtly of how it depicted the ongoing psychic toll on the main character. There is a great second when you can see he is exhausted by having to be “on” and consequence for it is expressed through violence and self-loathing via homophobic verbal abuse. But what I disliked is ironically—especially for a competition surrounding the topic of privilege—is how we again have an uncritical look at how race operates in the psychic toll. “American Male” privileges whiteness as a universal subject and suggests that all men of any every color or culture create these gendered binaries to delineate acceptable masculinity. If that was the point filmmaker Michael Rohrbaugh was trying to make, it would have been more startling to have men of many colors, wearing the same clothes, playing the same character, in different shots, performing this version of masculinity (Think Sense8 here). But we only get a presumably cisgender white male who represents the American male subject and the effect is that viewers can gloss over how racial homogeneity, class congruence, and other socio-economic factors enable the kind of masculinity being performed. Are we really supposed to imagine that black masculinity performed by a queer black male would look similar to how it depicted here? That the narration wouldn’t be different? I am not poo-poo’ing the film efforts and the statement it is trying to make, but I don’t think we live a world that can afford to not have an intersectional analysis on cultural productions made for social commentary particularly if we are trying to put sunlight on the idea of privilege. We must stop allowing whiteness to remain invisible, navigate as the uncontested karyotype of the universal subject, and then act like that’s not what’s happening.

[micdotcom]

Watch: Everyone needs to see Jesse Williams’ BET Awards acceptance speech.

[danielextra]

Speech of the Year. Also, Sexiest Man Alive.

[queerembraces]

David Wojnarowicz wore this jacket in 1988, just 4 years before he’d ultimately die from AIDS. Sadly, just a few years ago some of his artistic work was censored at the Smithsonian. People in power are still content to try and erase his history and the continued struggles of people with AIDS

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In honor of Nancy Reagan.

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Why an HIV Anthology Now

by Michael Broder

The HIV Here & Now Project seeks out and publishes poems and creative prose with a contemporary take on HIV. It’s a queer project that is reaching across boundaries of race, class, gender, sexuality, and HIV status. Its intent is both literary (to publish awesome writing about HIV and AIDS) and political (to advocate for HIV testing, treatment, prevention, and reducing shame and stigma).

My entry point to the project was the print anthology piece of it. I read at an LGBTQ event in Minneapolis in April for the annual AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) conference, where I noticed that a few poets—including me—were reading poems about having been HIV-positive for quite some time. Indeed, I have found that it is increasingly common to find gay men in their fifties who have been poz (HIV-positive) for 25 years or more, and some of them (including me) are poets who write about that experience.

So I started thinking about an anthology that would include the voices of older gay men in that category, but also the voices of the many young queers who are getting infected every year, especially young black gay men and trans women. And I also wanted to include the voices of young gay HIV-negative men who felt the presence of HIV risk in their lives. I wanted work that explored prevention methods, like condoms and PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis, a pill you can take once a day to prevent HIV infection). I also wanted to explore the choice not to use prevention methods—barebacking while not on PrEP, the who-what-where-when-why of risky behavior. Even the very idea of risky behavior, the way it operates psychologically, socially, culturally, the way it stigmatizes and creates silos of opposing groups, good sex and bad sex, good gays and bad gays, people (regardless of race, class, gender identity, or sexual orientation) who got HIV because they were “looking for trouble” versus others who are seen as “innocent victims.”

Very soon after I began soliciting work for the anthology, I realized what a hard sell this was going to be. It’s not like soliciting poets for work about, say, food or travel. A lot of writers did not think they had appropriate work. It was a struggle for me to convince poets that they did not have to be poz to contribute, and that HIV could be approached metaphorically in terms of risk, desire, love, loss, survival, etc., as well as directly in terms of a narrative voice.

That’s why I started the online component of the project, the website. I thought a poem-a-day website would keep the project in public view and allow me to solicit poets for a project that felt immediate and urgent. I needed something to hook it on, like Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker’s Starting Today project (a poem a day for each of Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office) or Carey Wallace’s Lament for the Dead project (a poem on the death of anyone killed by police or a police officer killed in the line of duty in the summer of 2015). In fact, 2016 marks 35 years since the start of the AIDS epidemic. The public first became aware of what would come to be called AIDS on June 5, 1981, when a public health newsletter ran an article about five young gay men in Los Angeles who had been treated that spring for a rare form of viral pneumonia and who also had histories of other viral and fungal infections that were rare among people with normal immune systems. So that became my hook: a poem-a-day countdown to 35 years of AIDS on June 5, 2016.

The website took on a life of its own, with over 28,000 views to date, an average of about 4,000 views per month since it launched in June. Our single best day was 453 views on October 4, 2015, when Lucy Wainger’s “Mysterious Skin” (Poem 121) and Stephen Ira’s “Vultures” (Poem 122) were in heavy rotation.

This project is so important right now because HIV is so off the radar of most people—both beyond and within queer circles—and because HIV is still so very deadly with 1.2 million in the US currently living with HIV and 50,000 new infections annually. I cannot state enough times that the highest rate of new infections in the US is among young black gay men, trans women, and gender nonconforming people. Worldwide, the situation is even more dire (although the balance of affected populations may differ from that in the US).  

It’s also important because this is such a critical time of opportunity for ending the epidemic. If we could get all the people with HIV on treatment and all the sexually active HIV-negative people on PrEP (or consistent condom use without PrEP, whichever they prefer), we could virtually end HIV transmission within a decade. Really. It’s a matter of political will as well as a matter of adequate public and private funding for public health outreach and intervention. But it’s also a matter of cultural shift. One part of this shift is the need to end HIV-related shame and stigma so that more people accept testing and access prevention and treatment services. Another part of the shift is the need to address the role anti-black racism plays in perpetuating the epidemic. It’s no coincidence that HIV disproportionately affects black people. Racism impacts the allocation of healthcare resources as well as the level of trust (or mistrust) in the white-dominated healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. Just for starters.

And this cultural shift, I would argue, is where poetry and writing can play a role. Just as ecopoetics raises awareness and shifts attitudes about environmental protection; just as the poetics of witness raises awareness and shifts attitudes about social, economic, and racial justice issues; so too can poetry and creative prose raise awareness and shift attitudes about HIV, transforming it from an issue of individual responsibility, guilt, and shame into an issue of collective responsibility, public health, and, indeed, an issue of social, economic, and racial justice.

This brief essay only begins to address what The HIV Here & Now Project implies or can potentially become. HIV is an intersectional phenomenon, something that affects people regardless of HIV status and across lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as across axes of privilege and oppression. Gregg Bordowitz, a leading AIDS activist in the formative days of ACT UP, gave an impassioned speech to the general assembly of ACT UP on the very day he himself tested HIV-positive in 1988. His was addressing the membership about an action the group was planning around drug addiction treatment services. It would be the first demo ACT UP had organized to address substance abuse issues, which had long been seen as beyond the purview of ACT UP as an organization focused primarily on the impact of AIDS on the gay male community. He concluded his remarks with these indelible words (from The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings: 1986-2003):

We’ve got to ask ourselves who are the gays and who are the drug users? Who are the fags and who are the junkies? We have got to seriously question the names and categories used to separate the groups of people hardest hit by this epidemic. We have to take responsibility for these issues.

While so much has changed on the medical front of the ongoing HIV epidemic, those divisions among affected communities, by race, class, sex, gender, and increasingly by HIV status itself, remain. In some ways, they are worse, more pernicious, more pervasive, than they have ever been before, and therefore it is all the more imperative that lovers of social, racial, and economic justice fight harder than ever to tear off the masks and tear down the mythologies, the ideologies, that empower the state against its people. I conclude with these ringing words by HIV and racial justice activist Timothy DuWhite (from the essay Hunted by the State: HIV, Black Folk & How Advocacy Fails Us):

When I say the state, I am referring to the cultural pathology that positions black people as disposable, therefore worthwhile specimens for experimentation, yet unworthy of proper care and sustainability. When I say the state, I am referring to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in the 1970s to the 1996 jailing of poor black mothers who were unwitting research subjects in South Carolina, to the 1998 infusion of poor black New York City boys with the cardiotoxic drug fenfluramine. When I say the state, I am referring to a history of bigotry and patriarchy shrouded in anti-blackness. However, more supremely, when I say the state, I am referring to a prison I rededicate myself each and every single day to abolishing!

I do not pretend that poetry and creative prose can do but a tiny sliver of that work of abolition; but it is work that must be done, and The HIV Here & Now Project stands as one way, one of many ways, to marshal words and ideas in the service of social, racial, and economic justice – a justice that includes transforming the way people think about HIV, a justice that includes ending the HIV epidemic.

Michael Broder is the author of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS (Third World Press, 2010), edited by Kelly Norman Ellis and ML Hunter. He is the Founding Publisher of Indolent Books and the director of The HIV Here & Now Project. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman. 

[danielextra]

Empire State Pride Agenda Goes Out with a Whimper Not the Bang of Having Passed GENDA

Contributor Pauline Park shines the light on some of the dubious history of one of New York’s leading gay rights organizations and how its decision to shutter its doors seems in line with the short-sighted manner in which it operated.

by Pauline Park

On Dec. 12, the Empire State Pride Agenda abruptly announced it would be shutting down the Pride Agenda — which so many people over the years have called ‘ESPA’ — and its Foundation, though its political action committee will apparently remain active.

The announcement was reported by media outlets from the New York Times (“Empire State Pride Agenda to Disband, Citing Fulfillment of Mission,” 12.12.15) to Gay City News to PlanetTransgender.com. This is big news for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, because ESPA is the only statewide LGBT advocacy organization in New York and widely viewed as its voice, especially by members of the state legislature. In its Dec. 12 press release, ESPA declared:

The Boards’ decision comes on the heels of securing the Pride Agenda’s top remaining policy priority — protecting transgender New Yorkers from discrimination in housing, employment, credit, education and public accommodations — in the form of new regulations announced in partnership with Governor Andrew M. Cuomo at the organization’s Fall Dinner on October 22…

Of course, an executive order and even a state Division of Human Rights regulation can be rescinded by any of Cuomo’s successors as governor, so it does not have the force of an enacted statute law, and many saw this as a George W. Bush ‘mission accomplished’ moment, in particular because the Pride Agenda is closing shop without having gotten the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) through the state Senate and signed into law.

But Norman C. Simon, chair of the Pride Agenda board and co-chair of the Foundation, responded to criticism of the decision and the announcement of it by telling Gay City News:

We did not and are not declaring mission accomplished on LGBT equality. What we are saying is that our top priorities have been completed, and that the remaining work that needs to be done we will transition to other organizations in the coming months in an orderly process (Paul Schindler, “ESPA Leadership Pushes Back on Charge They’ve Declared ‘Mission Accomplished’,” Gay City News, 12.13.15).

In his story for Gay City News, Paul Schindler wrote, “Matt Foreman focused his criticism both on the way the Pride Agenda reached its decision and on the message the announcement of that decision sent,” quoting the former executive director as saying,

There was zero consultation with folks who spent their lives building the Pride Agenda. If they are going to make a decision of that magnitude, there has to be a consultative function. They need to talk to the stakeholders, to the communities around the state… This is an abrogation of a fundamental obligation that an organization has to its constituency… And, it plays into the national narrative that the job is done.

But the same could be said of ESPA’s decision to endorse Cuomo’s executive order without any consultation even with the coalition attempting to advance GENDA in the state Senate. I have been involved with what originally was called the GENDA Coalition from the beginning, far longer than all of the current ESPA staff, and I represented the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) in that coalition from its formation, and at no time was there even a conference call to discuss the executive order, which will have the effect of undermining any remaining efforts to push GENDA through the Senate. Why would the Republican majority in the Senate feel pressured to pass GENDA when ESPA and the governor are both touting the executive order/regulation as providing sweeping protections for transgendered people in the state? And the lack of even the most rudimentary consultation on the decision to endorse the governor’s executive action is why it feels to me like a backroom deal cut between ESPA and the governor rather than a genuinely community-driven policy victory. Hence the decision to settle for an executive order rather than to demand that the governor use his power and influence to push GENDA through the Senate — in which Republicans maintain a majority in large part due to Cuomo’s efforts to keep the Senate in Republican hands — is not only substantively questionable but really represents a betrayal of the transgender community and the process through which the GENDA coalition was working to achieve a legislative remedy to the lack of protection from discrimination based on gender identity or expression in state law.

(The author at Equality & Justice Day 2009. Photo from PaulinePark.com)

The most negative reactions to the news of the shutdown of the two most important parts of the Empire State Pride Agenda empire have focused on the organization’s abandonment of its transgender legislative agenda, Kelli Anne Busey writing:

Realizing the trans community’s worst fears, the New York Empire State Pride Agenda announced the shocking news Saturday that they are ceasing operations after 25 years of operations… [executive director Nathan] Schaefer just said the job isn’t finished without saying transgender and every fucking person in the room knows that’s what he’s eluding to. (it’s their little secret) They’ll just walk. So gay New Yorkers will spend money on making sure the laws protecting them aren’t eroded but will throw the T under the bus. Nice. (Kelli Anne Busey, Empire State Pride Agenda Disbands, Screwing NY Transgender People,” Planet Transgender, 12.13.15)

On Twitter, a number of people ‘tweeted’ critical comments:

This is what superficial justice looks like: “Empire State Pride Agenda to Disband, Citing Fulfillment Mission” (Jen Jack Gieseking @jgieseking, 12.13.15)

“We got marriage equality our work is done.” “What about trans equality, we aren’t done?” “Well we are!” (Mia Marie Macy @Miamariemacy, 12.13.15)

The closure of NYC’s @prideagenda is a sad indictment of legal activism. Marriage equality does not heal all wounds. (Senthorun Raj @senthorun, 12.13.15)

I have worked with every executive director and deputy director of the Pride Agenda from 1998 onwards as well as every transgender community organizer and every coordinator of the New York State LGBT Health & Human Services Network, which Tim Sweeney founded when he was deputy director of the Pride Agenda and in which I represented Queens Pride House (the only LGBT community center in the borough of Queens), so I actually know ESPA’s history better than the current members of the board and staff. And so my perspective is the long view, informed by my experience leading the campaign for the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002, in partnership with Tim Sweeney and Matt Foreman and other ESPA staff; it is also informed by my participation in the steering committee of the coalition that led the campaign for the New York State Dignity for All Students Act (DASA), enacted in 2011.

And so what I would like to do is offer an assessment of the Pride Agenda’s record from 1998 to 2015 as informed by 17 years of working with the organization. That relationship goes back to the founding of NYAGRA in 1998 and our very first meeting with another organization; several co-founding members went to the Pride Agenda’s old office on Hudson Street. In the cramped office in the West Village, we met with Tim Sweeney, then deputy director, to seek ESPA’s support for inclusion of gender identity and expression in the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA) then pending in the Republican-controlled state Senate after having already passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly; we also sought Pride Agenda support for transgender inclusion in the hate crimes bill, which had also passed the Assembly and was also stalled in the Senate. Tim Sweeney told us that NYAGRA should join the state hate crimes bill coalition if we wanted to have gender identity and expression added to the hate crimes bill; he also told us that ESPA was not prepared to add gender identity and expression to SONDA but that the Pride Agenda would be willing to work with us on a local transgender rights bill. As a result of that collaboration, we launched the campaign for the bill that would eventually pass the City Council in April 2002 and be signed into law later that month.

It is important to recognize that the Empire State Pride Agenda was a self-defined ‘lesbian and gay’ organization when we met with ESPA staff in November 1998; transgender simply was not a part of the organization’s mission and there was no indication that they had even considered including transgendered people in their work. NYAGRA was the first transgender advocacy organization in the city or the state, and its formation and our pressing ESPA on transgender inclusion in pending state legislation is what prompted the Pride Agenda to move toward transgender inclusion in its work.

Any assessment of the Empire State Pride Agenda has to focus primarily on legislation, because that is where the organization has made its mark, along with the founding of the Network and the funding that it was able to garner for the over 60 LGBT-specific social service providers in the state. The major legislation that ESPA played a role in getting enacted since 2000 have included the state hate crimes law (2000), SONDA (2002), DASA (2011), and marriage equality. ESPA also helped with the campaign for the New York City Dignity in All Schools Act (NYC DASA), enacted by the City Council in 2004 over Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s veto, though the organization didn’t play the leading role with that legislative campaign as it did with the aforementioned state bills.

The first and best-known charge of transgender exclusion leveled against ESPA is also the most misunderstood; it is often thought that the Pride Agenda stripped gender identity and expression from SONDA so that it could be pushed through the Senate in December 2002; but in fact, transgender-specific terms were never in SONDA; the more mundane truth is that ESPA simply refused to bow to pressure from various parties to add gender and expression to the bill when it became viable in June 2001 when Gov. George Pataki first expressed openness to supporting it. As executive director of the Pride Agenda, Matt Foreman cut the deal that secured passage of SONDA: in exchange for ESPA’s endorsement of Pataki for a third term as governor, Senate majority leader Joe Bruno allowed a floor vote on SONDA in December, with the bill passing with a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans before being signed into law by Pataki.

GENDA was introduce the next year and has since passed the Assembly several times but never the Senate, where it was even defeated in a vote in committee in 2011. The bill that did finally pass the Senate in that year was the Dignity for All Students Act, the first and so far only explicitly transgender-inclusive legislation enacted by the state legislature and signed into law. But the history of DASA does not reflect unqualified support for transgender inclusion on ESPA’s part. When Moonhawk River Stone was co-chair of NYAGRA with me, we were twice approached by Alan Van Capelle, then executive director of the Pride Agenda, about a possible compromise that could satisfy the Republican Senate leadership sufficiently to allow the bill to come up for a vote in the Senate. The first was an overture from the Senate leadership that entailed stripping gender identity and expression from the bill altogether; the second a proposal by Kevin Jennings, then executive director of the Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to water down the language of the Dignity bill to remove the definition of gender, which included identity and expression, and instead put ‘identity and expression of’ in front of the list of characteristics in the bill; the dubious language had never been tested in any court or even enacted by any state language. Alan Van Capelle convened a small group of transgender activists, hoping I am quite certain that we would all go along with the dubious proposal; but Hawk Stone and I stood firm and refused to put NYAGRA’s imprimatur on it. After these two overtures were deflected, the coalition continued to work on the bill, even after the lead sponsor in the Senate, openly gay Sen. Thomas K. Duane, completely lost interest in his own bill; Dignity did eventually pass the Senate in June 2010, ironically enough as a kind of consolation prize to the LGBT community for the Senate’s rejection of the marriage equality bill that would eventually pass a year later, in June 2011.

As for the marriage equality legislation itself, on the one hand, it is certainly true that it ultimately redounded to the benefit of transgendered New Yorkers as well as non-transgendered gay and lesbian New Yorkers; but many felt that those who would be the most immediate beneficiaries of same-sex marriage recognition in New York would be the relatively more privileged members of the LGBT community, including wealthy gay white Manhattan professionals who — just as Andrew Cuomo no doubt calculated they would — opened up their checkbooks to make donations not only to ESPA but also to Cuomo for his 2014 re-election campaign. The most deleterious effect of the drive for marriage legislation by ESPA and Cuomo as well as marriage organizations such as Freedom to Marry and Marriage Equality-New York was that marriage came to dominate discussions of LGBT issues in the state legislature and coverage of the LGBT community in the media for most of the decade that preceded passage of the marriage equality bill, to the detriment of discussion of virtually anything else. I can remember one media interview in which I attempted to discuss GENDA and DASA with a reporter who seemed to insist that marriage was the most important issue facing the LGBT community and misquoted me to that effect in her write-up, despite my having said the opposite. Because of the enormous media attention on marriage, even Tom Duane, the lead sponsor of both GENDA and DASA, lost interest in those bills and let them languish. Nor did ESPA do anything effective to pressure the Democrats when they were briefly in control of the Senate from January through mid-June 2011 to bring GENDA to the floor for a vote, when it would almost certainly have passed.

The Empire State Pride Agenda Foundation honored Christine Quinn and Louis Bradbury at its annual fall dinner in October 2012, which was a disgraceful political act intended to ingratiate the organization with the Council Speaker when she was preparing to run for mayor; the press release announcing the honorees declared, as Council Speaker, “she was at the helm of some of our community’s most historic victories, including ensuring dignity and protections against bullying for all students, and New York’s momentous marriage victory in 2011.”  Chris Quinn had little if anything to do with the marriage bill passing — the Speaker of the New York City Council has no authority in the state Senate — and she did nothing but sign her name to the New York City Dignity in All Schools (NYC DASA) bill as a co-sponsor; I was on the NYC DASA Coalition steering committee and Chris Quinn didn’t lift a finger to help us get the bill passed, which actually passed during Gifford Miller’s speakership, not Quinn’s; in fact, after NYC DASA was enacted, she conspired with Mayor Bloomberg to block its implementation by the NYC Department of Education (NYC DoE); so to give her credit for NYC DASA’s enactment is doubly false. The same ESPA release asserted of Bradbury “As Chair of the Board of the Empire State Pride Agenda, which under his leadership helped to secure passage of The Dignity for All Students Act.” I was on the steering committee of the New York State DASA Coalition and Louis Bradbury had zero involvement with that effort; the bill finally passed the New York State Senate when he was chair of the ESPA board, but enactment had nothing to do with him, and it was clear to me that he was just using his position as chair for yet further self-aggrandizement after he fired Ross Levi — ESPA’s best executive director, in my view — back in March 2012 in a sordid power struggle initiated by Bradbury that significantly undermined the organization’s credibility. Truth does not come from falsity and honoring the dishonorable only dishonors the LGBT community that the Pride Agenda claimed to represent; honoring Chris Quinn and Louis Bradbury by making false claims about their achievements was a disgraceful act.

In Virgil’s Aeneid, the last words of Dido, queen of Carthage, are:

Vixi et quem dederat cursum Fortuna peregi, et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago. (I have lived and run the run the course which fortune allotted me; and now my shade shall descend illustrious to the grave.) (IV. 653)

But could one say the same thing of the Pride Agenda? Will this organization be remembered fondly or be regarded as having fulfilled its mission? The manner of one’s passing says a great deal about an individual and I think the same is true of an organization. Organizations die just like individuals, and the rather abrupt, almost hasty manner of ESPA’s passing is telling. Just as the Pride Agenda consulted with no one — not even the coalition working to advance GENDA — when it cut a deal with Gov. Cuomo to endorse his executive order on transgender discrimination and give him a platform at its annual fall dinner in October 2015, so the boards of the Pride Agenda and its Foundation consulted with no one, not even former board and staff members, on the decision to close their doors. Norman Simon’s talk about an ‘orderly process’ of winding down and collaboration with other organizations to try to parcel out its current work seems to mask something quite disorderly. Because of the secretive nature of ESPA deliberations, it would likely be impossible to get confirmation of my suspicions, but I suspect that the board voted to shut down operations for the very mundane reason that ESPA and even its Foundation were no longer financially viable operations. As Gay City News reported:

Data available through the New York State Board of elections suggests the modest role PAC dollars have played in an organization that in 2011 had a budget of more than $5 million. Contributions to the ESPA PAC reported on the state website amounted to roughly $185,000 and $148,000 in 2010 and 2011, respectively, at the height of the battle for marriage equality. Since then, that figure declined to about $100,000, $98,000, $52,000, and $41,000 for 2012 through 2015, respectively. The decline in PAC contributions is part and parcel of a larger reduction in overall support for ESPA, particularly for the non-Foundation, 501(c)(4) entity, Empire State Pride Agenda, Inc. That is the part of the organization which is unlimited in its political activities, but for which donations are not tax-deductible. In 2011, the year in which marriage equality was won, the Foundation had revenues of $2,333,673, while ESPA, Inc. had revenues of $2,731,607. Two years later, in 2013, the most recent year for which public figures are available, the Foundation had revenues of $2,129,832, while income to ESPA, Inc. had fallen to only $504,391. The non-Foundation unit was also struggling with a negative net asset value of nearly $380,000, with outstanding liabilities of just over $600,000, the bulk of which was money owed to the Foundation (Paul Schindler, “ESPA Leadership Pushes Back on Charge They’ve Declared ‘Mission Accomplished’,” Gay City News, 12.13.15).

In a sense, then, ESPA was a victim of its own success, but one that its board should have planned for: it should have been clear even before the height of the marriage frenzy that the unprecedented donations flowing into ESPA’s coffers would fall off after the enactment of the marriage equality law; instead, Louis Bradbury and his board cronies killed the messenger, firing Ross Levi abruptly for the fall-off in fundraising that he had little if any control over; or perhaps, to put it more precisely, using the fall-off in donations as a pretext to get rid of an executive director with sufficient standing in the community to give him a degree of independence from a board that wanted to micro-manage the executive director and staff, replacing him with someone with virtually no relevant experience who could be more easily controlled. If that suspicion is correct, then one can only conclude that the increasingly precarious fiscal situation of the parent organization made its closing less a matter of ‘if’ than of ‘when.’ Hence the need to declare victory and go home; hence the need to cut a deal with a governor who had not shown the slightest interest in using his enormous power and influence over the Senate on behalf of GENDA; hence the need to avoid consultation even with what used to be known as the GENDA Coalition, because a negative to the question as to whether the shoddy deal that ESPA cut with Cuomo could not be entertained.

Of course, it’s not just GENDA, as important as our pending transgender rights bill is; it’s also the scores of issues ranging from police harassment and brutality to health care access to effective implementation of the Dignity for All Students Act to more aggressive and effective advocacy for funding for LGBT social services that constitute the work left unfinished by the Pride Agenda. ESPA could have taken a different path and expanded its work to move beyond the relatively narrow remit that the organization restricted itself to; and in fact, that was the direction the GENDA Coalition was moving in, having decided by general consensus in 2014 that it would expand its work to a broader agenda of social justice and social change. But the truth is that neither the boards nor the staffs of the Pride Agenda and its Foundation had any real interest in moving in that direction; the leadership was content to declare victory and go home after having ‘done’ SONDA, hate crimes, DASA and marriage. No one could deny that the enactment of such legislation isn’t a significant achievement; but the shoddy deal that ESPA cut with Cuomo that effectively undercut the work of those attempting to advance GENDA cannot be forgotten and will not be forgiven by many; it was the final betrayal of the transgender community after the solemn vow in the wake of the SONDA debacle in 2002 to secure enactment of transgender non-discrimination legislation.

Originally published at PaulinePark.com

Pauline Park is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) and served as executive director of Queens Pride House from 2012-15; she led the campaign for the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002 and served on the steering committee of the coalition that led the campaign for the New York State Dignity for All Students Act that was enacted in 2011.

[danielextra]

What's Not Wrong With Us: A JAKE Chat with Eric Schneider

Check out my JAKE Chat with Dr. Eric Schneider of GayLoveMatters.com where talk about Alan Downs' widely-read book The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World, sexual racism and the gay culture that keeps queer men from building lasting romantic relationships with each other.

[danielextra]

[independentcreativeservices]

The Unknown History of Latino Lynchings

(Warning: this article contains images that some may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.)

The following is a summary & analysis of Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review article, “Law of the Noose: A History of Latino Lynching” by Richard Delgado.

SUMMARY

Delgado attempts to shed light on a largely unknown history of Latinos, particularly Mexican-Americans in the Southwest U.S., who were lynched between the years of 1846 and 1925. This is roughly the same time that many Blacks were lynched in the U.S., as well. While many know of the ominous and horrific fate that Blacks and African-Americans saw in the U.S., few know of the lynchings that Latinos were met with. Delgado challenges scholars and institutions by trying to unveil the truth on this shameful past, while exploring the history of these lynchings and explaining that “English-only” movements are a present-day form of lynchings.

Although research on Latino lynchings is relatively new, circa 2006-2009, lynchings have a deep rooted history. Such acts can be described as mob violence where person(s) are murdered/hanged for an alleged offense usually without a trial. Through reviewing of anthropological research, storytelling, and other internal & external interactions, there is believed to have been roughly 600 lynchings of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans beginning with the aftermath of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (this document essentially ended the Mexican-American war, where Mexico surrendered half of its land to the U.S.). This grim fate of Blacks & Mexicans in the U.S. was intertwined; both groups were lynched by Anglos for reasons such as “acting uppity,” taking jobs away from Anglos, making advances toward Anglo women, cheating at cards, practicing “Witchcraft,” and refusing to leave land that Whites coveted. Additionally, Mexicans were lynched for acting “too Mexican;” for example, if Mexicans were speaking Spanish too loudly or showcasing aspects of their culture too defiantly, they were lynched. Mexican women may also been lynched if they resisted the sexual advances of Anglo men. Many of these lynchings occurred with active participation of law enforcement. In fact the article reiterates that the Texas Rangers had a special animus towards persons of Mexican descent. Considering that Mexicans had little to no political power or social standing in a “new nation,” they had no recourse from such corrupt organizations. Popular opinion was to eradicate the Southwest of Mexicans.

Many of these lynchings were treated as a public spectacle; Anglos celebrated each of these killings as if the acts were in accordance with community wishes, re-solidifying society and reinforcing civic virtue. Ringleaders of such lynchings often mutilated bodies of Mexicans, by shooting the bodies after individuals were already dead, cutting off body parts, then leaving the remains on display perhaps in hung trees or in burning flames.

These lynchings took place in the Southwest U.S., in present-day Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, amongst other states. The killings were carried out by vigilantes or other masked-men, as a form of “street justice.” These killings became so bad that the Mexican government lodged official complaints to the U.S. counsel in Mexico. Given that this region of the U.S. was at one time Mexican land, and it was shared with Indian/Indios, Mexicans, and Anglos, protests against the lynchings emerged. As legend has it, Joaquin Murrieta took matters into his own hands by murdering the Anglos responsible for the death of mythical figures Juan Cortina and Gregorio Cortes. Such acts were short-lived and perpetuated the conflict between Mexicans and Anglos.

Delgado goes on to cite that only some U.S. historians have written about these Latino lynchings and have pointed out that they occurred due to racial prejudice, protection of turf, and Yankee nationalism left over from the Mexican-American War. However, it has been concluded that such lynchings are a relatively unknown history due to a global pattern of shaping discourse as to avoid embarrassment of the dominant group. Those in power often have the ability to edit official records.

Further exploration reveals that these lynchings were not only edited & minimized outright, but were also ignored or misrepresented due to primary accounts in community newspapers being written in Spanish. Since very few mainstream historians read Spanish or consulted with these records, they were left to flounder. Also, many Latinos knew of these lynchings; their accounts were maintained, shared, and solidified as Mexican lore through ritualistically songs (corridos, actos, and cantares). Many oral cultures have equivalences of such interpretations. Today, Latino scholars are not surprised by history’s ignoring of such events; postcolonial theory describes how colonial societies almost always circulate accounts of their invasions that flatter and depicts them as the bearers of justice, science, and humanism. Conversely, the natives were depicted as primitive, bestial, and unintelligent. Subsequently, colonialists must civilize the natives, use the land & its resources in a better fashion, and enact a higher form of justice. The “official history” is written by the conquerors, thus showing them in the best possible light.

Delgado questions whether such remnants of Latino lynchings may still be present in society today. This can best be exemplified through movements to make English the official language of the U.S., forcing immigrants to assimilate to the dominant Anglo culture. Such actions can be illustrated in movements to end bilingual school opportunities and enforce English-only speaking at jobs, businesses, etc. Postcolonial scholars argue that such movements facilitate children to reject their own culture, acquire English, and forget their native language. These actions have far dire [documentable] consequence, like social distress, depression, and crime. As such, Delgado ventures to say that these actions are an implicit form of lynching.

Delgado ends the piece by saying that hidden histories of aggression, unprovoked war, lynchings, and segregation are corroborated/proliferated today by the mass media and entertainment industry. These groups, along with other scholars, have the opportunity to redress this history and reject further practices against Latinos. Otherwise, marginalized groups find themselves in a position where they are alienated from their family/identity/culture, co-opted, and unable to resist further oppression.

ANALYSIS

Such history is imperative to the framework of Americana and for acknowledgement purposes, not only because it is a matter of fact, but because this history is relevant to the ancestors of the land. History has always been exploited to benefit those who are in power, so to maintain their structures. However, today, I would argue that current powerbrokers would gain more respect & credibility by being honest with themselves and the actual history. Continuing to deny or ignore the history does an injustice to all. Current Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, and Americans alike would most benefit from this restoration for a few reasons.

First, a corrected version of history helps the people better understand themselves. Americans, Mexicans, the fusion of the two, in addition to people of the world, would recognize a better sense of their true identity & culture. The exploration of such history can perhaps allow for analysis of current rates of depression, crime/incarceration, and socioeconomic status(es). If we, the people, want to understand ourselves, we need to know the truth.

Secondly, if we want to understand why things are the way they are today, we can look to history. This shameful past can assist us in the interpretation of Mexican/American relations. Additionally, I believe that this understanding will help both groups reach a common ground with current relations. Since the year 2000 alone, the FBI has reported over 2,500 hate crimes against Latinos based on race and ethnicity. The U.S. is marred with a nasty & stalled immigration battle that is masked for hatred against Mexicans. In 2014, there is a continued, on-going crisis at the Southwest border affecting many children and families. With the history of these lynchings, it is now time for the “greatest country in the world” to make the wrong things right.

Again, we know that history can repeat itself, but only if we let it. Thus, the entire world needs to be educated on the true history of these lynchings. The more we are educated on such atrocities, the less likely we will allow them to happen again. Attacking the access of this knowledge is the third reason to explore this history. Ignoring the disastrous past does not make the history go away. With the knowledge of the truth, the Latino people can empower themselves to conquer stereotypes and achieve further greatness. Most Chicano/Latino studies programs in schools allow students to learn about their past while achieving higher marks. But in states like Arizona, educational officials have banned Chicano/Latino Studies in schools, and as a result have not allowed students to know the true history of the land they currently inhabit. This is not only a further atrocity, but it reaffirms Delgado’s point that current lynchings, lynchings of the mind, are happening today.  This is blatant lying and it is unacceptable; when we lie to our government, we go to prison. When our government lies to us, it’s no big deal.

Furthermore, for those who are tired of people of color in the U.S. raising points of contention about racial issues in this country, you now see the justification. This is why we won’t be quiet about racism, racial prejudice, discrimination, etc. This is why we’ll march in the streets for the Trayvonn Martin’s, reject the school to prison pipeline, and continue to spread awareness until administrative action is taken on a grand scale. Today’s generation is a bi-product and reflection of this history; not only are these “lynchings” continuing to happen, but the masterplan has worked. In order to achieve our full capabilities, we need to reject a fragmented history and seek a personal revolution, which starts with ourselves. And we can achieve this revolution through education & knowledge.

Be empowered.

Maximo Anguiano is a scholar, actor, and creative. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook. 

REFERENCES

The Law of the Noose: A History of Latino Lynching. R. Delgado (2009). Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 44, 297-312.

Lynchings in the West, Erased from History and Photos. K. Gonzalez-Day (2012). New York Times.

[danielextra]

[brandonkneefel]

I cannot honestly consider the fruits of marriage equality without a lens for the past and future. The past would give me perspective into generations of violence toward the LGBT community from policing (literal law enforcement and power figures such as clergy and community leadership). These...

[danielextra]

A great interview with Professor Aslan on the problem with atheist fundamentalism.

[danielextra]

A tremendous piece. Read it.