EAA is encouraging activists across the country to take action and expose the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a non-profit organization that “has a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.” This “mission” has been pushed by a campaign of lies and/or misleading propaganda in the form of television and radio advertisements and on line campaigns.

On July 14th, NOM launched the Summer for Marriage Tour 2010, where anti-equality activists will travel through nineteen cities and hold “pro-marriage” rallies to garner support for preserving the Defense of Marriage Act, a piece of legislation passed under the Clinton administration that disallows any same-sex marriage in any state to be recognized by the federal government.

On July 6th, EAA launched a campaign to motivate activists in each of the 23 cities with NOM events scheduled to hold peaceful and positive events at the same time NOM rallies are taking place. In places like St. Louis, Tampa, and Indianapolis, event planning is already underway. EAA will support all actions being independently organized by publicizing information about the events through Facebook, Twitter and e-blasts.

“NOM has done a terrific job at instilling fear into the hearts and minds of the American people regarding marriage equality, and it’s the responsibility of the LGBTQ community to rise up and show who we really are. We’re everyone, and we’re struggling like everyone. The benefits of marriage to an LGBTQ couple could mean health insurance, legal citizenship or simple financial security, and we can’t let the lies of the NOM be the prevalent voice. They are on the wrong side of history.” — EAA National Organizing Team

Equality Maine responded to the July 14th NOM rally in Augusta, Maine by hosting their own press conference and rally about the ongoing work to win marriage rights and supporters of marriage equality out numbered the NOM rally attendees. “The press conference EqualityMaine organized was really inspiring. Governor Baldacci, made a surprise appearance.” reported Samantha White, EAA National Organizing Team Member. “More than 100 marriage equality supporters showed up wearing red. The crowd was energizing. Maine is not the place for NOM hate and fearmongering tactics. I think the sea of red proved that, and we’ll prove it again soon.”

In Providence, Rhode Island, marriage equality supporters confronted the lies and deception around the struggle for civil marriage and were able to drown out the speakers from NOM.

EAA encourages local activists in the remaining cities to take action, and will continue networking and building momentum within the broader LGBTQ community.

www.equalityacrossamerica.org
]]> http://equalityacrossamerica.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/stopping-the-bigots-from-florida-to-maine/feed/ 0 equalityacrossamerica http://equalityacrossamerica.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/and-as-we-scream-from-the-top-of-our-lungs-another-u-s-is-happening/ http://equalityacrossamerica.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/and-as-we-scream-from-the-top-of-our-lungs-another-u-s-is-happening/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:10:01 +0000 equalityacrossamerica http://equalityacrossamerica.wordpress.com/?p=234 ]]> This week, thousands upon thousands of folks from across the country (and other countries as well) converged on Detroit for the United States Social Forum. We’ve been blasting out a lot of information about Equality Across America’s participation in this historical event, but if you’re behind on the game like all of us are sometimes go to ussf2010.org for the inspiring details.

This is my sixth conference I’ve attended since mid-March, so I was worried that I was going to be burnt out quickly. I’ve felt burnt out ever since the ending of Harvey Milk week and the last leg of regional conferences that were affiliated with EAA.

Upon arriving, I felt the scalding pessimism and frustration melt off my shoulders as the forum kicked off with what had to be a 10,000 strong multi-issue march for any and all social justice issues. Be it racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, gentrification, immigration, environmental or Detroit-specific issues, they were represented. Undocumented activists stood in solidarity, unafraid and led chants in Spanish and English that were eaten up by the crowd. Environmental chants were immediately followed by queer chants. It was the most beautiful feeling to be screaming along with the masses, not isolated by issue but together in solidarity even though we may not all agree or understand each other.

There wasn’t a single person in that march not smiling, dancing, crying or awestruck. I saw it in their faces, and I couldn’t stop reading the crowd.

Why were we at a conference that wasn’t queer specific?

We can’t do this alone, and neither can any of the other movements fighting for a better society and planet. We must help before asking for help, and we must continue helping. The work will most likely never end – for we have billions of hearts and minds to change and a societal structure that pits us against each other to re-work or tear down.

At this forum, I’ve cried. I’ve laughed and I’ve been horrified. I conversed with folks who never knew that there was a raging queer movement about to topple over into a revolution once we unify. I’ve been educated, and I’ve educated. I’ve argued and expanded so rapidly I’m still digesting everything. My politics have changed, but my goal and my reasons for organizing with Equality Across America have only strengthened, become more cohesive, and that anger…the anger that drives us to transform our sorrows and disappointments into a creative and positive energy that will permeate through this society slowly until all have been liberated, IS BACK.

So many of us have been fighting for only a short time, while others have been going for decades. The younger generations don’t have a time-line for liberation, WE WANT AND NEED IT NOW AND THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION. But, we need to remember to take care of our minds, souls and bodies otherwise what happened to me over the past month happens to all of us.

We hit a brick wall, and sometimes it’s impossible to see that positive energy. We still have some air to clear out, and we need to organize our movement to allow us to unite without assimilating. We’re not the same, so why the hell should we ever say we are? Yet, the e-mail listservs ALWAYS have drama, we’re anxious to check our e-mails after a weekend off (if we ever give ourselves one) and sometimes we want to wave a white flag, say fuck you and run away to some island away from electricity so we can just focus on our own happiness. Don’t deny it. We all feel it. We’re all human and in the end we all become selfish. It’s human nature, for individuality is human nature and we’re all trying to collaborate with so many different identities on the table. It’s a beautiful, stressful and historical mess we are living in right now.

Point being, take care of yourselves you little revolutionaries. Go to conferences, summits, meetings, retreats, actions and events, but take 2 days out of the week to not check your e-mail. Get a creative outlet, or even a therapist (Full disclosure: I am not tolerant of the stigma around that word. The most organized and rational people still need an external communication system they can release their frustrations through).

A REVOLUTION IS BREWING, and even though we may not know exactly what it will look like, we need to prepare for the moment everything comes together and us queers actually become LEGITIMIZED FORCES ON THE TABLE, and ONES THAT HELP OTHER MOVEMENTS. Oppression is oppression, and it would be ignorant of us to forget everyone else.

What might this revolution look like? I think I finally have an idea:

or this

or maybe it’s something as simple as dancing in the streets.

No more of this “Yes we can” bullshit.

Yes we are.

And yes we will.

With all my love,
Nik

With the Prop 8 trial coming to a close in San Francisco and partial reforms for LGBT people coming from DC as a result of months of protest activities, Equality Across America (EAA) is proud to announce that we are moving forward in our fight for full federal equality with a new leadership team.

This newly expanded leadership team represents a diverse group of activists from many groups, cities and experiences. Our successful regional and citywide conferences across the country drew more than 1,300 LGBT activists and allies and allowed us to win more people to building a national grassroots network through EAA and to meet many of these new leaders.

EAA National Organizing Team (to replace Interim Governing Board)

Purpose:
To build a broader leadership team that involves activists we met through the regional and citywide conferences who identified themselves as individuals interested in carrying forward EAA as a national grassroots network. Included in this body would be local activists rooted in organizing work on campuses and in local groups representing regional diversity.

Structure:
This body, EAA National Organizing Team (ENOT), should include 15-20 activists who are able and interested in acting as a consultative and voting body that discusses their experiences on the ground and through reports from EAA groups and members throughout the country. It would:

1) meet via video conference, skype or conference call no more frequently than once every 4-6 weeks;

2) put forward national action initiatives;

3) select a handful of ENOT members help write and edit regular e-blasts and press releases;

4) select a handful of ENOT members to update Web site and respond to queries;

5) coordinate a team of bloggers to make contributions a few times a week and solicit blog contributions from others involved in activism;

6) elect 5-7 ENOT members as administrative delegates to decide financial expenditures and other more immediate questions that require quicker decisions than a wider body can take, but the broader ENOT should be consulted for comment and input on decisions.

7) include the project director whose priorities should be set by this body.

Goals:
1) project and build EAA;

2) develop easy communication and input from EAA members;

3) develop budget and fundraising initiatives to financially sustain EAA through members and supporters;

4) plan an EAA national convention for members by the end of 2010 to provide broader EAA membership input, assess EAA and movement, develop longterm goals, and elect new ENOT for the coming year.

Motivation:
Given the experiences we had before, during and since the conferences, a council of approximately 15-20 people has the potential to tap into the energy, ideas and creativity of a wider layer of activists nationally. Naturally, we’d want this body to be as diverse in every way possible, though if it gets too large it will never be able to meet with any regularity, as we remain a group of volunteer activists with jobs, families, and busy activist lives already. We want EAA to help to shape national debates, initiatives and strategies with diverse input and experiences so that EAA can have an impact on the fight for full federal equality, Time and other limitations necessitate that this body must be both functional and flexible to adjust to the inevitable ups and downs of movement work.

–

The new EAA National Organizing Team includes: Tiffani Bishop (Austin), Ann Coleman (Boston), Bert Coleman (St. Louis), Lindsey Dietzler (Chicago), Anthony Farver (Tampa), Wendy Forbes (Philadelphia), Aiyinah Ford (Washington DC), Colin Hammar (Indianapolis), Judy Heithmar (Chicago), Donna Lee (Gainesville), Amos Lim (San Francisco), Omar Lopez (Austin), Marc Loveless (Chicago), Nik Macjewski (Chicago), David Mailloux (Boston), Melanie Nathan (Los Angeles), Angel Poventud (Atlanta), Ed Reggi (St. Louis), Casey Robinson (Los Angeles), Laura Wadden (San Francisco), Samantha White (Bangor), Sherry Wolf (New York City)

As a grassroots network that grew out of the National Equality March last October, we have continued our devotion to an anti-corporate and grassroots-focused agenda of solidarity with other oppressed groups. We came away from the march with $100,000 remaining and in the last 8 months have spent less than $15,000 in our aim to expand our network and have a broader leadership.

Our Harvey Milk Day initiative was taken up by groups across the country and we are now ready to plot our next steps. We look forward to working with all forces who want to fight for full equality through solidarity and diversity!

In solidarity,

The EAA Crew

City Councilors, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen: I’d like to thank the Pride Committee for all the hard work they do every year to stage the fabulous pageant that Boston Pride has become. This 40^th anniversary Pride celebration invites us to look back on our collective past. The world has changed so much since 1970, the year following the Stonewall Riots, that it is difficult to conceive what living conditions were like for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and trans people in the 1960’s. Yet it is so important that we remember; those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to relive them.

Before Stonewall, there was no such thing as coming out; everyone who could hide in closets, often going so far as to marry persons of the opposite sex. Homosexuality was a dark secret, exposure of which could mean loss of career, friends, family, and even one’s freedom. The shame of being outed as a homosexual or transgender drove many people to suicide.

Homosexuality and transexuality were defined as mental illnesses. One could be involuntarily committed to a mental institution to undergo forced “conversion therapy,” which might include torture techniques like aversive conditioning—electric shocks administered to the genitalia at any sign of same-sex arousal. Any expression of homosexual desire entailed legal jeopardy, regardless of how private or consensual the act. Same-sex dancing, holding hands, and displays of affection were treated as crimes under overbroad and vague statutes; sex acts were felonious. If you sought out intimacy, you ran the risk of entrapment by plainclothes police officers dressed suggestively to entice sexual interest.  Gay bars were illegal, which meant that they were typically owned and operated by organized crime, with unsanitary conditions and abusive employees. If you had a job and an income, you were vulnerable to blackmail; oftentimes, extortion rings operated out of gay bars. Since exposure was tantamount to ruination, victims paid up. Violence at the hands of gaybashers, police officers, or even sex partners was commonplace. There was no recourse. The images of homosexuality one encountered in the media were stereotyped and ugly. Messages about homosexuality were invariably condemning, to the point that the disease label was thought a compassionate innovation. Not even political liberals or the American Civil Liberties Union would stick up for the despised homosexual minority.

It’s a measure of how far we’ve come that this account of the way things used to be seems shocking or incredible, especially to folks under 40. We celebrate today and for the next nine days because our world has been so profoundly transformed since the time of Stonewall.

Change came fitfully. The American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in 1974. Private, consensual sex between adults began to be tolerated; gay bars not owned by the Mafia began to open. Some LGBT folks began acknowledging our identities, and being a known homosexual no longer meant automatically losing your job. Police entrapment of gay men became less frequent, though it was many years after Stonewall before the practice was largely abandoned. The idea of non-discrimination laws to protect LGBT people in access to employment, housing, and public accommodations gained currency. In 1984, the City of Boston passed a non-discrimination ordinance; the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a comprehensive anti-discrimination law for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in 1989. Gaybashing stopped being a risk-free pursuit; hate crimes laws were amended to protect the LGBT community from bigoted violence. Gays and lesbians began to be appointed and elected to high office. The needs of LGBT youth became a concern of state government in the 1990’s. And of course, Massachusetts led the way in recognizing same-sex marriage in the landmark Goodridge decision of 2003. That same year, the US Supreme Court finally invalidated the sodomy laws that have afflicted English-speaking gays and lesbians since the reign of Henry VIII.

What all of you should realize is that change was not inevitable. We have made progress only because we have fought for it, unrelentingly and with tenancity, against tremendous odds and fierce resistance. Every step forward has come at a cost; the cliché that freedom isn’t free has been borne out time and time again.

Living conditions for LGBT people are dramatically transformed because dedicated activists took initiative and confronted the status quo. Courageously, year after year, heroes have stood up at great personal risk to demand that LGBT’s be treated as human beings. Because of the unsung efforts of countless activists over the past 4 decades and more, we live in a time that the downtrodden homosexual of the 1960’s simply could not have imagined.

Getting from riots to rights was exceedingly difficult, and yet here we are. As we revel for the next nine days, let us remember that activism has been our pathway to social change. And the work is yet unfinished. I hope many of you will find inspiration in this year’s Pride festivities to get involved in the movement for full equality.

Don Gorton is a veteran grassroots LGBT activist and one of the 2010 Boston Pride Grand Marshals. Don brings a wealth of historical knowledge and experience as well as support for new activists in our movement. He is currently a board member with Join The Impact MA, and chair of the anti-violence project. He was Chair of The MA Gay and Lesbian Political Alliance and Co-Chair of the Governor’s Hate Crimes Commission. Don has dedicated his life to activism for the LGBT community. He has been instrumental in hate crimes legislation and reporting, a leader in grassroots activism, a stern advocate for police protection and accountability, and a prolific writer with countless letters to the editor and elected officials. He continues to inspire new generations, recently joining to support the local GLAAD presence, and Equality Across America.

Folks from Equality Across America will be attending the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit from June 22nd to June 26th. Before going into anything, here’s a blurb from the website.

The US Social Forum will provide a space to build relationships, learn from each other’s experiences, and share analysis of the problems our communities face. It will help develop leadership, vision, and strategy needed to realize another world.

Leadership, vision and strategy! Something every part of every movement needs, right? Be it a grassroots group of a few people trying to build their vision or the entire LGBTQ movement as a whole, even though sometimes it doesn’t look, sound or feel that whole, those three words are essential to not just a particular organization or movement,  but to life in general.

When I first became involved in LGBTQ activism, I found comfort in talking to people involved in movements against racism or other forms of bigotry because I heard the same struggles, the same concerns and the same passion. Everyone wants to be equal. Everyone wants to figure out a way to make their movement more cohesive and unified. At the forum, union organizers will have the chance to sit face to face with those struggling in the movement against racism. Queer folk can sit FACE to FACE with women’s rights organizations and see where the opportunity lies to learn from one another.

We all know from organizing ourselves and even just living in this electronic world that e-mail doesn’t replace a human conversation. Our movements can only become stronger individually if we are willing to sit and listen to everyone struggling, and perhaps make statements together.

Already people are finding ways to make a grand statement before they even arrive. Organizations are planning biking tours that will bring activists to their destination with practically no carbon footprint. Many cyclists are donating their bikes and gear upon arrival to help those with transportation needs in a city with little to no options without a car.

You can still register for the forum if you feel like taking an impromptu trip for your activist soul. If you’re contemplating, do it QUICK. Hotels are filling fast. Another world that embraces LGBTQ people IS possible – and we’re excited to take this opportunity to network and collaborate with other folks fighting various forms of oppression.

-Nik Maciejewski

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Federal Plaza, downtown Chicago

230 S. Dearborn —12 Noon

Harvey Milk Week Action Committee

Contact: Lindsey Dietzler-773-554-0085

Join activists in a FLASHMOB to present the letter below to Senator Richard Durbin demanding a transgender-inclusive ENDA in 2010

While we are pleased to note that Senator Richard Durbin has co-sponsored the latest Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), the levels of discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) workers in this country, creates an urgent need for Senator Durbin to take a more public stance. We ask that he sign our pledge below calling for his forceful advocacy for passage of a transgender-inclusive ENDA this year.

While polls show that 89 percent of the overall population—and 77 percent of Republicans—support workplace equality for LGBTQ people, fear-mongering and transphobic rhetoric are being spread and echoed by the far right. Now that it is becoming less palatable to openly discriminate against lesbians and gays, transgender people have become the primary targets of the culture war.

According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 97 percent have experienced mistreatment, harassment or discrimination on the job. Of those surveyed, 47 percent were denied a job, a promotion or were fired because of their gender identity. Despite higher levels of education than the population at large, 15 percent of transgender people earn less than $10,000 per year, twice the national average for that income level. Twenty-seven percent reported incomes of $20,000 or less. Meanwhile, only 21 states and the District of Columbia mandate workplace protections for sexual orientation, and a mere 12 states provide legal protection for gender identity. As you know, the nation’s largest employer, the U.S. military, is exempted from ENDA and will remain a closet for LGBTQ military service-people until Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is repealed.

Hundreds of organizations have signed on to demand passage of ENDA Now (http://endanow.com/). We ask you, Senator Durbin, to gather your colleagues in the Senate and stand before the media to address this crisis in the American workplace head-on. Passage of ENDA this year would be a crucial step in our struggle for full federal equality.

Pledge:

I, Senator Richard Durbin, agree to stand before my colleagues in the U.S. Senate and the media to forcefully declare the urgent need for a transgender-inclusive ENDA in 2010. While all LGBTQ people in this country remain second-class citizens, it is a crisis that 97 percent of transgender people, according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, have experienced mistreatment, harassment or discrimination on the job.

Federally-sanctioned discrimination of the millions of U.S. workers who are sexual minorities must finally pass into history. The time is now to stop the lies, the scapegoating and the bigotry against those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer. I appeal to my colleagues in the Senate to end our sad history of anti-LGBTQ bigotry and pass a transgender-inclusive ENDA in 2010.

So what is it going to take?

When the Mormon Church rode into towns all over California with their fat wallets and their insistent and hateful religious philosophies, and more than five million people bought into it and voted away marriage equality in November of 2008, something blew up. Stonewall 2.0 emerged and hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets with an incomparable disgust and passion for change on November 15, 2008. In the weeks and months that followed, though, those same people who nearly rioted in streets all over the nation went back to their regular everyday working worlds. By the time Pride weekend emerged in 2009, four more states had legalized same-sex marriage, but it was the same few people who cared and blogged about it.

So what is it going to take?

The anti-marriage equality campaign that reared its ugly head in the State of Maine in the months after Pride made barely a whisper sound to the majority of the LGBT population. And when Prop 8 cloned itself in the form of Question 1 in Maine on Election Day last year, the rallies that followed were Girl Scout cookies and skim milk compared to the raucous full-fat anger of a year before. It became clear that the National Equality March was little more than an exciting field trip to our Nation’s Capital for many in October of 2009, as the fire and passion from the 2.5-mile march through its streets and the rally that followed failed to burn for long. Suddenly, the marriage equality legislation that seemed sure in New York and New Jersey died quickly, and 2010 started up as the year of indifference for the LGBT population – both outside and inside.

So what is it going to take?

I am watching the meticulous planning and extraordinary actions of Queer Rising and GetEQUAL, and I am training with them, working with them. I am seeing the conferences that Equality Across America has encouraged, as they bring hundreds of people into the same small buildings where they might learn how to create and build this Movement further. I am stepping up in my hometown of Boston to help guide our local group, one of the last of its kind after the passage of Proposition 8, so that we can assist in securing rights and protections for the transgender community here, then work on issues in the national Movement. And I see very few alongside us.

What will it take before we wake up and realize that, without more people to care, without more people to work, without more people to step up to the plate and take risks and take action, we are going to lose? Some of us toss a modest three-figure sum to the HRC every year, thinking that is our contribution. Do we pay attention, though? Do we see that passage of an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act may not happen this year? Do we see that a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act may not happen at all? Do we see that people in our own community may be bartering away our rights in between dinner party planning sessions to create a comfortable schedule for our legislators?

We might lose, and it’s going to take a lot more than eating chicken piccata in our evening wear and some spare cash from a coffee jar to win. 

So what is it going to take to get people to wake up? What if we lose a more liberal majority in our Congress in the midterm elections? What if our president, who would sign an inclusive ENDA, who would support a repeal of DOMA or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, loses a second term to a disturbingly evangelical autocrat who would just as soon see us perish in the fiery pits of his hell than reach full equality?

We might hate the words of older activists like Larry Kramer, as the fires he lights singe every single one of our asses, but sometimes that’s what we need to hear. We might prefer our cocktail parties with friends in Chelsea or West Hollywood or the South End or Boys Town, because they’re safer, more enjoyable, less work. We might prefer that Pride is as simple as getting drunk and laid with our rainbow flags about us. But if we ever want full protections under the law, if we ever want to be truly safe, we need to listen to people like Kramer, put down our cocktail glasses, take our legs out of the air, and put them down on the street, and start marching.

We need to clue ourselves into the networks that are being built around us by Equality Across America, GetEQUAL and Queer Rising, we need to find a role that works to save us even when it disturbs our personal comfort zones, and we need to work until we arrive. As it is, the thousands of same-sex couples who have married in their own states are still filing separate tax returns with the federal government, and missing out on 1,100 other benefits that should be guaranteed them. More than 13,000 military personnel who identify as gay or lesbian have found themselves out of a job. And nearly every transgender person alive is unable to find suitable employment so they can live like normal people, somewhere above the poverty line.

We need to wake up and listen to the voices of our community, to the leadership who have put their lives on the line for our freedoms. Because if every one of us put just a couple of hours each week into that which matters for everyone’s rights and protections, our voices combined will be overwhelming. They will stop traffic and silence our naysayers and create an undeniable strength from one coast to the other. The rallies that followed the passage of Proposition 8 will be a whisper in comparison.

When we do this, we will be heard. And we will win.

Regards,

David Mailloux
Organizer, Join the Impact Massachusetts

Activists in 20 states and 26 cities have events planned for Harvey Milk’s birthday on May 22nd.  Didn’t know about these events? Come out from under your rock (those without internet access excused) and see if there’s one in your town.  I’ve organized a couple protests with 6 days notice, so if you need emotional support to plan one last minute, I am here.  Haha.

But seriously, today is a day ACROSS THE WORLD people recognize the fact that homophobia is a global illness that causes people to look solely on outside characteristics instead of the one single characteristic that brings members of our society together.

WE ARE HUMAN.

I logged into Equality Across America’s Facebook account today and saw a link for a petition to UNICEF and the UN to stop Malawi from sentencing a queer couple to 14 years prison and hard labor for having a marriage ceremony.

I walk around Boystown and feel like I’m in a sea of dating opportunities, because that’s what Boystown is in Chicago on any given moment.  But these two people in love had a ceremony because it’s their human right to love in a societal climate exactly the opposite to what I’m used to.

Then I got to thinking about getting married, which usually causes a slight bit of nausea for a few minutes…but then that nausea went away.  Now I know how I’ll know when I’ve met the “one.”

My new dating rule:  Not worthy of marriage unless you would risk imprisonment or hard labor.

Even with my twenties-driven mind completely not focused on getting hitched, I know I will because deep down I know I’m a sap.  I know I’ll fall head over heels in love and it will make all my previous dating adventures a bad dream.  I’ll want to marry him, even if Ann Coulter becomes the president of the United States with Sarah Palin as her vice president.

If it was love I knew needed to be announced, nothing would stop me.

Would it stop you?

Please sign the petition to help this LGBTQ couple live their life in peace.

Bring visibility to International LGBTQ Issues, because in most cases, people have got it way worse.

-Nik Maciejewski

The t-shirts many student strikers are wearing read: “Todos los Derechos para Todos los Amores”—All the Rights for all the Loves. Solidarity with our brothers and sisters fighting privatization, cuts and homophobia at UPR on this International Day Against Homophobia!

-Sherry Wolf