Here are some of the reactions I've received about the lack of transparency in HRC's selection process and the search committee to find a new leader for the gay community.
As you can read in the final response below, from one of the gay community's pioneering gay forefathers, Frank Kameny, at least one leader is okay with HRC not releasing the names of those on their search committee.
Kameny believes it would be a burden to these illustrious HRC leaders if they heard from half of the queer community's rank and file.
Imagine that. Thousands of us concerned enough to communicate with HRC about them, their agenda for all of us, and whomever their new executive director will be.
Seems to me that's one of the things exactly needed at the start of 2005: gay and lesbian American's reclaiming some of the gay agenda and the groups formed to represent us, whether or not we are dues-paying members.
Right now, the only means of communications with HRC about their leader selection process is through Isaacson, Miller, an executive employment group based in Boston.
As HRC says in it release: "Isaacson, Miller will post the position nationally and welcomes any candidate recommendations. Applications and nominations can be sent to 2959@imsearch.com."
Got ideas about who the next HRC/national gay and lesbian American spokesperson should be?
Send 'em to 2959@imsearch.com .
Michael Petrelis
San Francisco
^^^
I'm up to my ears in the AIDS Action contretemps, but I urge you to push on this HRC business. Secret committee, my ass! It isn't a secret from their board and I'll bet it isn't a secret from their senior staff. It's just a secret from the community, their members and the media. Garbage. I'll bet you'll get good pickup from the community press on this.
Charles King published an excellent commentary on the AIDS Action drama today on the HW website (while I was having a semi-public confrontation with Marsha Martin in the vestibule of the church hosting the planning meeting for the National AIDS March on Washington--which AIDS Action has declined to endorse).
Sean Strub
Struboc@aol.com
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The HRC is the sworn enemy of the glbt community.
It should be taken apart, limb from limb
Cheers,
david E
cllrdr@ehrensteinland.com
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Well said.
Can we run this as a letter to the editor piece in Outlook (Columbus, OH)?
thanks,
Michael Daniels
mdaniels@outlookmedia.com
Managing Editor
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Sherrill"
To: "Kenslist"
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 6:26 PM
Subject: [kenslist] Comment on HRC Search
> I usually pass on material of interest whether I agree with it or not.
> This standard applies pretty widely, including to the recent comment by
> Micahel Petrelis on the HRC search.
>
> Personally, I have served on search committees for many high level
> academic administrators, including the current president of Hunter
> College. The names of the members of the search committee always were
> public. I was not amused by efforts to lobby me when I was on these
> search committees and I usually chewed out the political friends who
> called me on behalf of candidates -- whether I liked the candidates or
> not. Similarly, I spent many years on the New York County Democratic
> Committee's Committee on the Judiciary. We set up screening panels to
> certify that candidates for judgeships. The names of these committee
> members, too, were public. In government, the members of transition
> teams who are charged with recommending canidates for high-level
> appointments to a newly elected chief executive also are made public.
> All of this, of course, has been in the public sector.
>
> I have no idea of how search committees work in the private sector or in
> charitable organizations. The norm there may well be to identify the
> committee chair(s) but not the committee members.
>
> I certainly did not intend to question anyone's honesty or integrity by
> passing on the Petrellis posting. I do think that members of this list
> ought to know what Petrellis is saying. He is a controversial member of
> our community -- to say the least -- but ignorance of his actions does
> no one any good.
>
> Ken
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: glaa@erols.com [mailto:glaa@erols.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 5:47 PM
> To: ken@kensherrill.com
> Subject: RE: [kenslist] FW: Closet cases running HRC search committee??
> (from Michael Petrelis)
>
>
> I sent my old friend Michael Petrelis the following note
> in reply to his complaint that Vic Basile isn't revealing
> the names of the HRC search committee:
>
> "I am not sure that any company would normally release the names of a
> search committee. In HRC's case, I can only speculate, but given how
> much they are constantly being attacked, people might be less willing to
> serve on such a committee if they know that people like Michael Petrelis
> are going to be digging into their backgrounds for things to be outraged
> about, and the next thing you know you're issuing press releases
> threatening a "piss tossing" incident. (I thought that one was very
> funny, by the way, but then I was not the target.) By the way, were you
> the one who was slamming Hilary Rosen for having given $5K to Orrin
> Hatch? He of course carried major water for her (in her job running the
> recording industry lobby) on intellectual property protection, so of
> course she showed her gratitude. That's how you get things done in this
> town, babe."
>
> Rick Rosendall
> Washington, D.C.
>
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From Doug Ireland
Ken,
It seems to me your comments and Rosendall's miss the point. HRC pretends to
be a civil rights organization--one may have ones doubts, but that's what
they claim. As such it is supposed to be accountable to those for whom it
pretends to speak. That's very different from either a university or a
company. I'm an old believer in Sartrian transparency in all things, and
particularly in political movements I hold that open covenants, openly
arrived at, are the best guarantees of political legitimacy and some measure
of democracy and accountability. Of course, the HRC has never been a
democratic organization but always an elitist one, with a self-perpetuating
board not responsible to anyone but itself. It seems to me that one ought to
be able to know what sort of people are being asked to choose the next
leader of the wealthiest and largest gay organization which pretends to
leadership of the gay community. Especially after the board just named two
corporate lobbyists as its joint interim CEOs, one is perfectly justified in
questioning the search committee and in wanting to know something about the
criteria it is deploying in its search. That's next to impossible when the
search committee is invisible.
Regards,
Doug
direland@nyc.rr.com
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Mike:
The HRC is being run, in the interim, by Hilary Rosen, partner of Elizabeth Birch and former head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
During her tenure at the RIAA, Rosen launched a disastrous PR campaign against evolving technology, essentially equating all file-swapping with thievery and alienating and angering music lovers and those who favor using technology to advance their lives, not remain stagnant.
Among the wonderful things the RIAA did under her tenure were to attempt to attach a hacking-authorization amendment onto the Patriot Act that Congress approved immediately following the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Callously taking advantage of the panic following September 11th, and all but equating file-swapping with terrorism.
In July 2002, RIAA supported a provision, that had it passed, would effectively have allowed the RIAA to hack into the computers of people they suspected were trading music files illegally. And protected them against damages were they to have either damaged computers they hacked into, or mistakenly hacked into the machines of innocent people. The bill by Representative Howard Berman would have allowed "content owners" to launch technological attacks against file-swapping networks where their wares are traded and immunize copyright holders from civil and criminal liability who use technological methods such as hacking to “prevent the unauthorized distribution of their copyrighted works via P2P networks.”
The privacy implications alone, demanding ISPs turn over private information, all but obliterating the notion of anonymity on the Internet -- particularly attractive if you consider such policies as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" which all but scream for protecting anonymity -- were repulsive as the RIAA attempted to unmask and sue file swappers, including an innocent woman who didn't even know what file swapping was, let alone had engaged in it.
The equivalent would be to condone and support the military rooting out the names of servicemembers they thought were violating the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy by forcing ISP's to turn over the true identities of their users (like AOL did in violation of their own privacy policy to the unfortunately named Timothy McVeigh, [no relation to the Oklahoma bomber] who was subsequently discharged). And even if the military was acting in violation of the "Don't Pursue" provision of the policy.
The RIAA unequivocally supported the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA -- the intellectual property equivalent of preemptive unilateralism by force, where hack attacks on "suspicious" violators are condoned and protected in the name of freedom and democracy.
I could think of no one more atrocious representing gays and lesbians or spearheading policy initiatives on their behalf other than perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer or Phil Burress, the President of "faith-based" Citizens for Community Values.
The only thing I find puzzling about your email is that you would expect anything more from a Washington-ensconced, overly-funded, predominantly white, ineffective, elitist organization that, aside from kissing Kerry's traitorous, hypocritical ass, managed to do absolutely nothing to anticipate, respond to or prevent some 11 states passing anti-gay-marriage resolutions in the last election.
You don't need transparency, you simply need to look at the record.
And continue to rely on yourself. You do a far better job than the HRC could ever hope to.
Clinton Fein
Email: clinton@xq.com
www.clintonfein.com
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From: fekameny@webtv.net
Hi
I think that you're being unduly harsh on HRC, with regard to the search
committee for a new director.
They ARE a private organization, free to run their internal affairs as
they see fit.
As you well know, I certainly am not closeted. BUT, if I were on their
search committee-- I most emphatically am NOT -- the last thing I would
want would be for my name to be known in that connection. The onslaught
of communications from every direction would be inconceivable. Everyone
would have an axe to grind. The names of half the national gay
population would be proposed by email, mail, fax, and phone.
Were I a committee member, I would want to deliberate calmly and
carefully, behind closed doors, with my my fellow committee members, and
then take our recommendations to the Board (or however HRC is setting up
its process) for final decision and announcement.
There is going to have to be a lot of back and forth, in some fashion,
between the commitee and individual candidates, probably to interview
them, to find out of some likely-seeming candidates wish to be
considered at all or not, etc., etc. To make a public or quasi-public
process out of this, even through merely publicizing the identities of
the committee members, would be severely counter-productive.
Re-think your criticism. In this instance, I think it's unjustified.
Cordially
Frank Kameny
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