Let the Sun Shine In!
MMOW Must Open its Books

MMOW has Come and Gone
But our Work is not Finished

[ Read Gay.Com Article ]

Below is a link to a reprint of the May 5, 1993, Washington Blade article on attendance at the 1993 March on Washington, which estimated 750,000 in attendance. The Blade is estimating 328,000 for MMOW 2000. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the D.C. Metro reported 117,748 extra rides on Sunday for MMOW, and 287,000 extra in 1993. Subway figures present some of the strongest evidence of crowd size because their numbers are less subject to manipulation and interpretation.

[ Read 1993 Blade Article ]

The following are final Poll figures reported on the Washington Blade website:

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POLLING BOOTH

The Blade/Gay.com Online Interactive Opinion Survey

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How do you feel about the Millennium March on Washington?

It was a failure and hurt the movement
31.0%

It was a success and helped the movement for equal rights for Gay people
36.1%

It was not successful and did not help the movement
17.7%

It was fun but neither helped nor hurt the movement
10.2%

It was neither a success nor a failure and neither hurt nor helped
5.0%

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[ Washington Blade Web Site ]

[ Read Millennium March Magazine Article ]

". . . Unlike past marches, this one is being dismissed by scores of local and grassroots activists who say it’s being controlled by national gay rights figures. 'We refuse to march back into the closet,' said a letter written by Tom Ammiano, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and Eileen Hansen, a regional organizer for the 1987 March on Washington."

[ Read Full Article ]

A growing list of more than 770 signers from 34 states and DC have endorsed a powerful letter from the next generation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists. Signatures are still be collected at lgbtnextgeneration@hotmail.com

This growing national grassroots effort was joined on April 25 by Youth Resource, www.lgbt.net, and www.beautifulboy.com, who replaced the front page of their websites with the letter.

The next generation letter has been emailed to executive directors of national groups asking for a response by mid-May and it has been distributed to LGBT media across the country with signatures and contact information.

FROM ISOLATION TO JUSTICE
A letter to the LGBT movement from the Next Generation

Among our nation's monuments for liberty, equality and justice lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people march on Washington. For many in the next generation, this is our first opportunity to experience a national march. Yet, we are faced with conflicting emotions. More important than the experience, this march provides us with an opportunity to ask what kind of a movement we are inheriting.

The LGBT movement does not belong to today's leaders alone; it belongs to tomorrow's as well. The next generation of LGBT activists will be left to either sustain or undo the work done today - work that affects how LGBT people are thought of in American society and how we think of ourselves. Thus, we must be guided by a vision that continues to advance our values and enrich our legacy.

To what degree do today's LGBT organizations have a long-term view that anticipates the consequences of today's strategies? What are our movement's values, beyond the festivals, rainbow "tchotchkes," fundraising dinners and concerts?

We, the next generation of LGBT activists, join hundreds of thousands of LGBT people who share a commitment to the values and principles of social justice that are the foundation of the LGBT movement. These values have implications beyond sexual orientation and are the basis of civil rights for all people and inform how social movements act.

WHAT ARE OUR VALUES?
Each one of us grew up in a homophobic society that taught us to feel alone and isolated. From this isolation, we reach out to each other to build community and act together to build a movement. We are our friends' found families, the creators of new traditions and ethics. We are reinventing gender. We act up, and kiss in. We build community centers and other social service programs everywhere. When the nation was in homophobic denial, together we launched an unprecedented response to the AIDS epidemic and we created the most poetic monument in the country, the Quilt.

From these experiences, the core values of our movement emerge: compassion, belief and commitment to the common good, non-discrimination, political freedom, freedom from violence and harassment, control over our own bodies, and equal opportunity.

These values are part of a larger legacy that links justice movements together. Do we believe in these values as a "Simple Matter of Justice" for all people? If we truly do, the LGBT movement must resist isolation and return wholeheartedly to this nation's struggle for justice.

IN ISOLATION
It is clear that the LGBT movement is succeeding at achieving some gains on sexual orientation and gender identity issues. But if LGBT organizations act in isolation, our values will be undermined and they will not be realized.

A single-minded approach that attempts to isolate sexual orientation equality from other struggles limits the movement's agenda so that some may move forward while others are left behind. In our own history, internal battles were fought to recognize some of the movement's most obvious constituents - bisexual and transgendered people. Acting as if sexual orientation is the common denominator - and not justice - makes the movement irrelevant to those who cannot or will not act in isolation.

LGBT people are the childless elderly, yet lack of social nets for the old is deemed "not a gay issue." The nation's commitment to public education - on which LGBT youth and parents depend - is deemed not a gay issue. LGBT youth disproportionately represent homeless youth in this country, yet homelessness is not a gay issue. Employment discrimination, for those of us who cannot or will not pass, casts us into poverty, yet unemployment, welfare and Medicaid policies are not gay issues. LGBT people are more likely to abuse drugs and this nation's drug policies are increasingly more criminal than interventionist, yet the war on drugs is not a gay issue. In this framework, we wonder who is "gay?"

If the LGBT movement acts in isolation it is blind to the ways in which it reinforces inequality. What does it mean to fight for more severe hate crimes penalties when we know that in our current criminal justice system people of color and people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds make up a vastly disproportionate number of people arrested and incarcerated? In addition, people 25 and younger are often the perpetrators. Wouldn't prevention of hate crimes - and our core values - be better served if resources and energy spent passing these laws were redirected to join education strategies that reach the places where young people learn?

If the LGBT movement acts in isolation it becomes blind to the crisis eroding the very foundations of civil rights in this country. Increasingly there are no rights apart from those that are bought and secured in the marketplace. The wielding of private power and political access based on wealth undermines democracy for all people. If this remains the context, gains made around "sexual orientation" are meaningless.

OUT OF ISOLATION
We believe the LGBT movement will not move forward without understanding the reality of LGBT people's lives - which are not isolated or reducible to a single issue. If the LGBT movement continues its trend toward isolation, we will have failed to understand the nature of justice - that it serves the common good and leaves nobody behind.

Thus, the degree to which the LGBT movement is directed by collective input and an open process of decision making is the crucial measure of its commitment to social justice. The survival of the LGBT movement demands that we refuse to concentrate power in any organization, and instead seek to foster a democratic ethic of participation among LGBT people. When this happens, more organizations will support ways for us to participate in the movement beyond appearing at a national march or by writing a check. No organization, no matter what their financial resources, could alone determine the direction of the movement.

TRUE JUSTICE IS JUSTICE FOR ALL
The means our leaders employ to fight for justice inform and redefine the ends we seek. These means define not only the movement's ethics but also determine who is invested in the movement, who it speaks to, who leaves, and ultimately who is left behind.

LGBT people have much to teach American society. It is our turn to support this nation's social justice legacy by contributing to the model through which rights are obtained by a community. If in adding to this model, we are true to our values in means and ends, we will have worked towards the day when this country affords equality to all of its citizens.

We applaud those organizations and activists who have built and support a LGBT social justice movement. We applaud the Audre Lorde Project, SONG, National Youth Advocacy Coalition and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force for creating programs dedicated to racial and economic justice within the LGBT movement. We applaud the Lesbian and Gay Community Center in New York City for leading the way for 11 national and state organizations to take a stance against the death penalty.

We call on all national LGBT organizations to meet soon after the March to agree upon and then publish how they will institutionalize accountability amongst each other and to individual activists in the movement, to ensure that the movement is never again put in the kind of dangerous position generated by the controversy surrounding this march.

We call on ourselves, our movement's organizations and our movement's visionary leaders to continue the unfinished task of articulating a social justice vision that directs the means and ends of the LGBT movement from a genuine commitment to "justice for all."

It is time for our movement to resist isolation and act in a larger social justice community, where many LGBT people live and where the next generation will thrive.

[ Full Interview ]

[ Read Article ]

[ Read Article ]

[ Read Article ]

Tom Ammiano, one of the leading elected gay officials in the nation and President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and Eileen Hansen, a Co-Convener of the Ad Hoc Committee for an Open Process, won't be marching in Washington next Sunday:

"We don't notice the words '. . . of Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals and Transgenders' anywhere in the title. In this era of mainstreaming our movement and fighting for the right to be considered "normal," we can't help but believe that the bland choice of titles for the march was deliberate. . . We won't be marching on April 30 for many other reasons. We believe in a movement that is democratic. Instead, this march has been exactly the opposite in its top-down planning and ignoring the pleas of many who asked for involvement and input over the past two and a half years."

[ Full Text of Open Letter ]

The following is an official media release by "Freaks are Family":

Media Release
WASHINGTON, April 11— Frustrated with the planning process of the Millennium March on Washington that has excluded grassroots activists and by the assimilationist theme of the march, a number of local and national queer groups and community activists are planning an alternative march on Sunday, April 30.

"Freaks Are Family: The Millinery March on Washington Uniting All Queers" will take place concurrent to the MMOW, but will allow all queers and their allies to participate regardless of religious or political beliefs, family status, social class, or personal appearance.

"Our march is a true and inclusive representation of alternative lifestyles within our movement," march organizers said. "We intend to highlight the fabulousness and diversity of the queer community with a march and picnic among our family and friends."

The "Freaks Are Family" march—a response to the MMOW theme of "Faith and Family"—will congregate near the Washington Monument at 14th Street and Constitution Ave. NW at 9 a.m. and will march to a picnic site on the National Mall. Sponsoring organizations include Bisexual Insurgence, DC Radical Faeries, and the International Wenches Guild. Participants will include members of the Lesbian Avengers and of the transgender, leather, polyamorous, pagan, and gothic communities.

[ Visit their Website ]

An article by Aaron Krach in the April edition of A & U Magazine has asserted that the Millennium March organizers "deserve a flop for deciding that HIV and AIDS no longer warrant explicit inclusion in the official platform."

"The MMOW platform lists eight goals including "hate crime legislation, privacy rights and GLBT health care issues," among others. AIDS, still the single most serious threat against gay men after twenty years, has been discarded for "GLBT healthcare issues." According to coexecutive director Dianne Hardy-Garcia, the platform categories were meant to be "broad" and that specifics like "AIDS and breast cancer will be covered during the rally."

[ Read Full Article ]

The following is quoted directly from the March - June National Youth Advocacy Coalition UPDATE:

As Members of North Carolina Lambda Youth Network who are committed to the struggle for social justice for all people, we stand in opposition to the Millennium Marcho on Washington (MMOW). As young people, we recognize the connections between the oppressions and the multiplicity of identities within our movement. It is our view that MMOW recognizes neither.

Although we understand the potential value of a national march, and the historic significance of past marches, we cannot ignore the poor ethics with which the MMOW has been "organized." We do not believe MMOW has been mindful of the needs of youth, people of color, transgendered and bisexual people, people of different class backgrounds and access abilities. MMOW will be just one more time ofr the GAY movement to talke about GAY RIGHTS. This is a disservice to the diversity of the LGBT movement, and the depths of the struggle for social change. The LGBT movement has to expand its people power and monetary resources at home, in our own states and local communities.

We must ask ourselves these questions: How do we organize a movement that is inclusive of the entire LGBT community? Who will conduct this movement? Are we fighting for some of us to be tolerated, perhaps including them withing the existing power structure that does not and will not foster social change, or are we righting for a progressive agenda that includes a redistribution of power, access, and wealtth and the elimination of violence, exploitation, discrimination, and repression? As youth activists for social change, we are asking for the latter.

[ Boycott the Millennium March Website ]

Selected quotes from the editorial include:

". . . More troubling is that MMOW lacks any cognizant reason for people to march. All the previous marches on Washington—in 1979, 1987, and 1993—had a purpose. And they all operated under the process of representative democracy. People across the country felt involved. They were motivated to make the marches successful. This time the process has been elitist and disempowering. There has been no opportunity for meaningful input from local groups or activists."

". . . There seems to be no purpose for this year's event, and if there is, organizers haven't articulated it well because few in the community, aside from ardent supporters of the event, can name a single unifying reason to pay $1,000 to fly across the country to send some sort of symbolic message to political leaders."

[ Read Full Editorial ]

A hardhitting, pull no punches editorial in the April edition of Pittsburgh's Planet Q Newpaper has accused the Millennium March on Washington organizers of 'selling out" our community.

The editorial listed five reasons "why the MMOW is not the 4th Civil Rights March by our Community." These included a lack of community consultation in calling for the MMOW, a refusal to disclose financial information, the "selling out" of our community's interests to corporate sponsorships, an unelected and self-selected board of directors, and the failure of MMOW to publically state a reason for marching.

The editorial's final reason for not supporting the march is easily the most shocking: "This fifth reason to not march (MMOW’s "no reason to march") is perhaps the most important of all. MMOW board members have inexplicably hidden their "working vision" from the community. It is not on their web site. It is not in their literature. MMOW has not made it public via a press release."

[ Read Full Editorial ]

Four openly gay and lesbian New York elected officials have issued a blistering media release stating that "We cannot support the Millennium March on Washington for Equality. The concerns over democracy and accountability are so serious that we urge people in the LGBT community to withhold their support and participation as well."

Issued by NYC Councilmember Christine C. Quinn, NYS Senator Thomas K. Duane, NYC Councilmember Margarita Lopez, and NYS Assembly Member Deborah Glick, the statement characterized the community's response to the Millennium March as one of "disinterest, apathy and even hostility . . . and we understand why this has happened—our local activists, the people who selflessly fight for our rights every day, have been shut out. Denied are grassroots activists like the ones who brought us ACT UP in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Gay Activist Alliance in the '70s, and in the beginning, Stonewall itself."

[ Read Full Media Release ]

". . . Hyde's article reflected these concerns in, as he puts it, a 'sassy' style. Reporting his observations of Dallas' local organizing meeting, he wrote, 'Avoiding recent national criticism of secrecy and exclusion, the Dallas 2000 Committee carefully constructed a controlled parade of proponents, never allowing any opportunity for public dissent or discussion. Instead, the mostly white, hand-selected entourage pontificated about their glorious memories of previous pageants and how this time they would change the world. They had a dream, Dr. King.'"

[ Read Full Article ]

Hyde Article Yanked from Website
The Texas Triangle has apparently removed all traces of the January 28, 2000 article by Wade Hyde which was critical of the MMOW. A thorough search of their on-line archives could not locate it, although a letter to the editors supportive of the article was found.

Mike Castellano - Ad Hoc Committee

. . . 'Contracting the HIV virus in many countries is now a death sentence,' said NGLTF interim Political Director Virginia M. Apuzzo. 'The United States should acknowledge its past role in the development of IMF and World Bank policies that encourage countries with staggering debt payments to cut back and privatize their health care, while imposing fees on lower-income people who desperately need medical services. The United States must use its influence with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to encourage these entities to cancel or drastically reduce third-world debt so that more money can go to building health care centers, preventing and treating opportunistic infections that make AIDS more deadly and establishing massive education and prevention campaigns that include condom and clean-needle distribution.'"

[ Read Full Media Release ]

[ NGLTF Director Kerry Lobell Resigns from MMOW Board ]

( Note: The National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce is the largest grassroots organization of its kind in the U.S.A. They have not endorsed the Millennium March on Washinton on April 30. )

". . . Since MMOW was first announced by the Human Rights Campaignand the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches—without community input or discussion—this dreadfully flawed project has been undemocratic, disorganized, and without a political platform or grassroots mandate. MMOW's glaring lack of democracy has been both conscious and deliberate . . .

. . . Let's move on from this debacle. We know the strength of our movement—it will not be measured in the numbers attending a concert or a rally on the mall. So, for the sake of our collective future, let's sit this one out. And, when it's over, we'll get on with the real business of building a movement."

[ Read Full Media Release ]

" . . . by far the strangest and most revealing first of this march is the high level of opposition it has generated, not from right-wing homophobes and God-hates-fags groups but from gay and lesbian activists themselves. It is indeed an odd turn of events when bands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists are working as hard as they can to convince other lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people not to attend a national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender march on Washington."

[ Read Nation Article ]

"Next month, on a spring Sunday many hope will be warm and rain-free, hundreds of thousands of gay and gay-friendly folks from across the country will converge on Washington, D.C., to march in pursuit of equal rights for homosexuals.

That is if, between now and April 30, a few hundred thousand gay and gay-friendly folks decide showing up for the march is worth their bother. The Millennium March—three years and $2 million in the making—is fast becoming the biggest civil rights rally no one seems interested in attending."

[ Read Article ]

[ Read Announcment ]

[ Read Correspondence ]

[ Read Article ]