November 25,2005 Volume 26, Number 24 Serving the Carolines For Over 25 Years! OAKLAND, CA — More than 2£00 ' lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. (LGBT) rights advocates convened in Oakland November 10-13 for foe annu al Creating Change Conference. Creating Change is .foe largest annual meeting of foe national LGBT eommu „ nity. The conference reflects the breadth and scope of diversity of the LGBT community and its supporters. On Saturday, a full house.erf LGBT rights activists had foe rare experience of - 'eavesdropping' on a dialogue between Urvashi Vaid and John D Emilio, two of foe LGBT rights movement's preeminent thinkers. If there's anybody who knows about cre ating change, if s this duo, who a>-pre sented what they described as an ongo ing conversation in foeir 18-year friend issues related to the movement: its suc cesses and failures, aS well as how best to move forward. D'Emilio, who teaches at foe University of Illinois of Chicago, is a former Task Fence board co-chair and foe founding director of the Task Force Policy Institute, which is celebrating its lOfo anniversary this yeas He has writ • w ten or edited more than half a dozen bodes, including Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America; and Lost Prophet, an award-winning biography of African-American civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. From 1986 to 2001, Vaid 'worked for the National Gay and /' Lesbian Task Force, first as media direc tor and then as executive director and finally as director of the Policy Institute. She has written dozens of articles and commentaries, as well as the book, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation. In September Vaid became executive director of the Arcus Foundation. hi their keynote, DHEmilio and Vaid praised the work of national organiza tions to build political power; win legal rulings, and improve the health srftd well-being of the LGBT community. As EX Emilio said, "The visibility we nave achieved is like die air and water peo ple need to survive." Both he and Vaid, however warned against the negatives of institutional ization and selective visibility. Vaid crit icized the tendency of large institutions to lead from the top down rather than ■"W ■ r'v \ " '■; y«r-JV;\.v:° v ;v '• • ; V • V. " A "Its time to stop running away from the mofat values issue and seize it and go on the offensive,* N6LTF Executive Director Matt Foreman said to rousing applause. ‘Let's start by claiming our moral vakies--liberty and personal freedom for at,' ; J*:. Visit us on the web at www. National Gay .: ‘Neither protest nor politics will end the oppression of LGBT people. We must make a cultural shift, a shift that changes the moral values of pur society.’ — Urvashi Vakt ***&?&• Vi -.„• - -•* • • —. • :'■••■ I- • - ‘We are up against a global system that reinforces inequality at all costs? — John D’Emito ■ *•# ’ ' ,^;;.vv 'r;-,'"".; %' -f•; the grassroots up, saying, "A move ment does not consist of organizations, it consists of people." DTmilio brought up that many of die most visible LGBT people are white, and that this misrep resents the wide diversity of the com munity. "Until we shift die colors of our visi bility," EyEmiho said, "visibility will remain a double-edged sword." D'EmiKo and Vaid also discussed die systemic and pervasive nature of die opposition to LGBT equality as well as the inequities found within the LGBT community. D'Emilio tied racial, genr dei; sexual and economic oppression to alarger system of inequality that builds power for die few rather than the many. "We are up against a global system that reinforces inequality at all costs," he said. Focusing on the tendency of ' gains in equality in the LGBT commu nity to benefit the wealthy white and well-educated, he said, "We are up against the unequal distribution of die gains of our movement" Vaid gave credit to die LGBT move merit for allowing women to attain positionsof power, an achievement she said was not as common in other pro gressive movements. She stressed, however that the LGBT movement had not done enough to build power in people of color communities and with other social justice issues, including poverty. "Our politics of recognition needs to be married to a politics of redistribu tion. The progressive movement for greater justice is die mainstream of the LGBT movement, not a fringe group that has co-opted the queer move ment"'she said. Most important D'Emilio and Vaid encouraged LGBT people to see move ment building as a long-term process. D'Emilio brought up die. positives and negatives of the same-sex marriage issue, saying that "With same-sex mar riage, we have found an issue that pen etrates die homophobia of heterosexu ■' als in our society." (£■'. ~ He lamentect however; that "mar ' ■ cbnlifiiMd ovt pagil

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