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Table of Contents
February
Co-Chairs' Report
Or maybe I'm just a workaholic. Or a political junkie. Or in love with Alice Babette Toklas. No, that's not it…she's dead. But I do love her spirit. And why we're named after her. At least according to me. Some have described Alice as "a very close associate of Gertrude Stein…her secretary, cook, and confidante." That's a good description of Alice's role in the San Francisco political scene - we record and describe political events around us, give people a comfortable place to partake of gay and lesbian politics (the spicier the better), and do our best to influence the outcome of politics, as well as pride ourselves on being political insiders, always seeking the most private details (before they become public details, that is) of the political scene. Toklas has also been described as "a chain smoker with a slight mustache, Gypsy earrings, and manicured nails." Ah…a somewhat provocative description of San Francisco politics…unhealthy, obsessive, kind of butch, kind of femme, kind of backwards and progressive all at the same time. And, well, it's been rumored that Gertrude called Alice her "Pussy," while Gertrude was "Lovey" to Alice. Ah…luckily for you I am out of analogies to SF politics…suffice it to say, I thought it was a fun fact. I promise Scott and I don't have nicknames for each other. At least not yet. All this is a long way of saying I love Alice. The club that is the woman; her spirit of creativity and ingenuity and free thinking (and comfort food) that we are all wrapped up in. And I am lucky. And proud to be the Co-Chair of this hard working, fun, resourceful and influential club for another year. I will dearly miss Rich Kowalewski as my co-chair. He is an amazing person. He is one of the few people I know who can think big and provide vision and new ideas, while at the same time handle the details that running a large, all-volunteer club demands. And I welcome my new co-chair, Scott Wiener. His energy, integrity, charm and fastidiousness will only make our club stronger.
So, without further ado, I am proud to announce the new Alice Board of Directors for 2005. Drum roll please… 2005 Board of Directors Co-Chairs Immediate Past Co-Chair Treasurer Secretary Political Action Co-Chairs Finance Co-Chairs Membership Co-Chairs Public Relations Directors Newsletter Editor Program Co-Chairs Youth Outreach Chair Special Events Chair Technology Chair Field Coordinators Policy Advisors Emeritus Board
Alice welcomes its wonderful new Board members this year: Joan Roughgarden: Biologist at Stanford University (she's brilliant and creative; a great addition to our Board) Tony Winnicker: Communications Director for the SFPUC (he's brilliant too, just not about biology…though if you need him to communicate an obscure biological happening, he'll have it on the front page of the New York Times) Matthew Goudeau: Protocol Chief for Mayor Newsom, Matthew will throw fabulous parties and events for us, widen our spheres of influence and keep us up on City Hall events Rebecca Prozan: Assistant District Attorney for Kamala Harris (after graduating from law school and passing the bar, Rebecca is back…and excited to become more engaged in LGBT politics to help elect a new crop of leadership) Ken Cleaveland: Government Relations Director at BOMA (he's going to help his colleagues understand how important LGBT politics is to the fabric of San Francisco…oh yes, and he'll help with our finances) Robert Haaland: Organizer at SEIU Local 790 and one of our favorite endorsed candidates from last year…Robert's appearance on our Board is no accident. We want to continue our extremely positive working relationship with Milk, labor and other areas of the political spectrum and Robert is an integral part of that effort. Miguel Bustos: Another of our very favorite candidates. We want to build on Miguel's amazing work during his campaign, uniting people from all areas of the City and all parts of the political spectrum. And encourage him to run for office again… Julius Turman: A lawyer by trade, but activist by night, Julius was a key player in the Castro for All efforts to eradicate racism in the heart of the Castro. He's already jumped in feet first at Alice. Michelle Ortiz: Just coming off another campaign, Michelle is a fundraiser extraordinaire. She's also going to help us recruit more women to Alice. Julian Chang: A director at AT&T, Julian is well-known in the community for his years of community service. We are lucky to have him put his boundless energy to help Alice grow. We're excited about our new Board and the new year. Laura Spanjian Reese's
World: Perspectives from the Editor
1) The National Observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday with rallies and marches in support 2) The 32nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade with rallies and marches in support 3) The protests and rallies against the presidential inauguration 4) The ongoing protests against the war 5) National GLBT organizations issuing a Joint Statement on priorities 6) A statewide Marriage Equality Summit held here in our fair City 7) A growing national opposition to protect Social Security 8) And a myriad of other protests and actions against the death penalty, against Arnold’s state budget, for better education funding, supporting Senator Barbara Boxer’s challenge to Ohio’s electoral votes, against torture and Bush’s choice of Cabinet members, and on and on and on….
Are we working together?
No, seriously, are we working together? Look at that list above. Look at the many different issues. Think not of how they are different, but of how they are the same.
Our opposition is the opposition to all of the above. For, really, we are all of the above. And the opposition sees that and knows that and works on that level.
We work in separate rooms, rarely fighting to protect the whole house because we’re so busy trying to save our individual room. The opposition wants to blow our house down altogether. In the old nursery rhyme about the Three Little Pigs, they were able to defeat the Big, Bad Wolf by being in a house of bricks—but the real story there is that they stopped trying to fight the Big, Bad Wolf individually and worked together to create a home that he couldn’t penetrate.
We need to build a home, an America, that the Radical Religious Right, the opposition to all of the above, can’t tear apart room-by-room, thus blowing the whole house down.
And this all means that we gotta think large. I know, I know, so many times we’ve said things like this before in our movements. But we gotta stop just talking about it, and do it. Because the Big, Bad Wolf’s wind is really strong right now, on all sides of our house.
When the opposition goes to lobby against a bill, or argue a point, or writes a letter, they don’t just talk about these things in a limited view as our side does. They say things like, “I’m a Christian.” “I’m for family values.” “I’m an American.” “The Bible says…” “I believe in moral values.”
What do we say?
“The reason you should oppose this legislation is because it will destroy a fundamental human right and it has been proven that statistically throughout the course of our nation’s history that the American public supports this issue by 50+1% and therefore we should not take lightly the idea that this bill clearly would harm your district’s residents by disproportionately diluting their resources and funding and their children will not have the allocations necessary for….”
See the difference in the above?
We talk intellectually and specifically, and clearly we have won the argument on the particulars of the legislation at hand and clearly sense and reason will prevail.
But, clearly, that’s not reality though. While we’re talking about court reasonings and monetary allocations and historical demographic shifts and whatnot, our opposition talks from the gut. The emotion, whether intellectually and logically sound or not, is real. And that emotion, that gut-level argument, may not win a debate at a university, can easily win politically.
And so where is our emotion? And where is our larger perspective of the issues at hand? Why don’t we say, why can’t we say, why don’t we argue, “I’m for equality.” “I’m for justice.” “I’m for privacy.” “I’m against discrimination.” “I’m for economic and social justice.” "I'm a Christian who cares..."
See the emotion in those statements. See the larger perspective that incorporates our issue and our friends’ issues and the larger issues of democratic values. See how many people we bring into our house and make it stronger when we think large and show some emotion.
These are not everything we want to say, but if we begin to frame our conversations in a larger perspective, rather than pinpointing our individual issues and saying to others that ‘that’s not my issue,’ can we not see how these larger frameworks encompass our issues and all of the above? For really, these are all of our issues when we frame them not just in the specific context but in a larger, emotional, guttural, human context.
And once we begin to create our free, just, equal, private, American home, and protect it, from all sides and all anti-American fronts, our many diverse communities can finally enjoy an equal strength against the Big, Bad Wolf. But, in order to do this, we gotta think large, and we gotta show some emotion. Reese Aaron Isbell, M.P.P. On
the Mark in Sacramento
Now that Governor Schwarzenegger has delivered his 2005-06 budget, Californians will have the opportunity to consider his proposals and determine if they accomplish that which the governor had promised during his campaign for office and statements he has made since taking his oath. Among his more familiar mantras is his opposition to higher taxes and to more state borrowing.
The governor has been very clear in his assessment of our ongoing budget crisis. It is his determination that the state is suffering from a spending problem, not a revenue problem. If that is the case, the solution should be quite simple – cut spending. But what would it take to close a $9.1 billion gap through spending cuts alone? If we were to fire every state employee we would save approximately $8 billion in general fund salary expenditures. If we were to completely dismantle the University of California and California State University systems, the annual savings would be about $5.4 billion. Eliminate our Youth and Adult Corrections Agency thereby closing every state prison? Savings - $7 billion.
Clearly, if we were to balance our budget through cuts alone, we would do serious damage to our state’s basic infrastructure at a time when we should be reinvesting in it in preparation for the historic population surge we will experience in the next twenty years. Just as clearly, the governor knows that cuts alone cannot be the solution. That is why borrowing, which comprised 40% of his solution to the shortfall in the current fiscal year’s budget, is growing to over 60% in his proposal for the coming year. This is in spite of his famous recall campaign pledge, “I promise you as governor I will not spend more money than the state takes in” (to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, September 10, 2003) or during the Proposition 57 and 58 campaigns, “We will…cut up the credit cards and throw them away.” (Associated Press, February 6, 2004).
Of course, borrowing comes with its own price tag. Should the governor have his way, the cost of our debt service will increase from nearly $2 billion in the 2005-06 budget to approximately $4 billion in each of the next three consecutive years. That means we will be budgeting more for the cost of our governor’s new debt than for Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI) for aged, blind and disabled Californians, more than for our community college system, our UC system, our CSU system and more than for CalWORKS, our welfare to work program.
So if the governor cannot resolve our “spending problem” through cuts alone and now in his second budget must again rely upon historic levels of new borrowing in spite of his repeated promises not to, is it possible that his premise is faulty? Might we have a revenue problem? Without considering any new taxes but merely returning to the tax revenue sources the state had in place until the end of the last decade, the budget deficit would evaporate. If the Vehicle License Fee (VLF) had not been suspended by the legislature in 1998 and rescinded by Governor Schwarzenegger on his first day in office, the state would have benefited by approximately $4 billion each of those years totaling $30 billion to date. The cut in the VLF saved the average car owner about $200 annually, an amount she/he paid every year since 1948. If the top 2% of California’s tax payers were paying the same rate in state income tax that Governor Pete Wilson established in the early 1990s, the state would be receiving an additional $3 billion each year. If the governor were to direct his energies toward closing corporate tax loopholes and ensuring better collection of existing tax revenues owed the state we would have another billion dollars or more to close the gap.
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren has identified tens of billions of federal dollars owed to California (our tax payers send Washington a dollar and receive back 77 cents though Texan taxpayers receive closer to 92 cents on their dollar). If Governor Schwarzenegger were to use his friendships and political capital in Washington to collect just 10% of federal funds due Californians, we would have nearly $5 billion of new revenue. Unfortunately, there is virtually no new federal money in the governor’s new budget.
So rather than admit the state has a revenue problem, the governor proposes that we increase our debt load and put it on our children’s credit card. Rather than do what is necessary to identify and collect new revenue, the governor proposes taxing the elderly, the disabled and the poor by limiting their access to life sustaining state services and continuing to starve our under funded and failing public school system. He sees no problem with taxing middle class families by continuing to raise the cost of higher education.
Could it be that by reasonably balancing the 2005-06 budget with
a combination of cuts and new revenue without borrowing, the governor
would have no substantive arguments for a special election this
year? Is it possible that without exacerbating our fiscal crisis
the governor would have a more difficult time convincing voters
that the cause of our problems is the teachers and our public employees?
There must be some explanation as to why the governor would break
his promises, go back on his word and not recognize that there are
more sensible and politically feasible ways to return our Golden
State to sound fiscal health. P.S. Should you have questions or thoughts, please feel free to contact me at any time through my District Office at 415-557-3013 or keep updated on the web via: http://www.markleno.com National News Part I: Joint Statement on the GLBT Movement From the Editor: Once again, during the month of January, there were many news articles and press statements about the future of the GLBT movement, particularly on the issue of marriage and a vision for the future. Below is the Joint Statement from 22 national LGBT organizations on common vision. (For all of our information and resource, more follow-up articles are below the statement.) CIVIL RIGHTS. COMMUNITY. MOVEMENT.
The histories of America’s civil rights movements – and their successes in securing equal protection of the law for those denied it – have always been shaped by the complex interweaving of legal victories, political progress and advances in public opinion. So when we look at the state of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights today, we have every reason to be optimistic. Our movement is strong, it is determined, and it is gathering momentum every day. It has been only 18 months since the Supreme Court struck down the last remaining state laws that branded us as criminals, little more than a year since Massachusetts’ top court ruled that same-sex couples could not be denied full equality in marriage, and mere weeks since California enacted the nation’s most expansive domestic partnership law. All the while, public support for LGBT equality continues to grow. Gallup has reported that 89% of Americans support equal employment opportunity for gays and lesbians. Polls also show nearly two-thirds support the same opportunities for transgender Americans. Nearly four in five – up from 57% just a decade ago – support openly gay military service members; and amid the enactment of anti-gay constitutional amendments in 11 states this past November, exit polls showed that 60% of voters favor legal recognition for same-sex couples. The speed with which our movement is advancing on all fronts is absolutely historic – and it hasn't happened by chance or by accident.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community crosses all borders. We are born into families as diverse as our nation. We are of every race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, class, educational background, ability and party affiliation. We live in cities, towns and neighborhoods across this country, in red states and in blue. We, literally, are everywhere. Yet because that rich diversity often goes unseen, ignored or forgotten, we remain vulnerable to inaccurate stereotypes manufactured by a small but powerful group of anti-gay extremists. Wrapping themselves in cloaks of “family” and “values,” these groups are spending tens of millions of dollars to confuse, distort and subvert the public debate that continues to change hearts and minds about our right to equality as it opens America’s eyes to the true family values that LGBT couples, parents and families are living and demonstrating every day. This public debate serves another purpose as well: it reveals the unjust realities our community faces. If we must take time to care for an ill partner, we can lose our jobs because we are denied the protections of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. Surviving gay and lesbian partners can find their families imperiled by laws that deny inheritance, child custody rights, and Social Security survivors’ protection. Binational LGBT couples and families can be cruelly torn apart by deportation and immigration laws that treat them as legal strangers. The manifest unfairness of these and countless other discriminations is one reason why support for LGBT equality continues to rise. It’s also why we must commit to creating of our diverse community a truly inclusive movement – one that is represented by and pursues justice for the diverse lives that give it substance. The groups represented here are parts of a large civil rights orchestra. We play different instruments – lobbying, electoral politics, impact litigation, grassroots organizing, public education, media advocacy and more – and we are dedicated to playing them well. While our organizations vary in focus and strategies, we share a number of common priorities that will help shape and unite our work in the months and years to come. Among them:
In December, People asked President and Mrs. Bush about civil unions. "Is a couple joined by that kind of legal arrangement as much of a family as, say, you two are a family?" "Of course," President Bush replied. Bush’s acknowledgement (despite his support for an anti-gay constitutional amendment) has set an important new minimum standard for future dialogue surrounding same-sex couples and families, one that reflects an evolving public respect for our relationships that even those who seek to codify discrimination against us cannot easily ignore. This revolution in understanding and respect has been made possible by millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans who are coming out, being out, and living the truth of their lives for others to see. By families unafraid to publicly declare their love for and commitment to one another. By people unwilling, by word or deed, to tell future generations that our relationships are deserving of anything less than acceptance, respect and celebration. And by an orchestra of organizations committed to the strategic advancement of our movement. But at the end of the day, our movement must be more than a collective noun. It must also be an action. Even the most vibrant, vital community can, over time, settle into a status quo. A movement cannot. And the success of our movement is measured not only in the hearts and minds we change, the allies we engage and the civil rights we secure, but in the strength of our collective commitment to the pursuit of enduring social, political and legal change that moves us ever closer to true equality. Each of us. Each of you. Get involved. Learn more about the work of our movement's local, state and national organizations. Invest in that work. Encourage your straight friends and family to do likewise; give them the opportunity to invest in our future – and theirs. Champion equality and respect in your community. Engage new allies at home, in your workplace, in your place of worship, at your school. Stand up. Spread the word. Share your story. By virtue of who we are, we’re a community. But it is by virtue of the decisions we make that we become part of a movement – a civil rights movement working together to create a better, more hopeful world limited only by our ability to envision its promise and experience all that it has to offer. click here for full list of co-signers
From the Editor: Two detailed articles on the statement above and the discussion around it within our national community: San Francisco Chronicle, January 13: 22 gay, lesbian groups reset priorities in wake of losses"
National
News Part II: Federal Marriage Amendment Update
Washington Blade, January 21: "Bush hints at retreat on amendment fight; Gay marriage opponents buoyed by ruling upholding DOMA" President Bush angered some conservative supporters this week by hinting that he would not push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage because of Senate opposition to the measure. In a related development, a judge in Florida issued what is believed to be the first ruling upholding the federal Defense of Marriage Act..... Washington Blade, January 28: "Religious
leaders threaten Bush Arlington Group demands aggressive push for
gay marriage ban" A coalition of social conservative
leaders warned the White House last week that they would withhold
support for President Bush’s proposal to partially privatize
Social Security unless he enthusiastically supports a constitutional
amendment to ban same-sex marriage.... National
News Part III: National Reports on Incumbents' NGLTF Policy Institute: "Impact of Voting against Anti-gay Marriage Amendments on 2004 Re-election Campaigns in Five Midwestern States" Report Finds Incumbents' Chances of Re-election Unharmed by Voting Against Anti-gay Marriage Amendments HRC/Equality Federation: "Standing
Up for Equality: A Report on the Impact of Marriage-Related Votes
on State Legislative Races" Report Shows Voters Support
Legislators Who Oppose Discrimination
Alice B Toklas LGBT Democratic Club General Membership Meeting 2nd Monday of each month You can now join online www.alicebtoklas.org/abt/joinonline.asp, or fill out the application below Membership Application Yes, I want to join the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club! __$35 Regular __I am renewing my membership __I will be a new member __I am a registered Democrat Name ______________________________________________________________ Address _____________________________________________________________ City ____________________________________State: ______Zip: _____________ Phone: Day __________________________Eve: _____________________________ Email: _________________________________________ Please send checks payable to “Alice B. Toklas
LGBT Democratic Club” and mail to: |
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I
am lucky. 
In
just the first month of 2005, we witnessed the following: