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Via The Advocate:
I spoke with GetEqual’s Paul Yandura, who is attending Netroots Nation, and he points the finger straight at the Reid’s and Pelosi’s role in this process:
It’s clear that we have their attention. I’ve received many calls from insiders that the staff of Harry Reid’s as well as the senator are wondering why the LGBT community was unhappy. I told them that we expected him to follow through on his promises and that if we didn’t, we were prepared to hold him accountable.The insiders that called me on behalf of the senator and the Speaker Pelosi asked why we weren’t focused on the Republicans. We told them that we promised to focus on everyone who stood in the way once they did their jobs and scheduled a vote and that spending time and resources holding other elected officials accountable before a bill was on the floor didn’t make sense. We all know that they would weasel out of having to take a stand by saying “but there’s no bill to react to – I need to see the bill.”
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Arizona was thereAnd the gal at the start of the video was Erica Keppler, co-Chair of Arizona TransAlliance, president of the Arizona Stonewall Democrats, and a pretty damned tireless campaigner who happens to be trans herself and took special time off to attend this.
She wrote the following:
Meg Sneed is also the local Freedom to Marry leader, and a pretty righteous gal.
Harry, Nancy, & Barack, let’s talk….Last I checked, Democrats have a majority in both houses of Congress. Big ones. The largest ones in more than a generation. Democrats also have the White House.
You want to know why we’re not focused on Republicans?
Republicans are not the problem. Yellow-bellied, lilly-livered, chickenshit, wishy-washy, scared of their own shadow, timorous, pissant “moderate” Democrats are the problem. The majorities Democrats have now are the largest we are likely to see either party get for at least another generation. These types of majorities are rare and fleeting. You must use them when you get them because the opportunities they present will be gone if you don’t.
And Democrats haven’t used them. Not to the extent we were promised. Not to the extent we expected. Not to the extent we know you are capable of using.
In 18 months, we have gotten just one piece of LGBT legislation. ONE. We were promise that two (Matthew Shepard Act and ENDA) just in 2009 alone.
And the Matthew Shepard Act should have been very easy since it passed both houses in 2007, but you Chickencrats pulled it out of the final bill sent to Bush because Mr. 22% approval rating threatened to veto a must pass military authorization bill.
As things stand now, ENDA appears to have been taken off the table after endless promises of next month last September, October, November, March, April, May and June. In May we were told it’d be taken up before the July break. Here we are almost to the month long August break and ENDA isn’t on the schedule in either chamber.
Even when our issues are taken up, you manage to royally screw us, the Democratic Party and yourselves. From day one, your “plan” (being generous calling it that) to repeal DADT have been a complete and utter disaster. For a year we were told you were working on it behind closed doors. Then when Congress had the audacity to schedule a hearing on DADT, you get it delayed by claiming you will talk about it in the SOTU and it gets one measly, carefully parsed to be deceptive line. The subsequent hearing with Adm Mullen and Secy Gates was kabuki theater to delay any real action on DADT for yet another year.
And the latest on the immigration reform bill leads me to believe that LGBT’s were included originally just so that you could later bribe evangelicals to support the bill if you then dropped us out.
And all of this was done (or rather not done) with historic Democratic majorities. Republicans aren’t the problem. Democrats that don’t keep their promises and engage in political homophobia and the politics of division are the problem.
Mr Reid, Ms Pelosi and Mr. Obama, you were told that we’d hold you accountable. You asked us to hold you accountable. You told us we have to “make you do it”. Don’t complain when we do “make you do it” that you don’t like the method we us. If we have to “make you do it,” you shouldn’t expect that courtesy.
Thank you Robin McGehee, Paul Yandura, LT Dan Choi, and the rest of GETEqual for their activism.
very coolI wish I had been there! More people are necessary to make these protests more effective!
These folks are good!great video, nicely shot from a variety of angles. Perfect music choice, fun and a little hooky, perfect for Vegas, and with the perfect message: “a little less conversation and a little more action… satisfy me.”
They are clever. Very clever.
This is such a head-scratching, disheartening thing tough
Haven’t Reid and his staff heard, the gay community’s incessant bitching and non-stop whining are going to destroy–nay, obliterate!–the Democrat’s chances at midterms and bring down the Obama Presidency?
I read that a lot.
Very hard to ignorea message presented in this format
Harry Reid doesn’t listen to the community.Harry Reid listens to GAY Inc. If you only listen inside the Beltway, it’s easy to be surprised about what goes on in the rest of the world. I assume that GAY Inc. is supporting an inclusive ENDA this time around, but I’m not sure that they’re fierce advocates when they’re in the ears of Nancy, Harry, and Barry.
Of course, Nancy, Harry, and Barry are fiercely abrogating their commitments to the community. The blank looks are just a beard…
Over at JMGthere are some very vile, bitter, negative cynics who get great pleasure from tearing down Lt. Choi, Robin McGee and the whole Get Equal organization. They bash everything Get Equal does, but offer only negativity; never an positive alternative. Why are these people so bitter and cynical? Just outright nasty…it’s disgusting to read them tear down the movement. Perhaps they are HRC staffers lurking on the blogs, who are paid to create division in the LGBT Equality movement and to detract from the accomplishments of others, since HRC has proven itself to be so ineffective.
For my part, I say we NEED people like the committed activists at Get Equal to move the process forward. I applaud them and encourage them to keep up the good work!
JMGis dominated by mindless, virulent Obamabots. I stopped posting there, or even reading the site, because of the unending stream of deliberate lies and the hideous invective they hurl at anyone who doesn’t worship at Obama’s feet. (That, plus one of them, possibly Joe himself, sent me an email infected with a virus in response to one of my postings.) One of them lies, then all the rest swear by it, and woe betide the rational human being who tries to inject a few verifiable facts into the discussion. It’s the internet at its worst, as far as I’m concerned. You’d find a higher level of reason at GayPatriot, fer chrissakes.
Not in the Senate!The Senate needs help from moderate Republicans to get things passed, Craig!! If the Senate was say 65/35 or better yet 70/30, THEN you can say the Dems have a big majority in the Senate!
I’d much rather see old-style filibusters instead of the way they’re done today — make those old GOP farts in the Senate talk and talk to stop a bill instead of acting like spoilt brats. I highly doubt Bitch McConnell could stay on his feet an hour, let alone five or six or seven or…
Huzzah for Get Equal!I consider Get Equal the 2010 equivalent of ACT UP! We need new and younger blood to bring life back into the somnambulent dinosaur which is Gay, Inc.!
Have a question for all of you?Would the NRA and Wayne LaPierre tolerate this horseshit from Reid, Pelosi, and Obama?
Hell no. Wayne doesn’t have to attend the cocktail parties Gay Inc is obsessed with being a part of the “in crowd” politics.
If the HRC was like the NRA, we would have marriage equality in 40 states.
good for Get EqualI for one am tired of the promises made and broken by the obama admin. I put tireless hrs into getting him into office because i was taken in by his promises and speeches as far as Reid and Palosi go they need a wakeup call I will no longer vote simply because your a damnacrat and i will be keeping my gay dollars to myself and giving it out to organisations like Get Equal my time with HRC and giving over dollars to them are so over until they speak up for ME and my family and what we need
Not really true Marlene…The Republicans passed many bills with a bare, 51 vote majority during the Bush years…something the timid Dems are too afraid to do.
It might make Republicans and Faux Noise mad at them!
The rules changed…IIRC, the Repugs in the Senate changed the rules to force nearly all votes to break a filibuster, rather than simple majority.
Just another obstructionist move by Bitch McConnell and his whores in the Senate.
Yes, that was meYes, I was the t-gal blubbering away at the beginning of the video. It’s already made for rich fodder for friendly ribbing. That was taken just after the police cars pulled away with the arrested protesters in them. The entire experience was intensely emotional for me, and has been in the days following. I started feeling verklempt when I saw Robin McGehee and Dan Choi holding the banner and standing in front of traffic screaming at the top of their lungs against transphobia and anti-transgender discrimination. I generally think things are going pretty well when I here LGB leaders saying “LGBT” instead of “gay and lesbian”, and there they were, in the oppressive heat, putting themselves on the line, waiting for the police to show up, and standing up for the trans community.
Even more poignantly, there I was, on the safe side of the barricade, facing relatively little risk. My role in the action was very low risk. I shot the videos from up on the bridge (the ones shot from up high and as they were putting up the first banner), and I did clean-up of anything left behind to avoid any unnecessary littering charges. My role was so low risk in fact that I shot some of the scenes while standing right next to two security guards from the New York New York hotel. (At the time it was happening, they thought the protest was about the Arizona SB 1070 immigration bill.) After the battery ran out on my camera, I went down to the street where people were holding signs by the side of the road, where I participated in the chants and watched the arrests take place.
After those on the street were arrested and handcuffed, they were taken to the shade of a tree by the New York hotel, and police tape was put up separating them from the other protesters attending. They kept up their chants, a large portion of which were on transgender themes. That’s when I started feeling really guilty. I was the only transperson there, and here I was on the safe side of the police tape. I should have been on the other side. I should have been arrested. I had the opportunity to volunteer to be there, and I didn’t take it. I was a coward.
The video of me was taken very shortly after I saw my friend Lee Walters put into the police car. He was in hand cuffs, his glasses had been taken off, and sweat and sunscreen were in his eyes leaving him pretty much blind. Lee is a beautiful man. He has a purity of heart and a loving, giving character rivaled by few others. He basically walked off his job, risking termination to participate in the protest. He volunteered to stand on the line until the police showed up to arrest them. I knew the price he was paying. One thing that makes Lee such a beautiful person is that he has a certain innocence and fragility about him. He’s not a he-man. I could see the suffering he was enduring. I was crying away as I gazed through the bars of the metal fence witnessing him go through it. As I was watching this, I was thinking how it was inevitable that when an action like this is taken, that someone is going to levy the accusation that the people involved were just doing it to gain attention for themselves. Seeing what I saw Lee going through, the very thought of that just upset me further.
When the police cars pulled away, I turned around, and there was someone from GetEqual (whose name unfortunately escapes me) filming comments from people. At that moment, I wanted to stand up for my friends. I wanted to stand up because I knew the sacrifice they were making. I wanted to stand up because I was ashamed that I wasn’t doing the same. I wanted to tell people that this wasn’t a self aggrandizing publicity stunt. These people care, they are putting themselves on the line, and they are only doing this to improve the lives of others.
I pushed myself forward, and after he had finished filming someone else’s comments, he asked if I wanted to say something. I said I did, and I took off my sunglasses, because I wanted people to see the tears in my eyes and the emotions on my face. When I said that their sacrifice needs to be respected, I very specifically meant that this was not a stunt done to draw attention to themselves. This was serious personal sacrifice for a greater good.
And I love them for it.
Erica Keppler