Untitled Document

As the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) brings its annual Creating Change Conference to the Northwest for the first time, Views invited national movement leaders to have a "virtual conversation" with local organizers. Each participant responded by email to a set of questions about the state of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) movement. Their varied backgrounds and perspectives provide a kaleidoscopic view of the movement's triumphs and failures.

The conversation starts with participants introducing themselves:

Lori Buckwalter — I have advocated for gender identity and sexual orientation rights as Executive Director of It's Time, Oregon! since 1996. Our educational outreach to the community at large and work on civil rights, healthcare rights, public safety and cultural issues, has resulted in trans-inclusive civil rights ordinances in three Oregon jurisdictions, a change in state law regarding transsexual citizens, and policy changes in a major HMO. I have received the following public awards: 2001 Portland Human Rights Award, 2001 Oregon Fair Workplace Award, 2002 Oregon Friends of Public Health Genius Award. I am also a songwriter and musician. My partner and I live in Southeast Portland. I am a Euro-American, pansexual trans woman, 52 years old.

Mandy Carter — I'm a 54 year-old southern out black lesbian peace and social/ economic/ racial justice activist. I do multi-racial, multi-issue, coalition-building organizing. I constantly challenge our LGBT movement by asking, "Are we about justice or just us?" The primary focus of my work in the near future will be on people of color LGBT organizing and organizing with our non-gay people of color community and movement.

Monst*R Esguerra — Currently I coordinate a Filipino American history project designed to document the first wave of Filipino migrant laborers whose lives, struggles for workers' rights, and heavy critique of capitalism have been relatively invisible since the McCarthy era. The purpose is to preserve their histories and the legacy they left to us, provide spaces for artists and young people, and to develop leadership through popular education. I am also committed to ending the illegal blockade on Cuba with the EveryWoman's Movement for Cuba and serve on the board of the Pride Foundation. I identify as a 25 year-old, happy yet high-strung, working class, Pinay dyke with the most beautiful wyfe in the world.

Stephanie Gamroth — I am currently the Portland organizer at Oregon Action and am 25 years old. I have also worked at the Sexual Minorities Youth Recreation Center and have done a lot of work with Rainbow Youth, a queer youth of color group. In my spare time, I'm working on transracial adoptee rights issues. As a queer Asian femme I think that racial justice is something we are lacking in the queer movement and is something we need to move forward on.

Lorri L. Jean — My first act of organizing was leading a successful campaign in junior high school to allow girls to wear pants. That launched 30 years of organizing at the state, local and national levels. Since coming out in 1979, I have focused most of my activism on behalf of the GLBT community. I am currently NGLTF's Executive Director and previously served as Executive Director of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center. I am a 45 year old white lesbian of rural, working class background.

Christine Kaufmann — I am a white 50 year old who has been co-director of the Montana Human Rights Network for the past 10 years. We organize community activists to speak out against injustice, hate violence, and right-wing extremism. As an out lesbian and a human rights activist, I was elected to the Montana House of Representatives in 2000 and am currently running for re-election. To date, my sexual orientation has not been negatively used against me in my public life.

Liz Moore — I am the Southern Nevada Coordinator for the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, as well as the chair of Equal Rights Nevada and its campaign against the "definition of marriage" initiative on the November 2002 ballot. During ten years of organizing for social justice, my work has ranged from environmental justice, to raising the minimum wage, to fighting racism in public transportation. In 1999 I managed the successful campaign to protect the non-discrimination ordinance in Spokane, Washington. For fun, I read, create rubber stamp art, jewelry and other crafts, and watch "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I am 29 years old, and white.

Eric Rofes — I am a gay, white, 48 year old man and a long-time community organizer working on issues ranging from public education to sexual civil liberties to LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) health. I am part of collectives to organize the third national gay men's health summit and the second national LGBTI health summit. As a professor at Humboldt State University, I prepare elementary teachers and teach courses on community organizing, and am a founder of the North Coast Community Organizing Center.

Emily Shannon — I am an 18-year-old white queer social justice organizer in Boise, Idaho. I work mostly with Your Family, Friends, and Neighbors. Right now I am focusing my energy on a safe schools campaign. I hope to make schools safe for queer youth. I graduated from high school last spring and hope that no queer youth will have to go through what I did at school.

Carmen Vazquez — I am a Puerto Rican Butch Socialist. Always have been. Ask my mother. I have been involved in social justice organizing for more than thirty years beginning with a demonstration to save trees on the South Campus of the City College of New York in the fall of 1967. The tree, the Puerto Rican Independence movement, the Peace movement (Vietnam) and the Civil Rights movement were all of kind for me. They still are. I just added sexual and gender liberation to the mix. I was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, grew up in Harlem, and spent nineteen years in San Francisco before returning to New York in 1994. I am 53 years old and currently Director of Public Policy for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in NYC. My lover, Carlie is from Ohio. We live together in Brooklyn with a dog named Bailey, also from Ohio.

This is the 15th annual Creating Change Conference. From your perspective, what are the most significant changes the LGBT movement has seen since the late eighties? What have we won, where have we succeeded; what have we lost, where have we failed?

Awareness of gay and lesbian people has been integrated into general society at an unprecedented level. (I do not believe that we have achieved the same level of integration for bi and trans people.) The primary factors responsible for this are, in my opinion: the visibility of the AIDS epidemic in the late '80s, the "gays in the military" debate of the early '90s, and the explosion of gay and lesbian characters in and coverage by the media of the late '90s — in combination with the tremendous number of LGBT people who have come out of the closet.

As a result, our movement has achieved something that was not true even 20 years ago: it is no longer possible for any gay or lesbian youth in America to believe that s/he is "the only one". Many of us older LGBT folk grew up in a society in which it was possible to believe that we were alone in feeling as we did. The resulting loneliness and isolation were horrible and unbearable for millions of LGBT people. Today, a young person who is becoming aware of his or her sexual orientation need only turn on the TV to see that s/he is not alone.

I believe that we have achieved so much in this regard that it means we have won the "culture war", even though it likely will take many decades for us to secure the fruits of that victory, especially given the disproportionately powerful influence in our nation's halls of power of gay-obsessed religious fanatics.

In broad brush strokes, we have made enormous strides at the local level, within the federal sector, and in corporate America with law and policy changes that recognize us and our relationships, although not completely (and we have much further to go in all of these areas). The transgender community has won in fighting its way into acceptance into the broader movement for gay and lesbian civil rights.

We have been failing horribly at the ballot box when our rights have been put to the test by the right wing — losing ballot measures more than 70% of the time. (However, I sincerely believe NGLTF is turning the tide there.) And we have failed at building racial diversity at the highest levels of our movement, although I believe that most rank and file staffs are much more diverse than they were 15 years ago.

There is a lot of queer content in the media now, such as Will and Grace, Queer as Folk, etc. but it's racist and ageist. As a queer-o femme of color, mass or indie media does not represent my queer reality nor does it give me a sense community where I live. As for the ageism, I super-respect what LGBT people had to go through and fight for so that younger generations and themselves have it better. But queer youth today have a different struggle and problems that older generations didn't have to deal with. Some older leaders seem to think that lesbian and gay youth have it easier. That is simply not true.

I became director of the Montana Human Rights Network in 1992, when I began lobbying for LGBT civil rights issues at the Montana State Legislature. At that time there was no visible LGBT political community in Montana. The Human Rights Network and the Montana Women's Lobby were the only groups active on LGBT civil rights issues. In 1994, the two groups founded PRIDE, the state-wide LGBT political advocacy group, which has held the issues of LGBT civil rights in the political debate in Montana.

So in Montana, the most significant change is visibility. We have won a legitimate place in the debate. We have succeeded in forcing other players in the progressive community to at least take notice of our civil rights struggle. However, that progressive community is still cautious. I think the LGBT community has failed to communicate as effectively as we might with other progressives about our common goals and our common enemies, perhaps because we are conflicted about our about our place in the broader progressive community. We have failed to educate our LGBT civil rights movement about the potential of a much bigger win if we aligned with the broader goals of obtaining a progressive future.

Our success has been in the total queering of America, however imperfect that has been and however ambivalent some of us feel about it now. On a powerful and visible level our drive to "come out" individually and collectively has had huge ramifications in improving the life chances of all people. Not only are openly LGBTI people now present in almost all the institutions of society (schools, government, media...) but we have contributed to altering the ways in which non-LGBTI folks experience sex and perform gender. The blasŽ reaction to the Clinton/Lewinsky hoopla, the popularity of "Sex in the City" lifestyles for twentysomething urban women, and the tremendous boom in web-based sexual adventurism are all the results of our efforts of the past 30 years.

At the same time, we've seen the LGBTI movement, especially outside of Creating Change, become increasingly conservative in deep and fundamental ways and fail to tackle the entrenched sexism, racism, and classism of our own movement. Likewise, the absence of a central communications vehicle for queer progressives is the greatest loss of the past few decades (since the demise of Gay Community News). The uncritical public deification of the nuclear family as the primary form of social organizations for lesbians and gay men denigrates our authentic lives that prioritize clans, networks, and episodic/ democratic social forms. The reluctance of queer political groups to be major voices demanding sexual freedom, national health care, and a reinvigorated democracy have been sad disappointments.

I started organizing around LGBT issues a couple of years ago through the Washington Lesbian Organizing Project (WALOP) sponsored by the Pride Foundation. Since that time, which was sooooo long ago, I have noticed a "trend" in dismantling racism, undoing internalized racism, and anti-racist white organizing and education in the queer community, mostly amongst lesbian/ dyke/ transgender/ women-identified/ and other identities I am still learning. I'm hoping that the "trend" is a genuine shift within queer movements and organizing towards addressing and overturning intersecting institutional oppressions. I really don't know where we've lost or failed.

I have been organizing for not even a year yet so one would think that I had not seen too many changes — but the opposite is true. I have done a lot of my work with the Boise School District and have seen many positive changes in that particular institution. With the election of a supportive and open-minded Superintendent I have been received very well and am getting some very important work done with the help of many others in my area.

I started working on trans workplace and medical issues, as well as speaking out for same-gender marriage rights. At that time, my activism drew directly from my own experience. I had to fight against workplace discrimination, healthcare discrimination and personal safety issues to survive and support my family.

I believe the most significant change since then has been a wider dialogue about sexual minority issues, especially the concerns of transgender and intersex people. In fact, the term "transgender" has emerged in this time as an inclusive term open to individual identification, replacing a focus on "transsexual" as an identity strictly defined by a medical condition. This has changed our approach to trans civil rights, allowing a fuller range of trans identities, expressions and issues, expanding the common ground with LGB concerns. Trans rights have finally joined other sexual minority rights on an equivalent basis.

We have won where our advocacy efforts have cooperated, from an understanding of the common causes and concerns that we share as sexual minorities, and when we accessed the progressive human rights traditions that have gone before us. We have lost when we fought against, or were suspicious of each other and our prospects for building an inclusive movement. We have failed when we could not go beyond the traditional approaches to communication and respect within our community, or when we saw our advocacy as competing. When threatened from outside, we have too often turned against each other.

My involvement with the LGBT movement began in 1978 when I joined a political club called Stonewall in San Francisco and subsequently spoke for the Club at that year's Gay Pride rally. I followed Harvey Milk and Sally Gearheart, both of whom spoke with clear high notes of untarnished inspiration about the Briggs initiative and how and why we would defeat it. What I remember about the late '70s and early '80s was the absolute conviction out queers had about the necessity of speaking to the American people, one on one, heart to heart, without apologies. We insisted on visibility as a strategy and we were right.

The AIDS epidemic gave us unprecedented visibility but it also further stigmatized us with a brush of disease. It put a screeching halt to progressive, grassroots liberation politics that the movement grew out of in the seventies. When you have to circle the wagons because your people are dying by the thousands, the opportunity to think outside that circle, to connect struggles of justice and peace and health and anti-racism shrinks. We built powerful institutions at local and national levels, but neglected grassroots community organizing. We made it possible for queer kids to see themselves reflected in the popular media, but only if those kids are white and affluent. We learned to mount glossy ad campaigns in battles to defeat anti-gay campaigns from the Right, but we lost the ability to go door to door and talk with our neighbors about the unfounded fear in their hearts that keep us separate from them.

We have utterly failed to develop and implement an anti-racist message and agenda in our work. Consequently, we have made little gain in our ability to develop alliances with organizations focused on racial and economic justice. The leadership of the movement as currently constituted simply does not understand why it is in their interest to look beyond "gay" or "sexual orientation" in the development of strategies to achieve equality and justice for LGBT people. Beyond the temporary community of Creating Change that the Task Force creates every year, there is, in fact, little mention of justice as something that applies to us, unless it comes from queer people of color. That is, in my opinion, a huge political miscalculation. We have much more in common with those seeking social, racial and economic justice than we do with people who are already privileged enough to not be concerned about the "isms." It is like Democrats who remain mute in the face of an impending war against Iraq. They're speaking to the wrong crowd.

I started organizing around LGBT issues in Spokane, WA, in the summer of 1993. An anti-gay group was collecting signatures to put two initiatives on the ballot. I was doing a summer internship with the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane and working with the group that opposed the initiatives. I wasn't out as bisexual even to myself at that time. Being part of the campaign was just a part of the fabric of my politics.

The movement has gotten much more sophisticated in terms of understanding how to craft a message, and also more professionalized. It's more in the mainstream of the electoral and political world in terms of how leaders see themselves. Most folks who are in positions of power in the movement see themselves as political power brokers who are on the way to the inside, rather than as leaders of a movement and members of a community.

We have had some wins because of that professionalization. It's allowed us access to resources. But those resources still come at the price of being willing to work within the rules of the conventional world of electoral politics.

I think we have failed in that our movement is often more about rights than about social change and liberation. There's a struggle — usually not even articulated — between folks whose goal is be "out" as CEOs of horrible corporations, and folks who would like to create change so that gender and sexuality boxes are opened up, eradicated, and/ or multiplied; so that we all get to live in a society that encourages us to express ourselves, while we get enough food and healthcare.

Many of the queer people who are the most visible (and who are therefore seen as leaders) are moneyed white men who expect to have healthcare benefits, survivorship rights to their homes, and so on, and they are not so interested in changing who has power in society. It's largely about property rights as far as they are concerned.

I think we also have failed in not doing enough leadership development and organization building. I've been involved in four campaigns, and all but one were defensive: if we won, things were exactly the same legally as they were before the fight. The challenge then is to use those times when we are defending against an attack as an opportunity to build power for the long term. Leadership development is crucial if we want to ever get to the point where there are enough people doing the work that it's actually sustainable rather than predicated on a few dedicated folks working 24/7 and being willing to push themselves to burnout.

The most significant changes I think that our LGBT movement has seen since the late '80s are the ever-growing number of visible and viable local/ state/ national LGBT groups with various focuses (media, faith-based, electoral politics, arts, international, community centers, health, etc.). We understand that securing equality and justice is about changing hearts and minds and changing public policy. So, not only are we in the streets (e.g., pride events) but we are also engaged in electoral politics. The inclusion of the bi and transgender movements and the increasing number of people of color LGBT activists and organizations around the country underscores our visibility and viability.

The ever-growing number of "firsts" for our LGBT movement reminds me of the number of "firsts" for other social change movements like the women's movement, the labor movement and the civil rights movement. The reality that our LGBT movement is in fact here to stay has manifested itself with long-term strategies and vision, and not always having to react to everything. The funding of our LGBT movement has given it financial stability.

We have taken on the radical right. What we've won: major visibility in the media; key federal, state and local legislation and court battles; beating back state and local anti-gay ballot initiatives; more out gay and lesbian elected and appointed officials; same-sex adoption rights and freedom to marry organizing. We have also lost some key federal, state and local legislation and court cases, and some anti-gay ballot measures.

Where we have failed: we are too LGBT-centric in our organizing and vision; too national organization-centric in setting our agenda; sometimes too celebrity driven. We do not have enough LGBT people of color inclusion; despite people of color LGBT activists and groups, we are still seen as a predominantly white LGBT movement. The faces and voices of our movement within both our own LGBT media and the straight media do not adequately or accurately reflect our true diversity.

Right now, what aspect of LGBT organizing for justice, freedom and equality gives you the most hope? What scares you the most?

In many respects, one of the things that gives me the most hope also scares me a great deal: the rights of LGBT people being placed on ballots around the country. I am hopeful because until last November , we lost 75% of anti-gay ballot measures. But we have won six of the seven that have been on the ballot from November, 2001 — September, 2002. I am scared because such measures are the favored tactic of religious political extremists in this country and they harm our community enormously. They distract us; they dilute and divert our resources; the hateful and false rhetoric they use frightens people; and they demoralize entire communities when we lose (as well as embolden our opponents and give political leaders an excuse not to support us). Further, and perhaps most importantly, they keep us from focusing on proactively advancing our cause. If we do not turn the tide on these measures, we will be in danger of losing the gains we have worked so hard to achieve over the past 30 years. The significance of these measures is why NGLTF is investing so much energy in trying to defeat them.

Another element that gives me much hope is the response NGLTF received to our plans to organize Creating Change 2002 around the theme of building an anti-racist movement. We have received an unprecedented number of workshop proposals in response to the RFP that we issued. People really seem to be taking this issue seriously. It makes me hopeful that we might be about to make some significant progress in building the kind of movement that many of us have been taking about and dreaming of and working towards for some time.

If we want to "create change" then some of the white people have to give some of their power up. It really is not enough to say "we want people of color" or worse, to complain and blame queer people of color for not coming to mainstream white queer events. Queer people of color organize and create their own communities — if you didn't know — and actually do really great work! I don't know why queer people of color are asked to blend in with the mainstream assimilationist movement to legitimize their work. If more white mainstream queers gave up some of their power and at the same time legitimized the work of queer people of color in their communities then I think the "including" would happen on a more equal power level.

The youth give me hope. Gay-straight youth alliances are emerging even in Montana. I find those who are willing to explore issues about sexual orientation and align with civil rights struggles during high school are flexible, critical thinkers who will succeed and lead our movement to the next place it needs to go. I am encouraged that as progressives of all stripes are being marginalized more and more, as they are in Montana, they embrace our civil rights movement more.

Hate crimes and institutional discrimination continue to scare me. When a lesbian couple is targeted for murder in Montana because they seek equality in the court system, I know none of us is safe. When the police focus their investigation on the women and consider the head of PRIDE a "person of interest," because of the speed at which he organized a rally supporting the lesbian couple, I know none of us is immune from differential treatment.

Gay Republicans frighten me. When our access to wealth and power blinds us to the needs of struggling people and separate us from them, I fear for our work.

I find the most excitement in the nascent LGBTI health movement and was a part of a wild summit this summer in Boulder that was nurturing, fun, and political. I am investing my own energy to generate a multicultural, multi-issue LGBTI health movement that is activist and daring. Stay tuned!

What scares me is the continued failure of our national organizations to embrace tactics that involve actual grassroots organizing: demonstrations, disruptions, and rallies that are savvy and about shifting the relations of power. Life after ACT-UP hasn't brought about national queer activism and I really wish NGLTF would take up this role.

The anti-racism work mentioned above gives me the most hope. The ignorance around 9/11 by the general public freaks me out the most. Don't people know 9/11 was horrible scheme concocted by the US military, government, and oil companies to fulfill their evil plot to destroy the earth and dominate and oppress everyone in the world, or am I the only conspiracy theorist here?

The thing that gives me the most hope in the queer movement is the youth. I have seen so many queer and straight youth alike acknowledging and fighting for the rights of queer youth to feel safe in school.

The one thing that scares me the most is horizontal oppression in the queer community, which is based on so many things because we are such a diverse community. Horizontal oppression is the use of oppression internally in a group that is oppressed by "mainstream" society, like the exclusion of so many of transgender people out of the queer community. The "good queer" image is a severe form of horizontal oppression. The idea is that if the queer community is to "earn" our rights, we should act like "normal" people with "normal" families. The idea is not that queer people should be accepted as they are, but that they should conform to mainstream society.

The area where I see the most hope, and where I am committed to working, is in empowering trans individuals to self-define and self-advocate, to develop a positive image of themselves and their community, and to be aware and informed about how to obtain and use their legal rights. Fear and shame have plagued our community for too long. We are finally breaking free from these, to become out, proud and whole on our own terms.

I am scared that current winds of political and social backlash will blow away the progress that the most vulnerable parts of our community have made. We have seen a series of frightening decisions from state and federal courts about the rights of trans people. Cultural bias as represented by these decisions seems to be alive and powerful as ever.

When civil rights become something to be voted on, democracy and liberty are in trouble. This trend, coupled with the assault on civil liberties launched by Bush and his cronies in the wake of the attack on the Word Trade towers and the Pentagon, makes me frightened not just for us, but for the future of democracy itself. The matter of changing public policy, not just hearts and minds is complicated, sometimes tedious and always multi-pronged. If we don't get better at the "multi" part, I'm afraid we will lose ground. The right has successfully taken the initiative on "voting for rights." It is not, however, just us they have done that too. Initiatives to derail affirmative action, to deny basic rights to immigrants, to usher in harsh and punitive welfare reform and to promote abstinence and punishment as answers to sexually transmitted disease and/or unwanted pregnancies have also been central to their platform. If we persist in responding only to that which is directed at us, we will continue to be in defensive positions at the electoral level. There is broad right wing agenda that understands multi issue organizing. We need to respond in kind.

I am also scared by the right in our own midst. They have influence completely disproportionate to their numbers, particularly in mainstream media circles. We need a strategy for inserting a stronger progressive voice into those circles.

I am inspired by LGBT youth who come out at younger and younger ages and who have articulated a desire for alliance work that is evident in gay-straight alliances all over the country. I am hopeful that this generation of queers will be more open to developing an anti-racist agenda for the LGBT movement than their elders have been.

The emergence of a much more articulate analysis of gender and gender rights inspired and led by transgender activists is also a source of hope to me, though I hope it doesn't degenerate into a gender-is-all discussion that would mirror the sexual orientation- is-all —discussion that has not served the LGBT movement terribly much these last two decades.

Programs like the statewide effort connecting people all over rural Washington give me hope because they are making a larger community and breaking down isolation while developing new leaders and political skills.

Also, I get a sense that in some places there are communities that have knocked down some of the barriers between the "LGB" and the "T." There are folks who are taking seriously how crucial it is for those of us who are not trans to act as allies to trans people. When I see that happening I get hopeful, because there is not nearly enough attention to transphobia within our own communities.

I also get hopeful at some of the conversations and actions about making our movement not only safe and welcoming for queer and ally people of color but actually an anti-racist movement that can articulate and act on some of the connections between oppressions.

What scares me the most is how apolitical many folks are, even when we are being attacked. I realize it's a survival tactic sometimes not to engage. But it's so frustrating when we're trying to organize against an anti-gay ballot initiative and people won't even register to vote. It also freaks me out at how clever the right wing is in packaging their homophobia as "protecting marriage." They have figured out that average voters are against "discrimination," which is how we've been successful at framing issues, so they move to "marriage," which makes people go blind. We have to figure out how to fight that.

What gives me the most hope: the number of LGBT folks and groups that "get it" that equality is more than just about being gay; coalition building with non-LGBT folks and groups; the ever-growing number of LGBT people of color activists and groups and the realization that they are essential to the future of our movement; the decentralization of our movement with so much going on at local, county and state levels; and the inclusion of our LGBT faith community.

I find hope in NGLTF being for real about its desire for people of color inclusion in the movement as witnessed by the "building an anti-racist movement" theme of this year's Creating Change conference. Non-people of color LGBT activists and groups are understanding the importance of the creation of and inclusion of an autonomous, independent, self-sufficient, progressive LGBT people of color movement and community.

What scares me the most: the small pool of and under-funding of LGBT people of color activists and efforts; the concern that LGBT groups with lots of funding will get to set the national agenda because they can afford to; non-people of color LGBT activists and groups feeling threatened when LGBT people of color want to have their own groups and/or activities (e.g., black prides); and George W. Bush, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld!!!

The future of our LGBT organizing will be best served with a stronger emphasis on partnerships and collaborations both within our LGBT movement and with our non-LGBT allies. My future work will have a very strong emphasis building a stronger relationship between our people of color LGBT and non-LGBT people of color communities (e.g., NAACP, Leadership Council on Civil Rights, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Congressional Black Caucus, etc.)

I also want to focus on inter- people of color LGBT efforts within our respective communities of color (black, latino/a, asian pacific islander, native american, etc.). With the population of the United States becoming more and more people of color every year there needs to be a corresponding people of color LGBT movement that reflects those numbers.

Defining Moments

More than 2000 activists from around the country will gather to build community, strengthen our movement, and have a great time at Creating Change 2002 in Portland. But more than that, this year we're all doing it with the explicit purpose of building an anti-racist LGBT movement. While this is an issue that many of us have been working on for years, this is the first time that it has had the level of national focus that will be provided by Creating Change. This is a focus that can tap strong emotions in all of us. And there are valid reasons for these emotions to include everything from skepticism to fear, excitement and hope. All of us are products of a society that, from its infancy, was founded upon racist exploitation, and racism continues to this day. None of us are immune from and all of us are diminished by the impact of such a society. In that context, it has been especially inspiring to see that the feedback NGLTF has received from people all over the country has been uniformly positive. And, in some instances, the excitement and optimism has been infectious. This is a conversation, a focus, a commitment that is vitally important for the future of our movement. While overdue, it feels to me like there are many things happening in our movement, our nation and our world that make this an especially appropriate time to be engaging in this focus. In fact, I believe that the people who are coming to Creating Change this year are dedicated to doing this work together, to engaging with a level of intellectual honesty, openness and commitment that is critical. We will all have an opportunity to be involved in something I hope will be the catalyst for dramatic, long-term changes in our movement. And if we can accomplish that, not only will we have done something extraordinary, but we will remember the experience for the rest of our lives.

In 1995, the Montana Legislature attempted to require LGBTs to register for life as sex offenders. As a lobbyist, I sat stunned and truly believed the effort would be successful in the Republican-controlled legislature. Within hours, organizing efforts around the state channeled an outrage I didn't know existed, into calls, letters and public rallies. The churches, the youth, and many, many straight allies responded. By the next day the story was on CNN every half hour, the national media was calling the governor, and phone calls swamped the tourism bureau. Embarrassed legislators apologized and reversed their votes. Our "victory" of course was to maintain the status quo in the legal arena, but it cemented our place with our progressive allies and the Democratic party. We were a visible part of Montana.

My wake-up moment came in a conversation with other middle-age boomer queers who were nostalgic about our organizing days in our twenties, but too attached to SUVs and job status to do anything about it. The stranglehold boomers maintain on our movement needs to be dislodged before younger people (joined by some who are older and still believe in the power of authentic activism) can fully rock the boat. The queer generation gap is about power and authority and is a huge barrier to social justice right now.

The emergence of so many gay-straight alliances all over the US demonstrates that youth in numbers are showing support for queer youth. This brings me to one of the best things in our youth: extreme bravery. To start a gay-straight alliance — even though they are often harassed and not supported by their community — shows extreme bravery and character.

The most profound moment of my career as an activist came when I facilitated and participated in a project called the Conversations Project. We brought trans people together with other LGB folks to share our life experiences, to talk about our feelings and concerns, and the trials that we had overcome to get where we were. We created a loving, respectful tribute to this process and made it into a public performance piece, called Transparencies. The insight, love and friendships from that event have remained with me ever since.

Defending that tree on the South Campus lawnÉand speaking at a rally in 1980 at the Women's Building in San Francisco organized to call for the community's support after a series of violent incidents meant to intimidate the newly opened building. The Women's Building event followed a fire by arson, a bombing and a month long bomb threat (American grown terrorism at its most intimidating best) was attended by over two hundred community members and Mission District residents. Most were queer, some were not. There were white people and people of color. We were united in our will to not let terror keep us from our work and our lives. I was privileged to give voice to that sense of unity and hope in coalition on behalf of the collective that owned and managed the Building. It is a hope that has stayed with me ever since.

In 1999 in Spokane we fought and defeated an attempt to remove "sexual orientation" from our new Human Rights Ordinance, which covered non-discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation. Because of the connections between some folks on our campaign committee and professional consultants who worked with top candidates, we got some great, hard-hitting campaign messages and materials that helped us win. But through those same connections we were in alliance with folks who had opposed the minimum wage increase I had worked for the previous year.

When farmworkers in North Carolina called for a boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle company due to poor working conditions, some of our gay and lesbian community joined in solidarity while others asked, "What do pickles have to do with my gay rights?" I hear similar questions about the death penalty, English-only policies, school vouchers, etc. and whether these are "gay issues." Once again, I beg the question of "justice or just us?"

The State of the LGBT Movement: A Virtual Conversation with Ten Local and National Organizers

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