Rallying to make ENDA inclusive

Published at Socialistworker.org.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.--Over 70 people rallied here on the steps of City Hall on May 3 to demand the passage of a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would bar employment discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United States.

Such discrimination against transgender people is legal in 38 states, including Massachusetts, while employment discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people is legal in 29 states.

The rally was called by the Western Massachusetts chapter of Equality Across America (EAA), a grassroots network of LGBT civil rights activists determined to build a movement for full federal equality.

The rally focused on transgender inclusion because although protections for transgender people have been included in the most recent version of the bill, there are reports that the language specific to gender identity has been rewritten, and the updated version has yet to be released.

Organizers stressed the need to reach out to the 89 percent of the population who oppose employment discrimination to pressure Congress to stop stalling and pass ENDA now, and to challenge the right wing's tactic of opposing ENDA by shamelessly scapegoating transgender people.

Bet Power, a long-time transgender rights activist and founder of the East Coast FTM Group, pointed out, "We need to get the language of ENDA so we can be sure we're supporting a trans-inclusive [bill]." Power reminded the crowd of the scandal in 2007, when U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and the Human Rights Campaign broke their promise and supported a version of the bill that dropped protections for trans people.

Several other transgender activists spoke at the rally; many shared stories of times when they've been fired, not hired, or passed up for a promotion because of their gender identity.

"I'm the last one hired, the first one fired...I'm 45 years old, have over seven years of higher education, and I've never been promoted at a job. We deserve financial security," Trystan Dean, a lead organizer for the New England Trans United march and rally, said.

Lorelei McLaughlin, the reigning Miss Trans New England, added, "I'd go into a place with a 'help wanted' sign, give them my resume, and they wouldn't even look at it." McLaughlin shared that earlier in life, as a white man, she had no trouble getting jobs she was underqualified for, but more recently, has had to struggle to find work for which she is overqualified.

Power pointed out that he's "been fired for coming out about who I've slept with and for my gender identity...This is a very hard economic time, and we're suffering extreme poverty because of who we are."

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THE OUTRAGE of several speakers was palpable, as was the sense of urgency and a refusal to wait any longer for equal rights.

McLaughlin said, "we need a trans-inclusive ENDA now to secure basic human dignity."

Jessica St.-Claire, who said she is "proudly married to a transsexual," shouted: "It's the 21st century people, wake up...We're not in the Stone Age anymore! If they expect every American to pay taxes, they should get individual identity rights."

Her spouse, Elle St.-Clair, said, "Every day someone commits suicide, someone loses their job, parents are removed from their children, all on the basis of their gender expression. It's time to stop this."

Autumn Sandeen, a transgender Navy veteran who was arrested last month after she and others from GetEQUAL chained themselves to the White House fence in an act of civil disobedience to call for a repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," sent a solidarity statement from San Diego that was read at the rally:

Now it is not only time to redouble our efforts at lobbying our own Congresspeople into passing a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but it is also time for direct action. It is time for public rallies like this one; it is time for nonviolent civil disobedience.

We need to create a tension that tells our Congresspeople that there is an urgency of now in our push for our employment civil rights on a national level. When it comes to employment protections for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, we must send the message to Congress that we will no longer are willing to wait, nor are we willing to take the tranquilizing drug of incrementalism.

Several participants spoke about the need to fight for full equality and to stand in solidarity with other struggles, especially immigrant rights, in response to the recent attack on immigrants in Arizona, SB 1070.

Chants included "Trans/gay/immigrant/women's rights under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!" and "What do we want? Full equality! When do we want it? Now!"

The need for everyone to stand up for ENDA and equal rights on the job for LGBT people, and to make the connection between that and other struggles against discrimination, was driven home by one of the passersby, who joined the rally. "No one has rights until we all have rights!" they said.

Organizers called on rally participants to join them in Boston on May 22 at a rally at the State House to demand passage of the statewide Transgender Civil Rights bill and full federal equality as part of the national Harvey Milk Week of Action.

Madeline Burrows contributed to this article.

Where we stand with ENDA

Originally published at Socialistworker.org. Also published in Dissident Voice.

AFTER DECADES of waiting for protection for LGBT people from discrimination on the job, a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is likely to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives in the coming weeks--but still lacks enough votes to pass both houses of Congress.

This is the time for activists to turn up the heat and press Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration to keep their promise and pass ENDA this spring.

The bill has wide support--there are 199 co-sponsors for the legislation in the House of Representatives, including six Republicans. In the Senate, there are 46 co-sponsors.

But passage in the Senate is expected to be difficult. For one thing, the Republican bigots are escalating their rhetoric against what, disgustingly, they call the "bathroom bill," as Sherry Wolf reported at SocialistWorker.org:

What you can do

Find out more about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and how to get involved in the campaign to pressure Congress at the ENDA Now Web site.

Get involved with local events around the Harvey Milk Day week of action as well as the movement for LGBT equality at the Equality Across America Web site.

While polls show that 89 percent of the population support workplace equality for LGBT people, fear-mongering and transphobic stupidities are being spread and echoed by right-wingers. Now that it is less palatable to openly discriminate against lesbians and gays, transgender people have become the primary targets of the cultural cretins...

One widely circulated form letter to congresspeople on Congress.org states, "The thought of my child or grandchild in a bathroom with a transgender (sic) is repugnant to me." Tellingly, this note doesn't even modify the adjective transgender to refer to an actual person--as if "a transgender" is some alien species and not a human being who deserves respect and equal treatment.

But there's a further problem--16 Democrats in the Senate have yet to sign on to ENDA. The Democrats have enough votes to not only pass the bill, but avoid a filibuster if they get all their senators to support it.

The Democrats have no excuse for not passing ENDA now. Our movement needs to call them out publicly on this and demand that they "put up or shut up."

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LGBT ACTIVISTS are getting organized to push the issue of ENDA into the spotlight.

In April, members of the GetEQUAL group disrupted and were escorted out of a House Committee meeting after they called for action on the legislation. At the May 1 demonstrations for immigrant rights, many LGBT grassroots groups organized contingents to march in solidarity with immigrants and their native-born allies and to raise their demand for an all-inclusive ENDA.

Other groups, including Western Mass. Equality Across America, of which I am a member, are planning protests in support of ENDA, as well as organizing for the Harvey Milk Week of Action to demand full federal equality for LGBT people.

Rep. Barney Frank, the openly gay Democratic member of Congress who said that the 200,000-strong National Equality March was a "waste of time at best," called Get EQUAL's ENDA action a "stupid thing to do." He wants activists to stick to formal channels, and call and meet with their representatives, asking them nicely to support the basic civil right to not be fired on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Politicians are aware of this issue and why it matters to us. Those who don't support ENDA or who drag their feet do so because they calculate the political costs of inaction as less than those of action. It's up to us to change the terms of this equation, and that will take more than phone calls and polite visits. We have to act now before ENDA dies again, as it has every time since it was first proposed in the 1990s.

When you lobby a politician, they can tell you anything they want in private, and it's nearly impossible to hold them accountable unless you're a major donor who can use campaign contributions as leverage. Instead of lobbying in private, we need, through protest and direct action, to call out representatives and senators in public and demand they make a public stand on ENDA.

More than small acts of civil disobedience, we need to build a broad movement that includes the active participation of large numbers of people. That's a real possibility on this issue given the hundreds of people who attended recent Equality Across America conferences in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., not to mention the quarter of a million who marched on DC last October.

Barney Frank and other Democrats say they're "working hard," and Obama claims he's a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights. But they need to tell us what they're doing and why ENDA isn't a top priority for Democrats.

What does it mean that Barack Obama is a "fierce advocate"? He has said numerous times that he supports repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"--in his State of the Union address, he said he'd repeal it this year. Yet behind the scenes, he's been less than committed.

To get a sense of what "fierce advocacy" really looks like, consider what Obama did when it came to getting "antiwar" Democrats in the House to vote for funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in June 2009. The war funding bill passed with only 30 of 256 House Democrats voting against--20 "antiwar" Democrats switched sides and voted to fund the wars.

If they were acting as "fierce advocates" for the LGBT community, Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress would do what it takes, and not prioritize war over equality. It's up to us to force their hand and not let them get away with paying lip service to our cause while they drag their feet and toss us crumbs.

Why can't Constance bring her date?

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

OFFICIALS IN Mississippi's Itawamba County School District are calling Constance McMillen a "distraction."

But the real distraction is the policies of a school district that promote homophobia and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students.

People across the U.S. have been rallying to the 18-year-old's defense since the news emerged that she, with the support of the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), had filed a lawsuit against the school district--after the district cancelled the high school prom rather than allow Constance, who is a lesbian, to dress in a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend as her date.
In early February, after McMillen spoke with a vice principal about bringing her girlfriend to the prom, a memo was released in the school stating that prom guests "must be of the opposite sex."

In a textbook example of the discrimination that young LGBT people continue to face in many parts of the U.S., according to the Associated Press,

"In the court documents, McMillen said Rick Mitchell, the assistant principal at the school, told her she could not attend the prom with her girlfriend, but they could go with "guys." Superintendent Teresa McNeece told the teen that the girls should attend the prom separately, had to wear dresses, and couldn't slow dance with each other because that could "push people's buttons," according to court documents."

McMillen told the Associated Press that she stood up to the vice principal. "I explained to them that that's really not fair to the people who are gay at this school," she said. On CBS's Early Show, McMillen said she told the vice principal that "you can't pretend like there's not gay people at our school, and if you tell people they can't bring a same-sex date, that is discrimination."

Since district officials cancelled the prom, Constance has gone on the offensive, launching a public campaign for her right, and the right of her classmates, to bring whomever they wish as a date to the prom.

She started a Facebook page titled "Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!" which gained more than 300,000 "fans" in just five days. In a video posted on her page, McMillen, who has proclaimed in several interviews that she is proud to be a lesbian, thanked her supporters and encouraged them to "stand up for you what you believe in, stand up for who you are."

Although school district officials have not explicitly stated that their decision to cancel the prom is a result of McMillen's case, they released a statement saying they cancelled the prom due to "distractions to the educational process caused by recent events."

Christine Sun, McMillen's attorney, said on the Early Show that this was "clearly the reason they cancelled the prom...The ACLU sent a letter on Constance's behalf, and one week later, the school cancelled the prom."

McMillen's struggle has garnered national attention, including appearances on the CBS Early Show, MSNBC, and the Wanda Sykes Show, and there has been an outpouring of support from around the country.

Matthew Sheffield of the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (MSSC), a group that works to ensure that LGBT students may attend school free of harassment and discrimination, told USA Today that "his office was flooded by people looking to help" with the Second Chance Prom, which will be held in Itawamba County this year as a safe space for LGBT students and the rest of McMillen's classmates.

According to Sheffield, "We've had a definite spike in people signing on and joining our organization," as McMillen's stand has encouraged others to get involved in the struggle against homophobia in schools.
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CONSTANCE McMILLEN is not the only LGBT student to struggle for the right to attend the prom with a same-sex date, or to wear what they want.

Last fall, then-17-year-old high school junior Cynthia Stewart of Tharptown, Ala., stood up for--and won, with the help of the ACLU--her right to bring her girlfriend to the prom after the Tharptown High School Principal Gary Odom initially told her that she would not be allowed to.

Also last fall, a Wesson, Miss., high school senior, Ceara Sturgis, who is openly gay, was not allowed to appear in her yearbook wearing a tuxedo. The ACLU sent a letter to school officials demanding they allow Sturgis to appear in the yearbook wearing a tuxedo, stating "You can't discriminate against somebody because they're not masculine enough or because they're not feminine enough."

Then there is Will Phillips, a 10-year-old boy from Washington County, Ark., who has refused, despite pressure from a teacher, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because, as he told CNN, "There really isn't liberty and justice for all...[G]ays and lesbians can't marry...there's still a lot of racism and sexism in the world."

If individuals feel emboldened to take such stands, one big reason is the explosion in struggle as tens of thousands protested against the passage of Proposition 8, which revoked same-sex marriage in California.

Actions like the Itawamba School District's, however, paint a target on the back on LGBT students. So far, McMillen has faced verbal harassment from some fellow students who blame her for the district's decision to cancel the prom. And Phillips told CNN that he has been verbally attacked by students and called a "gay wad" for taking a stand for same-sex marriage.

As commenter Tom Head wrote on About.com, school administrators such as those in Itawamba County are "bullying [LGBT teens] at state expense," when they should be supporting them. Their discrimination encourages homophobia, transphobia and sexism, and gives others a green light to bully LGBT teens and those who do not conform to gender norms.

Such bullying has had deadly consequences. Although there is limited information available, EDGE Boston reports that a 2005 Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education study found that "gay teens had suicide rates nearly double those of their peers," and "were four times more likely to attempt suicide in the past year."

Last fall, according to Tulsa World, a survey of LGBT youth in Tulsa, Okla., found, "Sixty-seven percent of respondents reported having suicidal thoughts or feelings, and 39 percent said they had attempted suicide." Half of respondents reported facing bullying at school, and few reported seeing a school official intervene.

The bullies in the school administration in Itawamba County, meanwhile, are emboldened by the bullies in the Mississippi state government, which provides no protection for LGBT people from employment discrimination and bans same-sex marriage.

Constance McMillen deserves our full support for taking a courageous stand against institutional discrimination. We should honor her advice to stand up for what we believe in--and get involved in the movement for LGBT equality.

Why we're fighting for ENDA

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

WITH UNEMPLOYMENT and underemployment a devastating reality for millions and millions of people in the U.S., federal protection from job discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is more important than ever.

But the inaction and broken promises of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress shows that winning equality on the job will require more than overwhelming popular sentiment opposed to any form of workplace discrimination. It will require pressure from the grassroots.

Official unemployment was 9.7 percent in January (16.5 percent for Blacks and 12.6 percent for Latinos)--16.5 percent if you count people working part time because they couldn't find full-time employment. Economists estimate that there are approximately six people looking for work for every new job opening.

This bleak jobs landscape amplifies the destruction caused by employment discrimination on the lives of LGBT people.

In 38 states, it's legal to fire or not hire someone because they're transgender, and in 29 states if they're gay, lesbian or bisexual. Every day, millions of LGBT workers face a horrible choice: remain in the closet on the job, or come out and face legal harassment, discrimination or termination.

In 2007, Kenneth Roswell, a gay man working at a Hess gas station in Lee County, Florida, complained after a training manager told him that "gays are sick" and "should all be taken out and shot." He was transferred to a store in a dangerous neighborhood, and eventually fired a few months later, according to the Naples News.

When Roswell went to the Lee County Equal Opportunity Office to file a complaint, he said he was told that "gays are not a protected group"--so that even if Hess had fired him for being gay, there is no law making it illegal. Roswell continued to face harassment from Hess after his termination. "Any place I apply, they give me a bad reference," he told the News. "I'm about to lose my home [and] my car."

Nor are LGBT workers safe from discrimination after they punch out. In 2000, Peter Oiler says he was fired after 20 years on the job as a truck driver for the Winn-Dixie grocery store chain when managers found out that he sometimes cross-dressed when not at work, and identified as transgender.

Sue Kirchofer wasn't allowed to name her partner as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy in 1994, and was "told to remain invisible" about her sexuality by her Seattle employer, she told Newsweek. She was fired months later after her employer found out she had played soccer in the Gay Games in New York City.

Then there's the largest employer in the U.S.--the Department of Defense. The Pentagon discriminates against its LGBT employees with its "don't ask, don't tell" policy--over 13,000 people have been discharged under don't ask, don't tell since 1994, and partners of LGBT people killed or wounded receive no benefits.

Without federal protection from employment discrimination, LGBT people are forced to rely on a shoddy patchwork of state and local laws and company policies against discrimination--and plenty of states, counties, cities and towns where discrimination is perfectly legal.

What protections do exist are easily rolled back. In September, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer eliminated state domestic partner benefits. In Virginia, within his first month of taking office in January, Gov. Bob McDonnell signed an executive order eliminating protection from discrimination for lesbian and gay state employees.

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A 2008 Gallup poll showed that 89 percent of Americans support equal rights for gays and lesbians on the job. Support for workplace equality has been running at 80 percent or higher since 1993, and was at 56 percent as far back as 1977. Public opinion on this issue is far in advance of politicians.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was first introduced in Congress in 1994, but never made it out of committee.

ENDA, which at the time included protection from employment discrimination for gays and lesbians, but not transgender people, represented a narrowing of demands from efforts stretching back to the "Gay Rights Bill" of 1974--which would have added lesbians and gays to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Since then, ENDA has been introduced in every session of Congress but one, only to die in committee, fail to pass or be put off. In 2009, ENDA didn't even come up for a vote--despite the Democrats overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress and the promises of Barack Obama as a candidate to be a "fierce advocate" for the LGBT community. In fact, in an open letter published during his campaign, Obama promised that he would "place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of...a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act."

This month, Rep. Barney Frank, the first openly gay member of Congress and a sponsor of ENDA, said that the bill is "on track in the House," but that "some provisions protecting transgender people were hot topics," and that he's "less certain the bill will pass in the Senate."

So ENDA has yet to be passed despite the fact that: (1) The Democrats, who claim to support LGBT civil rights, control Washington; (2) Equal rights on the job have been supported by a majority of Americans for over 30 years; and (3) the working class faces a jobs crisis that greatly amplifies the impact of employment discrimination.

Frank and the mainstream gay rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) took a lot of heat in 2007 when Frank introduced, with HRC support, a version of ENDA that dropped protections for transgender people--just months after they were first added to the bill.
This move was especially disturbing given that transgender people are disproportionately impacted by employment discrimination, poverty and unemployment.

The National Transgender Discrimination Survey, conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, found that transgender people "experience unemployment [and poverty] at twice the rate of the population as a whole." Some 97 percent faced "harassment or mistreatment on the job," including one in three respondents who reported having to "present in the wrong gender to keep [their] job."

Now, Frank seems to be threatening to drop transgender protections again.

The argument that ENDA would be "easier" to pass without protection for transgender people--and that this should be acceptable to us--boils down to the idea that lawmakers will act based on concessions and moderation from our side, rather than firm demands and pressure, that the road to equality must be slow and gradual, and that if we ask for "too much, too soon," we will only scare people away.

The claim that ENDA is being held up because of trans-inclusion is dubious, since a non-inclusive ENDA failed to pass for 13 years following its introduction in 1994. Secondly, social movements historically have made gains precisely when they have stuck to their principles and confidently confronted those in power from the grassroots.

Labor won the right to organize through militant struggle, including mass strike waves and factory occupations. The African American civil rights movement abolished Jim Crow segregation by firmly rejecting ideas of Black inferiority and by directly taking on structures of white supremacy. Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the U.S. in 1973, was decided in the context of a militant women's rights movement unapologetically demanding the right to choose.

Our movement, in order to build the unity and solidarity necessary to win full equality, should stick to our principles of equal rights for all and reject any attempt to divide us. We must build grassroots organizations such as Equality Across America to pressure Congress to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA as part of our demand for full LGBT civil rights. And we should offer no apologies and accept no delays: civil rights are not negotiable.

By demanding equal rights now--acting as equal people have the right to act--the LGBT movement will gain confidence, draw in new people looking to struggle for a better world and spur masses of people to question their transphobia and homophobia.

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THE STRUGGLE for LGBT equality on the job is one that impacts all working-class people, not just those in the LGBT community. Whenever one section of the working class is subject to discrimination and oppression, it's a threat to all workers.

Like undocumented immigrants, LGBT workers in states and localities where discrimination is legal can be targeted by employers if they protest abuses at work, try to join or organize a union, or otherwise stand up for the rights of themselves and their co-workers.

In her book Sexuality and Socialism, Sherry Wolf chronicles an inspiring example of solidarity between LGBT activists and the Republic Windows & Doors workers in Chicago, largely immigrant and Latino, who carried out a factory occupation in December 2008 took on their employer and Bank of America to win a severance deal owed to them:

The day before the Republic victory, according to Wolf, hundreds of activists "rallying for equal marriage rights as part of the national Day Without a Gay initiative...linked their march with the Republic protest outside Bank of America."

Soon after, Raúl Flores, representing the Republic workers, attended a gay marriage forum, where he said, "Our victory is yours...now we must join with you in your battle for rights and return the solidarity you showed us."

The connection between the Republic occupation and the upsurge for LGBT civil rights is no coincidence, nor is it anything new, as Wolf points out.

In 1977, Harvey Milk and other gay activists joined the Teamsters in boycotting Coors--and the next year, they had labor support that was key to defeating the Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers and their allies from California schools. Unions such as the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union took on homophobia, racism and red-baiting as far back as the 1930s.

Developing these links and standing in solidarity with one another as we struggle for our shared interests is the key to winning LGBT equality on the job, full civil equality, rights for immigrants, and social and economic justice for all workers.

Timothy Geithner's "great job"

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

DURING HIS State of the Union Address, Barack Obama stated that the U.S. government faces a "deficit of trust...deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works," and that closing this "credibility gap" is what he "came to Washington to do."

That caught me by surprise, because, just minutes before, while he was walking to the podium, Obama warmly embraced Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and could be heard on CNN telling Geithner that he "did a great job today."

I had flashbacks to Hurricane Katrina when George W. Bush told Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown that he was doing "a heck of a job" while thousands of mostly low-income and African American New Orleans residents had drowned or were stranded without adequate supplies or relief, hunted by racist vigilantes, police, the National Guard and Blackwater mercenaries.

What Obama was no doubt referring to was Geithner's testimony that day before the House Oversight Committee, where he defended his role in the bailout of the insurance company AIG--which ended up totaling over $170 billion, over 1,700 times the $100 million the Obama administration initially pledged to Haiti in the wake of the recent earthquake.

Incidentally, this would be the time to make a joke about how Obama's appointment and continued employment of Geithner--who served under Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers at Treasury during the end of Bill Clinton's second term, when they passed financial deregulation that contributed to the recent crisis--would be like tapping Bush to help coordinate Haiti relief, but Obama actually did that already.

Geithner testified that he was not involved in or aware of the New York Federal Reserve's decision to advise AIG to conceal the identity of AIG's counterparties (banks owed money by AIG), who ended up receiving $62.1 billion in taxpayer dollars that was funneled to 16 banks, with AIG as the conduit and the impact of AIG's collapse on the world financial system as the pretext.

This "backdoor bailout" included some $14 billion to Goldman Sachs, which then-Treasury Secretary "Big Bank" Hank Paulson used to lead, and was especially controversial because AIG's creditors were given 100 percent of what they owed. Generally, when a company goes bankrupt, its creditors take a "haircut": they receive a fraction of what they are owed, like the stockholders at Bear Stearns when it was sold off under Geithner's watch just months before.

Geithner's excuse for not being involved--given that he was the head of the New York Fed at the time and the AIG bailout at that point was the most-significant government bailout of a financial institution in the history of the world--was that he had recused himself because Obama had announced his intention to appoint Geithner as Treasury secretary.

This would be like Peyton Manning saying that he was planning to skip the Super Bowl this year in order to prepare for his job next season as head quarterback of the Colts.

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SO OBAMA said that Geithner "did a great job," and went on to give a speech where he proposed a freeze on spending, except for the military, which will get record funding for its growing list of wars and occupations. No matter which party, Democrat or Republican, holds power in Washington, there is always enough money for Wall Street and the war machine and never enough for education, jobs for the unemployed, housing for the homeless, or food for the hungry.

Then I realized that there was no contradiction between Obama coming to Washington to close the "credibility gap" and attempt to restore the people's trust in the government, and, in a whisper in Geithner's ear that happened to be caught by CNN's microphones, applauding his defense of his handling of the AIG bailout.

It's all about image. Obama is not attempting to change the way Washington works; he's fine with that, which is why he has staffed his administration with Wall Street lackeys and Washington insiders, veterans from the neoliberal Clinton years, and even kept on Robert Gates, Bush's defense secretary.

What he wants to change is perception--to restore confidence in the U.S. government on the part of the majority of people in this country who pay for the bailouts and the wars, the benefits of which go to a tiny elite--and to rehabilitate the image of U.S. imperialism abroad in order to enable the U.S. to recover from setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and restore and expand its power in the face of increased challenges to global U.S. hegemony.

But, as always, the ruling class underestimates the intelligence of ordinary people. The latter, unlike the former, actually experience the impact of Washington's disastrous policies, and our day-to-day experience over the past year has revealed Obama's "audacity of hope" to be in reality the "mendacity of hype," as a Brooklyn man put it recently.

Hence, the large percentage of working-class people and people of color who rallied for Obama in 2008, yet stayed home rather than vote for a Democrat in the Massachusetts special election this month.

But let's not give up on "hope" or our demands for "change." Working-class people are right not to trust the politicians in Washington, because they represent interests opposite ours--those of our oppressors and exploiters. We should have "hope," with a small "h," in our ability to change society when we stand on principle and take action in our own interests.

As the late, great Howard Zinn said, "It's not who's sitting in the White House, it's who's sitting in." Let's honor his memory and get to it.

Savage police brutality revealed

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

Gary Lapon reports on a horrific police beating in Springfield, Mass., caught on videotape--and the months-long inaction of police and city officials.

A VIDEO released last week shows how a routine traffic stop by local police for a dragging muffler last November turned into a nightmare for Melvin Jones III.

Jones, an African American and resident of Springfield, Mass., was pulled over on November 27--and ended up in the hospital with severe injuries to his face, after he was beaten by Jeffrey Asher, a white police officer with a history of brutality against African Americans.

The video, which was posted online, was only just released after being quietly held "in the hands of law enforcement and city officials for several weeks," according to Masslive.com/The Republican newspaper.

It shows Asher striking Jones, who was unarmed, repeatedly with a flashlight, at least 18 times, according to my count. Although not visible on tape after that point, it appears that police continued to beat Jones, since a bystander can be heard to exclaim, "They're still...they're beating him with the flashlight."

A woman, possibly his companion Malika Barnett, the driver of the car, can be heard yelling, "Please don't" and one of the officers apparently called Jones a "nigger"--a male bystander can be heard saying "Somebody called him a fucking nigger."

The arc of the light and the loud, sickening "thwack" from each blow of the flashlight suggest that Asher was hitting Jones, who was being restrained by multiple white officers, with full force. Asher resumes hitting Jones multiple times, for a total of at least four separate stretches of beatings.

While an injured, possibly unconscious Jones is lying motionless on the ground, surrounded by six police officers, one of the officers yells, likely about Barnett, "Fuck her, lock her up, too!"
Finally, paramedics arrive to take Jones to the hospital. Jones suffered a broken finger and fractures to the bones in his face, which required reconstructive surgery and left him partially blind in one eye.

According to Masslive.com, "Jones is charged with three counts of felony narcotics possession, resisting arrest and assault and battery on a police officer. The police report of the incident says the struggle ensued when Jones, who acted suspiciously during a traffic stop on Rifle Street, attempted to flee and then grabbed one of the officer's guns. The report states that Asher struck Jones with his flashlight in order to 'disorientate him' as the officers attempted to take him into custody."

But this conflicts with the video evidence showing Asher repeatedly hitting Jones while Jones is surrounded by several officers, apparently restrained. What's more, Masslive reported, the police report "doesn't indicate any injuries to the officers."

Jones' father, Melvin Jones Jr., told Masslive.com, "The way they wrote the report is not the way the video shows it, and it's not the way that it was told to me by various people who were witnesses."

Jones Jr. continued, "They beat him like a wild animal...I counted 17 or 18 times they clubbed him with that flashlight. Those officers have no regard for human life."

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THIS ISN'T the first time that Officer Jeffrey Asher, who is under internal investigation for this incident, has been accused of brutality against African Americans. Nor is it the first time that other officers of the Springfield Police Department have been involved in cases of racist attacks on African American residents.

According to Masslive.com, Asher, who was president of his class at the police academy, was accused of beating Michael J. Cuzzone after the man's friend got into an argument with Asher's father. The city settled with Cuzzone for $75,000.

In 1997, Asher "was caught on videotape" (as shown here in local news footage) kicking Roy Parker, another African American victim who was brutalized while he was already handcuffed and held down by other officers.

Asher was "cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by a judge who said he had used reasonable force," according to Masslive.com. While he was "suspended for one year and ordered to undergo sensitivity training...a labor arbitrator later reduced Asher's suspension from 12 to six months and awarded him about $20,000 in back pay" saying he'd been punished "too harshly," the Web site reported.

In 2004, Asher was among four white police officers who beat Douglas Greer, a Black charter school principal, as he suffered a diabetic attack in his car at a Springfield gas station. According to a 2004 article in The Republican, "a man who said he witnessed the incident told investigators...that he saw police officers beating Greer with a chrome flashlight."

The Police Commission voted 3-2 to find "no probable cause to pursue disciplinary action against" against Asher and the other officers. The City of Springfield settled a civil lawsuit with Greer in 2007 for $180,000.

In addition to Asher, one of the officers accused of beating Greer was "James L. Shewchuck, accused of helping to organize a support party for another officer ultimately cleared in the fatal shooting of a Black motorist who was driving a van falsely reported stolen in 1994," Masslive.com reported.

The party was for Officer Donald Brown, who was accused of shooting to death Benjamin Schoolfield, an unarmed 20-year-old Black man. The charges against Brown were dropped, as well--and the city later settled with Schoolfield's family for $700,000.

According to a 1994 New York Times article, the Western Massachusetts Order of Black Officers stated that "during the party last month, a ham was presented to [Brown]...a ritual gift of Old South vigilantes." Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.--then the executive director of the NAACP--told the Times that he heard of the ritual when he was growing up in eastern North Carolina. "It's something that white vigilantes would be rewarded with sometimes for committing acts of racial violence," Chavis said.

According to the Times, invitations to the party that were posted at police headquarters read: "Congratulate Don on a job well done (Keep up the good work)."

So Asher is only one high-profile member of a police force that has a long history of wrongdoing and a disturbing culture of tolerance for--if not outright support of--racist violence against African Americans.

For over a month--until Masslive.com published the video of the assault last week--city and police officials in Springfield, who had the video, made no mention of it or the investigation.

This lack of transparency is consistent with the city's pattern of keeping violent, racist cops on the streets, choosing to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars to settle with victims and their families rather than firing cops like Asher and Brown when they beat--or in the latter case, kill--African American residents who they claim to "protect and serve."

The beating of Melvin Jones III by Springfield police is yet another reminder that institutional racism is alive and well in the U.S.--and that police and government officials are unwilling to take concrete steps to reign in police officers who terrorize Black communities.

Too often, African American victims of police brutality end up dead at the hands of police who are not held accountable for their actions. Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell and Oscar Grant III are examples of police killings of Black people thrust into the national spotlight because activists refused to allow their deaths to go unnoticed.

According to a 2006 United Nations Human Rights Committee report, "The 'War on Terror' has created a generalized climate of impunity for law enforcement officers, and contributed to the erosion of what few accountability mechanisms exist for civilian control over law enforcement agencies. As a result, police brutality and abuse persist unabated and undeterred across the country."

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MASSLIVE.COM reported that Police Commissioner William J. Fitchet--who has had sole discretion to discipline officers involved in incidents of brutality since the abolition of the Police Commission in 2005--told 150 outraged community members at a forum on Friday, "We will get to the truth...you have got to have faith."

But some Springfield residents aren't taking Fitchet at his word, understanding that unless they take action, Springfield police will continue to terrorize African Americans.

On January 11, about 30 people gathered in front of the Federal building in downtown Springfield to demand justice for Melvin Jones III and call for an end to police brutality. The rally was called by ARISE for Social Justice and joined by members of Out Now, a local LGBTQ youth group; the International Socialist Organization; and Western Mass. Copwatch.

Behzad Samimi, a Springfield resident, connected the beating of Jones to the charges against Jason Vassell, an African American former University of Massachusetts student, who faces decades behind bars if convicted of charges stemming from his self-defense against two white men who attacked him in his dorm room while yelling racial slurs.

"It's a travesty of justice when a victim of a hate crime faces prison while repeat offenders are encouraged and get away with it, over and over," Samimi said. "All of these instances of racial profiling and hate crimes are connected...We the community must speak up and demand accountability and transparency."

Holly Richardson of ARISE, who organized the protest, said that beyond calling for the firing of officer Asher, protesters are demanding "a real, transparent civilian police review board" with the power to discipline police officers when they commit acts of brutality. Currently, "the board can only make recommendations, and they conduct their meetings behind closed doors," Richardson said. "The police end up monitoring themselves, which is never effective."

Richardson said ARISE and its allies plan to continue organizing to keep pressure on the city to hold Asher and the other officers accountable, address the issue of police brutality and "get at the root cause, which is institutionalized racism."

Shortly after the rally, Fitchet and Mayor Dominic Sarno announced guidelines for a "new civilian police commission" that, "if approved, it will have disciplinary authority." This is a step in the right direction, although it remains to be seen if this commission will be representative of those targeted by police brutality, and how transparent and effective it will be in practice.

However, even if it is all of these things, it won't be nearly enough. None of the officers on the scene at the beating of Melvin Jones III can be seen on the tape making any attempt to stop Asher. Greater civilian oversight is welcome, but further steps are needed to address the racist culture of the Springfield Police Department.

The announcement from the mayor and the police commissioner shows that the city is on the defensive and will grant reforms if pressured. That they waited over a month to take action, and only did so after the tape became public and the community responded with outrage shows that continued pressure is necessary to hold city and police officials accountable.

Taking the next step for equality

Published in Socialist Worker.

Community activists and students from five area colleges came together December 8 in Amherst, Mass., to hear presentations on the "state of LGBT inequality." The meeting was organized by the Western Massachusetts chapter of Equality Across America and took up a range of issues, including LGBT bashing and hate crimes legislation; employment discrimination and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; the "don't ask, don't tell" policy"; transgender inequality; same-sex marriage; and the need to change a section of Massachusetts law that associates homosexuality with pedophilia.

Gary Lapon, a founding member of the chapter and member of the International Socialist Organization, gave this talk titled "Why we need a movement."

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THESE ARE difficult times. It has been more than 40 years since the Stonewall Rebellion launched the modern LGBT movement, and there is still pervasive social and institutional inequality.

However, the laws on the books are out of sync with public opinion. Some 89 percent of people in the U.S. oppose employment discrimination against LGBT people; two-thirds favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military; and over 50 percent support same-sex partnerships with the same rights and benefits as marriage. While only 40 percent of people support same-sex marriage, this is one-third more than the 30 percent who supported it five years ago.
And that is in the absence of a mass movement unapologetically demanding LGBT equality, which would do a lot to shift public opinion.

There are over 30 million LGBT people in this country, and tens of millions more who are allies. The contradiction between the laws on the books and the actual and potential public support for LGBT equality is wide enough to drive a movement through. If just a fraction of those people devoted themselves to the struggle for equality, we could build a movement involving hundreds of thousands of people.

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ALMOST A year into the first term of President Barack Obama, with Democratic super-majorities in the House and Senate, it is clear that LGBT equality will not be handed down from on high. We must struggle for it from below. As the abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, "Without struggle, there is no progress."

This is why we organized buses to bring 150 people from Western Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., on October 11 for the National Equality March, joining a quarter of a million people to march on the Capitol building to demand full equality for LGBT people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states--now!

Many of the leading LGBT rights organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), opposed the march until the last minute, only offering limited support when it became clear the march was going to be a success. Many said it would be a waste of resources. Others, like openly gay Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, said it would have no impact--that the only thing we would be putting pressure on is "the grass."

However, after years of leading a state-by-state struggle for marriage equality and spending tens of millions of dollars--such as the $40 million spent on the failed effort to defeat Proposition 8 in California (including television ads that didn't even mention the word "gay"), as well as millions in campaign contributions to Democrats who do not support full equality--what has the corporate-sponsored "Gay, Inc." gotten us?

Marriage equality has been won in seven states, but it has been taken away in two, Maine and California, where a slim majority of voters were able to strip same-sex couples of their civil rights. And even in states like Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal, without over 1,000 federal benefits, it's still "separate and unequal."

We need a new strategy, one that sets as its goal full equality on the federal level, with no compromises and no more waiting and begging for crumbs. Like march organizer David Mixner said, we're equal, and we need to begin to act like it and demand our rights now!

President Obama was elected last year because his message of change, which included verbal support for LGBT rights, inspired LGBT people, youth and people of color to turn out to vote for him in record numbers. But what has he done? Of the dozens of items on the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's checklist of "low-hanging fruit"--steps towards equality that Obama could make with the stroke of a pen, including outlawing discrimination against transgender people in federal employment and recognition of homeless LGBT youth--only one has been checked off so far: more accurate accounting of same sex-couples on the census.

In the lead-up to the vote on Question 1 to repeal marriage equality in Maine this November, when asked where he stood, Attorney General Eric Holder--whose Justice Department in June, less than two weeks after Obama declared it LGBT Pride Month, defended the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in court by effectively comparing same-sex marriage to incest--said he didn't know enough to have a position.

Obama, who has said he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, had nothing to say about Question 1, and the day before the election, Obama's former campaign organization e-mailed Maine Democrats--asking them to call people in New Jersey to support Gov. Jon Corzine, with no mention of the marriage vote in Maine.

The Obama administration didn't step in to support marriage equality in New York, which was defeated last week after several Democrats voted against equality, and despite an international outcry over Bill 18 in Uganda, which would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment or death, the Obama administration has yet to release a statement of condemnation. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."

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THIS IS nothing new. In 1960, Democrat John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected having promised African Americans that he would oppose Jim Crow discrimination. However, like Obama, Kennedy did little unless he was forced to act. Instead, he attempted to keep the civil rights movement in check, and to negotiate with and appease bigots such as Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

He only intervened to protect activists from racist Southern brutality when the movement was able to thrust the issue into the national spotlight, making inaction no longer an option. In many cases, FBI agents and federal marshals stood by and watched as local and state police violated the constitutional rights of civil rights activists.

In fact, it wasn't until 1963, when thousands of Blacks led by Martin Luther King Jr. faced Bull Connor's police dogs and fire hoses to win a victory against segregation--exposing the brutality of Jim Crow racism to the eyes of the country and the world--that JFK introduced the Civil Rights Act that was enacted the next year. And it wasn't just Birmingham; there were marches, sit-ins and other campaigns in hundreds of cities and towns across the South, a mass movement involving thousands upon thousands of people.

The African American civil rights movement teaches us lessons that are vital for the success of our struggle for LGBT civil rights today--that it is possible for a mass movement of ordinary people, through determined action and effective leadership, motivated by love and a desire for equality, to triumph over the forces of bigotry and hatred, against odds greater than those that we face now; that we cannot rely on politicians to grant us equal rights, but that we must rely on ourselves to win them.

Politicians will not act in our favor unless they see that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of action, a calculation based on conditions it is up to us to create. The civil rights movement taught us that we cannot win unless we are clear that we cannot wait--that we must unapologetically demand full equality now. To quote Frederick Douglass again, "Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will."

And the civil rights movement taught us that we cannot win city by city, and state by state. We face federal inequality, so we must build a movement that demands equality on the federal level.
Finally, we must forge unity and solidarity. Shamefully, some, such as Barney Frank and the HRC, have argued that it is "more realistic" to win civil rights for LGB people by leaving our transgender brothers and sisters behind. This has created justifiable resentment within the trans community, and we should strive to make Equality Across America an organization that is genuinely inclusive of trans people, and uncompromising when it comes to their civil rights and demands.

We should also reject other divisive ideas--such as those that scapegoated African Americans for the passage of Proposition 8--and build a movement that is inclusive of LGBT people of color and their demands. Both of these will require more than lip service: we will only forge these alliances by standing in concrete solidarity with movements for trans rights and racial justice.

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WHILE THE civil rights movement could rely on the Black church to provide the movement with a framework, resources and a new generation of talented leaders like King, there is not an analogous institution in the LGBT community. However, as King wrote in "Why We Can't Wait," "Fortunately, history does not pose problems without eventually producing solutions. The disenchanted, the disadvantaged and the disinherited seem, at times of deep crisis, to summon up some sort of genius that enables them to perceive and capture the appropriate weapons to carve out their destiny."

Since November of 2008, when California's Proposition 8 banned gay marriage, tens of thousands took to the streets in California and across the country. This setback became a step forward: the launching of a new grassroots movement for LGBT equality. New organizations were founded by young people new to the struggle, as well as by seasoned activists reenergized by the explosion of anger following this bigoted attack on the rights of LGBT people.

Groups like One Struggle, One Fight in San Francisco have engaged in civil disobedience--for example, when hundreds shut down Van Ness Avenue, which leads to the Golden Gate Bridge, after the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8. In San Diego, the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality staged a sit-in in a marriage license office to protest the California Supreme Court's upholding of Prop 8, where dozens of activists listened to a reading of Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

In Chicago, LGBT rights activists have forged alliances with immigrant rights and labor activists, standing in solidarity with Republic Windows & Doors workers who staged the first successful factory occupation in the U.S. since the 1930s. And on October 11, a quarter of a million people descended on Washington, D.D. to demand full LGBT equality, in a march organized by grassroots activists on a shoestring budget, without corporate sponsorship and without the assistance of mainstream LGBT organizations.

Now, we are taking the next step with the founding of Equality Across America. All around the country, including here in Western Massachusetts, dozens of groups of activists who built the march have founded chapters of Equality Across America (EAA), united around a single demand: full equality for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people--now! Regional conferences are being planned for this spring to build EAA, meet with one another and figure out how we can work together to win our demands.

Millions of people are on our side, and millions more will question their homophobia and transphobia if we build a movement to challenge them, just as the civil rights movement changed millions of minds about racism.

We can draw on the rich history of struggles against oppression: the civil rights movement, LGBT struggles of the past, the women's rights movement and the labor movement, among others. And we will have to create new strategies and tactics specific to today: sit-ins at marriage license offices, protests, campaigns to win support from student governments and other organizations, putting pressure on politicians, utilizing the media and creating our own media to get our message out.

We can and have sought allies from other struggles both locally and nationally, but it is critical that we maintain our political independence--that we do not support politicians who refuse to stand up for our rights. Like one popular sign at the National Equality March said: "Attention Democrats: the gay ATM is closed," and since then, a campaign has begun to cease all contributions to Democrats until they take concrete action on LGBT equality.

We must build a mass, independent, democratic, unapologetic movement from below, and to do that, we need you, your friends, fellow students, co-workers and thousands more people we have yet to meet. Join us not as passive supporters, but as agents in the shaping of our own collective destiny. History is on our side, and it shows us that such a movement can be built--despite what our high school textbooks tell us, history is made not by a few "great men," but by ordinary people who stand up and demand their rights.

We have come a long way. There are LGBT people today who remember when homosexuality was considered by psychiatrists to be a mental illness. Today, millions live out and proud, and millions more consider homophobia and transphobia to be unacceptable. We have a long struggle ahead, but we will get there. I hope you will join us in taking the next step on the road to equality together.