LOOKING BACK
Queer lang syne
A year-end review of the Carolinas* top stories
compiled by Q-Notes staff
2008 was more than just an election year.
Our galvanized community accomplished
great deeds and made history. The election of
our nation’s first African-American president
was just one of a litany of amazing events.
Right here at home, the Carolinas LGBT com
munity saw plenty of forward movement on
our quest for equality.
CBPM Martin Luther King, Jr. Gala award winners
DeArcy McVay and Dorae Saunders.
Photo Credit: Moye/moyephoto.net
Our year-end review is broken down into
two sections: Community and Politics.
Community
RDU gets a center
January
This year, LGBT community members in
Raleigh and surrounding areas began to
organize their first community center. As for
now, the group continues to operate under the
501(c)3 status of Triangle Community Works.
The board of directors and oth
ers have begun the process to
achieve non-profit status of
their own. When they get final
approval from the IRS, the
group will begin capital cam
paign fundraising to open the
Raleigh area’s first-ever LGBT
Community Center.
CBPM honors two
February . ,
■ Scores crowded into the Afro-
American Cultural Center
(AACC) the Saturday after the
2008 Martin Luther King, Jr. holi
day to celebrate the visionary
leader’s life and legacy, and to
honor two members of the
LGBT/Same-gender loving (SGL)
Afncan-Airierican community.
Dorae Saunders, a trans
gender performer from Columbia, S.C., was
honored with the Audre Lorde Community
Leadership Award for her national visibility,
mentorship and contributions to the South
Carolina LGBT community.
DeArcy McVay of Charlotte was honored
with the Bayard Rustin Community
Leadership Award for his impact as a youth
mentor and men’s health educator.
Carter honored nationally
February
North Carolinian Mandy Carter was hon
ored at the 20th anniversary Creating Change
conference, hosted Feb. 6-10 by the Task Force,
for her work with Southerners On New
Ground (SONG), a North Carolina-based
rights group created at the 1993 Creating
Change conference hosted in Durham.
“I am truly humbled to receive this award
and I do so for everyone who has been, is
and will be in the social justice movement,”
Carter said.
She began her battle for social justice when
she heard a speaker from a Quaker group at her
high school. She said that conversation changed
her life, and as a result she often follows the
lead of the Quakers in her own activism. “We
have to go where the people are and we have to
interact with them there,” she said.
City honors gay leader
March
Openly gay community leader Tim Griffin
was honored with the 2008 Neighborhood
Leader Award on March'8. The award was pre
sented by the City of Charlotte’s Neighborhood
Development department at its 13 th Annual
Neighborhood Symposium.
Griffin, president of the Morningside
Neighborhood Association, has devoted
countless hours toward the revitalization of
the Morningside neighborhood in the vicinity
of Central Avenue, east of Uptown. The
bohemian area is popular with gay and les
bian Charlotteans, artists and musicians.
Griffin and his partner Neil have helped
organize the association into a strong and
vi&ant influence in the Plaza Midwood and
Morningside areas. They have also helped create
various sub-organizations to serve the interests
of the neighborhood’s varied population, such
as one group for mothers and children.
Pride Charlotte breaks I Ok
July
In its third successful year under the direc
tion of Charlotte’s Lesbian and Gay
Community Center, the 2008 Pride Charlotte
festival enjoyed another record turnout.
According to Charlotte Mecklenburg Police,
10,000 people attended the day-long festival at
uptown Gateway Village on July 26.
Raine Cole, one of the festival’s co-chairs,
said the event was “fabulous.”
“The turnout was tremendous and there
see Year-end on 14
DECEMBER 27.2008 • (f^Notes 13