Israeli ministry recruits queers and "diverse" flight attendants as pitchmen

Israel has stepped up its campaign to innoculate American liberals against critiques of its apartheid laws. The effort centers on queers and other minorities (just as New York's Jewish Community Relations Council specifically recruits NY City Councilmembers and other leaders from communities of color for its carefully-scripted junkets to Israel.)

Although the campaign is reportedly sending "ambassadors" to in response to invitations to speak, it looks like the ambassadors are being packaged as a tool for Israel lobby groups in places where anti-apartheid groups are having an impact. The flight attendants' first stop: Rutgers University.

In new pinkwashing recruitment campaign, Israel offers free travel for propaganda services
(Electronic Intifada)

"The story of the floundering “Brand Israel” advertising campaign continues. An Israeli government ministry... [is] asking for volunteer “candidates eligible to conduct public diplomacy activities abroad”. The volunteers “will not be eligible for any remuneration” apart from “costs of travel, daily expenses and insurance”...The ministry’s advert says it is looking particularly for “minority members” and “representatives of the gay community” to argue Israel’s case abroad."

In their off hours, El Al flight crews are now ‘ambassadors’
(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

"...an initiative [puts] El Al crews to use during their U.S. layover time to create a positive image of Israel in the United States. The idea is to counteract the negative images of Israel in the news with the personal stories and faces of El Al pilots and flight attendants... [T]he El Al delegation was unusually diverse: two gay men, a Druze Israeli, a woman who sidelines as an aerobics instructor and a pilot who also is a yoga teacher. The six also happened to be particularly attractive... The Monday talk largely kept clear of the Israeli-Arab conflict..."

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Queer voices are being co-opted for racist, anti-gay attacks. Where are our advocates?

Going forward, QAIA's blog will include opinion posts like this one from individual activists, marked with an "Opinion" tag. These are not QAIA statements.

This is an op-ed written in July 2011, just after QAIA and other anti-apartheid queers had populated Pride marches across New York City. It was never published. Gay City News seemed fatigued of constantly covering the issue, but hadn't (and still hasn't) covered the intense implications of queer institutions' complete failure to respond to a racially- and politically-loaded community uproar. This piece ranged too far for GCN. Mainstream outlets weren't covering the issue at all.

Now that QAIA's blog is up and we can publish ourselves, the same issues seem (unfortunately) just as relevant as they did then. Big queer organizations have not stepped up to insist on queers' right to organize and be safe within our own community. The Israeli government's cynical pinkwashing of persists, and queers who object are still branded "controversial." Right wing hatemongering against Arabs and Muslims is still masked by hatemongers in leftist clothing, who claim to be supporting apartheid on behalf of us poor downtrodden queers. And those of us who object too loudly are still threatened with exclusion and retribution -- not just by Israel boosters, but by our own queer institutions acting on the instructions of straight, politically powerful actors.

We have a lot of work to do.

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Queer voices are being co-opted for racist, anti-gay attacks. Where are our advocates?
Emmaia Gelman and Imani Henry - July 3, 2011

The LGBT Center's ban on support for Palestinian LGBT groups was shocking, but it pales in light of the assault now extending far beyond the Center's turf. Outside forces – not queer – are increasingly pressing the queer community to isolate Arab queers and amp up anti-Arab racism. Dirty tricks are escalating: like a massively jacked-up version of “DamascusGayGirl”, the Israeli government was just busted for posing as a queer vlogger. Like fake Arab lesbian blogger Tom McMaster, the Israeli video stole a queer voice to gain credibility – in this case, to claim that opponents of Israel's human rights violations are secretly anti-gay.

The Center has crumbled under these tactics. But will other LGBT institutions stay quiet?

The assault started when shiny millionaire porn producer Michael Lucas heard that the group Siegebusters was meeting at the Center to support the US Boat to Gaza. Lucas, an Israel supporter and anti-Arab pontificator, reportedly organized conservative donors to stop giving if the Center didn't eject Siegebusters. The Center complied, over objections from the Audre Lorde Project, Queers for Economic Justice, Jews Against the Occupation, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, FIERCE, SALGA, GAPIMNY, and Palestinian queer groups Aswat, Al-Qaws and Palestinian Queers for BDS. As Lucas said at the Center's subsequent forum: “why shouldn't the people who give the money tell the Center what to do?”

But the controversy soon jumped from the queer community to the hetero world of US-Israel politics. The NY Jewish Community Relations Council and Jewish Council on Public Affairs were apparently activated by Stuart Appelbaum, gay politically-wired front man of a NYC union, and labor's representative to major Jewish organizations. The lobby groups reportedly asked to meet with the Center on the issue. Appelbaum also contacted elected officials to ensure they would call the Center to support the ban. The Center didn't meet them, and its official position is that it got no such calls from electeds. But the groups Appelbaum mobilized are powerful in New York City politics. When they're up in arms about Israel, electeds think twice before declining requests to support their position. Their demands for a meeting were certainly enough to send a message to the Center.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Wiesenthal Center, a Holocaust memorial organization criticized for Muslim-baiting, called queers who support Palestinian queers' demands for human rights “self-hating gays” who '...should be shunned by all LGBT NGOs. By accepting them, the New York center is providing a fig leaf for Arab homophobia.' The JPost article was written by Benjamin Weinthal, a contributor to Gay City News who opposes queer critics of Israel.

Neither the New York lobby groups nor the Wiesenthal Center are remotely gay. But following their efforts, the Center cancelled more meetings and officially banned any on the “Israeli-Palestinian issue.” Since only Palestine human rights groups had scheduled meetings, the ban shut out only those queers whom the JCRC, JCPA and Wiesenthal Center disliked. The Center's unimpressive ambitions were to “avoid controversy” and “not take a position.” But outside lobbying pushed the Center into new waves of controversy, and committed the Center to enforcing anti-Arab racism in the queer community.

It's not new that conservative, anti-Arab straight voices are speaking for queers. For five years, Israel's “Brand Israel” campaign has lobbied queers to view Israel as a gay haven, and the antidote to Islam. That's why the Israeli consulate suddenly marches in Pride, and the Israeli Foreign Ministry markets gay trips to Israel, and last February the JCRC flew queer NY City Councilmembers to Tel Aviv's gay community center. It's straight people – a government with a human rights problem – pretending to speak on behalf of queers, to queers.

Real Israeli and Palestinian queers call Israel's gay spin “pinkwashing.” Palestinian queers have rejected the idea that Israel makes them safe, when Palestinians are constantly denied rights and safety under Israel's military occupation. They note that occupation is the main force behind Palestinian conservatism: Palestinian society, when free, is historically liberal. Inside Israel, gay couples in which at least one partner is non-Jewish (or worse, Arab) face huge obstacles to Israel's much-touted residency and adoption rights. Homophobic violence, compounded by racism against Arab queers, is as persistent as anywhere else.

Pinkwashing may be too old hat to properly scandalize us. But the escalation over Pride weekend was stunning.

First, a NYC Pride contingent was attacked by a gang of Israelis. The marchers had signs reading "Stop Pinkwashing Israeli Apartheid" and "Stonewall Means Fight Back – from Wisconsin to NYC to Palestine." Most were queers of color and women, including many Jewish women. Reportedly, men wearing Israeli pride contingent shirts “rushed into [our] midst... yelling, pushing, thrusting themselves and their signs in front of us... body-checking and pushing our folks.” They knocked a 68-year old marcher to the ground with a metal pole. The attackers were finally pulled out by horrified onlookers from the Armenian contingent.

Next, a weird YouTube video emerged, purportedly by a gay activist who had tried to join the flotilla to Gaza – the same flotilla that Siegebusters was working on. The video claimed organizers rejected the man because they were cozying up to Hamas, therefore a queer passenger would be a problem. Since there are indeed many queers on board the ships, the video raised eyebrows. It turned out to be fake, made by an Israeli PR firm and distributed by two Israeli government workers.

A fake. The Israeli government is impersonating us.

The only thing more shocking would be the continued silence of Big Gay organizations in response to these racially charged assaults on queer identity, voices and bodies. The Center has already committed to silence. In a press release, it explained that it's too hard to let in queers who face opposition; the Center opts just to censor queer human rights work so it can get back to providing support groups. (Frankly, board president Mario Palumbo should resign since he clearly isn't up to the task.)

But we're still waiting to hear from NYC Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, which hasn't yet responded to the charge of queers of color that the Center is no longer safe space for them. AVP is even more urgently missed since queers challenging Israeli policy are now being physically attacked. We're waiting for GLAAD to object to queer images coopted to thwart human rights efforts.We're waiting for Lambda Legal to stand up for queers' right to organize ourselves, although Lambda lists Lucas and his boyfriend (formerly president of the Center's board) as fundraising “sponsors.”

We won't be silent while we wait. Queers Against Israeli Apartheid will hold another meeting on July 5th at the Center. Yes, we're banned. It'll have to be a sit-in, again.

----
Emmaia Gelman and Imani Henry are members of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

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New threats and silencing from the LGBT Center

Below is a reportback from December 1st at the Center, when QAIA was invited to speak briefly at the screening of the Starlite film (which looks really great, by the way.)

The upshot is that the Center is still actively silencing and coercing queers who try to use Center space to discuss queer stuff that the Center finds "controversial." The Center is also still apparently content to silence communities of color without concern for the particularly disturbing implications of that. And the ban on queer discussion of Palestine apparently now extends even to the mention of a ban.

Action planned, please stay tuned. As queers occupy HRC to challenge the corporate/right-wing takeover of queer communities, it's time to build a bigger challenge to the Center as an emblem of the exact same issues. The interconnections between anti-Arab/anti-Muslim hatemongering in the name of queers and moneyed gays' effort to gentrify the queer community get clearer every time QAIA shows up at the Center.

-------

Reportback (from Emmaia):

QAIA was invited to speak briefly at the screening of the Starlite Lounge film at the Center, because the filmmakers didn't want to hold an event at the Center without acknowledging the ban.

The plan was to put QAIA flyers on chairs, and then at the end of the night make a quick announcement/update. We also had little cards that people could sign and leave at the reception desk for the Center's board president Mario Palumbo and executive director Glennda Testone to object to the ban.

As we started to put the flyers on chairs, a Center staff person literally panicked. He ran in repeating "There's a moratorium!  There's a moratorium! You can't do that here!" and snatched up the flyers already distributed. He told me that he was "happy to have me there" (in my own community space!) but not to flyer. He told the filmmakers "I don't know, this is all from before I even came to the Center!" -- in other words, he had no idea what was going on, but was committed to his job as an enforcement-bot. After that, Robert Woodworth came to the room and stayed till the end.

The filmmakers and I talked about how to proceed without taking the focus away from from Starlite, and from the members of the Starlite community who were there to speak out. We settled on having the filmmakers just hold up a flyer at the end of the screening, announce that they'd invited QAIA because of the ban, and people would hear an update from QAIA at the end of the panel discussion.

I'm not sure what conversation took place between them and Center staff, but they came back to say they couldn't make the announcement after all, because Center staff had said they'd be kicked out. They were angry about being silenced, but they didn't want to risk derailing the message about Starlite. They were also worried that Starlite folks would not be allowed back at the Center to continue to raise awareness, funds, etc. The Center had successfully leveraged its control of community space to shut people up. Insert your own analysis of strong-arming an initiative of queers of color in particular.

Instead, at the end of the night, the organizers called on me as an audience member. I thanked them for questioning whether to hold their event at the Center. I said that the Center was community space that had been created, like Starlite, by queers who were carving out their own space when nothing else existed; that it had since become a big-money organization that's lost to the queer community that founded it and is now banning "controversial" queers; that from one community struggling to hold onto valuable space to another, we appreciated that the organizers had tried to include QAIA; and that the Center had stopped us from telling them about the issue.

People in the room got it, and virtually everyone came by on their way out to take a flyer.

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Documenting "Brand Israel"

In the wake of the NYT Pinkwashing op-ed, Sarah Schulman and the folks at PrettyQueer.com posted this handy Documentary Guide to Pinkwashing. It tracks Israel's perverse queer-oriented PR campaign to cloak apartheid in LGBTQ rights, from 2005 to the present.

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Pinkwashing hits the New York Times!

Queers have known about pinkwashing for a good while. But because queers are now the sacred darlings of liberals (or at least, nice queers are) it's been hard to crack through the well-meant mainstream's idea that Palestinian queers are better off with Israel.

Sarah Schulman's op-ed in the New York Times finally gets pinkwashing the huge exposure it deserves. She hits not just the pinkwashing of Israeli apartheid, but the use of queers to demonize Muslims and Arabs far beyond Palestine. And not too soon: QAIA's battles in NYC have been framed nearly as much by the general Muslim-hating of powerful New York institutions as by pro-Israel drum-beating. It's the logical extension of the post-911 freakout: not only are Muslims terrorists who are always a step away from procuring bombs, but they're homophobes all the time!

"...depictions of immigrants — usually Muslims of Arab, South Asian, Turkish or African origin — as “homophobic fanatics” opportunistically ignore the existence of Muslim gays and their allies within their communities. They also render invisible the role that fundamentalist Christians, the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Jews play in perpetuating fear and even hatred of gays. And that cynical message has now spread from its roots in European xenophobia to become a potent tool in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

That connection is at the heart of many QAIA folks' willingness to focus on fighting the LGBT Center and the bigots who turned human rights organizing into a "controversy" in the queer community, even though it's something of a distraction from more direct Palestine anti-apartheid work.

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'The Center Cannot Hold' - Jasbir Puar on queer anti-occupation activism (not at the Center.)

Jasbir Puar writes about why Palestinian queers are not devoting resources to fighting the LGBT Center's ban, and how the Center controversy has helped exposed both pinkwashing and deep conservatism in the queer community "leadership."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jasbir-k-puar/the-center-cannot-hold-th_b_991572.html

"Calls for free speech and equal access for all groups sound democratic on the face of it, but they leave unquestioned the default political positions of those running the Center; worse, it does not address the exclusionary logic of inclusion itself. If inclusion is granted without changing the terms upon which an exclusion was originally articulated, the granting of space is tokenistic at best... 

[F]or many Palestinian queers, gaining access to a LGBT Center that has positioned itself as indifferent to their concerns is a minor point in the agenda for political transformation. There is an incredible wealth of progressive queer organizing in this city that never did and never will originate or coalesce in the Center."

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Lambda Legal: Don't endorse Lucas' right-wing, anti-speech campaign

Last week, Lambda Legal sent around invitations to a Fire Island Pines party -- co-sponsored by Michael Lucas and his boyfriend Richard Winger (former president of the LGBT Center's board.) Queers for an Open LGBT Center asked Lambda: really?!

Kevin M. Cathcart, Executive Director
Lambda Legal // 120 Wall Street, Suite 1500
New York, NY 10005-3904

7 July 2011

Dear Kevin,

Lambda Legal is one of the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations in the country, and it is because of our recognition of the prominence and importance of your organization that we are writing to you to express our concern about the inclusion of Michael Lucas in the list of sponsors of your 33rd annual Fire Island event on July 9.

We fully recognize the need for any 501(c)(3) organization to raise funds to support its work, especially in an economic downturn such as we are now experiencing. However, we feel compelled to bring to your attention the involvement of Mr. Lucas in the operations of the LGBT Community Center -- in particular, his pernicious influence in persuading the Center to expel and ban the Siege Busters Working Group in March of this year and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA) in May.

It was the ban on the Siege Busters and the silencing of free speech at the Center that prompted us to form Queers for an Open LGBT Center (QFOLC). Unfortunately, the ban on both of those organizations remains in effect to this day, and represents an unprecedented as well as entirely unjustified exclusion of individuals and groups working on behalf of the liberation of the Palestinian people -- including LGBT Palestinians -- who currently struggle to survive under an illegal and oppressive Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Michael Lucas has consciously and deliberately mischaracterized both groups as being 'anti-Israel hate groups' and its members as anti-Semitic -- despite the fact that many members of both groups are Jewish -- while he himself has made outrageously bigoted statements about Arabs and Muslims. Lucas has been quoted as saying, "I hate Muslims, absolutely. It’s a horrible, horrible religion. It’s a plague." Lucas has also said of Muslims, "They have not contributed to civilization in any way, in any field — political thought, science, music, architecture, nothing for century after century. What do they produce? Carpets. That’s how they should travel because that’s the only way they travel without killing people." And Lucas has slandered the proposed Islamic cultural center on Park Place in Manhattan as a "monument to Muslim terrorism."

We have to assume that Lambda Legal as an organization does not endorse Michael Lucas's virulently Islamophobic and anti-Arab/anti-Palestinian bigotry or his efforts to exclude QAIA and the Siege Busters from the Center and repress queer political speech -- in particular, his campaign to marginalize Arab and Muslim LGBT people and to silence community members who speak out against racism and bigotry. However, we would have to ask whether Lambda Legal would want to be seen as legitimizing the position as an LGBT community leader that Lucas so obviously wants to claim for himself.

Sincerely,

Naomi Brussel
Leslie Cagan
Bill Dobbs
Emmaia Gelman
Andy Humm
John Francis Mulligan
Pauline Park
Brad Taylor
for
Queers for an Open LGBT Center (QFOLC)

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At NYC Pride, Israel contingent attacks LGBT Palestine supporters

Will the Center provide safe space for queers under attack? So far, it's just providing safe space for attackers.

NYC's Pride March saw a scary escalation of the effort to squelch queer political speech -- this time with violence. Pride marchers carrying Palestine-related signs were physically attacked by marchers from the Israel contingent. Facebook posts on "Queer support for Israel" (now apparently removed) indicated that the attack may have been aimed at Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

This attack comes directly from the Center's ban on queer Palestine-related groups: it was a violent act in support of the ban, by the anti-speech forces with which the Center has aligned itself.

The Center's claim that it's "not taking a side" by banning Palestine groups is ridiculous. The Center has an obligation to stand up for an open queer community, and stand up against violence. The Center has created controversy by entertaining anti-speech bigots, instead of affirming what it should have from the start: that the demand to ban certain LGBT ideas -- and people -- is outrageous. Now that controversy is making queers physically unsafe.

Here's the first-hand report of the attack, from Shelley Ettinger:

"As you may know, Workers World Party was assigned the same gathering block (39th Street btw Park and Madison) as what was listed as "The Israeli Delegation." We were separated by about a half-block and several contingents. Shortly before everyone was to step off, as we were lining up behind our lead banner, suddenly four or five young Israeli men (they were all wearing the same t-shirt with a star of David, which everyone in that contingent had on) rushed into the midst of our contingent, laughing, taunting, yelling, pushing, thrusting themselves and their signs in front of us and ours, very pugnacious and physical. They kept body-checking and pushing our folks who were holding Palestine-solidarity signs in an apparent attempt to physically block us from hoisting our signs or being able to march. (Our lead banner, by the way, read "Stonewall Means Fight Back--from Wisconsin to NYC to Palestine." Among our placards was one that said "LGBTQ Solidarity with Palestine" and one that said "Stop Pinkwashing Israeli Apartheid.") Along with trying to scare us and block us from marching, it seemed to me that they were also clearly trying to provoke a violent fight. And by the way, most of us were women and there were a lot of people of color, so this was also a sexist and racist attack by white men.

We did not let them get our signs away from us, in fact we raised our signs higher, and everybody came together and started chanting, "Viva viva Palestina." Holding up our signs, we told them to leave, to get out of there, to go back to their own contingent, but as they kept up with trying to push in against us, we made a line facing them and started walking forward to try to back them up onto the sidewalk, all the while yelling at them to get away. It did get quite heated for a few minutes as they were still screaming at us and pushing against us and refusing to leave, and swinging their own signs with metal poles at us, and it was at this point that they knocked over one of our folks, a 68-year-old woman, knocked her to the ground with a metal pole; in their bashing and thrashing out at us they also knocked the glasses off another woman. Right around then five or six people, from the Armenian contingent which was lined up behind ours and possibly also some parade marshals, showed up and started helping us get the Israelis to go away, basically pushing and pulling them and telling them they had to leave and then escorting them back to their own contingent. These folks who'd helped, all men, came back and talked to us, were very friendly and very sorry that it happened and appalled at what the Israelis had done, and several of them were friendly specifically about our signs and thanked us for being there.

By the way, our contingent included a lot of Jews. In fact, I think as it fell out it was mostly us Jewish people, including the two they hit hardest, the one they knocked down and the one whose glasses they knocked off, who were the ones trying to get them to leave, and it was all women."

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Article on QFOLC, QAIA and more: "Protesting apartheid at Pride"

Here are some excerpts from "Protesting apartheid at Pride" by Frankie Cook (June 22, 2011)
http://socialistworker.org/2011/06/22/protesting-apartheid-at-pride

"While QAIA received a surprising amount of support and interest at the first two New York City-wide Pride parades, the same cannot be said of NYC LGBT Center, which has kicked pro-Palestine queers to the curb. 

...The center essentially took the same position as the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs by saying that it's illegitimate and illegal to call Israel an apartheid state. Until now, the LGBT Center has been a place where activists of all sorts have come to organize--from antiwar, to abortion rights, workers' struggles and many others. 

Activists, however, have continued to organize in groups such as the newly formed Queers for an Open LGBT Center and QAIA to demand that the center remain a safe haven of free speech and open to all types of queer organizing...

Recently in New York City, a propaganda/fundraising party was organized by the gay division of the racist Jewish National Fund--a large landowner in Israel that refuses to sell land to non-Jews--as way to build "ties" between Israel and the gay community of New York. 

To the frustration of the Israeli government, queers across the world have rejected this pinkwash within the Middle East and in Europe, Canada and the U.S. From Beirut to Jerusalem and now in New York City, LGBTQ activists have demanded human rights for all--whether they are gay, straight, Arab or Jew."

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QFOLC Tells Garden Partiers: Stop Censoring Viewpoints of Groups that Meet at Center

Patrons of the LGBT “Community” Center’s Garden Party at Pier 54 on Monday evening, June 20, were greeted by an informational picket urging them to tell Center board members that their policy of censorship and exclusion is unacceptable. About 45 members of QFOLC, QAIA and their supporters joined the picket.

Board chair Mario Palumbo briefly stopped to speak with us, but reiterated his refusal to have a meeting between QFOLC and the board, which is one of our demands. Palumbo kept parroting what are now the Center’s talking points on the controversy: that LGBT people who are concerned with Palestinian rights are a “distraction” from the mission of the Center. He said that there is nothing to talk about and walked away when he realized that a member of the press was recording him. Stonewalled again. Palumbo took special exception to our references to “OUR Community Center.” I guess it belongs to the funders on the board now.

There were many people going into the Garden Party who were either unfamiliar with the controversy, so our signs and leaflets and discussions brought them up to date. Many expressed support for our demands: reinstatement of Siegebusters and QAIA at the Center, open board meetings, and free speech at the Center. There were a few patrons who expressed open hostility to our cause, but many others promised to raise the issue with Center leaders.

We were also told that there is a lot of support for the cause of an open Center from the Center’s own staff, but they are being stopped by the administration from speaking out publicly.

There seems to be some reluctance on the part of the leaders of other LGBT and AIDS groups to confront the Center about its censorship. Part of our work in the coming weeks is to build support from these leaders and the grassroots in our community.

I talked with at least one longtime supporter of the Center who thought this was one of the dullest Garden Parties ever and he left early. We have no idea if the crowd was diminished by this controversy. Many of us on the picket line have been patrons of the Party in the past. We do not wish our community Center ill. We are trying to save it from people who do not respect its rich heritage as a vibrant place of community organizing that welcomes all viewpoints.

The Center as it is now would probably not welcome ACT UP which in its heyday caused enormous controversy, taking on the mayor and religious bigots like Cardinal O’Connor in ways that made international headlines. In the case of Siegebusters and QAIA, Center leaders panicked because of a couple of stories in the Jerusalem Post and Gay City News and because of the protests of a handful of wealthy donors. This is no way to run a “Community” Center.

QFOLC Will Picket the Center on July 6 at 6 PM

Our next informational picket will be at the Center itself on Wednesday, July 6 from 6-8 PM where we hope to build support for an open Center from the people who use the Center regularly. This was the time that the Center had scheduled a meeting for QAIA before withdrawing their approval and declaring that Israeli-Palestinian issues may not be discussed on the premises of the Center!

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QFOLC Garden Party protest: some photos!

About 45 people turned up to protest the LGBT Center's censorship and general bad behavior yesterday, delivering 600 flyers to partygoers and a strong message to the Center: "you can't avoid controversy by slamming the door on the queer community!" More to come on the protest. Meanwhile, here are a few pics from Pauline Park. (Full album on Facebook here.)

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Trans Day of Action takes on the Center, links queer/justice struggles

The NYC Trans Day of Action takes place next Friday, June 24th. This year, as every year, it makes strong links between the rights of trans people and other queers; demands to end racism, anti-immigrant  and "war on terror" policy and repressive policing, and battles on other social and economic justice fronts. This year, the points of unity include specific support for the push to open the LGBT Center back up to the community, and end censorship there.

In the wake of protests against the Center's exclusion of queers and its odd community forum in March, many folks noted that the board (particularly Board President Mario Palumbo and Tom Kirdahy, the only board members who showed up at the forum) and director Glennda Testone seemed oblivious to the depth and history of LGBT organizing -- particularly queer work on issues they seemed to deem "not queer enough," like racial and economic justice, and human rights.

Maybe the Center bigs only attend Manhattan pride, where they could -- if blinded by beads tossed from club floats and given enough promotional Absolut cocktails -- convince themselves that all queers do is dance and join support groups. (And many of us do!) But they'd be better advised to check out the Trans March, the Dyke March, and pride marches in Harlem, Queens and Brooklyn that show the vastly wider reach, and the deep political engagement, of the queer movement.

If the Center's decision-makers were really part of the larger community, we wouldn't have to explain it to them. And they wouldn't be in so very much trouble right now.

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Protest the Center, and Protest its Welcome to Mayor Bloomberg.

by Andy Humm, Queers for an Open LGBT Center

We're protesting the LGBT "Community" Center's lack of transparency and openness at its Garden Party on Monday from 5:30-7:30 PM with an informational picket at 14th St. and the Hudson River. But now we have another reason to protest as the Center is welcoming Mayor Bloomberg to his first Garden Party and hailing his "incredible support" for LGBT rights. The fact is, Bloomberg's record on LGBT rights and civil liberties in general has been a disgrace.

Yes, Bloomberg is putting himself out there as a champion of same-sex marriage, but if it passes--as it may--it will be in spite of Bloomberg not because of him. Bloomberg has given MILLIONS in donations to prop up the anti-gay Republican Senate majority. This majority is blocking every piece of progressive legislation we care about from transgender rights to stronger tenant protections to universal health care for New York.

As mayor, Bloomberg has blocked virtually every significant piece of LGBT rights legislation. He vetoed the bill to require contractors to provide domestic partner benefits and successfully went to court to block its implementation when he was overridden by the Council. When the council overrode his veto of the school anti-bullying bill, he called it a "silly" law and refused to implement it. When he was ordered in 2005 by Justice Doris Ling Cohan to start issuing licenses to same-sex couples, he appealed her order, cited Leviticus in his briefs, and overturned her historic ruling at the Court of Appeals.

Don't even get us started about the way his police department has targeted gay men with false arrests and unconscionably stopped and frisked hundreds of thousands of African American and Latino youth. He used the police force to illegally detain thousands of peaceful demonstrators protesting the 2004 Republican National Convention to which he wrote a personal check for $7 million. The City had to pay tens of millions in settlements for these false arrests.

Bloomberg doesn't offer us "incredible support." It is incredible that our LGBT "Community" Center is giving him a platform and welcome. It is also absolutely shameful. Please join us in giving Bloomberg and the Center's leaders a different kind of welcome.

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QFOLC slams censorship @ NYC LGBT Community Center

Statement from QFOLC
June 16th, 2011
(QFOLC has called a protest at the Center's annual Garden Party! Monday 6/20. Btw, it's NOT at the Center -- instead, at 14th St. & West Side Highway.)

• Lift the Ban Against Siege Busters & Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

• Open Board Meetings

• Free Speech at the Center

New York's LGBT Community Center has served as an indispensable resource since its founding in 1983. But now, something has gone very, very wrong at the Center. Its Board has turned the simple matter of renting space to queer groups for organizing into a giant mess. Groups have been told they can meet and then are banned. Suddenly there’s a cloud of censorship on 13th Street.

Claiming it "has been forced to divert significant resources from its primary purpose of providing programming and services to instead navigating between opposing positions involving the Middle East conflict," the Center announced "a moratorium, effective immediately, on renting space to groups that organize around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Summarily canceled were scheduled meetings of the group, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA), which the Center had approved only eight days earlier. One such meeting took place without incident.

Previously, the Center banned the group, Siege Busters, from further meetings because of its organizing around Israeli Apartheid Week. Center Executive Director, Glennda Testone, stated that Siege Busters was expelled because it was both non-LGBT and controversial, with neither factor alone being grounds for refusing meeting space. Obviously, QAIA met this announced criteria. Also obvious―now―is that the banning of Siege Busters and the criteria were a smokescreen for something else.

By banning queer political organizing groups in response to "controversy," the Center is moving into a dangerous world of policing the queer community on behalf of outside forces―forces that are openly trying to silence anyone with a position different from their own. Making matters worse, by banning discussion of the Middle East conflict, the Center is, indeed, taking a side: implicitly endorsing Israel's policy on Palestine as well as the dangerous idea that anyone who objects to this policy is "anti-Semitic." Only groups opposing that occupation had been meeting there, so the ban affects them only. Despite the extreme controversy surrounding this issue, these groups have affirmed the right of those supporting the opposite position to meet at the Center as well.

The Center's "primary purpose" as described in its release is historically inaccurate. The Center was founded in 1983 to provide meeting and office space to community groups for the purposes of organizing, developing programs and rendering services. That the Center now itself performs some of these functions is great, but this role should never be used as an excuse to negate its founding purpose by limiting access to community groups.

Contrary to the Center's claim, there is nothing around which to "navigate." Republicans, Democrats, socialists and anarchists have met at the Center; so have Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and atheists. Before this latest statement from the Center leadership, no one―including the Center itself―had ever suggested that the provision of rental space implied an endorsement of the groups renting rooms or of their political perspectives.

Siege Busters was banned under pressure from anti-free speech, Islamophobe Michael Lucas who threatened to organize a donor boycott of the Center. When QAIA was briefly allowed to meet, he threatened to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times against the Center, calling it an "anti-Israeli nest." Thugs like Lucas are the last people the Center should be listening to when developing policy.

Clearly, secret conversations are taking place behind the closed doors of the Center's boardroom. But if the word "Community" in the Center's name has any meaning, we all have every right to know what's going on. Instead of responding positively to requests from community activists to meet on this matter, the Center board hired a consulting firm to formulate a space utilization policy at exorbitant cost that is a complete waste of community resources.

Calls for open board meetings have been heard before. Now, with the latest flip-flop and ever lengthening trail of obfuscation, the need for the Center to heed this call is more urgent than ever.

• Lift the Ban Against Siege Busters & Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
• Open Board Meetings
• Free Speech at the Center

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Reporter stumped by pretzel logic of censorship.

From Duncan Osborne's blog:
http://herdandscene.blogspot.com/2011/06/can-someone-please-explain.html

'I was struck by one thing on June 11. Lucas and the folks who joined him in pressuring the Center to give these two groups the boot prevented them, or tried to, from meeting and talking among themselves. When I asked Lucas if he had any plans to challenge the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the gay pride marches in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, he said “I don’t care. They can do whatever the hell they want.”

So it is beyond the pale for these groups to meet quietly, but perfectly acceptable for them to carry their message to what will have been hundreds of thousands of people by the time they are done marching in the June 26 pride march on Fifth Avenue? So the objection is what? I remain confused.'

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Protest @ the Center's Garden Party! Mon 6/20 @ 5:30pm

RSVP on Facebook!

We're trying to put the community back in NY's LGBT Community Center. Please join us at a protest at the Center's Garden Party on Monday evening. Mayor Bloomberg is attending for the first time and being greeted by the Center as a "strong supporter," despite his terrible record on LGBT rights and civil liberities.

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GCN on QAIA & Queens Pride: Queer speech in queer space, what's the big deal?

Another vote against censorship, this one from the Queens Pride Committee and Councilmember Danny Dromm. From Gay City News: The World, Again, Comes to Queens.

'...Queens Pride also played host to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA), a group who used the parade to loudly voice their opposition to the Jewish state’s policies toward Palestinians....

[Councilmember Danny] Dromm voiced uncertainty about the specifics of QAIA’s stance, but said he had no doubts about their right to participate in the parade. 

 “I don’t know exactly what their stand is, although I have heard some of the press around it,” he said. “I know that the Pride Committee, when they discussed the participation of that group here, felt that, look, they’re gay, they should be allowed to march and to express their viewpoint. We all agreed on that.”'

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LGBT Center sit-in: weird success, failure & pix.

This evening's sit-in by Queers Against Israeli Occupation and Siegebusters, with support from QFOLC, went oddly unchallenged by the LGBT Center. About 60 people gathered in the lobby to hold the scheduled-then-banned QAIA meeting, since the Center had refused to allow QAIA to rent a room.

The meeting went on for about 90 minutes and broke just about every rule the Center has ever enforced about the lobby: meeting attendees sat on the floor, blocked the flow of traffic (not on purpose, but because there were so many people), spoke and applauded loudly, etc. The Center made absolutely no response -- staff just let the meeting go on. And amazingly, the sky didn't fall as queers discussed controversial topics and organized action.

While the Center was arguably wise to just let the moment pass without escalating (remember that in March they panicked and hired private security goons, ostensibly to protect the Center from the queer protest outside), it doesn't necessarily add up to good news. Instead, it seems like the Center will just go along with whatever pressure it most currently feels.

The LGBTQ community urgently needs the Center actually to stand up for queer space, for openness, for community and accountability. That includes refusing to be bullied into pushing queers out of the Center, making its operations transparent and public, and explicitly affirming that the Center is open to all facets of the community -- not just whenever it's convenient. Nothing like that happened tonight, and the fight goes on.

Here are photos from the sit-in. More will be listed here as we see them posted.
https://picasaweb.google.com/117132485970294538173/QaiaSitInPix#
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150269586599859.376954.716419858

Gay City News:

Critics of Israeli Occupation Occupy Center Lobby

Queer group terming treatment of Palestinians “apartheid” defies ban on its meetings

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For tomorrow's LGBT Center Sit-In: the flyer.

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Village Voice: LGBT Center's self-imposed "public humiliation."

This VV post speaks for itself. And for a lot of us.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/06/gay_center_now.php

"This is not particularly shocking, but it is the most blatantly embarrassing example of how both the Center's Board and its executive director, Glennda Testone, have been willing to placate Lucas and publicly humiliate themselves. It also shows how thoroughly they are willing to turn their backs on the Center's 28-year history as a locale of controversial free speech in order to become just another censored venue catering to influential donors."

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QAIA calls Sit-In at LGBT Center - Wed 6/8

In response to the LGBT Center's second (or third) refusal to rent space to anti-Occupation groups -- and its announcement that such refusal is now the Center's policy -- NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is calling a sit-in this Wednesday, 6pm at the LGBT Center.

Many other cities have queer groups organizing around Palestine, in some cases actively supported by queer institutions like Pride Committees. In Toronto, where the city's Pride march was threatened with de-funding because of the participation of Toronto's Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, the exclusion was overturned as improper. As in New York, the politics in Toronto are complicated and cross over queer-straight boundaries. (But they're not too complicated to muddy the difference between those who would silence queer organizing, and those who would fight to hold space for it.)

Here's NYC QAIA's call for this Wednesday's sit-in.

The Center has done it again. After a brief flirtation with openness, the NYC LGBT Center has capitulated to right-wing pressure – and shut down progressive queer political organizing again.

SIT-IN @ THE LGBT CENTER

Wed., June 8, 6pm

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid was supposed to have our meeting at the Center at that time... but since the Center won't stand up for us, we have to SIT IN! 

Last week, the Center responded to community demands that the Center remain open to queers, by finally granted meeting space to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. But on Thursday, after a new round of threats and bullying from the right, the Center cancelled all future QAIA meetings. In short, the Center has said that it won't stand up for queers' right to organize if that organizing becomes “controversial.” (Read statements from the Center and QAIA here.) 

Please call and/or e-mail Center director Glennda Testone and board president Mario Palumbo (again!) Tell them they can't avoid controversy just by slamming the door on queer activists. You can email from here: http://openthecenter.blogspot.com/p/action.html

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Siege Busters statement on exclusion of all Palestine organizing groups

Siege Busters Statement - June 4, 2011
Regarding LGBT Center Exclusion of all Groups Organizing in Support of Palestine

It is with deep disappointment that we, the members of Siege Busters, receive the news that the Executive Committee of the LGBT Community Center has decided to extend the ban of our group to all of those organizing for justice in Palestine. It is clear from the established pattern that this decision reflects capitulation to an exceedingly small number of financially influential donors who have threatened to destroy the Center for renting space to groups who hold an opinion that differs from their own. In response to these threats, the Center has in every instance complied with the demands of this small number of donors by cancelling events, banning groups, and even disallowing an entire category of activism and speech from taking place within the facility.

Of particular concern to Siege Busters with this latest incident of exclusion is the adoption by the Executive Committee of demonizing language. By stating that all groups organizing around the Palestinian liberation struggle were to be banned due to “anti-Semitism in political expression,” the Executive Committee has chosen to promote the characterization of pro-Palestinian activism as hateful and racist. This despite the fact that a large number of the activists banned from the Center are themselves Jewish, and not a single incident of anti-Semitic language or action has been cited by the Executive Committee when this characterization has been challenged.

In all honesty, we are not surprised by hateful rhetoric and demonizing language emanating from those who oppose Palestinian self-determination, human rights, and dignity. Our disappointment is focused on the failure of the Center’s Executive Committee to appreciate the commonality between queer struggles worldwide and the Palestinian struggle in the United States and Israel. Both of our communities have been portrayed as a menacing presence and suffer the injustice of denied equality. We have both endured violence by those who perceive themselves as superior and us inferior. We have both witnessed the devastating effect upon our communities when the bigotries hurled at us are internalized; and for these reasons among others, we stand shoulder to shoulder – sisters and brothers in a common struggle.

While the occupation of Palestine is often portrayed as a purely divisive issue, the truth of the matter is that there are few causes as unifying as the liberation of Palestine. In upcoming weeks, we will be outside of the Center protesting this latest decision and any passerby will be able to witness this unity: Arabs and Jews, Muslims and Christians, black and brown, white and Asian, queer and straight – all hand in hand.

It is our position that harm has been done to the Center through the exclusion of this spirit of universal human justice and solidarity, and we demand that the Center immediately end this ban and return to its 28-year policy of being a haven for the marginalized and oppressed, open to all who respect the rights of LGBT people.

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Gay City News sifts through the wreckage of the LGBT Center fiasco

Gay City News tries to sort out who exactly is pushing the Center to slam the door on queer political organizers. The verdict: a whole lot of Lucas' friends, Retail Workers Union leader Stuart Applebaum, maybe some elected officials (but maybe not.)

Also, GCN's Osborne asks, how much is the Center spending on a consultant to sort this out instead of actually talking to the community? (Way too much! Since bringing on the consultant, the Center's handling of the situation has just gotten worse. It's taking a major beating from all sides.)

http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/06/03/gay_city_news/news/doc4de95bd2022c0628479540.txt

"Opponents of QAIA said they spent the week following its meeting urging groups, individuals, and Center donors to contact the agency and ask it to reverse the decision, which it did on June 2... Lucas then said he had been copied on “well over 100 emails, but it's not 1,000” to the Center. Other groups and “lots of donors” contacted the Center, he said, though he would not identify any... 

Stuart Appelbaum, the openly gay president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said he had spoken with many people, including elected officials or their staff. 

"The Center is developing a new space rental policy with help from Ritchie Tye Consulting. The Center did not respond to an email asking what the consulting firm would be paid. In 2007, Ritchie Tye charged the Gay Men’s Health Crisis just under $92,000 for consulting, according to GMHC’s IRS filings from that year."

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Lucas: Out against truth and history on more than one front.

Queers for an Open LGBT Center has not focused on Michael Lucas. He's vile, but it's the NYC LGBT Center that's the point. That said, Lucas' deliberateness in snatching away progressive queer political space -- and the huge latitude he's been given by queer institutions to do it -- is worthy of notice, if only because it's  a surprise to many of us who believed that even queers who deeply disagreed probably shared some common ground. Now that it's not necessarily radical to be queer anymore, do we still share that ground?

From PinkwatchingIsrael.com, here's a piece on how deeply political was Lucas' film "Men of Israel," using the icon of unashamed public queer sexuality to virtually kill off the Palestinian history of a village, and claim it for Israel. The tactic will be familiar to New Yorkers fighting off Lucas' attacks: he tells a silly fictitious story ("The Center is supporting terrorist groups!), tags it with buzz words about queer community and freedom ("they're providing a fig leaf for Arab homophobia!"), and then spreads it so far and wide that it no longer matters whether it's true -- it's just part of the narrative that everyone "knows."

http://www.pinkwatchingisrael.com/michael-lucas-in-lifta-village-on-israel%E2%80%99s-attempted-colonization-of-the-queer-narrative/

...It was during this backlash [about Siegebusters meeting at the LGBT Center] that Max Blumenthal called attention to the fact that Michael Lucas has previously shot pornography in Israel in a depopulated Palestinian village. Indeed, watching this video excerpt of a conversation between Lucas and one of his actors I couldn’t help but feel sick on my stomach when I recognized the village to be Lifta — the village that Yacoub was driven out of is somehow the perfect scene for an on-camera sex romp for Lucas and his buddies. The damage is only furthered by Lucas’s promotional statements for the film:

…we went to an abandoned village just north of Jerusalem. It was a beautiful ancient township that had been deserted centuries ago [sic.]…however, that did not stop our guys from mounting each other and trying to repopulate it. Biology may not be the lesson of the day but these men shot their seeds all over the village. [emphasis added]

It is a strange thing to attempt to “repopulate” a village whose original inhabitants are simply prevented from returning under the threat of state force. Hence here we have perhaps the first example of what some have termed “desecration porn.” 

At this point it’s difficult not to ask the obvious question—as others have — what if somebody made a sex tape on the location where an anti-Semitic pogrom had been carried out? ... A man who has filmed LGBT-themed porn on the site of an act of ethnic cleansing is not only given a voice in discussions of what social justice in LGBT spaces should look like, he is given absolute authority in this case to decide who is and who is not allowed to even participate in that conversation.

Here's the original blog post exposing "Men of Israel" as "desecration porn."
Money Talks, Desecration Walks: Nakba Porn Kingpin Michael Lucas Bullies LGBT Center Against Anti-Apartheid Party (MaxBlumenthal.com)

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NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid: statement on the Center's ban of their meetings

Statement from NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid:
Pro-Israel pressure machine is shutting down NYC queer community organizing.

June 2, 2011

This afternoon, the NYC LGBT Center summarily cancelled all future meetings of NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid -- and all LGBT groups organizing around the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Center claimed in a press release that it has been diverted from its "primary purpose of providing programming and services" by the protest and rhetoric around the question of meeting space.

We object completely to the idea that the Center's "primary purpose" is for "programming and services" -- it was created as, and has always been, a community space for queer organizing and self-determination. We object to the Center's spineless attempt to hide behind social services to queers, as if political organizing were not also critical to queer community and survival. We already know that the Center's board suffers from serious disconnection with the larger LGBT community and its history, but we are shocked and aggrieved at this slap in the face to queers as makers of our own path rather than passive recipients of "programming."

The Center's failure to stand up for queer communities' right to use its space sadly goes further, though. In banning "groups that organize around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," the Center is telling queers that we will be out on the street as soon as we are challenged by powerful forces. The Center is clearly responding to pressure mounted by well-resourced pro-Israel forces -- including right-wing activist Michael Lucas, who recently moved the Jerusalem Post to write an article full of absurd accusations that the Center is anti-Semitic and is "providing a fig leaf for Arab homophobia."

In fact, the Center has only been under two kinds of pressure: from the pro-Israel lobby, including some wealthy and powerful queers, comes pressure to ban groups who support Palestinian queers and oppose Israeli occupation; from the queer progressive community comes pressure to keep the Center open and decision-making transparent. Instead of insisting on queers' right to organize ourselves around what's important to us, the Center has said the choice between repression and openness is too much of a burden.

We must be clear on what's happening: the Center has only banned groups working in support of Palestinian queers' demand for an end to Israel's occupation as a critical step in achieving their civil and human rights. It has only responded to demands for openness by frantically slamming the door. And it has fully complied with the highly political demand of right wing pro-Israel groups that it shut out Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

For the record, we would oppose any attempt to ban Zionist or pro-Israel queer groups as well as pro-Palestinian ones -- it is not the Center's role to filter queer organizing. But contrary to its claim of "having no position," with this decision the Center moves from confusion to implicitly siding with Israeli Apartheid.

The Center has heard from groups of Arab queers, Palestinian queers, queers of color, and progressive queers that their actions have made the Center unwelcoming and unsafe for us. It's time for the Center to open its doors back up to the community -- apologize, make its processes public, and stand up to those who would so narrow the entrance to our once-treasured community home.

NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
NoPrideInOccupation@gmail.com

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LGBT Center strikes again: another queer group banned.

The LGBT Center is amazing... they've done it again. They've completely given in to right-wing demands to cancel the meetings of anti-Occupation groups (and no other groups, btw.) This time they're saying it's just too hard to stand up for queers' right to organize, and it's impinging on their provision of "programming and services" -- as if queer organizing is marginal. What horrifyingly short memories.

The LGBT Community Center Calls a "Time Out" In Renting to Groups Organizing Around the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Thu, June 2 2011

Media Contact

Cindi Creager, Director of Communications & Marketing
(212) 620-7310, ccreager@gaycenter.org

New York, NY June 2, 2011 -- The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center today announced a moratorium, effective immediately, on renting space to groups that organize around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The decision comes after months of divisiveness, protest, and heated rhetoric regarding whether the Center should rent space to two groups organizing around these issues.

The Center has been forced to divert significant resources from its primary purpose of providing programming and services to instead navigating between opposing positions involving the Middle East conflict. The Center, which does not endorse the views of groups to whom it rents space and requires all groups to sign a non-discrimination pledge, has decided to implement this moratorium to allow a cooling off period.

“We must keep our focus squarely on providing life-changing and life-saving programs and services to the LGBTQ community in New York City,” said Executive Director Glennda Testone. “We respect those who are deeply passionate about these issues, and we respectfully ask that they take meetings outside of the Center. Make no mistake, everyone is welcome at the Center; but these particular organizing activities need to take place elsewhere.”

In February, the Center declined to rent space to a group called Siege Busters, a non-LGBT-focused group whose presence at the Center provoked controversy and diverted energy and resources away from the Center’s core mission. The Center subsequently agreed to rent space to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which conformed to the Center’s application guidelines and signed its non-discrimination agreement. But the ensuing controversy has again consumed significant time and resources and forced Center staff to negotiate issues of anti-Semitism in political expression – an area outside the Center’s expertise. For these reasons, the Center has adopted an indefinite moratorium.

“We have tried in good faith to weigh each space request while considering the deeply held beliefs of members of our community about these issues,” said Board President Mario Palumbo. “But we are first and foremost a community services center and need to ensure that all individuals in our community feel welcome to come through our doors and get what they need to live healthy, happy lives. This must be our priority.”

###

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How fire spreads: Jerusalem Post jumps on the "Center is anti-Israel" message

A new article from the Jerusalem Post calls the LGBT Center "anti-Israel" and says that anti-occupation queers are just providing "a fig leaf for Arab homophobia." Wait -- it just reports that other people are saying that. But you'd have to do some real filtering to understand that the JPost isn't endorsing that view.

In truth, the Center's board and staff are the farthest thing from anti-Israel: if anything, they appear to be so apolitical that they default to "shh, don't say anything about the Occupation!" And queer anti-occupation activists support Palestinian queers' demand to end occupation as a starting point for opening up civil society. But that matters not to sensationalist reporting.

This is the kind of baseless but effective pressure tactic that makes middle-of-the-road organizations buckle -- unless they have some core principles about free speech, openness and truth. The LGBT Center has not been strong on any of that lately, so this is worrisome.

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=223236

NY LGBT Center slammed as center of anti-Israel activityBy BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
06/01/2011 23:58

Manhattan institution providing fig leaf for Arab homophobia, Wiesenthal Center says.
New York City LGBT Community Center’s decision to host an event of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid last week has drawn sharp criticism. 

Prominent US gays and the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Wednesday laced into the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. 

Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s international director, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid was a group of “self-hating gays” who “are working against the interests of their own brothers and sisters and should be shunned by all LGBT NGOs. By accepting them, the New York center is providing a fig leaf for Arab homophobia.”

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Summary of the LGBT Center/Palestine drama so far: Pauline Park

Pauline Park (of Queers for an Open LGBT Center, among other groups) blogged a how-we-got-here history of the LGBT Center's ridiculous floundering that has resulted in their alienation of queers of color and progressive queers, and the suppression of queer political organizing. It's a sad read.

http://www.paulinepark.com/index.php/2011/03/israelipalestinian-conflict-breaks-out-at-the-nyc-lgbt-community-center/

Within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, the slogan “we are everywhere” is not only wonderfully true but painfully true as well, as LGBT people are found both among the Jewish Israeli and Palestinian and Arab populations living within the borders of the State of Israel. And LGBT people in the United States are found on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian divide, scattered on a continuum from those who see Israel as the only legitimate claimant to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean to those who believe that all of that land is the home of the Palestinian people alone. Many queer Americans, of course, are somewhere in between, recognizing as legitimate both the State of Israel and the aspirations of the Palestinian people. Perhaps a majority in the LGBT community in the United States is either frustrated to the point of giving up or apathetic after years of war and conflict.
...
And the story of how the Center became drawn into the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, despite the desire of its board and staff to avoid such entanglement — or perhaps because of it — is a cautionary tale for LGBT community centers and LGBT organizations and queer politics more generally — both in New York and beyond.

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QUEER VICTORY! Today's action is still on!

Dear friends,

Pressure works! Yesterday afternoon, the LGBT Center reversed itself, and offered Queers Against Israeli Apartheid a meeting room for tonight's meeting. Thanks for all your very effective emails, calls and action RSVPs.

But the huge problem at the LGBT Center is not fixed.

• The Center is clearly still panicked over queer political organizing -- they jettisoned their whole space request process because they didn't like the name of a queer group.
• The Center board is still refusing to meet with queer organizers about these major accountability issues. Supposedly they've hired a consultant to "figure this stuff out" -- but they're not talking to the community!
• Board meetings are still closed-door, unlike other queer community centers.
• The right-wing gay forces who touched off this firestorm are gearing up again -- hoping to claim that allowing political groups to meet is a violation of the Center's non-profit status. It's ridiculous, but also scary.

PLEASE COME TONIGHT: It's still very useful and important to be at the Center at 6:30pm tonight.

The Center has just started to feel the pressure -- but truly, they still haven't gotten the message that they can't act this way. Filling the room (and the hallway!) tonight will help them get it.

PLEASE RAMP UP YOUR EMAILS AND CALLS TO THE CENTER.

Tell the Center's board: We refuse to have to organize actions and sit-ins in order to use our community space.

The Center must be transparently run, and be accountable to all queers.

The board must open its meetings, restore Siegebusters' right to meet there, and meet with Queers for an OpenLGBT Center.

Send your email from here: http://openthecenter.blogspot.com.

Join us tonight! Meet in Rm 412 to support Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. Overflow into the halls!

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Michael Lucas kicks up again.

This email from Michael Lucas circulated after the LGBT Center announced that it has approved meeting space for Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. Terrifyingly, it proposes that the Center is not allowed to host any political group meetings, and that the Center is itself an "anti-Israeli nest." (What does a pro-Israel nest look like, then?!)

If ever there were a time to shore up the Center's principles of openness and commitment to queers' long history of political organizing, it's now.

From: Michael Lucas
Date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 4:47 PM
Subject: Bad News
To: Michael Lucas

Dear friends-

I have a very unfortunate update. The group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid was just granted the ability to have their meetings in the LGBT Center. As I always believed, the LGBT Center of NY is an anti-Israeli nest and we did not put enough pressure on them to stop their efforts to harm the Jewish state. But we have the power to stop them. The LGBT Center receives city, federal, foundation, and private funding. We have to work on reaching the government officials and ask them to cut that funding unless the Center changes its decision. We should also reach out to different organizations and individuals and collect money to take a full page ad in the New York Times Magazine. I know this is not cheap and I myself will generously contribute. I also believe that their support of political activity may jeopardize their ability to maintain tax-free status. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, input, and suggestions. I do need your help.


Best regards,

Michael Lucas

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LGBT Center's press release on Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

Here's the LGBT Center's press release on giving Queers Against Israeli Apartheid some meeting space.

It's something of a mystery that the Center did not send this statement to any of the folks who wrote from Queers for an Open LGBT Center, nor the folks who send them emails about QAIA. So whom were they talking to with this press release?

And second: really, it was worthy of a press release?! Then we still have a problem...

May 25, 2011

Statement on Decision to Allow Space Use by Outside Queer Identified Group

The Center recently received a request for space rental by a group called “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid” for the purposes of holding recurring meetings to plan for local Pride events. This afternoon we informed the group that the Center would allow access for these meetings.

The decision is consistent with our current guidelines. Under the guidelines we provide space to community groups for a fee on a case-by-case basis, asking that they abide by the Center’s Space Use Agreement, Payment Terms, Code of Conduct and Good Neighbor Policy. Earlier this year we denied space to a group with a similar profile because among other reasons, it was not LGBT focused. In addition, the Center has a longstanding practice of allowing non-LGBT groups to meet so long as it doesn't distract us from our primary purpose of serving the LGBT community; the circumstances surrounding the group in question diverted us from our core mission and we therefore asked it to move an event and all future meetings.

LGBT New Yorkers are facing urgent issues including: youth homelessness, violence, bullying, substance abuse, health disparities and the other myriad of challenges our community members encounter each and every day.  The Center is here to help address these issues 365 days a year. Six thousand people pass through our doors every week.  We have a responsibility to meet the vast and diverse needs of this community, and our number one priority is delivering critical services to the people we directly serve.

The Center also provides space for a variety of LGBT voices in our community to engage in conversations on a range of topics. The Center does not have a position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, nor does it endorse the viewpoints of this group or any others that use rooms here. This is a complex issue, and there is a tremendous diversity of viewpoints within the LGBT community.

We are currently undergoing a review of our space-use guidelines to ensure we have the most robust standards moving forward. As an interim step we are asking all new and existing groups to sign a Space Use Pledge of Non-Discrimination as part of their rental agreements. The group we approved today has signed this pledge.

Most recently we have also engaged the firm Ritchie Tye Consulting, Inc. to help facilitate a thorough review of the Center’s current standards and procedures for determining space use by outside groups, with the ultimate goal of strengthening our guidelines. Ritchie Tye Consulting, Inc. is a New York-based organizational development consulting firm with a long tenure of work with the LGBT and HIV/AIDS communities.

The firm has already been working closely with Center leadership on a process that includes opportunities for input from a diverse cross-section of Center and community stakeholders through interviews and small groups, and will deliver recommendations to the full Board of Directors later this year. At the conclusion of this process, we will apply the newly adopted guidelines to all existing, recurring and new space-for-fee requests.

The Center continues to welcome community input and feedback on this topic through our online suggestion box. http://mycenter.gaycenter.org/Page.aspx?pid=324

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Join the QFOLC mailing list.

QFOLC email updates and action alerts. Infrequent emails!

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Action Alert! Thursday 5/26 - come out for an open LGBT Center!

ACTION ALERT

WHAT:  LGBT group that is being denied meeting space at LGBT Community Center will show up to try to take it.
WHEN: Thursday, May 26 at 6:30 PM
WHO: Queers Against Israeli Apartheid supported by Queers for an Open LGBT Center
WHERE: LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., Manhattan
MEDIA CONTACT: Pauline Park, Queers for an Open LGBT Center at (718) 424-4003 (phone); (718) 662-8893 (cell); e-mail: paulinepark@earthlink.net

HOW TO SUPPORT:
Join a support action at the Center on Thursday, May 26 at 6:30 pm.
Call or email Center director Glennda Testone on (212) 620-7310/glennda@gaycenter.org to demand meeting space for Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.
Call or email Center board chair Mario Palumbo at (212) 875-4900/mpalumbo@millenniumptrs.com.



MORE INFO:

We are calling to all those who support the meeting-space request of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid to come out in solidarity on Thursday, May 26 at 6:30 PM. We will meet in the Center lobby to make sure that there is a place to meet in the Center. We are not looking for a confrontation and we are committed to nonviolence, but we cannot predict how the Center will respond.

This is not about endorsing Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. Some of the undersigned are members of that group, others of Queers for an Open LGBT Center and some of both. But all of us longtime LGBT activists are united in insisting on an open LGBT Community Center that does not reject groups on the basis of political viewpoint.

More than 1,600 people have already signed a petition to demand an open LGBT Center. You can see who has signed and add your name at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savenyclgbtcenter/

You can read more about the issue, including press reports, at http://openthecenter.blogspot.com/

We urge you to call Glennda Testone, the Center’s executive director, at (212) 620-7310 or e-mail her at glennda@gaycenter.org and demand that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid be allowed to meet at the Center. Also contact Mario Palumbo, president of the Center board at (212) 875-4900 or e-mail him at mpalumbo@millenniumptrs.com

Let’s put the community back in our Community Center.

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Statement to the Community: Stonewalled by the Center -- Enough is Enough

STATEMENT TO THE COMMUNITY

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid to Meet at LGBT Center May 26 at 6:30 PM

Request for Space Stonewalled by Center

Queers for an Open LGBT Center Say, “Enough is Enough”

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid will hold a planning meeting for participation in New York-area Pride marches on Thursday, May 26 at 6:30 PM at the LGBT Community Center at 208 W. 13th St. Queers for an Open LGBT Center is calling on community members to show up on Thursday in solidarity with their request for meeting space.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid works to build LGBT opposition to the Israeli government’s institutional racism and occupation of Palestinian lands and in solidarity with Queer Palestinians who identify how these issues are a necessary part of their Queer agenda.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid applied for meeting space on May 10. The Center’s stated policy is to respond to such requests within “two to three business days,” but the Center has still not confirmed a meeting space and time for the group almost TWO WEEKS later. Instead of receiving an answer, the group has been stonewalled, asked to answer a raft of questions about its intentions and stonewalled again. Promises were made

to give the group a decision by various dates including May 20, but now the Center’s director of operation, Rob Wheeler, is telling the group “there is sensitivity around the name of the group,” the Center “wanted to think it through,” “didn’t want to rush it,” “this is going to the board next week,” “the big issue is the name of your group,” and “we don’t have clarity on process and are concerned about the process.” The Center is holding this group to different standards and asking questions about its longevity and relationships with other groups that it has not asked of any other group meeting at the Center. These delays and deferrals amount to a denial of meeting space and a clear attempt to filter and censor queer political organizing.

Enough is enough. The pride season is upon us, starting with the Queens Pride Parade on June 5, and the Queers Against Israeli Apartheid group has to meet now in order to begin planning for its participation in these events. The Center is not providing a reason in a timely fashion why this queer group is effectively being denied the opportunity to meet in our Community Center and keeps moving the goalpost. The Center will not say when their board meeting is, but we no longer have time to wait to find out.

No LGBTQ group to our knowledge has ever been put through this kind of delay or political vetting process by the Center.

Queers for an Open LGBT Center, which has been working to get the Center to reverse its precipitous decision to expel Siege Busters from the Center and to keep the Center open to all, is in solidarity with the request by Queers Against Israeli Apartheid to be able to meet at the Center on an ongoing basis. When Siege Busters was expelled, the Center said the group was not queer specific and too “controversial.” This new standard has not been applied to any other group meeting at the Center, many of which are both controversial and not queer-specific. Queers for an Open LGBT Center has called for the board to open its meetings. Last month Glennda Testone, the Center’s executive director, rejected the group’s request to meet with the board about these issues.

When Queers Against Israeli Apartheid applied, the reference to “sensitivity around the name” was a resurrection of the vague and insidious indictment as “controversial,” a term that does and should apply to virtually any group that meets at the Center. Queer lives are controversial in our society in case the Center board has not noticed.

We are calling to all those who support the meeting-space request of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid to come out in solidarity on Thursday, May 26 at 6:30 PM. We will meet in the Center lobby to make sure that there is a place to meet in the Center. We are not looking for a confrontation and we are committed to nonviolence, but we cannot predict how the Center will respond.

This is not about endorsing Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. Some of the undersigned are members of that group, others of Queers for an Open LGBT Center and some of both. But all of us longtime LGBT activists are united in insisting on an open LGBT Community Center that does not reject groups on the basis of political viewpoint.

More than 1,600 people have already signed a petition to demand an open LGBT Center. You can see who has signed and add your name at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savenyclgbtcenter/

You can read more about the issue, including press reports, at http://openthecenter.blogspot.com/

We urge you to call Glennda Testone, the Center’s executive director, at (212) 620-7310 or e-mail her at glennda@gaycenter.org and demand that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid be allowed to meet at the Center. Also contact Mario Palumbo, president of the Center board at (212) 875-4900 or e-mail him at mpalumbo@millenniumptrs.com

Let’s put the community back in our Community Center.

Signatories:

Steve Ault

Naomi Brussel

Leslie Cagan

Bill Dobbs

Lisa Duggan

Marla Erlien

Emmaia Gelman

Andy Humm

Bob Lederer

J.F. Mulligan

Ann Northrop

Pauline Park

Brad Taylor

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