prop 8 and race: a community forum

just in from an event at the san francisco lgbt community center. want to get some stuff down before i forget!

panelists included andrea shorter, co-chair of the bayard lgbt rustin coalition, northern california's largest black lgbt political organization; rebecca rolfe, executive director of the sf lgbt community center; sf city supervisor bevan dufty stopped by for a few minutes; reverend amos brown; the director of the northern california no on 8 campaign; a really funny black woman lawyer who has done a lot of community organizing; and the moderator, who was from stopaids.org (i am hoping to find other blogs about this event tomorrow - i will update the names if i can).

some things that came up:

- "the endorsements didn't come too late - the money came too late. i needed $40 million on september 1st, not october 21st. the next time this comes around, give early, and give often." the director of the campaign

- there was a lot of talk about individual efforts - people sharing stories about marching here, there and everywhere, and then finding out their parents or co-workers voted for prop 8 - it doesn't always need to be a big forum, a massive march, or a traffic-stopping event - you can always do something.

- "let's be honest here. there are knuckle-headed people in the black community who are homophobic. and there are knuckle-headed people in the gay community who are racist." black lawyer lady.

- rebecca rolfe talked about how the lgbt movement doesn't have the history behind it that the black community does, in that our movement is relatively young. she also spent a good deal of her time talking about how the lgbt movement has always been about white, gay men, and how we need to reframe the movement so that people of color, women, transgender people, everyone, can get involved and feel like this is our community.

- "you are going to win this eventually. because the people who are against you? they're going to die." lawyer lady. this sparked some discussion later about how we can't write off old people, faith based groups, and minority groups just because they don't agree with us now - yes, the old people are going to die, but that doesn't mean that we can't make inroads now.

- the 70% figure. andrea spent about 10 minutes dissecting the "70% of black folks voted for prop 8" thing that was happening immediately after the election. other than reiterating that exit polls are not accurate, and that pollsters now say the number is 56%, she lamented that the media focussed on that figure as a wedge issue. it was used to divide two minority groups that should be working together.

- supervisor dufty said he thought the no on 8 campaign was "culturally incompetent." i was a little offended by this statement, particularly since he came in late, and left right after he spoke. it was a little unfair to drop a huge amount of blame on one group and then leave before the campaign was able to respond (in total disclosure, he had a sick daughter at home, so it was great that he came at all, i just... wish he had stuck around a little longer).

- one guy cracked me up when he said that racism in the gay community needed to stop on all levels - starting with manhunt profiles. "don't tell me you don't want any asians - just tell me what you do want."

okay. that's all i got for now. i'll try to update this as more info becomes available, both in other outlets and in my brain.

eta this link: sfist recap of the event. they didn't catch the names of the people i missed. i'll keep looking. i had forgotten about bevan dufty railing against the sit-in last weekend, which was pretty funny.