Five years after the Millennium March fiasco, veteran activist Robin Tyler calls for an April 2008 March on Washington. (Source: The Washington Blade, June 10)
I agree with Tyler that gays should aim their fire at Democrats as well as Republicans.
But I also wonder whether folks like Tyler will ever realize that national marches drain vital energy and money from local and state equality efforts — and it is only through the transformation of local voter attitudes and local leadership that any change in Washington will ever occur.
No, Robin.
We do not need an umpteenth picnic and parade in a coastal blue state. And we certainly don’t need more news reports of circuit-party organizers withholding tens of thousands of dollars from Washington-area food vendors and charities.
It is past time for action, all right. It’s time for equality and freedom-of-religion advocates to rise up in the red states — in local churches, city halls, and schools. It’s time to compel the holier-than-thou to repent of strawman arguments, paranoia, harassment and warfare against fellow community members, people of faith, families — fellow Americans.
Well said, Mike!
I’d like to add that if the last march did anything, it underscored the huge gulf between those of us that can afford to be open about our sexuality and those who can’t. Looking over the attendees, one would have thought that the average LGBT person was upper-middle class. I wonder, though, how many people the community is failing through that image. How many people living in poverty can’t embrace their sexuality because they remain an invisible population?
Barney Frank at one time said something to the effect that marches and protests don’t accomplish much any more, and I tend to agree. As Frank suggested, political activism, everything from writing your congresspeople to just being out at the watercooler to being part of some social progress organization is what is needed today.
I think most of our problem in gaining the rights we deserve as American citizens as well as gaining social equality is by role modeling and having discussions and challenging wrong ideas with the people around us.