Date: 11/20/2008

Category: · Writing  » News Coverage  » SFist · Writing  » Topic  » lgbt

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Before we get to the nitty-gritty, we just want to make sure that everyone knows that tonight's Prop 8 town hall at the Veteran's Building has been postponed indefinitely. We'll let you know if there's an update on that. 

Everybody got it? Okay, good. Now, on to the details:

We'd say between 75 and 100 people showed up for the panel discussion "Prop 8 and Race: What's Next?" The title of the talk -- "what's next" -- is an excellent question, and it was only answered in the vaguest possible terms. Teamwork! Cooperation! Back-patting and thoughtful introspection! Outreach and community building! Oh, okay.

If there is a specific strategy for starting work on any of those lovely action items, we didn't hear it. And y'know, some of the people on the panel and in the audience were staffers on the official campaign. Hm. How is it that we keep finding ourselves in this fog?

But that's not to say that it was a total waste. If nothing else, the meeting accomplished a sort of consensus: that we must do more to address the problems of racism and homophobia, that blacks and gays should not be enemies, and that there's not a lot of use in playing the "who's suffering more" game. Of course, it's not hard to get a roomful of the most socially concerned people in San Francisco to agree that the world ought to be a peaceful place. But there's value in getting everyone on the same page, so nice work there.

After the jump: surprising news about the campaign, and our hero Luis.

Of the speakers, Bevan Dufty and Amos Brown were the most engaging. Bevan said "I don't feel the No On 8 campaign was culturally competent," and made good points about the idiotic protest in the Castro on Saturday: that if they really wanted to reach an audience, they should have gone to Viz Valley, rather than harassing a neighborhood that voted 97% against Prop 8. And Amos Brown is what you might call a "fiery preacher," in that he held a wide-eyed audience in his palm and he roared about the civil rights fight in the south, that we must unite behind the common cause of freedom and equality, and declared that "racism, sexism, homophobia ... they're all in the same family." There was a standing ovation for that.

Other speakers, some of them African American, declared their mortification at the outcome of Prop 8, and asked each other "what's next" several times. Answers were never more specific than "analyze campaign strategy" and "deeper organization" and "we have to be honest about racism and homophobia and talk about it."

But this is interesting: you know how everyone's saying that the official campaign didn't reach out to non-caucasian communities? According to some of the speakers, the campaign did target minorities. They referred to church outreach, targeted phone banks, mailers, newspaper ads, town halls -- all of which surprised us, since to hear most people talk, the campaign didn't even know that black people existed. It's good to hear that there was at least some outreach, even if it clearly wasn't enough.

Then it was time for audience comments, which are always a mixed bag. The most controversial came from a man in a floppy hat who stated that homophobia in the black community is far more pernicious than racism in the gay community. There was an angry hubbub from the crowd at that; and while it could easily be argued that he's right, it doesn't seem like a totally useful observation. Okay, fine, gays suffer and sometimes certain people are mean. Welcome to life.

The best audience comment came from a guy name Luis, who told an O. Henry-ish story about how he went and protested in public, then later discovered that his family had voted for Prop 8 because he forgot to reach out to them. Ouch! And then he went on to talk about how he decided not to stay in SF for the protests, and instead went to Walnut Creek. He said he looked around at the thousands of people in San Francisco and decided, "I am not needed here," and off he went, to reach out to people who weren't on our side yet, but might be one day.

Luis, as far as we are concerned, was the hero of the evening. He's the only one who demonstrated an answer to the question, "what's next?"