Becky’s Blog

I needed to wait.

When you write a lot, you know that there are times when you know you have no business behind a keyboard, or at the very least, no business writing on certain topics. I’m usually pretty versatile in that way, but I do have my limitations. I reached and exceeded one of those today, and it put me in a frame of mind that was not conducive to writing about the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

So, I waited, and now, I’m ready.

It’s late evening. The sky is dark, the air is cold, and a chilly breeze blows steadily outside my window. I think about the lives lost to hate violence and I think about reasons, cause and effect. It occurs to me that the connection every one should be but no one seems to be making between employment rights and hate crimes should be obvious, especially in the case of transpeople.

The connection, of course, is poverty. So many of these murders happen in economically-depressed areas because transpeople, and transwomen especially, not only have difficulty finding work in the first place, but have no legal protections against discrimination in most states.  As a result, our annual incomes are often so low than many of us find ourselves barely surviving. When your financial tank is that low, that’s when you can find yourself in living and employment situations that are less than safe. While many of us may pass well enough to avoid problems, there’s a significant number who can’t, transwomen who will be targets everywhere they go. They are forced into dangerous living and working situations by the extremely limited employment opportunities often available to unskilled and non-degreed minority workers in general, and adding anti-transgender bias into the mix, the unemployment rate for transpeople is estimated to be far higher than for members of other, gender-normative minorities.

The fight for employment rights is the fight to prevent hate crimes. It is simply different fronts of the same war. In the end, the Matthew Shepard Act and the Employment Rights Non-Discrimination Act seek to help achieve the very same thing: to make a better life and future for LGBT people.

It’s a cycle that needs positive action at both ends in order to break it.

I promised myself that the next thing I wrote wouldn’t have anything to do with ENDA or the Human Rights Campaign. Really I did. I’m about to sort of keep half of that promise, even as I fail miserably to uphold the the other half. In the aftermath of this latest skirmish, two things in particular have jumped out at me that I feel the need to say something about.

The first is a story about a protest planned for Tuesday at the legendary Stonewall Bar in the West Village in NYC while an HRC networking event is taking place at the bar. The organizer, Democratic activist and National Stonewall Democrats board member Jon Winkleman, has apparently organized this protest to demand that HRC President Joe Solmonese step down and that the HRC Executive Board begin to include at least 10% transgender representation.

While I can certainly understand, sympathize, and support Winkleman’s motives, at the same time I think his method needs a bit of work. Calling for Joe Solmonese’s ouster is like calling for the banning of a particular type or brand of handgun or assault rifle while others are allowed to remain legal. Lobbyists, like guns, can be easily replaced when they’re no longer useful…just ask Cheryl Jacques.

And 10% minimum transgender representation on the HRC Board? A nice idea, I suppose, but really, how much of an influence is that supposed to make in the organization’s actual agenda even if it was agreed to? If HRC would still be 9/10 exactly what it is now, how is that really a significant improvement, anymore than having three transgender-identified members on Hillary Clinton’s list of prominent LGBT supporters is really any better than just one when that group numbers almost ninety people total? Having Donna Rose on HRC’s Board clearly didn’t stop them from screwing over transfolks (not that she didn’t try), so why would a few more transpeople on that Board make a difference? And how many transpeople are really willing to or capable of meeting HRC’s astronomically high yearly donation requirements to get on and stay on that Board anyway?

The fact is, HRC doesn’t really want our participation at that level. They’ve demonstrated it in the way they cut Donna Rose out of the loop during this latest ENDA battle, and they’ve demonstrated it in the way they’ve set up their organization in a way that allows only the very wealthiest of HRC’s donors to have a determining voice in its agenda. The deck is stacked all the way up and down the line with a strict hierarchy based on wealth and influence, and the only way to make a real difference there would be a complete restructuring of their leadership and decision-making process. If the last several weeks have taught us anything, it’s that such a radical change in this organization and in the way it operates is highly unlikely to occur anytime soon.

My other issue is with the whole idea of protesting the Human Rights Campaign in general at this point. Obviously, as the veteran of two protests in front of HRC’s headquarters building in Washington, DC in 2004, the author of numerous articles, and the host of many radio shows covering these issues, I strongly believe in speaking out against this organization and the way they do business. At the same time, though, at this point I have to wonder if protesting HRC directly over their lack of inclusion at this point isn’t playing right into their hands, ceding them the moral and political high ground and acknowledging them as the leading LGBT civil rights organization.

When we protest these people and demand they change to suit us, we are also signaling that we still consider them credible leaders and ourselves in need of their support. If we really want Congress and the rest of the country to see HRC for the discredited hypocrites they actually are, we have to act in concert with what we know to be true and instead send the message that both HRC and its sellout advocacy style are antiquated relics of the past that the majority of our activists and our greater community are moving beyond, working together inclusively toward a better future for all of us.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of good opportunities to make our points through protest coming up. Personally, I’m hoping Barney Frank’s going to see some not-so-friendly faces on the campaign trail this season, even if it’s only enough to publicly embarrass him, not cause his defeat. I’m especially looking forward to seeing some action in Nancy Pelosi’s district. It is, after all, in the city with the single largest transgender-identified population in the country. Wouldn’t it be an especially powerful message to send, for example, if the San Francisco transgender community would work in concert with those who are incensed with Pelosi’s refusal to initiate impeachment proceedings again Bush and Cheney and the Democrats insistence on continuing to fund the war in Iraq to run their own truly progressive candidate and unseat the Speaker of the House?

Personally, I think that’s pretty much exactly the tack we need to take here. These people think they’re invulnerable, that the trans community, the war resistance, racially and ethnically-based civil rights efforts, and other progressive factions can’t hurt them in any real way. We need to teach them that we’ve learned that while we may be too small to have the necessary impact on our own, we can unite with other progressive political factions which don’t feel their needs are being served by the current Congress to accomplish what we can’t by ourselves or even with the backing of most of our LGBT brothers and sisters. We need to demonstrate that we can and will work in coalition with others to change the course of elections, that we can and will be heard, and that there will a steep price to be paid for not heeding the increasingly progressive will of the majority.

It’s unlikely we’ll get a better opportunity to do exactly that for some time if we don’t take advantage of it in this upcoming election . With a strong Democratic majority popularly expected to be the result of next year’s election, we can afford ourselves the luxury of holding the Democrats to account for their failures. We can go after people like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi because we know that in the districts which they represent, the anti-Republican sentiment is likely more than sufficient to prevent any GOP’er from having any real chance of winning it for his party.

There’s more to it than simply the message we’d be sending by successfully helping to boot Democrats we don’t like out of office, though. By forming coalitions with other strongly progressive factions like the anti-war movement, we are laying the groundwork and establishing the relationships needed for calling upon their strength to add to our own in fighting for our own political goals when the time comes.

This is probably the one thing you won’t see me criticize the Human Rights Campaign for. Choosing to have a presence at the Jena 6 protests was inspired, and the kind of thing those of us who truly are progressive should strive to emulate (yes, you heard me). It is of key importance to publicly draw the connection that discrimination is discrimination and bigotry is bigotry, no matter what the root cause and no matter who it happens to. In order to truly unite progressive Americans behind us and our equality under the law, we must reach out and take advantage of opportunities to work in coalition with other efforts like the one we have now.

At the same time we are sending out these strong messages, however, we must make sure they are the right messages. If and when we do choose to protest the Human Rights Campaign in the future, either directly or indirectly, we must do so in ways which are both effective in making our point and which don’t imply our acceptance of the notion of this organization as playing a leadership role in our community’s political activism.

As a community, both in the smaller transgender sense and the larger LGBT sense, we have to look for and take advantage of opportunities to make ourselves a part of the greater movement for equality and justice in America. We have to take our own struggle and use it as a starting point to reach out and make ourselves part of the greater progressive political agenda and movement of this country. It’s the only way to get ensure that when the next opportunity for progress presents itself there will not be even a question as to whether or not it should include us. Being able to depend on our loyal friends and supporters in the LGBT community has been of great benefit for gender-variant Americans and has gotten us to where we are now, an issue, a topic of much discussion and debate in the civil rights movement in this country, but as we have so clearly seen over these last several weeks, there’s still plenty of work ahead of us.

If we’re to finally take the next step, to truly be considered players and participants in the greater American civil rights movement, ready, willing, and capable of speaking for ourselves, then it’s about time we finally started acting like it.

Thursday, November 15^th, 2007 7-9pm Eastern, 4-6pm Pacific

 That’s right, we’re back, with fresh coat of paint and ready to kick some butt! This week, we’ll talk to Bil Browning about the Bilerico Project, one of the most popular LGBT blogs in the country. Plus news, your phone calls, and a whole lot more!

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In Two Weeks: HRC Executive Board Member and OurChart President Hilary Rosen!

Sometimes it’s hard to keep a certain amount of journalistic distance on a story, especially if it affects you or people you care about in some way. For me, ENDA has been, and continues to be, one of those stories. Since going full time about ten and a half years ago, I’ve lost at least three jobs for reasons I directly attribute to anti-transgender discrimination, and I can’t even begin to come up with a number for how many times I’ve not been hired for the same reasons. I’m essentially unemployed right now. All this has happened in New Jersey, bluest of the blue states. And oh yeah, we’ve got a state law protecting transpeople here, too. The problem is that in order for that law to even be potentially useful you have to get someone to hire you first, and all too often that’s just the first of your problems in the workplace when you’re visibly transgender.

Since I transitioned in 1997, it’s not unusual for me to have been unemployed for significant stretches of time. Not because I can’t work, not because I don’t want to work, but because the fact that I’m different keeps getting in the way of actually being hired. While I can’t say for sure, of course, with transgender unemployment estimates being what they are, currently between 50 and 7o percent nationally, I’d guess that my experience is probably pretty common. If that’s what it’s like for a lot of transpeople in the workforce in New Jersey, imagine what it’s like for some of us in less enlightened areas of the country.

That’s where a lot of my emotion around this story comes from. I know people who have been there and I have been there myself. I know what it’s like not to know where my next meal is coming from or where and when, or even if, I would sleep that night. I know how easily it can all come tumbling down in short order when an income source suddenly dries up and a replacement can’t be found in time. I know many of my transgender sisters and brothers are dealing with or have dealt with much the same issues for much the same reasons. Most of all, I know why we must demand that yesterday’s vote be no more than a building block toward a fully inclusive ENDA , not a shamefully poor substitute for one. Of course, we don’t actually know what will happen next, but I think we’re in what I believe is a unique position to influence the outcome. Probably not a lot, mind you, but maybe, just maybe, enough.

United ENDA is the seed from whence it should spring. There needs to be a solid, reliable , coalition-type organization formed to lobby Congress on behalf of the entire LGBT community openly and honestly, a Leadership Conference on Civil Rights for truly inclusive, open, and honest civil rights legislative advocacy organizations, if you will. We need to replace HRC in the community spokes-organization slot. We need to have our own scorecard, to help LGBT voters make real, common-sense choices based on the principles of fairness for all, not just furthering the interests of a small group of self-involved millionaires funding and setting the political agenda of a single organization. And yes, we need to cut HRC completely out of the loop, especially for the immediate future. They simply can’t be trusted to participate fairly and honestly, and everyone knows it.

The time to plan for 2009 is now. I’ve said that I believe Hillary Clinton will probably be our next President and thus far I haven’t seen much happen to dissuade me from the correctness of that notion. For all my misgivings about what another Clinton Presidency would mean for progress in LGBT rights, I do expect that she’d sign any ENDA that made it to her desk. We have to keep up the lobbying, the media coverage, all of it…we can’t let ourselves slip off the radar for too long. Most of all, we must make sure that we fully capitalize on every shred of guilt fair-minded Democrats were feeling as they voted for that crippled, non-inclusive bill. While that may sound cold, we can’t afford not to do everything in our power to make certain that everyone is included in ENDA ‘09. If we miss that boat, it’s gonna be a damn long time before gender-variant Americans get another chance to to even approach having basic civil rights in this country.

Most of all, our community needs to speak with bold, new, credible voices to those in power, community leaders who do not advocate political expediency and selfish personal agendas at the expense of that which is right, fair, and in keeping with real American values. We must reject the kind of top-down, “ivory tower” style of advocacy practiced by HRC and its allies and instead embrace the restructuring of the leadership of our movement to a model where the real decision-making power and the setting of agendas is placed in the hands of our entire community and its most skilled, dedicated, and inclusively-minded activists, not solely with the wealthiest and most well-connected, as has been the case until now.

Transparency must also be a hallmark of this newly restructured movement. It will take years, perhaps even decades, before some of the wounds opened here will ever have a chance to heal, and most of it is centered around issues of trust and dependability. The entire community, no matter what our political positions, social and economic statuses, or particular ethnic, racial, religious, gender,and sexual, labels we might define ourselves with, must have a certain, effective, and staunchly protected voice in how the issues that affect our lives are advocated for by our movement’s chosen (key word) leaders. It will not do to simply replace one ivory tower with another. There must be a complete and thorough restructuring of how this community advocates its own interests to those in power and to the American public in general.

The Human Rights Campaign has intentionally and willfully abrogated its right to be credibly considered as the leading voice and advocacy organization of this movement. HRC knew the will of the community, and they made public promises to our community reflecting that understanding. Yet, the moment those promises were truly tested for the first time, HRC reneged on them, taking the low road of political expediency over the high road of principle to advance their own agenda at the expense of the poorest, most vulnerable, and most harshly oppressed victims of the kind of discrimination the passage of ENDA would seek to protect against.

In my opinion, that isn’t real, honest, or credible LGBT community advocacy. A real advocate of any minority group shouldn’t be willing to put the rights of any portion of its constituency on the chopping block in order to help gain rights for others, and they especially shouldn’t be willing to trade away the rights of those most desperately in need of them in order to help ensure those selfsame rights for wealthier, more politically potent groups. We expect our advocacy organizations to stand against the will of politicians and others to divide and separate our community, not to help facilitate and validate doing so as HRC has done here. Call me an idealist if you like, but I just don’t think this kind of behavior gives HRC or any of its allies the right to credibly speak on behalf of gender-variant Americans, or for anyone who really believes that civil rights should be the birthright of each and every American citizen, not just those belonging to the most politically popular and palatable groups.

In my opinion, HRC has now redefined itself not as an LGBT civil rights organization, but rather as what it actually is, the lobbying arm of a small but well-funded special interest group of rich, white, lesbian and gay millionaires who act and speak only on behalf of themselves and their own narrow, self-serving agenda. That is how their actions have defined them publicly, and it’s how they should be seen and dealt with by the rest of the community as we move forward. HRC has proactively made its choices in this regard, and so too should the rest of us.

What we need now is a new movement, with a new agenda and a new way of advocating it, and a new level of involvement and influence in its leadership and advocacy for LGBT Americans at all levels of social and political influence and social strata. It’s the only way things are going to change for the better in any real way, and the only way we won’t find ourselves right back where we are now next time.

We can have all of these things, but only if we insist on them and work together to create them. I believe we can make it happen if we collectively acknowledge that we have indeed had enough of the way things have been until now and consciously choose to go another way, toward a path of liberty, justice, and true equality for all Americans, with no trade-offs, compromises, or selling out of those precious ideals, no matter how much political pressure is placed on us by politicians and others to do so. Not only is it the kind of movement LGBT Americans want and need, but it’s the kind of movement we deserve and have a right to expect.

We can do better, far better, if we set our minds to making it happen, and I believe it’s high time we did exactly that.

As many expected, the Human Rights Campaign, in concert with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) and a few of its member organizations, yesterday effectively renounced its previous public promises and statements on the issue, and has now completely turned their backs on the poorest and most harshly oppressed segments of the American LGBT community by actively supporting the passage of the flawed and crippled version of ENDA currently being promoted by the House Democratic leadership, which is expected to be voted on tomorrow.

Appearing on the “Michelangelo Signorile Show” yesterday, HRC President Joe Solmonese was in full spin mode, unsuccessfully attempting to explain away the organization’s support for “CripplENDA”, the non-inclusive version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, in direct violation of their vote in 2004 not to support or endorse any legislation that isn’t specifically inclusive of protections for the gender-variant. Solmonese hemmed and hawed throughout the interview, claiming that he “misspoke” when he said in an address to nearly a thousand transpeople at the Southern Comfort Conference in September that HRC “…would not support and in fact, oppose any legislation that is not absolutely inclusive.”.

In a letter to Members of Congress today also signed by LCCR, American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees, NAACP, National Education Association, National Employment Lawyers Association, and Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, HRC turned its back on that promise, stating that:

“(We) express our support for H.R. 3685, the “Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007″ (ENDA). ENDA would prevent most employers from firing, refusing to hire, or denying a promotion to any worker on the basis of sexual orientation…”

It’s worth noting that out of the 192 civil rights organizations listed on LCCR’s website as members, only 7 are listed as signatories to this letter, indicating that this action was apparently not supported or endorsed by over 95% of LCCR’s own member organizations.

Among the amendments due to be considered is the Baldwin Amendment, which would restore gender identity protections back into the current bill. The amendment is reported to have been alloted ten minutes of discussion time on the House floor, but is not expected to be allowed to come up for a vote. House leadership agreed to the requests of freshman Democratic Representatives who asked for and received assurances that they would not be forced to vote on transgender rights because they felt it would hurt them in the upcoming election.

HRC also released the results of a of an October 26th poll in which one of the questions asked was:

“This proposal would make it illegal to fire gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers because of their sexual orientation. This proposal does not include people who are transgender. Would you favor or oppose this proposal moving forward?”

According to the Advocate, 70% responded in the affirmative. Given that the results of this poll are at odds with another HRC poll taken in 2004 which indicated that almost the exactly same percentage of respondents opposed such a bill, it’s not surprising to me that no information as to the makeup of the respondent sample questioned or the polling methodology used has been offered. As Alex Blaze notes, one has to wonder if releasing these figures now indicates that HRC is trying to offer this poll as justification for reneging on its promises and choosing to now fully support the “CripplENDA” bill.

Reaction from gender-variant activists and allies against HRC and LCCR’s divisive sellout tactics was swift and direct, among them NGLTF Executive Director Matt Foreman:

“Fundamentally, rights are not about popular opinion, and that’s why we so vehemently reject voting on the right to marry,” he said. “We shouldn’t just hold up our finger and test popular opinion at any one moment and say that’s the way we are going to go when we’re talking about fundamental human rights.”

Donna Rose, a transwoman who is a former HRC Executive Board member, resigned about a month ago in opposition to HRC’s political games surrounding their advocacy of ENDA. She posted some choice quotes regarding HRC and their advocacy of the bill on her ENDA blog yesterday:

“I agree that the time has come for all fair-minded people to withdraw their energy, their money, their trust, and their support from this organization. I appreciate that some have taken a more refrained approach to both the organization and its motives but to continue any involvement at this point would be to deny the obvious.”

“HRC rarely does things in a knee-jerk way so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that this has been in the works for quite a while.”

Questioning the validity of HRC’s new polling numbers, Donna asks:

“Are you trying to tell me that the numbers shifted so substantially over these past several years? I think not. Joe should have done his homework before doing this because their own research and their own words from years gone by will come back to haunt them. Any shred of credibility left is gone.”

Donna also writes:

“This strategy seems to be a direct contradiction of the board’s directive to NOT support a non-inclusive bill as announced Oct. 2. The thing that few people realize is that there have been 2 board calls since the fateful board meeting a month ago, and the board essentially gave Joe the authority to make the decision to support any version of ENDA that he felt was necessary. And, he has.”

As the only transgender person to ever hold a seat on HRC’s Executive Board and participate in its administration from the inside, someone who insisted on taking a “wait and see” attitude on the organization and its advocacy of ENDA long after many in our community, myself included, had determined for ourselves that HRC was not honoring its promises nor advocating in the best interests of gender-variant Americans, as well as what my own personal experience with this woman tells me about the kind of person she is, it’s my opinion that Donna Rose’s credibility and the validity of her views on this are unassailable.

Basically, what the HRC Executive Board told Joe Solmonese is “We don’t care if the bill is inclusive or not. Our promises to only support inclusive legislation mean nothing to us. Just get us a win, by any means necessary. That’s all we care about”. That right there should tell you everything you need to know about this organization and the people making the decisions there. While Solmonese may have been the actual trigger man, it was the HRC Executive Board supplying the bullets.

Can there really be any doubt anymore, no matter who or what you support? The Human Rights Campaign leadership are selfish, unabashed, unrepentant liars and political opportunists, caring little or nothing for anything other than securing rights and advantage for the most wealthy and politically popular minorities, and willing to do so at the expense of the most socially, politically, and economically disadvantaged LGBT Americans.

HRC has consistently lied to the community about its intentions and misrepresented the facts throughout this current ENDA effort, just as they have historically both before and after their pledge in 2004. Many of us who have been calling out the Human Rights Campaign for years on their duplicity have been called “radicals”, “idealists”, “unrealistic”, and plenty more. I was even personally accused by HRC Executive Board Member and OurChart President Hilary Rosen in a discussion about HRC’s advocacy of ENDA on OurChart of “living in the past”. And yet, here we are. Pretty much everything HRC has been being accused of by transgender activists for years has now been proven over the last few months to be completely valid and accurate, right up to and including reneging on their much-publicized 2004 vote not to support or endorse legislation that is not inclusive of protections for the gender-variant.

Even many who once refused to support or fully subscribe to what we were saying have now come to understand that we were right all along, that whatever good HRC might have done in the past or might do now doesn’t even come close to outweighing the bad, the willful and intentional lying, the misrepresentations, the breaking of promises, the facilitation and validation of anti-transgender sentiment in Congress, the advocating for legislation that would exclude the most oppressed and vulnerable and least politically potent minority groups to gain rights for solely the wealthy and well-connected more easily, all of it. I hate to say “We told you so.”, but we did. There’s no longer any doubt at all that we were 100% right about these people and about this organization all along.

Have we finally had enough NOW?

The Human Rights Campaign has now conclusively proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are not capable, willing, or deserving of being considered a leading organization of the American LGBT civil rights movement or of being considered credible speaking on the behalf of any segment of the LGBT community other than the ultra-wealthy and ultra-conformist who might have been protected should this bill have ever had the slightest hope of actually becoming law in the first place, which, of course, it does not.

Boys, girls, and everyone else, it’s time for change in Washington, and not just in many of the politicians.

Hey everyone, do me a favor…

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