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Showing posts with label alQaws. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alQaws. Show all posts
Video: QAIA w. Haneen Maikey + Saadia Toor on Islamophobia
11/23/13
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Please donate to Al Qaws' critical decolonizing work at their website.
"Pinkwatching Israel" has a fierce new website
6/20/12
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Maybe the most awesome update on the new site is about the coordination of 23 Muslim and Arab queer organizations to fight some pretty odious pinkwashing, in late 2011.
'[HM2F]... published an ethnographic report on Palestinian queer life - a subject completely unfamiliar to them. Indeed, HM2F is a French Muslim queer organisation that deems the occupying government and its organisations “experts” on the occupied. Certainly, these members of alQaws did not know that their brief personal conversations with this Israeli-French “interfaith tour” would be used to paint a broad, distorted picture of Palestinian society. Last, HM2F’s report reproduced deeply racist and patronising rationalisations for alQaws’ refusal to host or engage with them, such as bowing to pressure from unnamed “pan-Arabist” organizations, rather than taking seriously alQaws’ repeated statements, which are grounded in an international call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions.'The group letter is here, along with individual statements from many of the groups.
ROCKED IT: reportback from "Occupy the LGBT Center!"
3/4/12
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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.
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!
Gay City News on the protest @ LGBT Center
3/25/11
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In its coverage of the protest against the Center's ejection of Siegebuaster, Gay City News covers "pinkwashing" -- painting occupation with a gay-friendly brush -- and the Center's de facto exclusion of Palestinian queers.
http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/03/08/gay_city_news/news/doc4d765d18f1edc820424638.txt
150 Picket Center's Nixing of Anti-Israel Fundraiser
Protesters hoist the Palestinian National Authority's flag at a March 5 protest outside the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan. (GAY CITY NEWS) “The idea that the Center’s core mission does not include concern for queer Palestinians is a very odd definition of a core mission,” said Naomi Brussel, speaking for Siege Busters. Glennda Testone, the Center’s executive director, said in a February 22 release that controversy over the party had begun “to distract from our core mission.”...For Testone and the Center, however, the toughest challenge could come from critics such as Rami Al-Bakri, a 22-year-old Palestinian who has been in the US for the past four years studying (he declined to say where).
Pointing to daily humiliations he and his family endure at home, he said, “Then I come to New York and experience the same thing at the Center. It’s something I expect from the Israeli state, but not from the Center.”
Asked about the treatment of queers by Palestinian leaders and whether pro-Palestinian activists in the US can credibly claim to be speaking for LGBT people in Gaza and the West Bank, Al-Bakri, who is affiliatged with alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, responded, “Queers and women have always been part of the struggle for Palestinian rights. As a Palestinian identified as queer, I’ve always been part of the movement since I was a kid.”
...
“Am I giving up on my society to be gay? No,” he said, emphasizing his determination to stay with the cause in his homeland. “In Palestine, I fight for my right to be queer in the Palestinian movement. Here, I fight for my right to be Palestinian in the queer movement.”
Labels:
action/events by NYC queers,
actions by QAIA,
alQaws,
media,
pinkwashing
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:
Read more »
- 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:
Audre Lorde Project, Queers for Economic Justice, FIERCE, Sylvia Rivera Law Project letter to the Center:SALGA-NYC/GAPIMNY letter to the Center:Lisa Duggan letter to the Center:Judith Butler letter to the Center:Press release with statements from additional queer individuals, queer groups, queer-oriented anti-occupation groups, and others:
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 fourattStonewall ParticipantGay Liberation Front co-founderFounding Board Member NYC Lesbian and Gay Community CenterHealActup
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