DECEMBER 10, 1993

COMMUNITY FORUM

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 9

There is more going on than racism

To the Editors:

Around August of this year, articles and letters began to appear in the Chronicle asserting that the Lesbian-Gay Community Center, and later the Chronicle and entire Cleveland lesbian-gay community, were racist.

I heard a lot of rhetoric, but no actual facts or incidents. I do not understand what brought this on. If there was a specific incident of exclusion or racism I might better understand all this, but what seems to me to really be going on is that Peggi Cella and the group SOAR (Stopping Oppression and Racism) has just decided to target the Lesbian-Gay Community Service Center, Gay People's Chronicle, and the Cleveland lesbian-gay community to de-racify them and impose their own ideology on these groups and the community.

If these people didn't notice, lesbian and gay members of American society are presently trying to fight attacks from the religious and political right. A large percentage of the community nationally and locally are either infected or ill with AIDS. Quite a bit of our energy in the lesbian-gay community goes to fight AIDS, and it needs to. Because of AIDS, many of us have become more active in fighting anti-gay hatred and discrimination. We know that the anti-gay sentiment in this country has a lot to do with the response to AIDS, or lack thereof. Many of us who have the AIDS virus choose to fight anti-gay and anti-AIDS sentiment even though we have tremendous-exhaustion, not to mention stress and other complications.

Peggi Cella and the group SOAR are not serving to unite this community. They are dividing it and seemingly out to destroy it. To Ms. Cella and the group SOAR, the struggle against racism is more important than the struggle against anti-gay sentiment. They would like to see a major part of our energy go to anti-racism efforts. I did not like that, as a member of the LesbianGay Community Services board, Peggi Cella said that she would burn the Center down and go to jail if the Center board held elections and brought on any more people of color before the white members of the board did their anti-racism work. I also did not like the fact that Ms. Cella stated on the November 29 broadcast of the Gay 90's radio program that at a gay pride march she would not get up on a wagon with a bunch of white people to support gay rights. She also said that she hadn't seen any gay people die for civil rights as African-Americans

had. IfI am correct, she also implied that she would not take the gay civil rights movement seriously until we start dying for it. Many gay people have died because of their sexuality, victims of murder. Many others have been the victims of violent crime because of their sexuality. Also, a large percentage of the people who were murdered because they were gay have gone unnoticed. This is more than likely what happened to a friend of my family's, though since he was in the closet and the family did not want to know this about him, the issue went unaddressed. A friend and I who renovated a house in the Broadway area were the victims of about nine separate incidents of windows being smashed out, all because the young kids in our neighborhood (who were white) found out that I am gay. During some of the incidents, two or three windows were smashed at one time. This was not only life-threatening, but also cost us thousands of dollars. I eventually had to move.

It looks like nationally and locally the African-American community is not being very supportive of the lesbian-gay community. Many black political and religious leaders have said that they will not support us, but Ms. Cella and SOAR are asking the Center and other organizations in the community to do their anti-racism work. Is anyone asking the African-American groups to do their anti-homophobia work?

I support groups for people who have common interests in the lesbian-gay community. I am glad the Center offers these programs. I also feel that it is a good thing to address racism and other concerns. But not in a confrontative way. Also, the Center's focus is primarily an organization to assist the lesbian-gay community. I don't feel it should be marginalized to focus on one particular segment of the community to the extent that the efforts to combat homosexism are thwarted. If the Center steers away from its main purpose of fighting homosexism, I don't believe it will survive. I also do not see what the purpose of the organization would be.

Anthony Giglio Stonewall should lead the movement

To the Editors:

Recently, a friend and I were enjoying cocktails in one of our favorite bars, after a long night at work. Minding our own business and catching up on conversation, my friend was approached by a board member of Stonewall Cleveland. My friend is an active member of ACT UP and as it turns

HATE CRIME UPDATE

Compiled by the Maryann Finegan Project of the Lesbian-Gay Community Center

The following hate crimes have been reported to the Project:

October 14

Cleveland gay male raped and beaten by man he picked up outside a bar and drove to the W. 65th and Detroit area. Not reported because of negative past experiences with reporting to police.

October 22

Anti-gay graffiti spray painted on side of Cleveland convenience store. reporting to police.

October 28

Twenty-one-year-old Lakewood gay male continuously harassed by downstairs neighbor. Neighbor has used anti-gay slurs. Police called but not very helpful.

November 16

Cleveland gay male harassed and physically assaulted by blond, white male driving dark blue van between Church and Detroit Avenues. Police report not yet filed.

Report anti-gay or lesbian violence

This includes verbal abuse, threats, vandalism and police abuse, as well as physical assault. If hate crimes aren't reported, authorities won't know they're happening.

Call the police at 911, if they aren't already involved. Let them know it's a hate crime. Call the Center at 781-6736 or 522-1999. The Maryann Finegan Project will help you with police, prosecutors, and courts; and give counseling and support.

Call the U.S. Justice Dept.'s Hate Crimes Hotline, at 800-347-4283. Federal law requires them to keep statistics on anti-gay crimes numbers which can be used to prove the need for legislation.

out had previously had conversations with this Stonewall member at Dancin' in the Streets and the N.O.C.I. Family Picnic. He (the Stonewall member) was very friendly and supportive of ACT UP and its progress.

I soon entered the conversation and asked what was on the agenda for Stonewall. I was told briefly about the Cincinnati initiative and how the "psycho-Christians" are planning statewide anti-gay measures. That was it! Not one word about what Stonewall was planning to do about it, or even an opinion as to what he thought should be done, as an individual or as a board member. I suggested that maybe Stonewall should hit the streets and rally the community into making their voices heard, as ACT UP does when an important issue arises. I was then told, that doesn't work that way, that they are not as vocal as ACT UP.

Does anyone remember 1969?

Wasn't Stonewall formed and named

after a riot for gay liberation? It seems to me

that it has become a group of people named

after a bar, not a movement! Stonewall will be celebrating its 25th anniversary soon. What are they celebrating? A 25-year-old cry for justice followed by decades of silence? So far as I can tell, the only visible thing Stonewall Cleveland does is hold fundraisers. Fundraisers for what? I was told of the success of Stonewall fundraisers in terms of raising quite a bit of cash. This board member confided that they did not know what to do with all the money! How can they say that they don't know what to do with the money? I'm sure Stonewall Cincinnati would know what to do with it! ACT UP has a national slogan, SILENCE=DEATH. This slogan can be applied to any cause of activism, not just AIDS. I say to Stonewall Cleveland, put your money where your mouth is, or should be. Make sure our queer voices are heard! Fight the Fundamental Right that is knocking at our own doors right now! Or does STONEWALL WALLFLOWER?

Michael McCort

Wake up, ACT UP To the Editors:

I am writing in response to the "Gutless Pansies" column by Mr. Carroccio and the subsequent letters that have appeared in your Editorial section. I guess this letter is meant for him, but I'm not as good at writing open letters as he seems to be.

Gutless Pansies. That is truly offensive. And what was your intention in using such a phrase? To make me mad enough to jump right up and do something about the way things are? To make me feel guilty about not doing enough for the cause? Or maybe to get me to come to one of your meetings to learn how I too can ACT UP? All I know is that after I read your column I was ashamed that most of the general population lumps you and I together in the same classification and calls us both fags.

Certainly you must be aware of everything that goes on in this city for AIDS support. To even insinuate that any of us aren't doing enough is really a cheap shot. And to believe that ramming AIDS down people's throats is a way to get help is really psychotic. I hope to God that someday there is a cure for this holocaust that's affecting us, but what if they don't find a cure? We have to deal with what's going on now, and that's a lot of sick people. How many people do you intend to alienate, especially in our own community, in order to get your point across? And then how many will be left to help you?

I've lived the nightmare of AIDS too long already. I lost my lover almost two years ago. I've had my life ripped apart from under me and had to put it back together again. The whole time I've provided support to our community, both physically and financially. I am far from gutless.

What you don't seem to realize is that there are people other than yourself that don't have the time commitment, financial security, or even desire to be "public," to be

a part of your organization. Does that make them gutless pansies or suggest that they aren't doing their part? (By the way, you should be ashamed of yourself for picking on PWAs; did you ever think that maybe they don't feel well enough to demonstrate with you?) I personally would love to shave my head, get tattooed, and spend all of my time making people hate me and embarrassing the gay community.

I think you're very lucky that the Chronicle provides the space for your column for free. I don't think they'd print your namecalling drivel otherwise. Your advice to the no-name letter was "put up or shut up." How about "wake up before you ACT UP.”

Brian Haluska

P.S.: What are you doing about the fight against breast cancer?

Racism is perpetrated by remaining ignorant

To the Editors:

The Lesbian-Gay Community Service Center has embarked upon its first attempt to address the reality that it is not a welcoming place for People of Color. And those first attempts have brought me face to face with the need to work on my own racism.

Racism is an extremely loaded word and to most White people, it means the Ku Klux Klan, calling names, and physically threatening People of Color. I didn't view myself as racist because not only didn't I do those things, I fought in the civil rights movement. I taught in "Freedom Schools" in the inner city in Milwaukee in college when the African American community rose up against racism in the school system. I worked at an African American community center all through college and chose to teach in Cleveland's inner city schools when I moved to Cleveland in 1970. I live in an integrated neighborhood in East Cleveland. I have an African American insurance agent and travel agent. I rejected the notion that I was racist when this issue was first raised by Peggi Cella in her article in What She Wants. I didn't do any of those things.

But what I have learned through the Fishbowl process, and in the anti-racism workshop sponsored by SOAR, is that there is another, more subtle, and in some ways, more insidious level to this racism issue. It is ignorance and the choice to remain igno-

rant.

Some of this ignorance has to do with my knowing so little about cultures other than White, middle class existence that I didn't know what I could do that would make the Center feel like "home" to People of Color. I don't know where African American gays and lesbians "hang out;" I don't know what kind of activities Latino/Latina people would find attractive; I don't know if an Asian American gay-lesbian subculture exists in our city. And I don't have a good idea about how to find out. I do know that I'm committed to changing these facts.

But this level is also tied up with White privilege the ability to choose not to notice the massive discrimination against African Americans, Latino/Latina Americans, Native Americans, and all other non-White cultural groups, that goes on in our culture. Or, worse yet, to play blame the victim-"if they are poor, it must mean that they are bad; if they can't get a job, it must mean they Continued on Page 10

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