By Matthew Clark
It’s the day before I leave for D.C. By this time tomorrow I’ll be driving to Jacksonville to board a plane. I’m still really at odds with the whole ordeal, which is strange considering how much I’ve been working on getting people to go. Yesterday I had an e-mail from the Students for a Democratic Society listserv. An individual was iffy about going to the march because she wasn’t sure if radical queer issues were going to be addressed. These are series issues: anti-war, anti-poverty; working to combat racism, heteronormativity, and gender inequalities. Issues like marriage and DADT tend to have no resonance.
Yet at the same time, the working-class gays and lesbians (a majority of the demographic) have no support for anti-marriage/anti-assimilation strategies. The economic, emotional and personal benefits of marriage are real. They deserve them.
It seems that these two groups, working-class gays and lesbians and queer radicals should have so much of an agenda they can agree on, so much work to do together.
Take Harvey Milk for example. He built a minority coalition that battled homophobia while simultaneously working for labor rights, rights of the elderly and anti-gentrification. The Gay Liberation Front was vehemently anti-war and the Gay and Lesbian Academic Union put gender inequality at the top of their five-point agenda.
And what about today? Sometimes I’m just way too confused, if not totally distraught.
But I digress. On to Washington.
(Addendum: Donna, featured in the socialistworker.org link, is a member of the Gainesville community and recently spoke at a PSU protest last week in Turlington Plaza.)
Tags: GAU • GLF • Harvey Milk • March on Washington • marriage • political strategy • queer radicals • working-class