ROCKED IT: reportback from "Occupy the LGBT Center!"

Yesterday, 150 people occupied the LGBT Center!! Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and 15 other groups* packed the lobby with chants, signs, speak-outs and a banner drop. Check out photos, video and press coverage.

We protested the Center's horrifying indifference to the queers of color, Arab and Muslim queers, and activist queers whose work got us where we are today -- and who are marginalized by the ban on queer human rights organizing in solidarity with Palestinians.

We protested the Center's shameful policing (literally, with the NYPD on patrol) of queers meeting in our own community center.

We protested the Center's perversion of a major queer institution to support racist bigots who would deny not only human rights, but the humanity, of people based on their identity.

The Center's director, Glennda, was there -- but in keeping with the Center's total refusal to communicate with the outraged queer community, she didn't come out. Instead, the Center did its usual trick of "communicating" by press release. According to Gay City News, the press release claims that the Center's ban intends "to ensure that all LGBT people feel comfortable coming here." Dear Center: what?!

But queers communicated the heck out of the Center! The protest/teach-in occupied the Center's lobby and entrance for nearly three hours, to overwhelmingly supportive response from passers-by on their way to queer events. And in days before the protest, Glennda Testone and NY City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (who's queer, represents the Center's neighborhood, directs public funding to the Center, wants to be mayor, and has said nothing during the past year about the Center's marginalization of queers) received close to 500 emails from queers and Jewish activists demanding that the Center end the ban.**

The pressure on the Center has been slow to build, as information spreads about pinkwashing in Israel and the Center's NYC complicity, it's reaching a boiling point: queers are mad, and they're speaking out.

*Groups:
Queers for an Open LGBT Center (QFOLC)
alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society
Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel
Brooklyn for Peace
Jewish Voice for Peace-NY
Jews Say No!
International Action Center
International Socialist Organization
Metropolitan Community Church of New York
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
Palestinian Queers for BDS
SALGA
Sylvia Rivera Law Project
Workers World Party
Young, Jewish and Proud

**Thanks, Jewish Voice for Peace!