Petrelis Files

EQCA Hires Straight Person
to Serve as San Francisco Coordinator

There are hundreds of unemployed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the Bay Area with the qualifications necessary to serve as the San Francisco area's field manager for Equality California, an organization seriously lacking links to the local community.

The Bay Area Reporter's blog yesterday posted a story about EQCA's coordinator for ultra-queer San Francisco, and she is not an LGBT person:

[Angie] Coleman-Levy [pictured], who declined to state her salary, is straight, but she has gay family members, including her brother.

Why couldn't EQCA hire a gay person for this position? Judging Coleman-Levy only by what is reported in the BAR, there is no info on her at the EQCA site, she seems to be a nice young and enthusiastic person and not a heck of a lot of roots or experience in the gay movement. What has she been working on these past few weeks?

Coleman-Levy, who started in the position September 20, said her main task is “building the volunteer base in the Bay Area,” since “We don’t have a very big base right now.” So far, her efforts have involved phone banking, and going to the Castro Street Fair to recruit volunteers, she said.

Three years after EQCA led the community to an unnecessary defeat with Prop 8, and no discernible democratic engagement, cocktail receptions and galas don't count, the new straight woman running the group's coordination with us local yokels informs us they lack a big base. Well, duh, and given the turmoil this week over staff resignations and firings, don't expect a flood of volunteer to sign up for phone banking or (yawn) data entry.

What's on the top of the field manager's agenda?

However, Coleman-Levy said, “The biggest thing is finding out what people want to do.”

Oh, dear Goddess, how many times must we say democratic engagement with the grassroots is a key component to determining what the at-large LGBT community wants to do politically and activism-wise. And we now learn that the straight coordinator for EQCA is clueless regarding what gay people are interested in.

EQCA must go out of business, for so many reasons. The joke's over. Someone get out the hook and pull this worthless organization off the political stage.