“A” for Activism
Recently there was a workshop on “Social Justice from Classroom to Community”.
One of the guest speakers was Omecongo (www.omecongo.com)
In the questions round, I asked “How can we bring activism to our daily lives?”
His reply was awesome, and something that I have felt for long.
He asked us to be aware of social justice issues by informing ourselves using a variety of
sources, books, news, articles, web-sources etc. And he said that we should confront
issues within our minute circles. Even within our small circle of friends/family we might hear
words of hate/bigotry/discrimination every once in a while. We need to confront those
and bring greater understanding to those close to us … that itself is activism.
The need for speaking up and speaking out is huge.
Here is a recent article on Washington Blade on LGBT activism by Peter Rosenstein :
Activist isn’t a
new ‘A’ word
Gay Americans enjoying their quiet lives should not forget they owe that quiet to a generation of loud activists.
Friday, December 02, 2005
I HAVE ALWAYS thought of myself as a concerned citizen, rather than a gay activist.
But I seemed to become one last year when a column I wrote for the Blade was used
in TV ads to smear a Democrat running for U.S. Senate last year in Oklahoma.
The rampant anti-gay sentiment used by the Republican in that race to distort my words
in an effort to hurt the candidate I had complimented was a useful reminder to me how
much we still need our activists.
I always cringe when I hear gay people claim they don’t understand the need for activism.
We need our activists now more than ever before. We need them to remind both those
who hate us, those who claim to love us, and even those who are us, that we cannot safely
go about pretending that we are just like everyone else, with all the same civil and human
rights.
It will be these activists about which some complain so much who will get us to that happy
day when GLBT people really can go about living our lives in quiet and ordinary ways.
I APPLAUD THE work of gay and lesbian activists for bringing to the attention of the world
the intolerance that we must still face. We cannot just turn the other cheek and pretend
the insults, large and small, don’t affect us.
Prejudice cannot simply be swept under the carpet, or back into the closet. To argue that
out and vocal GLBT activists are the problem, not the solution, is like wishing
African Americans could hide their skin color so we wouldn’t have to deal with the
reality of racism.
The world isn’t always a friendly place, and it’s the activists that hold our feet to the
fire and remind us of this every day. Let us never forget that the only reason that some
GLBT Americans can now go about living their lives quietly is because of the drag queens
at Stonewall and those courageous gays who marched in the early Gay Pride parades while
so many others, including me, stood and hid behind trees as we watched the parade go by.
I WAS 34 BEFORE I came out even though I grew up in Manhattan where gays were, of course,
rampant. I knew there was homophobia because I heard my parents’ friends talk about fags while
playing bridge every Wednesday.
Those friends were shocked years later when my mother explained to them that those nice gentlemen
from next door who for 10 years joined their bridge game were “fags” of the type they always complained
about.
Only two years ago, I worked with a principal who was threatened by some parents for allowing a
gay-straight alliance in his school. How can we allow parents to send their gay children to “ex-gay”
camps yet still feel that we need not be vocal in challenging such bigotry?
Those who would denigrate our activists lack an understanding of history. Without activists, so many
more gays would be beaten and bludgeoned, both physically and mentally, by the bullies next door.
As I found out from my experience as an accidental activist in Oklahoma, some of those bullies are
today in control of the Republican Party. These activists from the religious right don’t shy from
pushing their worldview, and neither should we. Our own activists must counter these attacks by
standing up and speaking out.
I learned from my parents about the dangers of staying quiet and fitting in. They came to the United
States to escape the Nazis. They taught me that assimilating into the American way of life does not
mean giving up our identity. Instead, we must remain vigilant, and become an activist when necessary
to fight for our civil and human rights, and the rights of others.
