The Pink Sheet (from the LGBT Center's public forum)

As the Center issue was discussed among various queer activists, a shared concern emerged that the Center's "public forum" would be a melee in which nothing was accomplished, that it would amount to a turnout contest between "pros" and "antis," and the Center would be allowed to claim that "voices had been heard" and the matter closed.

A little effort to organize progressive queer activist thinking produced a Pink Sheet -- an open letter from queers to queers intended to help keep the discussion focused. Text and the list of signers are below. More detail on what did happen at the forum is posted next on this blog.


Letter to participants at the LGBT Community Center public forum –
March 13, 2011

Greetings to All,

We don't know how this meeting will go. We are (separately) members of Siegebusters, members of groups who wrote to the Center to object to the treatment of Siegebusters and queer political activists in general, organizers of the last week’s protest against the Center’s censorship, Palestinian and Jewish queers, and active participants in queer community. The Center hasn't included any of us as “stakeholders” in planning this meeting. However, we'd like to offset some of the chaos by offering a few starting ideas.

Some bottom-line issues:

1. The Center dealt badly with Siegebusters. An apology is due, and the Center should immediately restore Siegebusters' access to meeting space until it can provide a transparent process for deciding otherwise. The reasons given by Center staff for cancelling the March 5 event and Siegebusters ongoing meetings in scattered e-mails and announcements (that Siegebusters is somehow not queer enough, or that queer activism on Palestine makes queer space “unsafe”) have been broadly refuted in public comment from many corners of the queer community.

2. This controversy reveals a much bigger problem at the Center – lack of transparent decision-making. Center Executive Director Glennda Testone and the Center’s Board of Directors have made major decisions about our space and community with no real community engagement.

• No one from Siegebusters was consulted before the cancellation.
• No organizers of the ensuing protest against the Center were contacted before the Center decided to hire private goons to police our community center against us.
• No public response has been made to the queers – particularly queers of color and Palestinian queers – who told the Center that this decision has marginalized them and made them unsafe.
• The forum today has been organized without input from affected groups.

The Center must have a transparent process for making (and that allows for challenges of) decisions about who can use the Center. The Center also must open its board meetings to the public and take public comment. The board should be accountable, and it isn't. Its operations aren't public, its members don’t represent our communities, and it doesn't provide the Center's constituency with any lines of communication – although it's clearly making decisions about us.

What this meeting shouldn't be about:

• The Center shouldn't be blessing or disapproving queer political work, nor should this meeting.
• The Center shouldn't be making political calls about the Middle East, nor should this meeting.
• It's not a “neutral position” to shut down queer organizing or anti-occupation work because it's “too controversial.” But having gotten itself into this mess, the Center now has the responsibility to transparently and neutrally bring folks back to the table. This meeting doesn't satisfy that responsibility.

Here’s hoping for a productive discussion,

Bill Dobbs, Brad Taylor, Emmaia Gelman, Naomi Brussel, Sammer Aboelela, Sarena Melchert

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Gay City News: LGBT Center announces community forum

Gay City News was the source of news about the community forum for most of the groups and individuals (as well as Siegebusters) who protested the Center's actions.

Responding to Israel Flap, LGBT Center Announces Mar. 13 Community Forum

http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/03/04/gay_city_news/news/doc4d70e596b68b2049621442.txt

Dispute over pro-Palestinian event cancellation continues, Jewish state’s critics plan Mar. 5 protest on W. 13th St.

In the wake of an emotional debate pitting the LGBT Community Center and defenders of Israel against critics of the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians living in the territory it controls and other community members concerned about the cancellation of a fundraising party those critics had planned at the West 13th Street facility, the Center is now planning a “Community Forum” on Sunday, March 13 at 5 p.m.

...

The Center’s announcement of the March 13 forum followed by one day failed negotiations between its top staff and representatives of Siege Busters about the possibility of holding a town hall meeting the evening of March 5 at the time the IAW fundraiser had initially been planned.

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Siegebusters rejects a Center-controlled forum... and the Center announces a forum

According to Siegebusters reps: on March 3rd, Siegebusters met with Glennda Testone. Hoping to let the Center back out of its corner, Siegebusters reps said they would be amenable to a community forum rather than the Israeli Apartheid Week fundraiser they'd planned. Their terms: that they would plan the agenda, that the event would be open to the media, and that it would still be a fundraiser.

Testone was not agreeable to those terms. Reportedly, she said that the Center would have to control the content, no media would be allowed in because that violated the "folksy way" of the Center, and that fundraising could happen, but not as the overt intent of the event.

With no resolution in sight, plans for protest at the LGBT Center (not organized by Siegebusters) went forward. The next day, Gay City News ran an announcement of the Center's plan to hold a public forum. True to Testone's word, the Center forum was planned without input from Siegebusters, the individuals and groups involved in organizing the protest, or those who had written to the Center to object to everything that had happened so far.

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Gay City News on the protest @ LGBT Center

In its coverage of the protest against the Center's ejection of Siegebuaster, Gay City News covers "pinkwashing" -- painting occupation with a gay-friendly brush -- and the Center's de facto exclusion of Palestinian queers.

http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/03/08/gay_city_news/news/doc4d765d18f1edc820424638.txt

150 Picket Center's Nixing of Anti-Israel Fundraiser

Protesters hoist the Palestinian National Authority's flag at a March 5 protest outside the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan. (GAY CITY NEWS)

...The crowd of roughly 150 who turned out for the early evening protest voiced angry criticism of the Center for its decision 11 days before to bar a fundraising party by Siege Busters. The event would have provided money for a new flotilla to challenge the Israeli navy’s blockade of the Gaza Strip....

“The idea that the Center’s core mission does not include concern for queer Palestinians is a very odd definition of a core mission,” said Naomi Brussel, speaking for Siege Busters. Glennda Testone, the Center’s executive director, said in a February 22 release that controversy over the party had begun “to distract from our core mission.”

...

For Testone and the Center, however, the toughest challenge could come from critics such as Rami Al-Bakri, a 22-year-old Palestinian who has been in the US for the past four years studying (he declined to say where).

Pointing to daily humiliations he and his family endure at home, he said, “Then I come to New York and experience the same thing at the Center. It’s something I expect from the Israeli state, but not from the Center.”

Asked about the treatment of queers by Palestinian leaders and whether pro-Palestinian activists in the US can credibly claim to be speaking for LGBT people in Gaza and the West Bank, Al-Bakri, who is affiliatged with alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, responded, “Queers and women have always been part of the struggle for Palestinian rights. As a Palestinian identified as queer, I’ve always been part of the movement since I was a kid.”
...

“Am I giving up on my society to be gay? No,” he said, emphasizing his determination to stay with the cause in his homeland. “In Palestine, I fight for my right to be queer in the Palestinian movement. Here, I fight for my right to be Palestinian in the queer movement.”

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Gay City News on the Siegebusters ban

Gay City News' Paul Schindler writes a clear profile of who Michael Lucas is in this debate -- and the plethora of longtime queer community activists calling for the Center to stop heeding Lucas' claims that opposing occupation is anti-Semitic. Several statements appear here that aren't elsewhere. Snippets follow the link.

http://gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/03/04/gay_city_news/news/doc4d6e85181f2bb836438816.txt

Firestorm Over LGBT Center Jettisoning Critics of Israel

Michael Lucas, the Center's Glennda Testone, and Siege Busters' Sherry Wolf.

The February 22 decision by New York’s LGBT Community Center to cancel a party planned to mark Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), an annual international mobilization by critics of the Jewish state’s treatment of the Palestinians who live in the territory it controls, has sparked outraged response from many LGBT New Yorkers, including a good number of prominent Jewish lesbian and gay activists — but has also won support from other progressive Jewish gay leaders and journalists.

...

Lucas’ linking of IAW to anti-Semitism — a charge leveled by many defenders of Israel against a movement whose mission is BDS: boycott, divestment, sanctions — proved particularly stinging to the organizers and supporters of the Center event, many of whom are Jewish, when it became clear that the accusation apparently had traction with Testone and her board.

...

He has also been a harsh, even inflammatory critic of Muslims. ... In another Advocate essay about the Muslim Army psychiatrist arrested in the killing of 13 at Fort Hood last spring, he wrote, “We knew he simply carried out the order of his guide, the Koran.” While now saying, “Anything under the sun is possible,” Lucas told Gay City News that Islamic faith is essentially incompatible with US military service.

...

Leslie Cagan, a longtime peace activist, picked up on Taylor’s discussion of the Center’s tradition of diversity, writing, “The Center has always been one of the few places in New York City where all parts of the queer community have been welcome, and where our allies and friends have also found a safe space. Our community, indeed the nation as a whole, needs to know we can have open and fear-free discussions about so many important issues. Now is not the time to slam the door shut.”

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Press release: Protest @ LGBT Center

LGBT & PALESTINIAN RIGHTS GROUPS PROTEST DISCRIMINATION AT NYC'S GAY COMMUNITY CENTER

Groups challenge LGBT Center's move to ban anti-occupation group at behest of pro-Israel funders

March 5, New York, NY – More than 130 New Yorkers gathered this evening in front of the NYC LGBT Center on W. 13th St. to protest the Center's decision to cancel tonight’s scheduled “Party to End Apartheid” and to ban one of its organizers, Siegebusters Working Group, from holding regular meetings there. The party was intended to be part of the annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), a series of events designed to educate and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns in concordance with the just demands of Palestinian civil society.

A festive but determined mood permeated the crowd as activists chanted and members of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra drummed and trumpeted. Chants included, “We’re here! We’re queer! And we support Palestine!” and “Educate! Agitate! Organize!” – a phrase that also appears in a large art installation inside the Center itself. Individuals instrumental in the cancelation of the event did not escape notice, as protestors also chanted, “Michael Lucas, we know you – spreading lies and hatred, too!” and “Glennda, Glennda, you will see! Our center will be free!”

On Tuesday, February 22, 2011, gay adult film producer and right-wing columnist Michael Lucas issued a press release threatening to boycott the LGBT Center for allowing local IAW organizers to meet and plan an event there. Lucas denounced IAW as a “hate group” and “anti-Semitic,” charges categorically rejected by event organizers Siegebusters and Existence Is Resistance (EIR), as well as other IAW organizers. Hours after Lucas issued his press release, Glennda Testone, LGBT Center director, released a two-sentence statement cancelling the event, banning Siegebusters, and saying, "We have determined that this event is not appropriate to be held at our LGBT Community Center, which is a safe haven for LGBT groups and individuals."

“I’m here tonight because bigotry and apartheid are queer issues,” said protest participant Melissa Morrone. “The Center says their mission is to provide a safe haven for the LGBT community, but by letting one donor exclude a particular point of view, they’re making queers who support Palestinian rights feel unwelcome.”

More than 1500 individuals and groups have signed a petition criticizing the Center’s decision, including queer theorist and UC Berkeley professor Judith Butler and Canadian filmmaker John Greyson. The two will be speaking this Friday, March 11, at Judson Memorial Church, at an event called “How Now BDS? Media, Politics, and Queer Activism.”

Tonight’s protest was endorsed by Siegebusters, Existence Is Resistance, Israeli Apartheid Week Coordinating Committee, Irish Queers, Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, Al-Qaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, Palestinian Queers for BDS, Aswat - Palestinian Gay Women, Professor and author Sarah Schulman, Professor and author Lisa Duggan, Professor and author Judith Butler, Author Sherry Wolf, NYU Students for Justice in Palestine, Jews Say No!, Queers for Economic Justice, Audre Lorde Project, Al-Awda New York: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, International Socialist Organization, Queering the Air (New Brunswick, NJ), US Boat to Gaza, Jews Against the Occupation, and Out-FM (WBAI).

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Center's response to queer protest -- Goons.

In the lead-up to the protest, the Center did not respond to any of the letters it received from organizations that had signed on as sponsors. At the protest itself -- in the face of the clear message that the Center was becoming unwelcoming and/or unsafe for many queers -- the Center brought in private security (http://www.securityusainc.com) to keep queers out.

More photos of the demo and the security firm are here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106832707371053465359/ProtestOfLGBTCenterSAttackOnQueerAntiRacistActivists3511#

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