Waste. Toilet. Flush.
They all look and think the same to me. The Gay Inc folks who cycle in and out of jobs at Gay Foundation Inc or Gay Advocacy Inc or crossover from AIDS Inc and Gay Democratic Party Inc or Non-Profit Inc. You know who I'm talking about.
Let's start with Matt Foreman, who has been the executive director at a few organizations including Empire State Pride Agenda and NGLTF, and is now doling out the big dollars at the Haas Jr Foundation in San Francisco. Hundreds of thousands of dollars flow from Haas, which is non-transparent and holds no public meetings, to Equality California and Matt just flushed a few more bucks down this toilet.
Then there's Joan Garry, who when she headed GLAAD adhered to a strict non-transparency policy and was at one point the highest paid Gay Inc executive around, and is now advising EQCA. Hard to tell the difference between her and Matt regarding their elitist and secretive approaches to running "community" organizations.
We can't forget that another GLAAD executive, Julie Anderson, who handled development matters for the group when she worked with Joan, will also be offering advice to EQCA.
They all have to deal with the disastrous tenure of Roland Palencia, who came from a nonprofit network of community clinics and departed after barely three-months as executive director of EQCA.
Roland may be a Latino, unlike Matt, Joan and Julie who are white, but they're all cut from the same damn cloth of fearing the community, refusing to have regular democratic engagement with the grassroots, chasing corporate and banking industry support and keeping the at-large community under tight control. There is no fresh air or ideas with crew of Gay Inc types.
EQCA's gushing news release detailing Matt giving more Haas money so the group can hire Joan and Julie and transition the whole shebang into a viable and relevant entity, says nothing about grassroots community engagement during the time the consultants will be diagnosing the group's strengths and weakness. Yes, the same old wasting of a crisis by Gay Inc where the last development the same old elitist executives want it democratic engagement with the grassroots, is happening at EQCA.
BTW, the Haas Foundation's search engine goes back only to 2006 and since then EQCA has received at least $1.1 million, showing how tight Gay Foundation Inc and Gay Advocacy Inc are. Given the meltdown of EQCA this year, I'd say a lot of those Haas dollars went down the toilet leaving EQCA without a statewide grassroots network of engaged, committed supporters.
New Haas money is funding EQCA's "breakthrough conversation" program, whatever it may be. It's not been fully developed yet, but it's supposed to help LGBT California speak to families and friends about our lives. Whatever.
In the past two months, without a single consultant or big bucks spent, the nation has witnessed hundreds of General Assemblies at various Occupy encampments and protests, with lots of gay people speaking up and participating in Occupy actions.
Can you imagine Matt, Joan, Julie and their ilk seeing the handwriting on the wall at the Occupy protests and General Assemblies, and incorporate the genuine grassroots, democratic engagement tactics and strategies of that movement into their Gay Inc agenda? I certainly can't.
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