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 Millenium March Opponents Criticized Ad Hoc Meeting Called "Disheartening" |
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By Jim Baxter
Last November, I attended a meeting of what was called the "Ad Hoc
Committee for an Open Process." This is a group that formed in response to
next year's Millennium March on Washington.
The meeting was held in Pittsburgh, just prior to NGLTF's annual Creating Change conference. The ostensible purpose of the meeting was to address "the top down and closed-door process which continues to be used by the organizers of the so-called 'Millennium March.' " In all my years as an activist, that meeting was the most disheartening experience I can remember. If they'd called themselves the "Stop the Millennium March" committee, or the "Smash HRC" committee, it would have been more honest. And I would have known to skip it. The sad thing, for me, was these were the people I identify with: the progressives, the liberals, the radicals, the socialists. The bunch in that crowded auditorium included friends and heroes. But what I heard for the five hours the meeting lasted, was long-held grudges masquerading as issue politics. What I heard was the language of a movement I believe in being misused. The bitterness in the auditorium was overwhelming, but there was also a deep-seated denial, an inherent dishonesty that made me very sad.
And still the battle rages on. Every day brings new mail from the Ad
Hoc Committee trumpeting that "support for the Millennium March is eroding,"
while organizers of the March send news of new supporters and fresh triumphs.
The basic argument boils down to this: the Millennium March on
Washington has not been organized in the same way the previous three national
marches were organized.
My question is this: Why should it? The way it was done before didn't work. A lot of questions went ignored and unanswered after the last March on Washington in 1993, and because they did, I don't think any of us grassroots types has the right to criticize organizers of the Millennium March. '93 March on Washington Did you go to the March on Washington in 1993? Did you know that you marched in support of a political agenda comprised of 7 major demands and 55 separate points?
So there's the first problem with the '93 March: A platform that nobody knew about beforehand and which was completely forgotten afterwards. With this agenda in hand, organizers said, "Our lobbying committee... is collecting the appropriate materials needed to lobby congress." Get real. Lobbying of Congress in '93 was minimal except for a handful of AIDS activists and P-FLAG parents. "Our time and energy will now be focused on continuing to build the grass-roots organizational network which will bring more people to DC than ever before," organizers said at the time. No "grassroots network" brought people to DC. Publicity and advertising most of it donated by the gay media brought people to the city. And what happened to that "grassroots network" the minute the March was over? With a few exceptions, it vanished as if it had never existed. There were many questions left unanswered after the last march, hard questions that everyone just wanted to avoid. Crowd management at the '93 March, for example, was a total failure. Organizers did not anticipate so many people, and did not know how to handle the numbers. Likewise, organizers were not prepared for the amount of media attention the event would receive including live coverage on CNN. Otherwise, they would never have asked Lea Delaria to emcee. What an appalling gaff that was! I don't mean to beat up on the people who organized the '93 March. They worked their butts off. But the '93 March became a huge party that had absolutely nothing I repeat, nothing to do with it's "grassroots" origins. Or the all-inclusive platform. Or the intentions of the organizers. The event that happened was totally co-opted by the participants. The event that happened, so large and out of control, had nothing to do with all that preceded it. As a party, the 1993 March was great. But as a national consensus, it was a bomb. So, where was the analysis? Where was the discussion? Where were the long, thoughtful articles in the privately circulated, in-house publication for gay and lesbian leftists, Gay Community News? Or anyplace else, for that matter? The 'People'
I sometimes want to tell my activist friends: "You need to get out
and meet some of this proletariat you claim to represent."
The gay and lesbian masses, while lovable, are a pretty dull bunch and not all that interested in social justice. Occasionally, they get fired up to address discrimination that affects them personally. Taken as a whole, our community's commitment to fight racism and sexism is pretty sketchy. Likewise, it's commitment to social and economic justice for all. That is a bitter pill for most of my leftist friends, but it is reality. They will never get universal compliance to a united movement for social justice. As the movement grows larger, the common denominator between us grows lower. In 1979, the marchers on Washington were all political. Who else was out in those days? But today it's very different. The general gay and lesbian population is happy to have a big, fun event organized for them. They don't care about being part of a democratic, grassroots preliminary. Just let them know when the party starts. MCC and HRC A lot of the resentment against the Millennium March is not really how its being organized, but who is organizing it: the Human Rights Campaign and the Metropolitan Community Church. By way of example, let me mention another recent national event that oddly enough provoked no protests: We had a national organization, one with a dicey history with our community, unilaterally decide to hold a national summit representing us without asking anyone's permission, mind you and I didn't hear any complaints. Not only did this national organization have the gall to call for such an event, but they organized it, picked the location, the speakers, the workshops, everything. And I didn't hear a peep out of anybody. I'm speaking, of course, of the National Lesbian Summit, held in Washington, DC last April and organization by NOW. Why wasn't there a similar protest for this event? Where was the demand for "open, democratic process?" No, the issues here are with MCC and HRC. My friends on the "Ad Hoc" committee are going to have a very hard time convincing the gay and lesbian proletariat that the MCC is the bad guy here. HRC maybe, money breeds resentment. But a gay church?
I have my issues with HRC, sure. Not the least of which is a logo so "discreet," so bland that it serves a need not for a proud proclamation of sexual orientation but for a "secret" signal amongst ourselves. I hate it, but I don't blame HRC for noticing this niche and taking advantage of it. If there's blame to be placed it should go to those to whom it appeals, that gay proletariat we were talking about earlier. Let's be practical. An event the size of a national march needs crowd control like Disney World on a busy day. And that's tough to do with volunteers. An event like this which, apart from the pleasure of the participants, is mainly just a photo opportunity for the media needs to be thought through. Those photo ops and sound bites carefully planned and managed. So, given this, what does it matter who calls it? If they've got the permits, and the money, and the management skills, I say go for it. It's Called Trashing The excellent Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History (Houghton Mifflin, 1998), edited by Barbara Smith among others, has this to say about trashing: "During the first few years of the women's liberation movement, women who stood out in any way, particularly those who were achievers or had assertive personal styles or who received too much publicity, were often attacked, both privately and publicly, by other feminists. Known as 'trashing,' this phenomenon went far beyond criticism; it was the woman herself, not her deeds or words, that was targeted. ...Despite the fact that trashing helped destroy part of the movement, it was never adequately analyzed, explained or understood." * I wouldn't use the past tense, and I certainly wouldn't limit the phenomenon to the women's movement. "Trashing" is certainly what's happening here with the Ad Hoc Committee for an Open Process whether anyone wants to admit it or not. Their efforts are not about opening the organization of the event. They simply want to stop the March. A June 8 press release from the Ad Hoc Committee says organizers of the 2000 March "need to go back to the drawing board. A democratic, community-wide discussion is the only responsible way to consider if a March on Washington is even appropriate." Well, it ain't gonna happen, because it's too late to start over. More to the point: It's time to stop insisting that things be done the old way, when the old way clearly didn'twork. The 1993 March was organized by an open, grassroots process. And it produced no lasting results, no organizations, no statements. We didn't do our work, we didn't examine our failures, analyze them, or understand them. Instead, we pretended they weren't failures at all, and now insist that a national March be done the way its always been done in the past when that way, however virtuous, was a total flop. At the meeting last November, it disturbed to me to hear people I consider leaders saying "This movement is at a crossroads" with absolutely no self awareness that they've been saying exactly the same thing, to exactly the same crowd, with exactly the same urgency and the same catch in the throat, for almost thirty years! We have got to move past this. It's time for some serious analysis and self-examination. The Left is not owning up to the work not done. And not just about the 1993 March on Washington, either. Going forward in time, the same questions could be asked Stonewall 25, which was organized the same way, to the same negligible effect. Or going backward in time, there's Lesbian Agenda Conference, a "grassroots" debacle so horrendous that it is spoken of only in whispers, when it is spoken of at all. What I am trying to say about the efforts to stop the Millenium March is not that it's a losing battle, but that it's an unworthy battle. What the 1993 March on Washington taught us if nothing else-- is that it will become its own event, regardless of who organizes it or what their social, political and religious intentions are. Whatever the plans, once the date nears and arrives, the march and its participants will manifest their own destiny. Make no mistake about that. So what does it matter who organizes it? Meanwhile, my friends on the "Ad Hoc Committee for an Open Process," we need to stop wasting precious and limited time and energy on this stupid march. There are more constructive things to do. For starters, we need to do our homework. * Not entirely true. Joanna Russ tackled the subject in a collection of essays called Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts(Crossing Press, 1985. Now out-of-print.) "Trashing in the feminist movement has always proceeded from 'below' 'upwards' This hidden agenda of trashing is to remain helpless and to fail, whatever the ostensible motivation I believe that trashing, far from being the result of simple envy, arises from a profound ambivalence towards power." Jim Baxter is editor and publisher of The Front Page, a newspaper serving the gay and lesbian community in North Carolina since 1979. NC Pride, Inc. received honored the paper with an "Award of Merit" for twenty years of "outstanding service." |
