Equality Camp

This was the first time I’ve addressed a rally. It was a thrill to stand where Harvey Milk stood and speak some truth to people. Is your dignity up to any one else?
-heather

Equality Summit is a gathering in LA on Sat Jan 24th of mostly non-profit-y people to talk some more about how to repeal prop 8, work together, achieve 100% legal equality for queers, have people of colour and white people in the same room and actually discuss the No on 8 campaign. That’s what it says on the site.
EQCA is organizing this. Or they’ve hired Anne Marks to organize this and she’s doing a very friendly job of it too, emailing people ..including individual geeks like us to welcome us to the gathering. She’s also asking an important question “who else should be there that we haven’t yet invited.”

EQCA stands for Equality California. It’s the gay rights lobby for California. It is run by Geoff Kors who was also one of the main decision makers for the No on 8 Campaign. It must know something about lobbying because a bill to legalize marriage for all passed the California legislature two times two times.

(The HRC –Human Rights Campaign Fund, or national gay lobby has never passed a thing to the best of my knowledge)

However, the No on 8 Campaign showed, among other things, that EQCA and the many other alphabetical non-profits involved may not know so much about how to win a ballot initiative.

Anne asked me for ideas about the Summit and here they are, marked by “>” with her answers below:

>have a low cost or no cost access to the conference for individuals
it is free

>have open sessions that are run as collective inquiry to shared questions, rather than presentations or discussions of “experts”
(I run shows and conversations like this and am happy to help with a session or two if you’d like)
we are doing a mix of things, but mostly not “expert” talks

>minimize hierarchy and especially status (which doesn’t mean minimizing organization)
definitely a goal

>make sure there’s some kind of opportunity for the leaders of No on 8 to answer questions, be publicly accountable and *listen* to ideas from others. There is a lot of trust that needs to be built and this is a start.
in the proposed agenda, to be confirmed by the planning committee

>stream the summit online (not an expensive thing, can be done later if not live)
that’s the plan, just working out the details

>have wifi at the Summit
will do

>have a Summit blog / wiki where people can meet each other virtually.
working on it, with an application called kickapps. I know nothing about this stuff, so if you have suggestions about how to make it work, let me know

In a later email I asked the executive assistant at EQCA they’d be presenting info from the independent study they said they’d do (which I knew about thanks to commenter and Equality Camp attendee Michael Petrelis) and they replied “Equality California will indeed be presenting about the independent study of the No on 8 campaign. .”

Equality Camp is not an official non-profit and we hope it never will be. We’re just some people who want to do what we can to achieve legal equality for all GLBT people and cohere this movement with very simple geekery.

At this point I believe individuals matter much more than non-profits. I am hopeful that there will begin to be accountability and transparency at Equality Summit. A few of us will be going and then attending Camp Courage the next day
a grassroots training in the same vein as Camp Obama and also inspired by Equality Camp. You don’t have to have anything to do with a non-profit to go do this. But you do have to register, after which Courage Campaign will have your email address and then probably consider you a member.

Courage Campaign is working hard to focus on grassroots. EQCA is doing what it can to reach our to people of colour. Some lessons have hopefully been learned.

But we still have a great deal of mistrust, anger and confusion about money and accountability regarding the No on 8 campaign among interested people across the state.

There are dozens of non-profits. Each with their own memberships and Boards of Directors and funders and pride. The No on 8 Campaign dealt with this by forming a big Executive Committee. I

I’m interested to see an hear what they all want to do on the 24th.

I know I’ll be looking for the same things we individuals involved in Equality Camp are committed to:

• transparency
• accountability
• 100% open accounting for financials
• focussing on problem solving first
• all data is open and shared
• 100% legal equality is our common goal
• a commitment to the grassroots/ netroots principles that worked for Obama and that are worth believing in: Respect, Empower, Include
• an emphasis on intelligent analysis when looking at information, strategic thinking when planning and heart when communicating

I’ll blog, tweet and vlog and let you know what I se and learn. If there are particular questions you want asked, post them here.

-heather

Equality Camp SF 2009 – 35
Originally uploaded by chrisheuer

L to R Adina Levin, Tara Hunt, Hillary Hartley, Heather Gold, Cathy Brooks

Thanks to Chris Heuer for this great pic.

Equality Camp SF 2009 – 179

Originally uploaded by chrisheuer

We were in the midst of Equality Camp when Tara noticed 3 tall African-American men who had come into the room, but then left. She chased them down the street in her high heels and persuaded them to return. We offered them lunch and then they began talking with us.

The tallest man, the one who wears a collar, said is name was Slim. Everyone was affable and you could tell we all wanted to be nice to each other. But we just simply don’t see the world the same way.

I’ve had many religious Christians and Mormons tell me that being attracted to people of the same-sex is a choice. Another familiar refrain is that moral decisions aren’t up to the individual, they’re up to God. That’s what Slim is talking about in this photo here. (I have the earlier part of our group convo on tape and will post it late tonight or tomorrow).

While it’s something you can chat about over lunch, that’s not a conversation for a courtroom in a democracy. It’s already failed there.

Unlike many Christians I’ve met who want to give me these arguments, Slim doesn’t seem to feel like gay people are going to stop having relationships with each other. When I asked him if he believed that my wife and I love each other he said “Yes.” He hoped he could change our minds, but also acknowledged he didn’t believe it would happen. He said they committed to go to any event focussed on overturning Prop 8 to dialogue.

I much prefer direct contact. And it was very nice to meet. But I’m not sure I’d call it dialogue. At heart our world and reality views are so completely separate that it’s more like views being laid down side by side, rather than an exchange occurring.

thanks to the Courage Campaign for organizing this Flickr set
Send yours to pleasedontdivorce[at]couragecampaign.org
-heathr

I’m glad to see Geoff Kors do an interview. Lorri Jean of the LA LGBT Center and Kate Kendall of NCLR should do them too.
As should Patrick Guerriero. These are the people whom I know as the leaders of the No on 8 Campaign. If there were other leaders, the campaign should be making their ames clear and all of them should do interviews with independent press and blogs.

This isn’t about eating your own and being critical when you could be doing something.
We have had such an opaque process and so little public accountability from those who ran this campaign that public interviews with challenging questions are almost the only way I see the leadership regaining credibility with the many people who are not as involved in politics but who care a whole lot about this issue.

Legislative lobbying feels like a very faraway back room kinda thing to me and most others. The majority of queers, never mind Californians at large, probably don’t know what EQCA is. But we all know what Prop 8 is and we know what we saw.

We saw a campaign that didn’t reach people. We saw ads that were afraid to use the word gay. We saw lots and lots of Yes on 8 visibility and door hangers and attacks that went unanswered. Then we saw Milk and saw that the “paint the queers as corrupting children” is a very old political tactic, yet it seemed unanticipated. And we saw a Briggs initiative fight that seemed to reach out to average gay folks for their involvement. And we saw an Obama campaign that convinced people to get involved as organizers.
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