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On
Oct. 11, as many as 200,000 LGBT activists and straight allies descended
on Washington, D.C., for the National Equality
March (NEM), whose single demand on the federal government was “Equal
protection for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people in all
matters governed by civil law in all 50 states! Now!”
March
participants and observers were inspired by the political potential
embodied in the huge mobilization. It included a high percentage of
newly radicalized young people, who created a sea of rainbow flags that
could not be ignored. However, out Congressman Barney Frank drew ire
from the LGBT community and others for his attempt to downplay the
march’s significance. He had said that the only impression the march
might leave behind would be upon the grass beneath the marcher’s feet.
Organizing
for the weekend-long event was done primarily via the internet—the blogosphere, Facebook,
Twitter, the NEM website, text messages, etc., and with no centralized
office or staff. Equality Across America (EAA) orchestrated the event
on a “shoe-string” budget of $250,000, a fraction of what previous
Equality marches had spent.
EAA
is led by Democratic Party member David Mixner,
gay liberals like Cleve Jones, and a more youthful layer, including Kip
Williams of One Struggle One Fight. There were no corporate sponsors.
According to The Nation, Williams said, “Every penny … came from
individual donors who believe in us.” No funding was received from
national LGBT organizations: “They didn’t offer, and we didn’t ask.”
Prior
to the march, on Oct. 9, President Obama
addressed an exclusive $250-per-head, black-tie event organized by the
nation’s largest and best funded LGBT lobby, the Human Rights Campaign
(HRC). As the keynote speaker, Obama promised
to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), which since it was enacted 16 years
ago has resulted in the forced dismal of over 13,000 gay and lesbian
members of the Armed Services. His remarks were often met with wild
applause. But many leaders and activists in the LGBT movement
considered his speech similar to those he had given on the campaign trail—eloquent
rhetoric with little substance. Obama offered
no concrete proposal for ending the homophobic legislation.
With
a decision pending to expand troop levels and to send between 40,000
and 80,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, and with the situation in Iraq
continuing to deteriorate, it seems that the administration is testing
the waters in order to discern what kind of response it might expect
from the Pentagon and Congress regarding the viability of ending DADT.
A
protest was organized outside the HRC event, and although the crowd was
small, the mood on the street was defiant, with demands to end not only
DADT but also the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA),
and for the passage of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The
former effectively bars same-sex married couples from receiving nearly
1300 federal benefits that heterosexual couples already enjoy and also
nullifies their marriages should a legally married same-sex couple move
to a state where their union is outlawed.
The
latter would ban employer discrimination based on sexual orientation
and gender identification. Virtually no progress has been made on DoMA. ENDA has been introduced in Congress and has
189 and 41 co-sponsors in the House and Senate, respectively. (See the
October Socialist Action for more on DoMA
and ENDA).
While
there are ongoing discussions among march organizers about
organizational strategies for how to move ahead, it seems unlikely that
a sustained movement can be created through decentralized on-line organizing. However, the political strategy is
clear, which is prefaced by the following statement on in the “District
Action Team Organizers Toolkit #1,” which can be found on EAA website:
“This is the dawn of a new day. We have a Democratic majority in the
House and the Senate. We have a president who acknowledges and respects
our community and who has committed to be a fierce advocate for
equality. That means that we have work to do! We have to hold them
accountable and keep the pressure high.
“The
National Equality March was a first step to build a national grassroots
network to do the hard work of demanding equality and holding our
government accountable.”
Cleve
Jones can be seen on a Youtube video embedded
in the EAA homepage, in which he says that “true equality can only come
with decisive, unequivocal action from the United States Congress, the
United States Supreme Court, and the president.” Thus, the major push
nationally is to organize teams throughout all 435 congressional
districts to “pressure” representatives and to campaign for candidates
who are “friendly” to LGBT issues.
The
sum total of this political strategy entirely ignores the potential
independent strength of 200,000 who marched in Washington and the 8.8
million LGBT people in the United States. The challenge for the
movement is to create an alternate political pole, to build a force
that is independent of both the Democrats and Republicans, who have
proven time and again that, as a whole, they are the political
defenders of a system that treats LGBT people as second-class citizens
(see the October SA for more on the Democrats and Obama).
Viewed
in this light, it is this type of strategy that earned the Democratic
Party leadership the title of the “graveyard of social
movements.”
Of
course, with so many newly radicalized people in motion around LGBT
issues, there is an opportunity for radicals to begin a discussion
about why it is so important to build an independent movement for LGBT
equality, and to win a layer to an anti-capitalist viewpoint based on
the idea that equality can be guaranteed only when the capitalist
system, which falls back on homophobia as part of its larger
divide-and-conquer strategy, is replaced by an egalitarian socialist
society.
Hate crimes
Obama recently signed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes
legislation. While the reform should certainly be supported, few think
that it will add any meaningful protection to victims of homophobic
attacks and has added to the illusion that Obama
respects the LGBT community and is a “fierce advocate for equality.”
Ironically, to guarantee the bill’s passage, it was made part of a
broader bill authorizing an additional $130 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The
Washington Post reported that “according the FBI, law enforcement agencies
around the country reported 7624 hate crime incidents in 2007, the most
recent year for which data were available. More than half were
categorized as racially motivated, and about 17 percent were based on
sexual orientation.”
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