Isak

Twenty Years Ago Today

... The first hole was broken in the Berlin Wall, cutting through a city and a continent that had been too long divided into "East" and "West." The Wall was one of the twentieth century's most destructive metaphors.

Today, the site of the Brandenburg Gate is a beautiful  pedestrian plaza marked by large openings ... inviting people to pass through. Fascinating comparison photos can be found here. For an overview of how the Berlin Wall came to be--with amazing, heartrending footage of how it affected Germans in the days soon after it was built--look to this excerpt from a BBC/CNN documentary on the Cold War:

The Morning After: A (Short) Word

Following yesterday's elections, I am hardly alone in having mixed feelings. I am unsettled with both disappointment, hope, gratitude and sadness. Here's why:

Kalamazoo, Michigan, voted for equality rights by upholding the LGBT non-discrimination policy that was on the ballot -- by an impressive margin of 62%, even in the midst of a transphobic opposing campaign about how scary bathrooms will be if Kalamazoo protects people from being fired for their gender identity.

Detroit elected its first openly gay politician, also by a large margin. Charles Pugh is now the council president. Cue my mixed feelings: this is an important milestone, and I honor that, but I didn't vote for Pugh. I don't think he has the right skill set for the council, and I just plain grieve for other qualified candidates (Lisa Howze, Rapheal Johnson) who should have won the seats they deserve. (And Ken Cockrel, Jr., deserved to keep his council presidency.) And seriously, JoAnn Watson beat out Howze? Good grief. This city council will no doubt be vastly improved--I'm thrilled by the election of Saunteel Jenkins, Gary Brown, James Tate, and Andre Spivey, for example. But still.

Oh, Maine, you break my heart. The contest was close--so tantalizingly close--but gay marriage was lost in the coastal state yesterday. I am about done with civil rights being on the ballot. Civil rights should be federally protected, not up for the opinions of the electorate. Can you imagine if, say, interracial marriage had been put to the vote? No. Our social evolution didn't happen that way. Related: Hear what the Golden Girls have to say about gay marriage.

My friend and colleague, Melanie Piana, won a seat on the Ferndale, Michigan, city council. I'm sure she'll offer sensible and compassionate leadership. This was her very first electoral campaign, and it's a testament to taking risks and the worth of dreams.

While the numbers aren't certain yet, it looks like Washington voters approved Referendum 71 and expanded gay rights.

Houston (Houston!) may have elected its first openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, but we won't know for awhile; that contest is going to a runoff election.

LGBT Equality Struggle Goes to the Ballotin Kalamazoo

It may be autumn, but it's getting hot in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

That's where a non-discrimination ordinance intended to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people is up for a public vote this coming Tuesday. In the final week, campaigns for and against the proposal are giving it everything they've got ... and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is protection against gender identity bias that is generating the most controversy.

From The Michigan Messenger:

Perhaps because the “T” in GLBT remains the acronym’s least understood category, efforts to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations — as Kalamazoo’s proposed ordinance would do — have highlighted the confusion and in turn, have been met with stiff opposition.

If fact, equating transgendered women with bathroom perverts has become increasingly routine.

Last year, after the city council in Gainesville, Fla., enacted a nearly identical anti-discrimination charter amendment to the proposed ordinance in Kalamazoo, opponents successfully petitioned a public vote — and they kept their message to voters simple.

“Keep men out of women’s bathrooms” became the semi-official opposition mantra. A memorable TV ad featured a young girl stepping off a merry-go-round and walking into a women’s restroom. After the door closed, a bearded man in sunglasses and a baseball cap entered ominously behind her. Then a question is posed: “Is that what you want in Gainesville?”

Voters in Gainesville ultimately backed the anti-discrimination charter amendment this past March.

Over the last several weeks in Kalamazoo, campaign mailings and door hangers have revived the same molesters-will-prey-on-women-in-the-bathroom approach from Gainesville – even utilizing some of the identical graphics.

Mara Kiesling, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Transgender Equality, is well aware of the tactic.

“I understand there are some people who are uncomfortable. But you know what? They’re just uncomfortable,” she told Michigan Messenger. “That’s what civil rights are about — minorities who are not allowed to have the same lives as the majority because of our cultural biases. Most of these people are still uncomfortable with straight men being in a restroom with gay men. And there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable about being in restroom with people of different races,” she said.

... Keisling also noted that anti-discrimination protections for transgendered men and women have been on the books in Minneapolis since the 1970s — without a single bathroom incident.

“It’s not that it doesn’t happen much, it doesn’t happen,” she said.

One Kalamazoo is leading the equality campaign for the 77,000 city residents through a series of TV ads, last Sunday's march, and old-fashioned canvassing and phone-banking. If it succeeds, Kalamazoo will join more than twenty other cities across Michigan that have enacted a comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance, including Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, East Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Ferndale. Look here to find more details on the Kalamazoo proposal.

Please consider donating to One Kalamazoo in this crucial final week, or volunteering, or spreading the word. And my god, if you are a Kalamazoo voter, vote yes on Ordinance 1856!

Friday Must-See

On this rainy October morning, take heart in this moving video:

This is from Mr. Philip Spooner's testimony last April for Maine's Equality bill, which was intended to protect the right to marry for gay people in the state. On November 3, Maine will vote on Prop. 1 about whether to make that right permanent. The No on 1: Protect Maine Equality campaign has been fighting hard to ensure that that the right to marry in their state doesn't disappear as it did in California one year ago.

It's not too late to donate or volunteer for the cause; in fact, the next couple weeks are crucial.

My Favorite T-Shirt and the NationalEquality March

One of my favorite possessions is a pale green T-shirt, worn to cottony thinness. It is stamped in black on the front with the words "I'll Be There!" and a seal for the "National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights: Oct. 14." I found it in the clothing room at Haley House; somebody donated it in one of those large trash bags full of curiosities. Someone also marked the shirt in blue pen at the hem: "1987."

I love this shirt because it meant so much to the person who had it before me. This person kept it for two decades before donating it, and penned the date on it to keep the memory fixed in his or her mind. What was it about that 1987 march that affected this person so much? Did he or she come out then for the first time? Was this person there to support a gay child? Was it the first march this person ever attended? Did this person meet another that changed his or her life? 

I wonder.

This weekend, twenty-two years later, the National Equality March is rocking Washington. I suspect more lives are being changed. Maybe more T-shirts are being collected as reminders of a moment that aims to be personally and politically transformative. The gay rights movement looks a helluva lot different today: bisexual and trans people are better recognized as partners in the movement alongside lesbians and gays; AIDS isn't nearly the secretive and shamed epidemic that it was then; and in six states in our union, same-sex marriages are honored (though some of those are still on shaky ground).

At the same time, the Defense of Marriage and Don't Ask Don't Tell policies are inexplicably still in affect; hate crimes and bullying against gay people, or presumed-to-be-gay people, persist (remember the two suicides last year of harassed 11-year-olds?); and in only six states are same-sex marriages honored. Gay people are banned from being adoptive and foster parents in about half the country, presumably because these states think it's better for kids to be parentless then for the kids' parents to be gay. Workplace discrimination is very real (UPDATE: In 29 states, it is legal to fire someone because of their sexual orientation). It is simply not safe for many people to come out. 

While I'm not there in person, my heart and spirit is marching in Washington today.

UPDATE: In what is, of course, not at all a coincidence, today is also National Coming Out Day. Check it:

Image Credit: The Bilerico Project

Heroic Helen

On "The Today Show," Ann Curry shines a light on Helen Thomas, hero to journalism and to anyone who cares about how this country works:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

DETROIT STORIES:Grace Lee Boggs, Still Kicking Ass

Today and yesterday, Democracy Now! hosted a two-part interview with Grace Lee Boggs, the 94-year-od civil rights activist, philosopher, writer, and Detroiter who I happen to fall all over myself in admiration. We can count ourselves damn lucky for the chance to hear what she has to say.

Part One features Boggs reflecting on social change, the economic meltdown, and new visions of democracy:

Part Two features Boggs on the city of Detroit, mass protest, the evolution of race politics, and "the legacy of socialist thought in the U.S.":

Monthly Review Press has just reissued a book written by Grace's late husband and visionary Jimmy Boggs: The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook.

Together, Grace and Jimmy wrote the classic Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, which was reissued last year. Both books feature new introductions penned by Grace.

RIP Crystal Lee Sutton(The Real-Life 'Norma Rae')

Crystal Lee Sutton's bold work in organizing the workers of a North Carolina textile mill against low pay and poor treatment inspired the wonderful Oscar-winning 1979 film "Norma Rae." More importantly, her courage led to unionizing 3,000 employees at seven Roanoke Rapids plants owned by Stevens in northeastern North Carolina. Later, she helped lead organizing at J.P. Stevens, what was then the country's second-largest textile manufacturer.

On Friday, Sutton passed away after a long struggle against brain cancer at a hospice. She was 68 years old. 

From The Washington Post's obituary:

Ms. Sutton, a 33-year-old mother of three who earned $2.65 per hour folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile plant, was fired in 1973 for her pro-union activity. Before the police hauled her off the factory floor, the 16-year veteran of the job wrote "UNION" on a piece of cardboard, climbed on to a table and slowly rotated so her fellow workers could see her protest.

Her colleagues responded by shutting down their machines, in defiance of management orders.

Her death is tragic enough, but here's the real burn: As Sutton suffered from cancer, her health insurance wouldn't cover her needed medications.

She went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn't cover it, another example of abusing the working poor, she said.

"How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death," she said. "It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."

She eventually received the medication, but the cancer (had taken) a toll on her strong will and solid frame.

Sutton's fight makes me think of the kind of courage and persistence that it will take to change how we care for the health of this nation's people. We do have an opportunity right now to change.

In her honor, let's get organized.

Sutton was once asked how she'd like to be remembered:

"It is not necessary I be remembered as anything, but I would like to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor and the poor people of the U.S. and the world," she said. "That my family and children and children like mine will have a fair share and equality."

In the spirit of remembering Sutton, below is a video from the movie that told her story to millions. "Norma Rae" is movie that, incidentally, isn't just one of the best films about activism that you'll ever see, but also one of the best about rural life, about blue-collar workers, and about misbehavior.

DETROIT STORIES: The Water Front

I'm always amused by folks who see one of the Great Lakes for the first time and exclaim in surprise about how they can't see across to the opposite shore. I get that most people have an association of lakes as being just a step up in size from a pond and usually closely enclosed by cottages and docks. But you'd think that even a casual glance at a map would make the truth clear: The five Great Lakes are the largest bodies of freshwater in on earth. They hold about 22% of the world's surface freshwater--enough water to cover the 48 contiguous U.S. states with a uniform depth of about 9.5 feet. About 35,000 islands dot them. Ships sit wrecked at the bottom of their depths. If you stand on the shore--or better yet, jump in the waves--the experience isn't much different than being in the ocean. Except that it is warmer, there is no salt, and the tides are smaller.

Don't make the mistake of underestimating their vastness, or their wildness. I grew up on the shore of Lake Michigan and it is the source of my first awe.

A place so blessed by water, however, isn't without its challenges.

Enter Highland Park, a tiny stamp of a city that's bordered on four sides by Detroit--a Michigan Lesotho, if you will. It's a couple miles from the Detroit River, which links the massive Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair.

A new 53-minute documentary called "The Water Front," directed by Liz Miller, asks: "What if you lived by the largest body of fresh water in the world but could no longer afford to use it?"

Jessica Mosby at The Women's International Perspective reviews the film:

Miller was able to gain incredible access to everyone involved in Highland Park’s epic water fight while letting the story unfold without prejudice. Her direction is not unbalanced, but it’s clear her sympathy lies with the underdogs – especially during interviews with insolvent and angry locals who are living with no water. She captures the callous financial team discussing how they are going to force desperate residents to pay their water bills, while taking home six-figure salaries. ...

Highland Park’s water issues may seem like an isolated situation in an unknown city. But water is, unfortunately, changing from a basic human right to a highly prized and profitable commodity. As evidenced by the misguided decisions documented in the film, communities cannot always rely on their governments to maintain the local infrastructure. The power of citizens to contribute real solutions and transform their cities cannot be overemphasized.

The Water Front is an incredibly inspiring look at the universality of grassroots activism started by individuals who take matters into their own hands to effect real change. And that’s something that flows abundantly even during the direst of droughts.

Is your curiosity piqued? Mine too. Keep an eye out for the film, which is currently on a Great Lakes tour.  Find materials for hosting your own screening--as well as guides for activists and viewers--on the film's extensive website. Use the film in your classroom. Watch more on the Water Channel (and wonder if they intended the pun on "channel"). Participate.

Quick Hit: MHL, Interviewed

Melissa Harris-Lacewell--who happens to be one of my favorite writers, scholars, thinkers, speakers, and Tweeters, and who I quote extensively--is interviewed today in the Feministing Five.

An excerpt from the candid chat:

(MHL:) ... Our entire political spectrum has moved so far to the right that most of what the left does is spend its time defending centrist positions that are really quite right of where we would like to be, but which are really the only tenable possibilities given the public discourse.

For example, last night, I loved Barack's speech, it was great, but did he really have to spend that time saying that he would ensure that there would be no federal money spent for the provision of the termination of pregnancies? That's preposterous. It's stupid, and it's also bad environmental policy and bad global policy.

The State has an interest in poor women being able to have full access to the best medical care and reproductive options that are legal and available to them. And it's always only poor women: wealthy women have always been able to seek out secure termination services from private physicians, always. So this is always a question about women without that kind of access. But there was no space for us, as feminists, to say "What the fuck?!" because what we have to do is nod, and keep moving, to at least get coverage so we can go get our colds and our cancer taken care of. But meanwhile, these fundamental issues of reproductive rights are still used in the batting cage of partisan politics.