First the fun stuff: Stonewall25 planning is going to be GREAT! I'm really excited about the plans that were being discussed and the way that the overwhelming majority of the U.S. steering committee was pro-inclusive on bis, transgendered people, people of color (i.e. the people that FOUGHT at Stonewall). I'm also impressed that so many talented people are "on board" and working to make everything happen! (and before people ask, I didn't get laid) Now the boring stuff: -------------------------- TOM LIMONCELLI'S REPORT FROM THE JULY '93 STONEWALL 25 NATIONAL STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING: WHEN? WHERE? The meeting was in Milwaukee, WI. July 31-Aug 1. WHO WAS THERE? The people that were supposed to be there was anyone that has a vote on the National (i.e. domestic) Steering Committee. That is the staff, the exec. comm., reps from each geographic region (based on population and elected by each region), reps from national organizations (that have asked to be recognized) and caucus reps. (Hello to all the people that I saw there! Hi Mel! Hi Tommy!) WHY/HOW WAS I THERE? I am the voting representative from BiNet/USA, the national multicultural bisexual organization. I was also unofficially representing New Jersey (my plane ticket was paid for by the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition, which I am VP of). Since NJ is across the river from where the celebration will take place, I was asked to bring NJ's offerings to the meeting (i.e. what we were suggesting we could offer to make the event the biggest, greatest event the world has ever seen.) DISCLAIMER: I'm biased. I only took notes on things that I was very interested in, or related to the contingents that I was representing. I took very little notes on the second day due to exhaustion. At the more heated points I took no notes, since I was trying to follow (or be a part of) the dialog. Hopefully others will make reports and fill in the gaps. I'm not speaking for BiNet/USA, NJLGC, or any other organization. ACRONYMS: AI -- Amnesty International D/TG -- Drag and TG EC -- Executive Committee (the staff, national co-chairs, plus a few more people) IGLPC -- International Gay/Les Pride Coordinators. This organization is a coalition of people around the U.S. and Canada that put on Pride Parades. They have (I think) 2 conferences per year. ILGA -- International Lesbian and Gay Association LA -- Los Angeles, CA MOW93 -- The 1993 March On Washington for Gay Lesbian and Bi Rights and Liberation. POC -- People Of Color SA -- The Republic of South Africa SF -- San Fransciso, CA SW25 -- Stonewall 25, the entire TG -- Transgender "The March" -- The big parade, on Sunday, June 26, 1994. "The Rally" -- The big concert, etc. immediately after "The March". SATURDAY: SPEAKER: Nicole Ramirez Murray (Ms. Patty Mint) Ms. Patty Mint (drag queen and one of three national co-chairs of the effort) opened the meeting with a speech about stonewlal history. She emphasized that the riots were a D/TG & black/hispanic event. Therefore, she proclaimed, the d/tg/bi communities must be included in everything they do. She also asked that we change the 25% people of color (voting) quota to 50%. (It was 50% at the MOW93 meetings, and it's a step backwards to go down to 25%, especially after the MOW93 quota forced so many gorups around the country to discover their own diversity. SPEAKER: Janus Thomm Next speaker was Janus Thomm-- IGLPC has agreed to move all events away from June 26th, 1994. A great gift from them and their respective organizations. This means that SF and LA have agreed to move their parades so they don't conflict, and NYC has agreed to convert their parade into SW25. This kind of cooperation is historic. Janus then talked about the history of SW25 planning so far. BREAK VIDEO Next we viewed a 1/2 hour video of the g/l/b pride march in South Africa. Julie Dorf (from AI) presented it. She'll sell you a copy for $35 ($10 goes to SW25). The tape was, in a word, touching. When I watched it I was in tears because it made me realize: 1 -- for all the great queer freedoms I have in New Jersey, the people of SA would love to just have a fraction of them. Never the less, it was galvanizing to see how many thousands of people came out to the event. 2 -- black and white people were united and marching together. 3 -- One black woman that was interviewed was standing next to her lover, who was wearing a "/\ DecidelyBI /\" t-shirt. -- -- INCLUSIVENESS: We discussed changing the name of the march. The problem is that this was the U.S. national committee and we don't have the power to change the name. The name was selected by an international vote. The ILGA conference has been used as the site for these votes. There are no additional ILGA meetings between now and the march. Though this is bad news: 1 -- The American contingent at the last ILGA conference DID try to change the name, but failed. It seems that internationally bisexuals either aren't organized, or most countries don't have bisexuality as a concept, or have other gender/sexuality concepts that we don't have (and therefore they consider their g/s concepts more important). The Americans were basicly told that it was US-centric of them to try to have "bisexual" in the title, seeing that Americans wouldn't be willing to add the English translations of the many gender and sexuality concepts that are beyond our (limited by U.S. culture) imaginations. People that were at the ILGA conference listed a half-dozen names for gender/sexuality roles/concepts that I had no clue existed. I hope the above paragraph puts to end the rumors that SW25 is run by a bunch of white male anti-bi, anti-d/tg assimilationists. We were told that at ILGA they did seriously consider adding bi as well as many of the other words, but the title soon became longer than reasonable. So, the compromise was to accept the fact that internationally gay & lesbian seem to be the "common" words that everyone could agree to. However, we *are* the "home team" and have been empowered with making a lot of the local decisions, if not all of them. So, we (informally) decided to make sure that all domestic (U.S.) out-reach would be inclusive. (more on that later) I am glad that this was decided. I would have rather had the title change, but which would you rather have: 1 -- a title that's inclusive with no action to back it. 2 -- an organization that is actively inclusive of bis, but has a, ahem, "short" title. I think #1 is MOW93 and #2 is how we propose SW25 operate. We (the royal "we") have bis in places of power (i.e. the chair of the Domestic Outreach Committee) that will see that there will be more than lip service. REPORTS: MERCHANDISE REPORT: There was a proposal that Pride Enterprises (1-800-IS-PROUD) would coordinate merchandise production, sales, inventory, and accountability. The proposal was accepted by the EC. This will take a big load of work off SW25. They accept credit cards, which is good since it could take forever for SW25 to get a credit-card application through. (Most cards will not let a vendor accept their card if they don't have a store-front). RALLY REPORT: The current proposal for the rally was given. I'm going to type the whole thing in later (or hope that someone else does... hint hint), but let me just say that their plans are absolutely amazing! We're talking about an event so big, generations of queer activists will remember it! FUNDRAISING: Report given. Basicly, they're setting up a structure to raise the >$6 million needed to pull this thing off. Sue Jester is in charge of this and will be doing things from writing grant requests to working with the merchandise people. LUNCH North East Caucus: Basicly we planned how we were going to fill our one empty seat. I should note that we were the ONLY region to have met both the POC and men:womyn quotas. SMALL GROUPS SESSION #1: At this point we broke into work-groups on Media/PR, The March, Hospitality/Travel, and Fundraising. I attended the Media/PR group. MEDIA REPORT: We talked for what seemed like forever about what our goals were, etc. etc. etc. I didn't feel like we went anywhere. We did decide to hire a full-time media coordinator as soon as possible, and to try to come up with a packet of "how to do media in your local area" for those that request it. We decided that a short 3-fold "backgrounder" should be produced immediately. Many people emphasised that it is important that we get positive coverage in the queer media starting RIGHT NOW. I explained the QRD, explained how we're planning on making it available on a number of services besides the internet, and how we can use it to get Stonewall25 information out to everyone that needs it. SMALL GROUPS SESSION #2: At this point we broke into work-groups on Merchandising, The Rally, Domestic Out-reach, and International Out-reach. I attended "Merchandising". We went over the basic strategy. Basicly they are "going narrow and deep" (a small number of items, but plan on selling lots of 'em). (NB: by the way, at night the local queer organizations treated us to some really fantastic night-life, etc. Thanks to everyone! SUNDAY: VOTING DEBATE...or DEBACLE: We got into a 2-3 hour debate about what to do since no regions (except mine :-) ) had met their POC quotas or male:female ratios. Every so often I got up to remind everyone that our bylaws state what we're supposed to do in this situation, but everyone wanted to argue about it. Oh well. VOTING: One of the three National Co-Chair seats was empty, and three of the E.C. seats were empty. Long time NYC Pride Parade Coordinator Franklyn Fry was elected to NCC, and the three other seats were filled by Carolyn White, Mandy Carter (HRCF), and Billy Hileman (MOW93). GAY GAMES IV: During the voting, a person from Gay Games IV took some time to talk about the games, and answer general questions. Highlights: -- Part of the proceeds will go to SW25. -- Registration packets will go out middle of Sept (sorry for the delay) -- Scholarships are available. -- Register early if you want to compete, some events will be limited due to size of place-space. -- Still negotiating which statium in NYC area will be used. GGIV is the same week at the World (Soccer/Futbol) Cup; both hosted in the U.S. So, space is limited in the NJ area. MOTION: The Union Label Someone representing unions asked that we use union manufacturing when possible. I spoke in favor of this motion. The unions are willing to let you use the "union bug" (the mark that goes on anything printed by a union printshop) even if you aren't using a union shop... but they will request some money. However, if you plead poverty and convince them that it's for a queer cause, they will negotiate down to 0%. (I've done this in the past). The people that were against this motion brought up these points: (1) Though Labor seems to be an ally of the gay movement in the north, some southerners have reported that the police unions were strong opponents; (2) people felt we should favor g/l businesses over Union shops. (the g/l business owners in the room said they do everything through unions anyway, making #2 sort of moot, but appreciated). MOTION: HIV+ representation People noticed that there was no openly HIV+ person on the E.C. so they motioned to increase the size of the EC so that an HIV+ person could be included. Motion passed and an election was held (I didn't catch the guy's name). LUNCH NEXT MEETING: After some debate, it was decided that the next meeting would be Oct 23-24 in Boise, Idaho (Date may change if we can't find a place to hold it). The following meeting would be in Atlanta, Georgia. The last national meeting would be in NYC. There may be meetings between the Atlanta and NYC meetings. MOTION: Rural State Representation There was much concern that many plans (like parts of the fundraising plans) would fail in the rural states. Over lunch I had the opportunity to sit with people from some very rural states and came to understand their concerns. A motion was made to increase the size of the EC by one more, to permit someone from a rural state to join. This motion passed and someone was elected (again, I missed this person's name). The EC is still 3-4 people smaller than the EC for MOW93. STONEWALL: "J.P.", a person that was at the stonewall riots ("I set the first police car on fire") spoke for a while about his views of the meaning of stonewall, etc. I was too moved to take notes, which now I really regret. It was a really amazing speech. DIRECT ACTION: No body was against having some kind of direct action at or around or near the time or place of the SW25 events. However there are certain legal issues that need to be studied. For lack of better terms, "Direct Action" is the legal stuff (i.e. a legal protest on public grounds) and "Civil Disobedience" is the illegal stuff (i.e. blocking traffic, Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus, etc.). A non-profit organization like SW25 could lose it's non-profit status if it actively persued illegal activites. However, we can plan legal DA. So, Jamila & Johann were elected co-chairs of the DA committee. If a wild-cat CD splinters off from the DA on June 26th, we just can't be held responsible. Interest parties should contact ACT-UP NYC and ask for Johann. I MISSED THE END: I missed the rest of the meeting because I had to catch my flight home. I'm told that the rest of the small groups gave their reports, and that there was nothing toxic reported. My UNITED AIRLINES flight was delayed by almost 3 hours, which meant I could have been at the rest of the meeting... well, not really because I might have lost my seat. PROLOGUE: Well, my fingers are tired. I'm sure there are tons of typos. I hope nothing toxic. Please don't flame anything in this until you check with me for a clarification (my brain is on vacation and my fingers know not what they type). Also don't take this as representative of SW25 opinion or the proportion of time spent on the issues. (as I said before) I'm biased and I only took notes on the things that were important to the people I was representing. (thus emphasising things that were quickies, and under-emphasising things that took hours) Tom -- Tom Limoncelli -- tal@plts.org (home) -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) Moderator of the Drew University Alumni/ae and ne-social-motss mailing lists. _|_ The Love of Christ is contagious... _|_ | ...so is the hate of bigots using Christ's name. |