Liberty Hill

Responses to Yesterday's 2010 vs 2012 Statement

A number of organizations are weighing in on the Prepare To Prevail statement we posted yesterday advocating that 2012 be the date marriage equality supporters unite behind for the next same-sex marriage initiative.

Here's Courage Campaign's response, followed by Love Honor Cherish's response.

Courage Campaign Statement on "Prepare to Prevail" Letter 

LOS ANGELES - Courage Campaign chair and founder Rick Jacobs issued the following statement today regarding an open letter released by API Equality, HONOR PAC and the Jordan Rustin Coalition on Monday, July 13:

"We welcome the 'Prepare to Prevail' letter from API Equality, HONOR PAC, the Jordan Rustin Coalition and so many others as an honest, open contribution to the deliberations through which the community is participating.

"The 'Prepare to Prevail' letter, along with Love Honor Cherish's compelling statement on moving forward in 2010, is part of a healthy, vigorous debate that should help to inform the community as we begin the process of choosing the best path to victory.

"We encourage everyone engaged in this movement to put forward their portions of the road map to victory so that together, we can all win.

"Back in May, we asked our members to vote on which year -- 2010 or 2012 -- the Courage Campaign should support going back to the ballot to restore marriage equality. The response was overwhelming -- 82.5% expressed support for a 2010 ballot measure.

"The Courage Campaign is doing its part by helping to build an electoral road map to victory, as are several other organizations that are laying the groundwork necessary to win back marriage equality. It is our responsibility to our members, who overwhelmingly told us that they want to go to the ballot in 2010, and it is our responsibility to the marriage equality community."

"That's why the Courage Campaign announced support for a 2010 initiative in May.

2010 or 2012? A Major New Coalition Says: Wait To Win

A coalition including many Liberty Hill partners issued the following statement today urging marriage equality advocates to wait until 2012 to put a new initiative supporting same-sex marriage on the ballot.

Since passage of Prop 8, Liberty Hill has intensified its commitment to this issue and building the bridges between people and communities needed to advance full equality for all Californians.

The full statement is below:

Unlike Proposition 8 in 2008, any upcoming electoral campaign for marriage equality would be one of choice, not one of necessity in fending off an attack from religious-right foes. Timing is ours to determine. Going back to the ballot to remove the voter-imposed ban on same-sex marriage from the state constitution in 2010 would be rushed and risky. We should proceed with a costly, demanding, and high-stakes electoral campaign of this sort only when we are confident we can win. We should choose to Prepare to Prevail.

Marriage Equality Has Strength in the Asian Community

We've been telling this story for over a year: Smart organizing by API Equality (and supported by Liberty Hill) secured majority support for marriage equality in the Asian community before last November's election. Read Reuters account. Read our story.

California Supreme Court Rules to Uphold Prop 8

Just moments ago, The Supreme Court ruled to uphold Prop 8. The 18,000 same-sex couples who married in the window in which gay marriage was legal have also been upheld.

No surprises here. The court's ruling is available in full here.

This is disappointing, though expected. Since November, Liberty HIll has been funding the next steps toward full equality in anticipation of this ruling. Find coverage of Camp Courage, one of the efforts we have been supporting, on our blog.

I feel lucky to be alive when transformational change in America is possible

I feel lucky to be alive when transformational change in America is possible. That's the first thing he said. Deepak Bhargava, nationally recognized leader with the Center for Community Change, launched his remarks today in downtown L.A. before 100 grassroots L.A. leaders with this key observation:

We have the country’s first community organizer in chief. But community politics and electoral politics don't work together much. They have had occasional one night stands, and then the next day denied that it happened. It will take a dynamic relationship between elected leaders and outside movements to make the changes we want to see. It will take organizing on a scale that most of us are not familiar with.

Watch the video of keynoter Deepak Bhargava.

We'll See Change

I wish I had been there in Washington, D.C. to witness the Inauguration of our 44th President. I would have been just a pebble in the sea of people that filled every corner of the Capitol…but I would have braved the cold weather and the throngs just to be there.

I had the chance to do the next best thing…to share the moment with co-workers at Liberty Hill. We had coffee and breakfast treats and took a seat to watch it all on television. And I was glad I was with friends…and my son, Roberto…to bear witness to President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

After he’d been nearly two years on the campaign trail, I admit I didn’t expect a “speech to end all speeches.”  It seems all that could be said was blasted month after month throughout the country as Barack spoke to thousands along the campaign trail. He said some truly wonderful things, and I was always amazed by his calm spirit, his vision, and his leadership which, even then, seemed quite presidential. He made a fine speech today, and I wasn’t particularly in awe – but I WAS moved by the historic moment. Most importantly, I felt reassured. I felt confident, and could sense the world watching with wise approval, with deep appreciation, and with anticipation for what lies ahead. And I was glad that our decision, our decisive vote, was a good one. I do believe we’ll see change, and in the long haul – it will be positive change that will touch us all personally.

A Message Dance For Inauguration Day

This week we will feature a series of guest bloggers sharing their reflections and thoughts on President Obama's inauguration.  Today, we are pleased to share a post by Marshall Wong, a longtime Liberty Hill supporter and activist.

This evening, as is my habit a couple times a week, I went to a jazz class at a dance studio in Hollywood.  All the students were assembled and stretching when the teacher arrived, proudly sporting his Obama T-shirt. He took us through our regular warm-up, across-the-floor work, and then taught us a combination choreographed to the version of "I Say a Little Prayer for You," by Diana King, made popular by the movie, "My Best Friend's Wedding."  Diana King is Jamaican, as is my teacher (by way of Panama, New York and Texas).  But I sensed that the choice tonight was more deliberate.

After the class, I asked the teacher, "Teaching that combination tonight, were you saying a prayer for our new president?” He replied, "I've been doing that ever since he announced his candidacy."  I replied, "So this was a "message" dance?"  He smiled. 

Through the window we watched an advanced jazz class in the room across the hallway.  They were dancing a glorious combination to the anthem, "A Change is Gonna Come."  I thought to myself, "Wow.  People across the nation, probably throughout the world, are greeting this moment in a myriad of larger and smaller ways.  Including the dancers."  How cool is that?  I will remember this day.

Moving Forward, Conclusion: The New Politics of "Yes We Can"

The world turned on November 4.  A new movement is taking shape. I was immersed in it for two months and from my 40 years of activist experience, I can tell you the following:

 

*The Obama movement is about finding commonality and shared purpose: E Pluribus Unum.  Both pragmatic and idealistic, it’s rooted in core patriotic values of democracy, equality and civic engagement.  Most of all, this new movement looks at the positive and not the negative traits of our schizophrenic American history, valuing above all the jagged journey toward justice – the progressive American story of ever-expanding  “liberty and justice for all”.  It brushes aside the culture of identity politics and its tendency for competing victimization: its motto is “YES WE CAN”, not “I’M OPPRESSED”.  It has faith that people can change if you treat them with respect; its stated mantra is “Respect, Empower, Include.”   There is no place for inequality in this new era, but after 30 years of Right wing power, America has some catching up to do.  Both homophobia and economic inequality have been hallmarks of the past thirty years of Right wing dominance in America, so we will need to do some work to align our different struggles for justice – economic and equal-rights.  But it will happen, with faith and hard work.   The winds of change are at our back, and when my Obama-campaign friends vow solidarity on marriage equality and defeating Prop 8, I believe them.  There is a new and diverse army of supporters out there just waiting to be tapped, for us.  Just as we will need to stand in solidarity to restore equal opportunity to economic security and achieve racial justice as we go forward.  All in the name of a shared commitment America’s highest ideals.   

 

At last Saturday’s rally, my longtime friend, former boss, and a true brother in solidarity for full and complete equality for LGBT people, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, gave a gorgeous speech about marriage equality that you can find all over YouTube. It included these words:    “In the eyes of the law and the eyes of God, THOU SHALT NOT DISCRIMINATE...…This is not just about protest and this is not just about the internet.  Let us go back to our homes and into our neighborhoods and start this conversation and take it to the shuls and to the churches and to every civic institution and to City Halls and to the Halls of Congress and all the way to the White House…..” 

If we do this, in very short order, we will beat Prop 8.  Not to mention help forge a new American movement for democracy and equality that cannot be stopped.

                                                           

YES WE CAN.  SI SE PUEDE!

Moving Forward, Part 5: One Final Critique of No on 8

Never again should our EDs run our political campaigns!  Next time, let’s engage our community’s nonprofit leaders as grass roots leaders, mobilizing their membership, staff and constituencies, and NOT as professional political campaign operatives.  I’m a four-time former Executive Director and I believe in longterm institution-building and the need for excellence in EDs.  But as one who was also Southern CA Campaign Coordinator for No on 64 (the 1986 AIDS quarantine struggle), believe me, the skill-set of a  nonprofit executive is NOT the same as that required to run a political campaign. We need to hire the best, toughest political campaign consultant and let them go, not constrain them with a web of bureaucracy: No on 8 had a big committee of 93, then a smaller committee of 25 and, finally, an “executive committee” of seven representatives of nonprofit groups.  The tragedy is that this unwieldy structure precluded BOTH a topflight political campaign and a powerful grassroots campaign – that is, the campaign structure itself diverted energies from a real organizing campaign.

API Equality: Effective Grassroots Organizing

There was one standout model of effective grassroots community organizing in the LGBT community this year; it was part of the No on 8 campaign, but it began autonomously and was a three-year effort: “API Equality.”  This campaign should be closely studied as a template for future efforts.  Volunteer driven, collaborative, muscular, inclusive and savvy, it engaged and leveraged community-based nonprofits trusted in their neighborhoods and ethnic communities, political allies, diverse ethnic media, and fearlessly confronted homophobic religious groups.  API Equality reached their ‘moveable middle’ through engaging allies and putting the human face of LGBT Asian Pacific Islanders front and center.  The result? 51% NO vote despite fierce homophobic resistance. Let’s celebrate this success and learn from it!  

Moving Forward, Part 4: Why We Should Have Won - We Know How To Beat The Right

Last week, I saw the must-see film, Gus Van Zant’s MILK, and was brought back thirty years to the No on 6 campaign against the Briggs initiative that would have fired gay teachers.  The ugly homophobic words of messianic homophobes Anita Bryant and John Briggs were the same words we heard from the YES on 8 folks, only the Right has gotten more clever over its three decades in power: there isn’t one celebrity spokesperson, and they wrap the package in a happy-yellow family picture.  But the themes were eerily similar:  we threaten their children, we threaten their religion.  And, yes, we’ve come a long way when we are fighting for the right to marry as opposed to defending the right of gay schoolteachers to work.  But, the film inspired me to speak out, because I believe in my heart that we could have beaten Prop 8 had we studied our own history.  30 years ago was a different time, a time of widespread social activism on the progressive side; organizing and coalition-building was the norm, and the latest human rights movement – ours -- learned how.   We came from a 25-point deficit to beat Briggs because we did exactly in 1978 what Barack Obama did this year to win the presidency: Build BOTH a professionally run, disciplined, topnotch top-down campaign AND an inclusive huge grassroots movement that engaged every single person possible in activist support.