The petition! End the ban.

On Valentine's Day, the LGBT Center's refusal to provide space for QAIA's reading with Sarah Schulman spawned a Change.org petition. Within a few days, it had over 1,000 signatures and was on fire across queer email lists and Facebook. Some signers were outraged about the imposition of lock-step support for Israel, some were outraged about lock-step support for any state, and some were outraged about the suppression of queer speech and organizing in our community spaces.

As the petition vented the bottled-up rage and disgust of the queer community, the Center (along with a group of electeds who re-rang the "we totally love Israel no matter what it does!" bell) rescinded the ban.

Here's the petition text, created by Tom Leger:

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In 2011, the LGBT Center of New York City began to ban certain LGBT groups and events that discussed ideas that the Executive Director, Glennda Testone, and the Board of Directors, deemed to be controversial. Initially this ban was meant to affect only a group called Siegebusters, a group of LGBT people working on activism related to Palestine, but the effects of this ban have mushroomed over the past two years.

Banning some LGBT people from the Center based on their beliefs, interests or conversations puts into danger the legitimacy all LGBT people at the NYC LGBT Center. Since the ban in 2011, many groups have left the Center, especially groups that are comprised chiefly of queer people of color, because this shift in policy indicated to many people that the LGBT Center was no longer a safe or welcoming place for them.

On February 13, 2013, Gay City News reported that Sarah Schulman, one of America's most prolific out lesbian authors, was barred from appearing at an event at the LGBT Center of New York City because the content of the book she was to read from, ISRAEL/PALESTINE AND THE QUEER INTERNATIONAL (Duke University Press), was objectionable and violated the policy of censorship put into place under Executive Director Glennda Testone. 

The hosting organization, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid–NYC, is currently working to provide a back-up venue for the event.

QAIA Blog: http://queersagainstisraeliapartheid.blogspot.com/Gay City News Article: http://gaycitynews.com/lgbt-center-bars-sarah-schulman-reading/

Sarah Schulman is a distinguished professor of the City of New York, author of 18 books, co-founder of the ACT UP Oral History Project, co-producer of the ACT UP documentary UNITED IN ANGER, co-founder of the Lesbian Avengers and co-founder of the MIX Experimental Film Festival. In her long career, she has been awarded the Kessler Prize for Sustained Contribution in LGBT Studies, a Stonewall Award for Contributions Improving the Lives of Lesbians and Gays in the United States, a Fullbright for Judaic studies, and many other awards. She was arrested five times protesting the ban on gay groups in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. In short, there are few other living activists who are more deserving of space at the LGBT Center of New York City. That the LGBT Center of New York City has become an organization hostile to an activist and scholar with the credibility of Ms. Schulman is a clear indication that no LGBT person can feel safe expressing their personal political beliefs without fear of being ostracized by this LGBT organization.

Clearly, the current "space rental policy" constitutes a dangerous form of censorship. Additionally, it is unethical and inappropriate for an organization meant to serve all LGBT people of the City of New York to exclude those LGBT people with whom the leadership disagrees.

The leadership of the LGBT Center of New York City must immediately reverse any and all policies which ban LGBT people from meeting at the LGBT center because of their political beliefs. This petition appeals to Glennda Testone, Executive Director, and to Brian C. Offutt, the Board President, who are responsible for not just an important organization but for the future of LGBT culture and activism in New York City, which was not built on, and can not be successful under a climate of censorship and fear.

To:
Glennda Testone, Executive, Director The LGBT Center of New York City 

End censorship of Sarah Schulman and open your doors to all queer people.

The leadership of the LGBT Center of New York City must immediately reverse any and all policies which ban LGBT people from meeting at the LGBT center because of their political beliefs.

Sincerely,
[Your name]

(This post is backdated to maintain a historical timeline on the QAIA blog. Posted on 3/1/13.)

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This is wild: Center "lifts moratorium", NYC electeds bid to reimpose it.

Check out this announcement from the NYC LGBT Center, posted about 15 minutes ago... and the racist, repressive press release from NYC electeds (below), posted about four nanoseconds later.

STATEMENT ON CENTER SPACE USE POLICY FROM GLENNDA TESTONE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AND THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL & TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY CENTER

February 15, 2013 – In 2011 the Center was thrust into a controversy involving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict about which we took no position, but were forced to expend significant resources to address. This controversy placed substantial strains on management resources and front line staff, and created an environment that interfered with our ability to assist those in our community who needed our services. In response, we imposed a moratorium on renting space to groups that organize on all sides of this conflict, which, while itself controversial, allowed things to cool down and gave us time to rethink the Center's space use policies.

Our resulting Space Use Guidelines, Terms and Conditions will govern the use of our space going forward, and, accordingly, the moratorium is no longer in effect. The Center does not endorse the views of any groups to which it rents space. We adamantly believe in and defend free speech and the open exchange of ideas, but we deplore the rhetoric of hate and bigotry. As stated in our guidelines: "no group utilizing space at the Center shall engage in hate speech or bigotry of any kind." Therefore, all groups wishing to utilize space at the Center must agree and commit to our Pledge of Nondiscrimination and our above-described prohibition on hate speech and bigotry.

Going forward, if members of the community feel that hate speech or bigotry has occurred at the Center, they are encouraged to submit a formal complaint in writing. The Center does not have the resources to "pre-vet" all content that comes through groups that rent space, and we encourage community members themselves to help us keep our space safe through this formal process. In the coming weeks, the Center will publish the details of a formal resolution process to address space use-related complaints.

Provided applicants agree in good faith to fully comply with our guidelines, we will process current and future requests for space, including from entities who were previously declined under the moratorium. And we encourage other groups or individuals of differing viewpoints to apply to rent space as well so that all voices may be heard.

The Center must move forward and remains strongly committed to serving the needs of our community as best we can. We hope everyone will join us in good faith.

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Joint Statement by NYC Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, NYS Assembly Member Deborah Glick, NYS Senator Brad Hoylman, and NYC Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer

Re: New LGBT Community Center Space Use Guidelines

“We support the new Space Use guidelines, terms and conditions being implemented by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center. Their decision to allow groups to have open discussion and to create a resolution process to address complaints of potential hate-related speech is the correct approach. Under the Center’s new guidelines, all parties will have access to rent space to organize around LGBT issues, and the Center will remain a safe space, where hate-related speech will not be tolerated. This will allow the Center staff and board to promote its core mission of providing health and wellbeing services to our community, in addition to providing a safe and secure forum for issues relevant to NYC’s LGBT community.

That said, we want to make abundantly clear that we categorically reject attempts by any organization to use the Center to delegitimize Israel and promote an anti-Israel agenda. We adamantly oppose any and all efforts to inappropriately inject the Center into politics that are not the core of their important mission.

We vehemently oppose the absurd accusations by some groups that Israel is engaged in so-called “pinkwashing”. We find this charge offensive and fundamentally detrimental to the global cause of LGBT equality. These accusations should be understood as just one part of the arsenal of those who seek to completely discredit the state of Israel altogether. In fact, Israel’s highly laudable record in advancing LGBT rights deserves praise, not scorn. Given the very poor record of much of the world on LGBT issues, we should be celebrating Israel's – or any country's – LGBT equality advances. We must always encourage countries with strong records of achievement for our community to be rightly and publicly proud so they may set an example for others. We continue to believe that the boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) movement against Israel is wrongheaded, destructive, and an obstacle to our collective hope for a peaceful two-state solution.

We applaud the Center Board and staff for taking this important step. We now hope everyone will respect the Center as a safe space for open and safe discussions. We hope the Center can move forward and serve the LGBT community as it has always done.”

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QAIA's statement on Center's banning of our event with Sarah Schulman

Statement from Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

on the NYC LGBT Center’s banning of QAIA-NYC’s Sarah Schulman reading

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is (again) appalled at the hijacking of our NYC LGBT Community Center. At this point, the Center has banned any discussion of Palestine – and the growing movement to support Palestinian queers’ calls for civil and human rights – for two full years. We’re reminded that the Center’s board enacted this ban at the instigation of an avowed Islamophobe, who uses his wealth as a megaphone, who claimed to have organized other wealthy gay men as a threat to the Center, and who is the partner of a former chair of the Center’s board. The ban is not a community decision, but an action by a few wealthy, politically-powerful people to leverage their control of a community resource. The Center’s board and administration have refused to meet with the community, talk to the media, or respond to queries about excluding so many of us.

It’s worth noting that a number of groups of queers of color, immigrants and trans people have written to the Center to report that this ban further marginalizes them in a space that’s critical to them. The Center is not interested.

In its latest reprehensible move, the Center refused QAIA’s space request for a reading by Sarah Schulman from her new book, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. Sarah is a respected author, activist, organizer and educator, and this book, like her other books, reflects critical currents in the queer community. The ban on her reading insults the integrity and intelligence of New Yorkers. The Center gave no reason for the ban, except to refer obliquely to “Center policy.”

In banning Sarah’s reading, the Center made no distinction between refusing space for Sarah’s reading and refusing QAIA’s particular request for space for that reading. That’s because there is no distinction. Sarah and QAIA are engaged in the same work. It’s that work, in which much of the queer community is engaged, that the Center has banned.

The work of QAIA and Sarah that the Center is banning is this:

1) exposing Israel's pinkwashing of the occupation, and

2) supporting the civil and human rights of Palestinian queers, which are inseparable from the civil and human rights currently denied to all Palestinians.

The Center ban covers anyone working with or in support of Palestinian queers who are trying to secure their rights.

Meanwhile, the issues of Palestine and pinkwashing – the Israeli government’s draping of itself in “LGBT rights” in an effort to obscure its gross violations of civil and human rights – have come to the forefront of queer organizing. While the Israeli government’s “Brand Israel” public relations campaign paints Israel as a gay haven, queers in Palestine are increasingly organized and vocal. Their call to queers worldwide is that Palestinians cannot begin to have “queer rights” under conditions where Palestinians have no rights at all. Worldwide, queers have increasingly responded. In fact, few issues are more front and center in queer political organizing right now than Palestine.

The Center’s claim that its ban maintains neutrality on Israel/Palestine is absurd. No reasonable person would interpret room rental as an endorsement of a position. QAIA is not neutral, but we support our community’s freedom of speech at the Center, and would of course support the right of pro-Israel groups to meet there. The Center is not neutral either: in banning Sarah Schulman, QAIA, Siegebusters and any discussion which dares to touch on Palestinians, gay or not, the Center’s board exposes its complicity with broader right-wing elements who are no friends to LGBT people. With shady maneuvering reminiscent of the recent attacks on Brooklyn College, they trample the rights upon which the Center was built.

The Center’s comportment mirrors exactly the attacks on the BDS forum at Brooklyn College. It reflects the same bias against human rights organizing by inconvenient people, the same censorship, and the same racism. It leverages the same complicity of “progressive” elected officials: with Brooklyn College, they piled on in attacking discussion of Palestinian rights. Here, they pile on with a deliberate, deafening silence in the face of racism and exclusion. The difference between Brooklyn College and the Center is integrity: Brooklyn College undertook its role as a taxpayer-supported institution to preserve free speech, while the taxpayer-supported Center sets out to undermine it.

The queer movement to expose and unravel Israel’s pinkwashing is gaining strength. In the process, we are forced to challenge the anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim hysteria in the US that pervades circles of wealth and political power, which in turn support the ugliest, most bigoted corners of the queer community. To the extent that queer institutions have pulled those queers into their boards as fundraisers and political connectors, we’re forced to challenge them too. We are not afraid of public discussion of these issues; we welcome it. Those ugly forces pulling the strings of queer communities have been hidden for too long – let’s bring them out.

For more information about QAIA:

http://queersagainstisraeliapartheid.blogspot.com

For info on the event:

http://tinyurl.com/schulman-reading

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Comic biteback: There's a checkpoint around this Center!

Check out Ethan Heitner's really beautiful exposition of Tara and Ana's throwdown at "Occupy the Center!" The full 8 panel comic is posted on mondoweiss.net today.

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QAIA's pride flyer - download & print

Print double-sided, 4 to a page. See you at Pridez!
QAIA pride flyer 2012

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