Petrelis Files

GLAAD's Barrier to Contacting Staff

Here's something I have not encounter at any other nonprofit's web site, a new barrier to easily contacting the staff.

Over at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's web site, the staff directory is quite long listing dozens of folks who keep this useless organization leeching off the gay body politic.

At most nonprofits, you highlight the desired addy of the staffer you wish to contact, then cut-and-paste the characters into the To box of your draft email. I grabbed the top two addys at GLAAD, for Mike Thompson and Juan Barjaras, the acting executive director and director of community engagement (who knew they had such a person?) respectively.

What was copied were images of their addys:



Paste the addy images in the To box and the word "email" appears. Not user-friendly in the least. Just one more little, annoying and telling component of GLAAD keeping them from democratically engaging with the full spectrum of the LGBT community they claim to represent, including critics such as myself.

Let's circle back to GLAAD's staffer for alleged community engagement, Barjaras, for a moment. He lives in San Francisco where he serves on the board of directors of the SF gay community center and I briefly observed him at the center's fully-open board meeting recently.

I've never heard of the guy before and if he's organized a single damn open meeting of any sort in the Bay Area, he kept it secret. Where has Barjaras carried out his democratic engagement, live and in-person, in his hometown of San Francisco? He immediately must announce a regular series of town halls to discuss GLAAD's agenda and work, listen to the community, and finally get around to direct engagement.

To assist GLAAD in fulfilling its communications requirements on this activist's terms, I typed up a list of all staffers. Here it is. Use it to eblast them your concerns. What I am doing is pushing for mine and other voices to amplify concerns directly to the GLAAD folks hiding behind their computer screens.

Distribute this list far and wide:

thompson@glaad.org, barajas@glaad.org, ferraro@glaad.org, graddick@glaad.org, palmer@glaad.org, adams@glaad.org, bass@glaad.org, bhola@glaad.org, davis@glaad.org, Gouttebroze@glaad.org, hannah@glaad.org, johnson@glaad.org, kane@glaad.org, mcleod@glaad.org, mcquade@glaad.org, murray@glaad.org, pachecseo@glaad.org, sekaran@glaad.org, stone@glaad.org, trasandes@glaad.org, ward@glaad.org, adam@glaad.org, Monteavaro@glaad.org, goode@glaad.org, smith@glaad.org, elsner@glaad.org, moore@glaad.org, oxley@glaad.org, domino@glaad.org, ochoa@glaad.org, contino@glaad.org, sheng@glaad.org, wells@glaad.org, kimmelman@glaad.org, tseng@glaad.org, moss@glaad.org, hosmer@glaad.org, bowles@glaad.org, fountas@glaad.org, Giragosian@glaad.org, jaincruz@glaad.org, Simangan@glaad.org. 

BTW, ambitious Democratic operative Corey Johnson is back working for GLAAD. He once was a field strategist for them and is now deputy director of media programs. Oh, how these Gay Inc porkers like their fancy titles as they cycle through the nonprofit world, and in the case of Corey, stoke their political careers waiting for the chance to become a Democratic elected official, preferably in a race with little competition.

This past week, GLAAD released an innocuous survey, shake-down report really, of gays on TV and many of the channels and networks surveyed are damn corporate sponsors of the group. Who can take seriously any nonprofit with a huge overhead and high salaries fairly critiquing the very sponsors who have financially gainful relationships with each other?

Check out GLAAD's latest annual report for a list of corporate partners, including too many television outlets, on page 21.

GLAAD is not a media monitor. It is spin machine promoting worthless galas, pimping gays out to corporations who want access to our dollars, whose sole purpose is to keep itself in business. It should do the movement a favor and close up shop.