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!

Read more »

Statements from queer groups objecting to the Center's actions

Many groups sent statements and letters in response to the LGBT Center's cancellation of the anti-Occupation fundraiser, and the expulsion of Siegebusters. They covered topics including:

• The marginalization of queers of color, Middle Eastern queers and Palestinian queers in particular by the Center's actions
• Objections to censorship of free speech and queer organizing
• Objections to the Center's capitulation to funders demanding to control queer space
• Lack of a transparent process for deciding how our community's Center can or cannot be used
• Challenges to the Center's excuses for acting as they did
• and more...

Statements posted online are here:

Aswat - Palestinian Gay Women and alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society:

http://www.alqaws.org/q/content/alqaws-and-aswat-statement-lgbt-center-ny-0

Audre Lorde Project, Queers for Economic Justice, FIERCE, Sylvia Rivera Law Project letter to the Center:

http://alp.org/open-letter-nyc-lgbt-community-center-audre-lorde-project-fierce-queers-economic-justice-and-sylvia

SALGA-NYC/GAPIMNY letter to the Center:

http://www.gapimny.org/2011/03/07/open-letter-to-the-lgbtq-community-center-from-qapi-groups/

Lisa Duggan letter to the Center:

http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/open-letter-to-lgbt-center/

Judith Butler letter to the Center:

http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/judith-butlers-letter-to-nyc-lgbt-center/

Press release with statements from additional queer individuals, queer groups, queer-oriented anti-occupation groups, and others:

http://newyork.apartheidweek.org/en/pr-lgbt-center-3-5-11

Some statements aren't posted elsewhere (that we know of):

Statement from Jim Fouratt, co-founder Lesbian and Gay Commuity Center

As one of the original five people (Karen Zeigler(Mcc), Ken Dawson (SAGE) Marc Weiss (Media Matters) Jim Trickler) who sat in and demanded the old baking School NOT be sold to developers by the City Administration. I can tell you we and the board we choose had from the very beginning a shared vision of a safe place for all lesbian and gay people despite differences in gender expression, age, politics, race and economic position. Diversity was our goal and inclusion our method. Even back then we had people who promised to financially support the NYC Lesbian and Gay Community Center if we agreed to exclude one group or another. Despite the financial pressure, we resisted. The power plays from special interest people of wealth have always been lurking in the corners of the building. Historically the Board of Directors maintained the original vision of a safe space for all people whose sexual orientation manifested in same sex attraction and desire.

Until now!

Michael Lucas, successful pornographer, is the newest, gay money-bully. He should know better given his own journey through institutionalized homophobia and religious bigotry, but apparently he has forgotten. Lucas should know that respect for diversity builds strength in the name of community. But apparently he does not. Shame on him for threatening the financial viability of the Lesbian and Gay Community Center, shame on whom ever on staff or the Board of Directors who forgot the historical guiding principles that has held the Center together as a community despite our differences and capitulated to the money bully.

I call upon the Board of Directors to right this wrong and welcome into the building the Siege Busters.

jim fouratt

Stonewall Participant

Gay Liberation Front co-founder

Founding Board Member NYC Lesbian and Gay Community Center

Heal

Actup

Read more »