Now in Orange as well.
I already posted on one of the more interesting events of the Equality Summit from Saturday, the election/past year review. I wrote it at the event so memory was a bit fresher. If you haven’t had the chance to read that, it might be worth a read. If you’d like to relive the whole experience, EQCA has made everything available on Google Video. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 of the Election Review. You’ll find other videos along the Google sidebar from the plenary meetings. Part 2 has the very insightful Marriage Equality USA presentation and the David Binder presentation. I think the one thing that I hope people took away from Binder’s presentation, if they took nothing else with them, is that phone calls don’t work. It’s something that most field organizers can tell you. But it’s cheap and easy, but sometimes you get what you pay for.
There was a bit of fun to be had afterward with Asm. Tom Ammiano’s take on the situation. After all, it’s pretty hard not to have a smile on your face after 10 minutes of his jokes. But what I got out of the review panel, and from the speeches of Ammiano and many other leaders that were outside of the campaign was something more basic. Simply, don’t hide the ball. Marriage equality is about love. It is about two people who want to spend their lives together. No matter how much spin you put on it, if we win an election any other way, it is a hollow victory indeed.
Follow me over the flip.
And the consensus, put tactfully by David Binder (powerpoint here) and more bluntly by the amazing Eva Paterson. (Video here) As we move forward, and the electorate shifts towards a millenial majority, equality will trump bigotry. Paterson said it best when she said, paraphrasing here, “I’ll be more blunt than David Binder, the people who are against you are going to die.”
While it is a waiting game, there was a feeling pervading the room that it was more than just that. This was a campaign that we could have won, that we should have won. I won’t go into all of the mistakes, the failures to communicate, and the lack of honesty with the community, but I will say one thing. The next time this campaign is run, this time for an affirmative statement of marriage equality, it will be the community’s campaign. For better or for worse, the LGBT community will be visible in the next campaign.
As the day continued, I settled myself into the netroots breakout session. I’m not sure the group itself was all that productive. Or rather, it was productive in spite of the atmosphere. It was facilitated very old-schoolish, and it seemed that I wasn’t the only one chafing under the structured nature. Like most nerd gatherings, I think the group wanted to introduce themselves to the group and figure out what worked for them. That didn’t happen, but I did get the chance to have a good talk with the very clever (and hilarious) Heather Gold.
After a bustling lunch trying to fight with a few hundred LGBT activists and a few thousand LA artists trying to pile into two cashier stations, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa graced the stage with his presence. Villaraigosa was one of the most prominent opponents of Prop 22, in fact, we have a button that says “Speaker Villaraigosa says No Knight” or something to that effect. He welcomed us to the city, and all that fun stuff. The rest of the afternoon consisted of a few breakouts by region and a large meeting about talking about LGBT rights with people of faith and color. There were some really great ideas tossed around, and hopefully some of them will be incorporated into educational and campaign programs from some of the many groups at the meeting.
Near the close of the day, there was a meeting regarding strategy for getting marriage equality back on the ballot in case we lose the Supreme Court case. In a room full of men (self-selected, but still worth noting that none of the many women at the summit came to the ballot proposition meeting), a few good points of consensus were made. Namely, a general election would be preferred to a primary, and that the language should be more refined than simply repeal Prop 8. One issue that arose was the possibility of adding some language that addressed the religious concerns, something akin to what appeared in Mark Leno’s AB 43. The propositions already submitted to the Secretary of State, while a good sentiment, present large risks. One, if we happen to qualify one of these, we either get on the primary ballot, or more dangerously, a special election. Also, for the most part, these initiatives are simple repeals without any of the religious or other beneficial language.
The event got plenty of media coverage, several short blurbs, but also a long article in the chronicle by John Wildermuth. That appeared along with a “why do gays hate us” column by the always uninsightful Debra Saunders. It’s the same old tired refrains lamenting the disclosure rules and how the mean, mean gays are out to get all the people who just prefer to keep the gays second class citizens. She laments that people had to resign over their contributions to Prop 8. She wants the LGBT community to be tolerant of people who are not tolerant of us. Wouldn’t that be sweet of us? She of course misses the point by a mile. The bigots have a right to be bigoted, but our community, by the same token, has a right to not give our money to said bigots. It’s called a boycott, and it’s used on a regular basis by Christian groups against large corporations when they dare market to the LGBT community. Where is her outrage for that?
Finally, I think the meeting was worthwhile, which is perhaps more than I expected going in. That being said, I think the real winner from all of this was Equality California. After the election, they were not popular amongst the community, and for good reason. This event brought them back to the position of the lead organizer for California’s LGBT movement. I’m split on whether that’s a good thing or not. But one thing that I’ve been telling everybody, and might soon be working on fixing, this community still needs a political arm. This is true nationally, but especially locally. We have strong lobbying arms in DC and in Sacramento, but clearly we lack the deep bench of LGBT folks who know how to run a solid campaign, how to do large grassroots organizing, and run a field campaign in California. That must change, and perhaps some of these new groups forming might develop into something along those lines. But for the time being, we still need to work on the political side of the ledger.
