by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
PHOTOS, top to
bottom: Tom Ammiano, Robert Lynn, Judy Forman, Sean Sala, Richard Barrera, Emily
Sarafy-Cox, Vanessa Cosio, Cindy Green
In its last
major event before adopting its new name, “San Diego Democrats for Equality,”
the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club hosted its 2011 Freedom
Awards at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center in Hillcrest
October 1. The featured speaker, and recipient of the club’s A. Brad Truax
Human Rights Award, was Assemblymember Tom Ammiano from San Francisco, a
longtime Queer leader and activist who’s been a teacher, comedian, activist and
elected official. Coming at the end of a long program, he didn’t get to speak
very long — just six minutes, the same length of time Assemblymember Toni
Atkins from San Diego took introducing him — but he used his time to stress the
importance of coalition-building and reaching out to other communities,
including people with disabilities, undocumented immigrants and others who have
it even worse than Queer people.
Ammiano cited
the message of his close friend, Harvey Milk — with whom he worked in 1978 to
defeat the Briggs initiative, which would have mandated the firing of all Queer
or Queer-friendly public school teachers in California — to “look out for
others as they help you, and maybe you’ll take a step forward. … There will
always be people who don’t necessarily have the advantages you do, even as LGBT
people. … I’ve got to acknowledge a friend of mine who’s here in San Diego that
I met in the 1960’s. Pam, in the wheelchair, over there. I met her at Camp
Easter Seal in 1962. … The Queer energy in in all of those entities, including,
if you’re looking currently in San Diego, in immigration rights. Very, very
important.”
One of the most
emotional moments of the event was the appearance of its founding president,
Robert Lynn, to accept the Herb King Lifetime Achievement Award. After
reporting that he’d been diagnosed with cancer early in the year but had just
been declared cancer-free by his doctors, Lynn avoided reminiscing about the
early days. Instead he said the Queer community needs “to do an outreach to the
African-American community” to avoid a repeat of “the situation with
Proposition 8,” which passed by a wider margin among African-Americans (57 to
43 percent) than any other ethnic group. Lynn recalled that when he first came
out, he would walk down University Avenue and “almost every face was white.”
Today, he said, there are plenty of people of color but “still almost no
African-Americans. We have our own people in that community, and we need to get
them out.”
Judy Forman,
proprietor of the Big Kitchen restaurant in Golden Hill and a frequent
supporter of Queer and other progressive causes through hosting benefits at her
restaurant, accepted the Gloria Steinem Communications Award. Unlike the other
speakers, Forman took advantage of the wireless microphone and worked the crowd
in a witty presentation reminiscent of the performances of her former
dishwasher, Whoopi Goldberg. She acknowledged deceased Queer activists like
Gary Rees and Albert Bell, and at the same time called for an outreach to young
people. “I’m going to be 65 years old in just a minute, and … you’re all around
my age,” she joked. “But next time we’ve all got to bring someone who’s under
18 with us here. And we have to let them know what it was, what it is, and how
we got here.”
Active-duty
servicemember Sean Sala accepted the special recognition award to the Active
Duty/Veterans’ Contingent in the 2011 San Diego LGBT Pride Parade, which he
helped organize. He recalled that the day the U.S. Senate voted to repeal the
“don’t ask, don’t tell” policy “was the day that I returned from my third
deployment in the Middle East,” and when he got off the ship and went home, he
saw the final vote on TV “and I, by myself in my room, wept.” He talked about
the risk participants in the contingent were running, since when the parade
occurred “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal had passed the Congress but still
hadn’t been “certified” by the commanders of the various armed services, and
boasted that their contingent has inspired Queers in Arizona, Florida,
Virginia, Texas and other states, as well as countries like Germany and the
Netherlands, to march openly in their own Pride parades.
Richard Barrera,
president of the San Diego Unified School District board, accepted the special
recognition for the district’s Safe Schools Task Force. “We came together three
years ago in response to the murder of Larry King,” he said. “When members of
this club and this community take ownership of what happens in our schools,
life gets better for all of us.” He said the impetus behind organizing the task
force was to make sure horrific events like King’s murder and Seth Walsh’s
suicide “cannot happen in San Diego,” and that he, Center executive director
Delores Jacobs and school district academic supervisor Nellie Meyer came
together and started the process of developing an anti-bullying and anti-hate
policy which the board approved unanimously.
Matt Corrales,
the club’s special events coordinator, introduced Linda Perine and Emily
Sarafy-Cox to accept the Eleanor Roosevelt Community Service Award to the
Community in Unity Redistricting Coalition, which pulled together the Queer and
Latino communities, along with other groups, to lobby the independent
commission that re-drew San Diego City Council district lines after the 2010
census. “We saw this as an opportunity to bring people to the table who had not
been there before,” Sarafy-Cox said. “It was the first time some of the
African-American members had been in a coalition with anybody who was LGBT.”
Vanessa Cosio,
the club’s information technology coordinator and one of its youngest board members,
introduced Lorena Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer and CEO of the San
Diego-Imperial Counties Central Labor Council, and the Council’s political and
legislative director, Evan McLaughlin, to receive the J. Douglas Scott
Political Action Award. Gonzalez talked about her difficulties in bringing some
union members on board to support the Queer community, and pledged that “we’re
going to do that work until everyone realizes that you should have the same
rights” as everyone else. “I’m glad the award is also honoring my staff,” she
added, “and nobody works harder for all
communities than Evan McLaughlin.”
Receiving the R.
Steven Pope Award for volunteerism, Cindy Green, the only person who’s ever won
it twice, recalled that the award’s namesake was “a volunteer extraordinaire. He volunteered a lot more than I ever have.” She
particularly thanked three of her key volunteers — Bethany, Matt and Lyn —
along with Lyn’s service dog and “all the members of the board. I’m also
thrilled that so many of you have answered my call for volunteers. … It takes a
lot of people to keep this club going. The club is only as good as its
members.”
Green was one of four finalists for the
President’s Award, which is given by the club’s president — currently Doug Case
— rather than the entire board, and is the only award whose recipient isn’t
announced before the event. The others were club publications chair (and former
president) Craig Roberts, who also was recently elected co-chair of the
National Stonewall Democrats; David Warmoth, who took over as publicity chair
and gave the club “a bigger presence … in the media this year,” according to
Case; and the winner, Vanessa Cosio, whom Case said had “brought the club into
the 21st century” by creating the club’s current Web site and Facebook
page and “putting together our electronic newsletters that are miles above what
they used to be.”
