Nadine Smith served as one of four national co-chairs for the 1993 March on Washington. She is currently Executive Director for the Human Rights Task Force of Florida and lobbys the state legislature on behalf of 17 Florida-based L/G/B/T and allied organizations working to end discrimination. I've spent a great deal of time pondering the recent turn of events that now has us grappling with what to do about the proposed Millennium March. Because I was as a national co-chair of the 1993 March, people have frequently asked for my opinion on this situation. I've taken time before responding publicly because I understand how casually critical some people can be and I have worked hard not to be one of those who would rather attack our own than focus on our enemies. But now I've come to realize that there is much more at stake here than hammering out the logistics of a march. In fact, what is at stake here is the very heart of our movement. Currently, a huge segment of grassroots community leaders and many national groups believes that this march is ill-timed, strategically weak and coordinated by people out of touch with the important work happening outside of Washington D.C. Even U.S. Rep Barney Frank, the most politically prominent openly gay elected official in the country called the proposed march "a diversion of resources" and "not a good idea." And yet, rather than set up a structure for meaningful dialogue to balance pros and cons and evaluate the strategy of such a march, edicts are delivered via press release. The Human Rights Campaign, the largest group involved in advocating for the march has publicly apologized for the ham-fisted manner in which it has approached the issue and that is good. However, it is not enough to say "sorry" and continue to move forward on the same misguided course. In the past, a critical mass of support has been established before committing the enormous resources that marches require. Now, it appears, instead of doing the work of building broad-based support for such an effort, the movement is being hijacked and strategy and coalition-building have been thrown out the window. We must decide whether this is a movement for social and political change that will continue to build and grow and grapple with the tough issues. Or will we be a product to be packaged and shaped according to the dictates of the latest focus group. We can't replace courage with marketing. There is without a doubt tremendous power in marching on Washington. My first March in 1987 was a significant turning point in my life. But this debate is not about the value of marches. It is about whether we best serve this movement by going to Washington in 2000, a major election year, and how we decide when and if the time is right. Three times in the past two decades we've come to Washington D.C. and the community was told go home and build. Well, we've built and built and built and back home is where it is all happening. For over a decade the idea of a march on the 50 state capitals has been gaining steam and for the first time there exist enough organizations to make this a powerful event. To truly have a strong national presence that isn't merely a paper tiger, building local and state networks that can gain ground at home and feed the national effort is vital. Talk to young people who are coming out. While they are thrilled to see Ellen and Martina and Greg and other celebrities, what they really want to see are people in their own communities who have lives similar to the ones they imagine for themselves. A gay janitor or principal. An openly gay business person or reporter in town. They especially want to see couples whose relationships are lasting and loving right in their own back yard so they know that is possible without being a rock star, television actor or moving to some gay mecca. People have called marches on D.C. glamourous and media sexy events. That is perhaps our biggest problem. Too many people are wondering how they can become the Martin Luther King, Jr. for our movement when we are in desperate need of a million Rosa Parks. We're mistaking style for real substance. We used to be a movement willing to demand full equality but savvy enough to occasionally settle for half a loaf. Now half is all we ask for and we seem grateful enough that we were granted an audience. We've traded true activism for occasional access at the national level. I was part of the first gay delegation to meet in the Oval office with President Clinton. Sure, it was a historic moment but I still came home to a state where I can be fired, denied housing and barred from adopting because of my sexual orientation; where sodomy laws remain on the books and gay kids are still threatened, beat up and harassed in schools. At the brink of the next millennium, people aren't waiting to come to D.C. to come out. In fact, the people who are coming out in record numbers need local structures to provide real assistance not just symbolic gestures far away. If ENDA is to pass nationwide it will come because the constituents back home sway legislators. We must have strong local groups, that form strong statewide groups, that support a strong national effort. Now is a great time to establish that priority. As I think back on the 1993 March, I am proud of the diversity displayed throughout the organizing and the March itself. But I agree with those who criticize the presence of Lea Delaria and a few other performers who lost sight of the March as a political act. It is however, astounding that having launched that criticism, HRC would then turn to the person responsible for putting that part of the March stage together to produce the next one. Criticisms of Robin Tyler as the producer of this proposed march cannot be dismissed as "dredging up old stuff". HRC and the other sponsors must address directly Tyler's reputation for racism, exclusion, and questionable business dealings. I have heard Tyler describe efforts at inclusion as the "tyranny of the grassroots". I've witnessed her sabotage group decisions that she disagrees with. While publicly purporting to be supportive of the transgender and bisexual communities, I've watched her work behind the scenes to try and ensure their exclusion. With her installed at the helm, promises of a broad-based, inclusive decision-making process ring hollow. Over the years, HRC has developed a reputation for pulling money out of local communities without giving back, for swooping into town, treating the local organizers like rubes and setting up parallel organizing structures without respect to the wishes, knowledge or insights of the people who must live with the fallout. Now HRC has an opportunity to demonstrate a new attitude that supports those who work outside the D.C. beltway. I state all of this as someone who has supported HRC since long before they dropped the "F" from their name. I have attended fund raisers and urged people to open their check books. I received the HRC's national award for activism and just recently traveled with a member of their field staff to help organize in South Florida. I will support every effort to empower and strengthen local and statewide organizations because I believe it is the recipe for national success. I believe that good people work at HRC who are passionate about achieving the same things I care so deeply about. And while the organization provides an important and powerful voice in the national media, I think too many of its leaders are woefully out of touch with the pulse of this movement and the shifting political ground. I fear we are headed for a massive, strategically foolish, financially draining march simply because a handful of people like the alliteration in the phrase "Millennium March" and their eyes flash dollar signs whenever they say it. I have yet to hear a cogent, persuasive argument for a national march in 2000. I'm open to it. If convinced no one would work harder to bring folks to it. But right now I believe our priority is back home. We need massive voter identification efforts so we can start winning elections for ourselves and our supporters. We need to lobby our elected officials in their home districts. We need to build our memberships and fundraise for the referendums we continue to face on the local and state level. Those of us who believe that our movement should not be strong-armed have a responsibility to speak up instead of accepting this as a "done deal". For HRC's own good, for our community's benefit, we need to make clear that this march will not go on as it is now conceived. HRC is the wealthiest and largest gay organization in the country. I hope that it is big enough to admit its mistake and begin to heal this divide. This is not the way for us to greet the next millennium. Nadine Smith Human Rights Task Force of Florida IN AGREEMENT WITH NADINE SMITH and The Human Rights Task Force of Florida By PERRY BRASS PUBLISHER: BELHUE PRESS CONTRIBUTING WRITER: BADPUPPY'S GAYTODAY Dear Human Rights Task Force of Florida: Thank you for keeping me abreast of the controversy over the Millenium March. I agree with Barney Frank that marches like these have become media circuses, that often signal the deaths of the movements that spawn them. At this point, the gay movement is probably the most important social movement in the United States, but only because queer men, lesbians, and T-people are the only people offering any alternative to the massive corporate structure that is controlling more and more of American life and the international economy. This corporate structure for the most part hates queers because we offer some alternative to corporate conformity. But it would love to co-opt our movement, and buy us out. The first thing we'll see—and at this point have to see—with the Mill March would be a rush towards corporate sponsorships. Without these sponsorships, the March would have to rest exclusively in the hands of the gay community: a thought which has terrified most gay organizers for the last decade or so. Therefore, we would have corporations like Coors beer sponsoring an event for people and ideas that they found absolutely repugnant only a very short time ago. Now they just see us as a willing and open market. A perfect example of this are the Gay Consumer Expos in New York, San Francisco, and L.A. In New York, this will be at the Javits Center at the end of April. When Belhue Press, a small press, called them and asked the organizers if they were doing anything for smaller gay businesses or groups who could not afford to spend almost $2,000 to "play" in their pool, we were told by the straight corporation organizing it: "Absolutely not." It was out of the question. This was strictly a money thing, and the community and the culture around it had no part in it. I asked if the Consumer Expo would be interested in organizing group tables or booths for smaller businesses to use at — say — $400. I said that I personally would look around to see if I could organize such a situation. I was told then, point blank, "We're not here to make small businesses happy." But if we were like Penguin Books, a large, multinational publisher that has a vague interest in the gay market, we'd be "welcomed. We'll do anything we can for you." This story will be repeated now constantly. The Millenium March will be a perfect backdrop for it. Like the Gay Games in New York, it will be a wonderful pool for gay marketers and their straight allies to play in —and like the Games, which ended with a whopping deficit of close to a million dollars, it will end the same way. I am not saying here that I am against rallies and other events which are important in raising some other consciousness than the dollar one or the "media" one. But I don't see any other "issues" here being raised except that. Instead, the individual needs and lives of people in our community should come first. We are at the present seeing an absolute escalation in anti-gay violence. We are also seeing the fact — and it is a very large one — that that the emotional, spiritual, and health needs of our community are not being met. Instead of a dog-and-pony show in Washington, what we really need is a larger survey regarding who and what we are. And how we can connect with each other, in ways other than 900 numbers. This includes the very important problems of gay youth — who are killing themselves as much as ever in an ever more homophobic youth culture. And gay elders who are finding themselves, sometimes after a lifetime of involvement with their community, alone and poor. These are very important aspects to being gay, and they will not be solved in any way by a march. Sincerely, Perry Brass Belhue Press Perry Brass's unvarnished gay thriller, The Harvest, has just been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Gay Science Fiction. His newest book is The Lover of My Soul. He can be reached through his website, www.perrybrass.com.