Last Post For Pride Month: Young Lesbian Of Color Teaches School District A Lesson In Human Rights.

This was one of my fave stories from last month! I thought it would be a good post to close out Pride month. Rochelle Hamilton, like so many LGBTQ folks (or anyone who doesn't fit prescribed notions of gender whatever their sexuality) was going thru a living hell at school. Her TEACHERS were perpetrators of hate against her. Ugh. The ACLU reports:

For Rochelle Hamilton, starting high school was the beginning of relentless harassment from teachers and school staff because she’s openly gay. One teacher told her, "You're going to hell. This is a sin." Another said, "What's wrong with you? What are you, a man or a woman?" After months of asking the school and the district to intervene—to no avail—Rochelle and her mom reached out to the ACLU for help. Together, we took on the school district—and won.

YES! Love it. Triumph of the human spirit. I'm waiting for the made for tv movie to come out. Alicia Keys could play the main role :)

Be sure to read the rest of the article, and there is also a video clip that has interviews with Rochelle Hamilton and her mom. By the way, they what they won was 1) new anti-discrimination laws in the district 2) mandatory anti-harrassment training around sexuality and gender identity for ALL students and teachers in the district... and 3) Rochelle got 25K.

Reaffirms my faith in justice and humanity!

First and foremost, Happy Pride to my LGBTQ peoples! And to everyone else i say... whoever you love, if this story makes you proud that we can work together to uplift each other and respect the humanity of our children and community members... Happy Pride.
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San Francisco Pride: Party Or Police State?

Wow. Check out the Nobody Passes blog an expose on how SF Pride has been getting more steadily corporate and militarized by an aggressive hetero presence. Its very well written, and you can practically see the eye-rolls in the colorfully frank piece. I heard glowing reports from people who went to the Dyke March in Dolores Park (a lot of whom are still glowing from the hot sun), but who went to Pink Saturday?

here's a quote from the blog:

Get this: the security staff yells at us that we need to form separate lines for “men” and “women”-- I kid you not! Binary gender lines at a queer event in San Francisco, organized by a bunch of queens who dress as nuns. The security staff is frisking people and making people throw away water bottles, asking us if we have any drugs or sharp objects -- wait, I thought this was a public street, I didn’t realize we were visiting our friends in the tank at 850 Bryant.

this other example of over-policing is of note:

But there’s more -- just as Hilary and I are trying to make our way through the crowds to get to one of the exit checkpoints, we spot a few friends, and guess what? This year, the Dyke March got stopped at 17th and Sanchez, stopped by the line of straight male security guards who demanded that all the dykes walk single-file through the frisking station. That’s right -- on the one day of the year when dykes actually flood the Castro, it’s important to make sure there’s extra security! Outsourced security, no doubt.

Yikes.

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USA To Finally Sign UN Gay Rights Declaration

I can't wait to see the run down of Obama's first 100 days, and how it compares to other US Presidents. AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will endorse a U.N. declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality that then-President George W. Bush had refused to sign, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. officials said Tuesday they had notified the declaration's French sponsors that the administration wants to be added as a supporter. The Bush administration was criticized in December when it was the only western government that refused to sign on.

The move was made after an interagency review of the Bush administration's position on the nonbinding document, which was signed by all 27 European Union members as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries, the officials said.

This is exactly the kind of strategy I was hoping Obama was going for. Handing meaningless symbols to the homophobe Christian fundamentalist right (Rick Warren speaking at the Inauguration) while planning to make REAL change for the people. Ever so slowly, this country is evolving out of a medieval state of being. From closing Guantanamo Bay, to affirming the human rights of LGTBTQ fam... Its been getting sunnier up in here. Giving Thanks. May the positive momentum continue.

Protest The H8. Historical Nationwide March This Saturday Coming To A City Hall Near You.

*This just in! Oakland is now on the map for the nationwide protest! This Saturday, 10:30am, Frank Ogawa Plaza! I proud to say I am one of the organizers, please hit me up with contacts for speakers, poets, conscious comedians, community leaders, etc at str8blackally@gmail.com! And for those who use Facebook, spread the word thru this link:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/event.php?eid=43126081702
Coo? Lets do this!

The momentum of change continues people! This very well may be the largest protest in the history of the United States that was organized in **3 DAYS**. Protests have been rallied together to be occurring simultaneously in over 80 cities, all 50 states. And now its gone international, with allied protests in Canada, the UK, France, Puerto Rico, Japan, China...Wow. This is the next level right here people. The unfortunate passing of Prop 8 has sparked what might be one of the largest manifestations of the LGBTQ Civil Rights movement. I know I want to be a part of it. Go To Join The Impact (hosted by Wetpaint) to see where the protest nearest you is, and when it will happening to in order for it to be synchronized, all-city style.

Aw man, they took down the awesome timeline of response to JoinTheImpact.com... basically, how this movement happened! They are juggling servers with all the traffic they are getting, maybe it got lost. Luckily I left a window open with it on there, i cut and paste, check this out:

1. November 7^th – Launch (original Join The Impact blog)
   
2. 5 Hours post launch – First 10,000 visitors
3. Midnight on November 7^th – 20 cities organizing
4. November 8^th (Afternoon)– Thanks to the help of organizers, we made CNN’s iReport.
5. November 8^th (Evening) – Our site hit 35K visitors
6. November 9^th (Morning) – 30 cities organizing
7. November 9^th (Afternoon) – We got the attention of ParezHilton.com
8. November 9^th (Evening) – The tipping point – Traffic jumped to 50K visitors/hour. With the help of Hostdango.com, we immediately switched to a new webhost (Generously donated by Hostdango!)
9. November 10^th 8am PST – Our initiative goes international! Now there are protests being planned around the world for the exact same minute on November 15^th!
10. November 10^th 10am PST – Hostdango shows even more generousity by upgrading us to an amazingly robust server to ensure that we can handle the traffic! That server goes live the morning of November 11^th!
11. November 10^th 11am PST – WetPaint.com enters the mix of local Seattle based companies donating time and services. Thanks to WetPaint, we now have an amazing Wiki to upload contact information and protest locations for every single city! They created a social site just for us: http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com.
12. November 10^th 11pm PST – All 50 states have local organizers in over 80 cities!!!
13. We have had almost 1million visitors to the site since launch!

Incredible. History being made right here folks. I'm just waiting for the next revolutionary movement to step up, whats next??

In the meantime... Say No To H8! And Liberate The Love!