Equality CA's Board Meets
in a Closet This Weekend
in a Closet This Weekend
Two sources have told me that the board of directors of Equality California, the HRC clone that was the lead state organization behind No on 8, is meeting this weekend in San Francisco. Both sources claim to not know where the meeting is taking place and seemed reluctant to give me any solid info about who will be attending and what's on the agenda.
This is so typical of the closeted, closed-door way of business for EQCA's executive director Geoff Kors, who was a key leader in the Prop 8 disaster. Kors and his group are not known for holding any town hall forums, allowing public comment and scrutiny at board meetings, releasing minutes of meetings, in short, it's a secretive society open only to a handful. EQCA then turns around and says it's the chief advocacy org for all CA gays.
Who's on the board? The usual HRC/A-gay list of suspects, many of whom are practicing attorneys or have law degrees. Not that there's anything wrong with gay lawyers, per se, but a statewide org should be representative of the community's diversity and not saddled with an overwhelming number of them.
On the board we have LA laywer Diane Abbitt, longtime board member of and bigger donor to HRC and Linda Scaparotti an attorney in SF and member of the HRC board. There's also lawyer Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who when he endlessly kissed Kors' butthole on the LA gay center's virtual town hall meeting, failed to disclose his board link to EQCA.
What is one of the most important duties of an EQCA board member? Organizing HRC-style rubber chicken galas across the state. Don't have a few hundred to drop on a ticket for the galas? Well, there ain't nothing else EQCA puts on for none-A-gays.
Anyone care to wager that a seat on the board costs $100,000?
Even Stevie Wonder can see there are no street activists or web-based organizers or political artists or non-degreed professionals on the EQCA board. Click here to see the full list of board members.
Why is the EQCA board meeting not open to the gay public? We've just lost the Prop 8 battle, in large part to the abysmal leadership of this group on the No on 8 executive committee, and the closeted decision-making of the campaign was nothing more than an extension of the closed-door operations of Kors and his org.
Would it be so terrible for the board to accept public comment this weekend? Listen to the criticism in a group setting, ponder new ideas like ending their non-transparent style, tell how they made their Prop 8 decisions, you know, treat the community with respect and openness?
In late October I helped generate a KPIX news story about the lack of gays in the TV ads of No on 8. Kors told the TV station that "the campaign [was] not about winning the hearts and minds of gay people." Click here to watch and listen to Kors almost boast about not needing the gay heart.
To counter Kors' internalized homophobia, I believe we could have had gays in our TV ads, and won the hearts and minds of both gay and straight voters.
Now, six weeks after Kors cavalierly dismissed the gay hearts and minds that were not engaged by his strategies and TV spots, the man could really use those same organs to unify behind him and his (lousy) leadership and org.
Here it is more than a month after Prop 8 passed and Kors and EQCA have yet to either hold their own town hall meeting with the San Francisco community or announce such a forum in the near future.
But in a few days, EQCA will proably put out a glowing press release, about the only thing they're good for in these times, heralding their supposedly successful meeting. The board will likely tell us they've "heard the criticism" and that we are all putting the Prop 8 debacle behind us, and uniting behind this lame group and its secretly-agreed upon agenda for 2009/2010.
EQCA is nothing more than A-gays running an org without a strong grassroots component. Given their non-transparency and non-accountability, don't expect them to harness much, if any, of the energy or activists who've marched in the streets lately. The grassroots needs sunshine, an ingredient totally lacking at EQCA.
(Photo credit: IN LA Magazine. Shannon Minter, left, and Geoff Kors on the right.)
1 comment:
I am huge admirer of EQCA Board President John Duran, so I hesitate to criticize anything re. EQCA, but I do agree with Michael here that in moving forward, we MUST include a very broad-base of our community -- all the people marching in the streets -- in order to move forward with either a new ballot initiative for 2010 or other actions. We need to include the "Internet generation" of very young activisits, and for God's sake, we need to include the leaders of communities of color next time! We lost on Prop 8 because of the failure to provide outreach and influence to African-American and Latino voters, some of whom I talked to directly on Election Day as I volunteered for No on 8. One lady I talked to, who was voting "yes", was a relatively new immigrant citizen who was voting for the first time, but because she belonged to some Latino evangelical church, she was taught and believed that "gay and lesbian people have Satanic souls". Unless we do outreach to that kind of "new voter", who doesn't know anything "real" about our community, then we will continue to lose, as the Latino vote becomes more and more influential in California politics in the years to come. EQCA, LAGLC, HRC, etc. cannot afford to allegedly "exclude" and reject the outreach help that was apparently offered from Latino and African-American gay leaders. There needs to be a shift in strategy -- or else a shift in leaders -- or will continue to lose. In the movie, "Milk", Harvey Milk is quoted in the script (not sure if this was real), that the "face" of gay people needs to be shown -- something NOT done in the No on 8 TV ads. That kind of decision was bad leadership, and that needs to be addressed, discussed, and very publicly altered next time around. Let me be the first to volunteer myself and my husband for these ads -- the "Restoration of Marriage Rights Equality" Initiative for the 2010 ballot!
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