Public Workers’ Struggle Is Our Struggle

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN and LISA KOVE

Introduction copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

If you’re going to march in the streets or occupy government buildings to protest against an oppressive regime, and you want the national mainstream media to cover what you’re doing, you’re better off if you do it on the other side of the world — like in Libya. Though it’s barely been covered in the corporate press — overshadowed first by the tumult in the Middle East and now by the horrific earthquake in Japan — from early February, when newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin introduced a bill that essentially wipes out collective bargaining rights for the state’s public employees, there’s been a pitched battle both inside and outside the Capitol building in Madison. The entire Democratic membership of the Wisconsin State Senate left the state for three weeks in an effort to keep Walker and the Republican majority from passing the so-called “budget repair” bill, and protesters occupied the Capitol and also congregated outside.

Their efforts to block the bill were in vain. Under a quirk in the Wisconsin constitution, the legislature needs a larger quorum to pass a budget bill than for any other sort of legislation — so on March 9 Walker simply deleted the budget provisions and sent the destruction of Wisconsin’s public-sector workers’ labor rights to the legislature as a separate bill. It passed easily in both houses with only one Republican Senator voting against it, after a process that opponents charged eliminated even the pretense of public hearings or debate on the motion. Walker presented the bill as a necessary step to cleaning up the state’s budget deficit — for which he and the legislative Republicans were largely responsible since he began his term winning huge tax giveaways for the state’s corporations and wealthy individuals — but his decision to pass the union-busting parts without even the fig leaf of “budget repair” revealed his real agenda: to destroy what’s left of the American labor movement and thereby make it impossible for Democrats to get the money to compete fairly with Republicans in future elections.

If this sounds paranoid, don’t blame me. Scott Fitzgerald, the Republican leader in the Wisconsin State Senate, said as much on Fox News [where else?] when he said, “If we win this battle and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.” The intent is not only to cripple Obama’s re-election effort in 2012 and to regain the U.S. Senate for the Republican party, but to fulfill a longer-term strategy devised by then-U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Right-wing organizer and lobbyist Grover Norquist in 1995 called “Defund the Left.” Its objective is to put out of business every institution that might provide money to spread liberal or progressive ideas to an American public increasingly indoctrinated to Right-wing views by powerful media like talk radio and Fox News.

That’s why the current Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives are going after public broadcasting — because they don’t want there to exist a media outlet that even hints at a different view of the world than the one coming from the Right-wing propagandists on talk radio and Fox. It’s why they’re seeking to put Planned Parenthood out of business, because they don’t want (straight) American women to know that there are alternatives to abstaining from sex or being slaves to their wombs. And it’s why, having already driven organized labor out of the private sector — the percentage of U.S. workers in unions has dropped from 36 percent in the 1950’s to 12 percent today, and only 7 percent of U.S. private-sector workers are still in unions — they see bills like Walker’s as their opportunity to drive the final stake through U.S. labor’s heart by destroying its ability to represent public-sector workers and collectively bargain for them.

What the American Right wants the U.S. political system to look like is what Mexico’s looked like for the last two-thirds of the 20th century. The formal institutions of democracy will continue to exist, and the Democratic Party will not only be allowed to function but even to win the occasional election — but in practice America will become a one-party state and the Republican Party will be the only one that matters. That’s why moves like Walker’s are being fought tooth and nail by unions, progressives and their allies — including most of the Queer community — because they realize that putting labor out of business means destroying the most substantial source of funding for political candidates who stand in the way of the total domination of American politics by a relentlessly anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-consumer, anti-civil rights, anti-woman, anti-Queer far-Right Republican Party.

On February 26 there was a nationwide call for rallies in support of the Wisconsin state workers and the Democratic state senators who left the state to try to stop the passage of Walker’s bill. The San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) endorsed this demonstration, partly out of solidarity with labor’s support of the No on Proposition 8 campaign in 2008 and partly because, as the old union slogan says, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” I wrote the following statement and read it at the rally; fellow S.A.M.E. member Lisa Kove offered valuable input and her work is reflected in the final draft below.

— Mark Gabrish Conlan, Editor

“What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”

— Adam Smith

“An injury to one is an injury to all.” It is in the spirit of that famous slogan of the labor movement that the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) unequivocally condemns the attempt of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republican Party majority in the Wisconsin legislature to wipe away 52 years of collective bargaining rights for most of the state’s workers and effectively destroy organized labor in Wisconsin’s public sector. We equally strongly oppose any attempts to pass similar legislation, including drastic cutbacks in workers’ health and pension benefits, in any other U.S. state or city, including San Diego City Councilmember Carl DeMaio’s proposed elimination of defined-benefit pensions for new city workers.

We support the mass protests and other demonstrations against these cutbacks in Wisconsin and other states in which they are being considered. We also support the courageous actions of Democratic state legislators in Wisconsin, Indiana and other states where anti-labor bills are being considered to leave the state rather than allow a legislative quorum to convene for the purpose of passing bills that trample on state workers’ rights. Many political executives and legislators federal and state are wealthy and cannot relate to the middle class. They are “out of touch.” Wisconsin is our middle-class’s “Alamo” and we will never forget.

We call on the public-sector workers of Wisconsin to stand firm on both their right to union representation and maintaining their current health and pension benefits. We reject any so-called “compromise” that would retain workers’ collective bargaining rights at the cost of being forced to give back the gains they won under those rights. We recommend that all oppressed workers and their allies stand tall and be obstacles to voracious power mongers.

We call upon the governor and legislators of Wisconsin to repeal the $117 million in tax giveaways for businesses, including so-called “job-creation incentives” that are not in fact creating jobs, that Governor Walker and his party’s legislative majority pushed through in his first days in office and are now telling the state’s workers that they must pay for through reduced pay, benefits and pensions as well as the loss of collective bargaining rights.

To those working people in the private sector who say, “Why should public-sector workers get defined-benefit pensions while I’m stuck in a 401(k)?,” we say they should instead be asking, “Why am I stuck in a 401(k) and can’t get the benefits and pensions public workers get?” We call on them to organize and demand that their state’s and their nation’s corporations, which are making record profits despite the misery they are inflicting on their workers through layoffs and speed-ups, pay them decent wages, health benefits and pensions.

As a people who have directly experienced oppression, including bigotry, hatred, publicly supported discrimination, physical violence and psychological harassment which has often driven us to suicide, we know intimately what it is like to be made into scapegoats. We are appalled at the ongoing media propaganda and disinformation campaigns that are portraying public employees as the villains who are driving state and local governments into bankruptcy, when the real parties responsible are corporations ceaselessly demanding to pay little or no taxes despite the value they extract from the economy, legislators who go along with them and voters who fail to realize that taxes are the price we pay for civilization.

Just as we applaud the courageous protesters in Tunisia and Egypt who stood up to their country’s dictators and poured into the streets to demand democracy, and those who are doing the same in Libya, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, so we strongly support the citizens of Wisconsin and other U.S. states who are marching and using nonviolent resistance to challenge and fight back against political and corporate leaders who aim to fatten their own swollen bank accounts by destroying America’s middle class and impoverishing most of its people.

This declaration by the economic top 1 percent to force the middle class into a reduced station of being the working poor is economic violence at its worst. There are more of us than there are of the top 1 percent. We will win in Wisconsin, the nation, and the world. Stay strong as you speak for all of us that have experienced economic and other forms of oppression.

Maddocks Teaches “Trans 101” to Queer Marriage Group

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

PHOTO: Courtesy of Connor Maddocks’ page at www.zoominfo.com

LISTEN TO THIS EVENT! Check out the audio link at http://zengersmag.posterous.com/

By now, virtually all Queer people and a lot of mainstream heterosexuals as well have heard or read the awkward acronym “LGBT” as an inclusive term of art for the Queer community — and it’s likely most people who’ve seen that set of initials know it stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender.” But while it would be hard to find people who don’t know what a Lesbian, Gay man or Bisexual are, far fewer really understand either what Transgender people are or how they fit into the same community of interest. As a step towards broadening Queer people’s understanding of Transgender people and how they’re both different from and similar to Lesbians, Gays and Bisexual, Connor Maddocks, facilities manager of the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center and a female-to-male Transgender person, spoke to the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) March 8.

The dictionary definition of “Transgender” — to the extent there is one — is any person whose psychological experience of their gender varies from the genetic makeup of their body. Maddocks began his talk by explaining what a wide variety of people that describes, from drag queens and drag kings (usually Gay men and Lesbians, respectively, who dress in clothes and affect the attitudes of people of the other gender) to cross-dressers (usually heterosexual men “who feel a need to dress in women’s clothing, and don’t do it for sexual perversion or gratification,” Maddocks explained), transvestites (who also cross-dress but are more open about it and “usually have a name for their [alternate-gender] persona,” Maddocks said) and transsexuals, who so totally identify with the gender opposite to the one they were born into that they often (though not always) go through gender-reassignment surgery to conform their bodies to what their brains tell them they really have been all along.

But those aren’t the only types of Transgender people out there, Maddocks explained. In addition to Transgender people who draw a strict line between male and female and simply believe they were born into a wrongly gendered body, an increasing number of people identify as “androgynous, someone in the middle,” Maddocks said. “They don’t want to be identified as either male or female.” According to Maddocks, one word that’s becoming more common is “Genderqueer,” meaning “someone who wants to be gender-fluid. Sometimes they experience a female side and sometimes they experience a male side. They’re fluid in their gender expression.”

Another group that sometimes gets included in the Transgender community are so-called “Intersex” people, formerly known as hermaphrodites. These are people who were actually born with an in-between body that contains both male and female sex organs. Typically, doctors confronted with a gender-indeterminate infant have made surgical decisions on the fly, sometimes consulting the parents first but more often not, and rearranged the baby’s organs to fit a more common “male” or “female” pattern. Intersex activists are lobbying against this practice and urging parents and doctors of Intersex children not to assign them as males or females but to let them grow up in their natural in-between state. Maddocks made it clear he agreed: “You need to let these kids alone to find their own gender.” Some Intersex activists have also suggested that the initial “I” should be added to “LGBT” to include Intersex people in the Queer community.

Though Maddocks bent over backwards in his presentation to include the gender-ambiguous, Genderqueer and Intersex, his own experience was a more straightforward female-to-male (FTM) Transsexual one. He told S.A.M.E. he knew as early as age three that he was a male, even though his body was female and his parents, teachers and everyone who knew him related to him as a girl. It wasn’t until he was 50 that he finally started to “transition” — the term Transgender people use to designate the transformation of the body into what the person’s brain has known he or she was all along. Maddocks described the process in vivid and sometimes shocking detail.

The first step — at least for most Transsexuals of Maddocks’ generation — is a course of psychotherapy to make sure this is what the person really wants. He said some younger Transsexuals “are avoiding therapy, which I think is a mistake because it’s the biggest thing you will do in your life.” The physical transformation begins with regular doses of hormones — estrogen to transition a male into a female, testosterone to transition a female into a male. “Because I didn’t start my transition until I was 50, my doctor started me on higher doses than usual,” Maddocks said. “It takes 18 months to 2 ½ years to see all the changes. My face actually got wider. My muscle mass built up. I didn’t get taller, but my voice dropped and facial hair came in about two to three years.”

Maddocks added that for male-to-female (MTF) Transsexuals, the change takes longer because estrogen isn’t as strong as testosterone. “Their skin gets softer, their body fat redistributes, and they have less hair on their bodies,” he explained. “The facial hair does not disappear, so they have to have electrolysis” — a painful process of burning out the hair, follicle by follicle, with electricity. “They will grow breasts, but a lot of them have implants,” he added. One other quirk of the transition is that for MTF’s the hormone treatments lower the sex drive, while for FTM’s it increases it until they “become raging idiots.”

The next step in the transition, if the Transgender person can afford it — and a lot of them can’t — is the surgery. “MTF surgery is more common and done better,” he said. “They’re so good at it now that after the surgery they can go see a doctor, and the doctor wouldn’t know she wasn’t a woman-born woman. It costs about $35,000, plus $5,000 for breast implants, and a full facial feminization (involving plastic surgery) can cost up to $100,000. It’s very expensive and very painful.” Contrary to popular belief, Transgender people keep not only their ability to have sex but to have orgasm and feel pleasurable sensations from it, Maddocks explained, since the surgery is so good now all the nerve endings still exist, and still function, even though they’ve been turned outside in — or, in the case of FTM’s, inside out.

According to Maddocks, the FTM transition is both chancier and more expensive than the MTF. “The first thing they do is do a mastectomy (a breast removal) and pull the chest together,” he explained — a step that costs between $5,000 and $10,000. “Testosterone does a lot of the changes, and then the other side is the bottom surgery: metoidioplasty or phalloplasty. First you need a hysterectomy, and then they create a scrotum and you can pick the size of your balls. They re-route the urethra into the clitoris, which the testosterone has made two to three inches long — and it works, but most guys don’t want a two- to three-inch penis. The phalloplasty is bigger at first, and when it’s done it’s a six-inch penis. There are only seven doctors in the world that do it. It used to have a 60 percent failure rate; now it’s about 20 percent.”

But the procedure is also quite expensive — $50,000 to $100,000, not counting the cost of travel and lodging to one of the cities in which the seven doctors live, and the two- to three-month recovery period during which you can’t work. There’s one other curveball the biology throws you, Maddocks explained: “A phallus made that way comes from arm tissue and there’s no erectile tissue, so about one year later you have to get an implant pump similar to the ones they give guys with erectile dysfunction.”

Asked why Transgender people have come to be part of the movement for Queer equality along with Lesbians, Gay men and Bisexuals — even though the issues surrounding gender identity are quite different from those about sexual orientation — Maddocks said, “I think it comes from way back when, when the drag queen community joined because they were Gay. Because our community is about gender and sexual orientation, when people are Gay they’re told, ‘You act like a girl.’ The other reason is that we are at the bottom of the pile. We need you as our allies.” Though California allows post-operative Transsexuals to marry in their new gender (only one other state, New York, does), Maddocks said that the Transgender community is as concerned about marriage equality as any other Queers because discrimination against same-sex couples — however “sex” and “gender” is defined — “does affect all of us.”

One ongoing source of frustration to Transgender activists like Maddocks is how hard it is to mobilize his community. “So many Transgender people have to deal with day-to-day survival issues, they don’t have the resources to help,” he said. “But they need to help, because that’s the only way things will change. We need the LGB’s to tell the T’s that we are allies.” The upside of organizing Transgender people, Maddocks added, is that though it may be difficult to get them into a political or social movement, “once you get them in and they feel comfortable, they are awesome and they have so much to give.”

Jay Murley, Gay Rights Pioneer, Dies at 75

by LEO E. LAURENCE

Copyright © 2011 by Leo E. Laurence for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

Though he was a frail, senior citizen with false teeth, only one eye, little hair and a bubble belly, the late Jay Murley had a magical way of connecting with the cutest, very young guys … and many were his roommates and/or guests.

Jay was 75 when he died quietly at Scripps Mercy Medical Center in Hillcrest, after being ill for about two to three years, according to his daughter, Trish.

Jay grew up in a Boston suburb. His mother was an artist and his father a radio broadcaster; ac-cording to biographical data provided by Sam Warren.

Jay was married to Valerie Hart when we first connected about 44 years ago. We both worked in radio news in San Francisco in the 1960’s (he with KYA Radio, I with ABC-KGO News).

He was particularly proud of live KYA broadcasts he made of the controversial SFPD raid on the famous Black Cat homosexual bar on Hallowe’en in 1963 in San Francisco.

He bounced over to a Phoenix station, then left radio and moved to Laguna Beach and Newport Beach. There, on behalf of the ACLU in Orange County, he got actively involved in police misconduct issues among homosexuals.

By day I was a mainstream reporter at ABC-KGO News in San Francisco at the time in the 1960’s. By night I was an underground reporter for the Berkeley Barb, the only journalist regularly covering the Gay community.

Jay told me that he regularly read my Barb stories.

He was the only person I’ve met at the LGBT Center in Hillcrest who understood that our now worldwide Gay Lib movement actually began on the streets of San Francisco, two months before Stonewall.

Indeed, Jay told me he was thrilled when Gale Whittington recently published an autobiographical history novel, Beyond Normal (www.galechesterwhittington.com). Whittington’s book intimately — and sometimes erotically — challenged Gay history and the Stonewall myth.

Jay earned an undergraduate degree at Harvard and sometimes flaunted the distinction. He did not hold a law degree, according to his daughter.

He earned an MBA from Western Ontario University in Canada. He closely identified with Can-ada, and proudly played hockey there. He loved to talk about Canadian hockey.

Jay enjoyed being on the attack. He sometimes crudely used legalistic lingo and pseudo-legal procedures, when negotiating with City College of San Diego for official recognition of the Fellowship of Gay Supporters (FAGS). And he was successful!

The name FAGS was tacky, but caught the imagination of the “City” students, though it got only weak coverage in the campus newspaper (the City Times) which Jay battled regularly.

Jay loved to be around young people. He liked working intimately with Gay students at Cal State University in Fullerton. Later in the 1990’s he was intimately involved in organizing the now officially recognized Fellowship of Gay Students (FAGS) at City College of San Diego.

Jay served as treasurer of the Binational AIDS Project, involved with Gays in Tijuana and was an ex-president of the Prime Timers, a social club for Gay seniors, according to Warren. He also served nine years as treasurer of the Humanist Association of San Diego.

Jay passed away quietly and peacefully on Feb. 8, the day after his 75th birthday.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Latino Film Festival Runs Through March 20

18-Year-Old Event Screens 185 Films Despite Meager Budget

by LEO E. LAURENCE, J.D. • Member, Latino Journalists of California

An army of young volunteers served as the backbone for the 18th annual Latino Film Festival March 10-20 at the soon-to-be-razed UltraStar Cinema complex in the Hazard Center in Mission Valley.

Ticket sales were “comfortable,” said Ethan van Thillo, executive director of the Media Arts Center in North Park, which annually produces the internationally respected, film festival.

While many of the screenings were sold out, overall tickets were running “about the same as last year,” van Thillo said on the festival’s third day.

Several student volunteers served as assistant reviewers, and were provided on-the-scene training by me how to watch a movie as a newspaper reviewer. Their observations provided a young per-spective on the 185 films, mostly in Spanish with English subtitles, ranging from high drama to Cine Gay, a special series devoted to Gay international films.

Vuelve a la Vida

“I’ll give it (only) a B,” said Ramon M. Silva, 23, who assisted in reviewing a Mexican movie, Vuelve a la Vida (Return to Life). Produced in 2010, it’s a documentary that makes a saint-hero out of “Perro Largo” (“Long Dog”), a legendary scuba diver in Acapulco in the 1970’s.

The 72-minute movie was mostly a long series of seated, face-on interviews with beach people who knew the diver, making it a monotonous.

“Documentaries are usually dull and boring,” observed Silva. “There was some humor (in the movie), but after 50 minutes of hearing the same stories over and over, it got a bit boring.

“There was too much repetition. It could have been a good, short film.”

“The producers had to be persistent to get this film,” explained Alan Cruz, 21. “There were no (professional) actors. There was no make-up. There was no lighting.

“This movie happened by accident,” Cruz added.

Diversity

“The festival has expanded dramatically over the years,” said Ethan van Thillo, executive direc-tor of the Media Arts Center (which produces it), in an exclusive interview with Zenger’s Newsmagazine.

“We are now on four different screens (at the UltraStar Cinemas in the Hazard Center in Mis-sion Valley), each celebrating a different aspect of the Latino community” from life in the barrio to Cine Gay to animation,” says van Thillo.

“Something new this year, we are celebrating the Jewish Latino experience,” with that showcase funded by the Leichtag Family Foundation.

“Of top of that, we have chosen Brazil to be our country of focus. There will be Brazilian films and special Brazilian entertainment. Because of the (global) growth of Latino cinema, we can choose different themes and countries, and really spotlight those,” van Thillo added.

Latino music is highlighted at the festival and strikingly handsome singer/guitarist Gonzalo de la Torre, 34, of San Antonio appeared in person at a recent festival event to promote his new CD, Borderless, which may be available at the festival.

“It’s more mainstream, with a very energetic, ‘dancy’ feel,” observed James Dongegan, 21, a UCSD student and guitarist after hearing the CD. “It’s intense with basic rock chords.”

Festival staff can be reached at (619) 230-1938, by e-mail at info@mediaartscenter.org, or on-line at www.mediaartscenter.org

Difficult Problems

“The most difficult part of producing the Latino Film Festival (in the Hazard Center) each year is the budget,” even though “it stays nearly the same each year,” about $250,000, the executive director reported.

That budget “is very low for a ten-day, multi-venue festival,” van Thillo said. About fifty percent comes from corporate support, and the other fifty percent is from ticket sales and other earned income.

Finding staffing to produce the enormous event is also an annual struggle for the Media Arts Center in North Park, which produces the film festival and dozens of other programs like the Teen Producers’ Project.

Each year trying to find the staff and volunteers who can actually organize the festival is a challenge to van Thillo. “We’ll have well over 100, largely young, volunteers; and nearly 20 independent contractors.

Oddly, the “easiest part of producing the film festival is obtaining the huge selection of films. We will have watched close to 700 films, just to decide on the 185 that we’re screening,” van Thillo explained in our recent interview.

“There’s always a big wealth of great Latino films out there, though they’re not always easy to get and there are challenges,” he said.

Two major movies he wanted, but couldn’t get, were two Mexican films: Abel, directed by the renowned Diego Luna, and No Eres Tu.

Festival staff often runs into problems with marketing operatives involved in the movies, and their strict limits of screenings at film festivals.

Media Arts Center

“The success of the Latino Film Festival allowed us to create the Media Arts Center,” a multi-media facility that recently moved from Golden Hill to North Park (2921 El Cajon Blvd., [619] 230-1938, www.mediaartscenter.org), van Thillo added.

“The Center has grown and now provides programming throughout the year,” van Thillo explained.

“The Center produces the monthly film series called Cine en tu Idioma from August to Novem-ber, operates the ambitious Teen Producers’ Project and produces digital, audio and visual work-shops at it large facility in North Park.

“Despite the economic crisis, we’ve been able to really connect the Media Arts Center into new avenues and with funding from new partnerships,” van Thillo said.

PHOTO CAPTION:

Student volunteers Alan Cruz, 21 (left) and Ramon M. Silva, 23 at the Latino Film Festival. Photo by Leo E. Laurence.

Lawyers’ Guild Hosts Forum on Nonviolent Resistance

Panel Offers Three Points of View: Participant, Attorney and Observer

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

PHOTOS, top to bottom: Alex Landon, Zakiya Khabir, Rachel Scoma

The San Diego chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild (NLG) hosted a forum February 23 at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law downtown that offered three perspectives on nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. Veteran civil rights attorney Alex Landon discussed the legal perspective, recent law school graduate Rachel Scoma of Canvass for a Cause talked about the much-misunderstood role of “legal observers” — and Zakiya Khabir of the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO) talked about what it’s like to participate in a civil disobedience action, get arrested and face an uncertain future over the potential legal consequences.

Landon began his presentation by offering a definition of civil disobedience: “not following the law in peaceful protest against the law or an issue.” Though the two names that immediately come to most people’s minds as exemplars of civil disobedience are Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Landon pointed out that there’s actually a much longer tradition of nonviolent resistance both in the U.S. and elsewhere. One example he cited was the Boston Tea Party of 1773, which he joked had “been given a bad name” by the Right-wingers who have organized today’s “tea party” groups, but which qualified as civil disobedience: “The people were protesting an unjust tax and did something technically illegal.”

Another movement that used tactics of nonviolent resistance was the fight for women’s suffrage, both in the U.S. and Britain, Landon said. It was a protest against “the idea that all ‘men’ were equal but women were not included and didn’t get the right to vote,” he explained. “Women protested and went to jail, and those were examples of civil disobedience.” Landon also cited Henry David Thoreau’s 1848 Essay on Civil Disobedience — which may have been the first use of the term — in which he explained why he was willing to go to jail rather than pay a tax the U.S. had levied to support the 1846-48 war against Mexico and to tighten enforcement of the laws against fugitive slaves.

Landon then discussed Gandhi, King and the use of civil disobedience in the U.S. in the 1960’s to protest against racial discrimination and the Viet Nam War. More recently, he said, “In San Diego a group of students and community activists didn’t like the English-only laws and the people trying to rewrite the 14th Amendment so a person born in the U.S. to parents who are here illegally wouldn’t be a U.S. citizen. The students blocked La Jolla Village Drive, and some of them were arrested.” He also cited a demonstration at the headquarters of a health insurance company in which protesters and law enforcement officers cooperated so customers who had business in the office could get in, and “everything was O.K. until a security guard wanted to file a complaint.”

According to Landon, the purpose of civil disobedience is “to bring about a change in a law or a government policy. There is a tension in this country between the First Amendment and an individual or individuals who in effect wind up breaking a law by expressing themselves or assembling.” He talked about the legal ramifications and the possible charges public protesters may face when they do civil disobedience, including California Criminal Code sections 415, “disturbing the peace,” a misdemeanor; 602, the anti-trespassing law; and 594, “malicious mischief,” which usually is a law against vandalism but can also be used against nonviolent protesters. Landon said the “malicious mischief” law is one attorneys call a “wobbler” because prosecutors can use it either as a misdemeanor or a felony.

Other more serious laws that can be used against nonviolent resisters, Landon explained, include Penal Code sections 148, “willfully resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer in the lawful performance of their duties,” and 243, “battery on an officer,” which is a way of bumping up the charges from a misdemeanor like 148 to a felony. He also discussed the wide discretion law enforcement officers have in deciding how to charge anyone they arrest, including people engaging in civil disobedience: they can do nothing, they can “cite and release” as an alternative to jail, they can take the person into custody, and once the arrest is made they can “pass on the arrest report to the prosecutor” — which in San Diego is either the city attorney, if the charge is a misdemeanor; or the county district attorney, if it’s a felony.

One thing the police can’t legally do, Landon said, is “prior restraint” — shutting down a legal protest on the ground that the protesters may do something illegal. The courts, he said, have consistently ruled that law enforcement can’t do this because they have no way of knowing in advance whether the protesters will stay within the law or break it in an act of civil disobedience. He mentioned that protesters can file for a writ of mandate (mandamus) to force the police to allow a protest and “try to prevent individuals from violating people’s civil rights.” Landon also cited Title 42 of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, a remedy protesters can use, either in federal or state court, after the fact to penalize law enforcement officials who take actions that violate the people’s right to protest.

Finally, Landon talked about the “balance” and said that the political climate in San Diego for protesters improved when an assistant police chief named Norm Stamper started educating a succession of chiefs, from Bill Kolender on, about “community policing” — meaning that the force is “our police and should be responsible to we, the people. Certain people who have tried to assist in protecting First Amendment freedoms have worked with the police to make sure there is no prior restraint, misdemeanors won’t be escalated to felonies, and people will be given citations and released immediately rather than being taken to jail. There are attempts to get law enforcement to understand that these people are trying to express opposition to a particular law or policy, and perhaps there’s a way to handle this in a responsible way.”

On the Front Lines: Zakiya Khabir

Zakiya Khabir had been a community activist in San Diego for more than five years when on August 19, 2010 she and eight other members of S.A.M.E. were arrested at the San Diego County Administrative Center (CAC) for staging a civil disobedience action at the office of the San Diego County Clerk. The action came about from the roller-coaster history of marriage equality for same-sex couples in California since May 15, 2008, when the California Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution’s guarantee of equal protection required county clerks to issue marriage licenses to opposite-sex and same-sex couples equally. But the state’s voters reversed that decision in November when, by a four-point margin, they passed Proposition 8, writing into the state constitution a legal definition of marriage as only between one man and one woman.

On May 26, 2009 the California Supreme Court ruled that the voters had the right to enact this constitutional amendment and Proposition 8 would stand. The next day, S.A.M.E. members Michael Anderson and his partner, Brian Baumgardner, showed up at the San Diego County Clerk’s office and demanded a marriage license. When they were refused, they and up to 70 people sat in at the office and said they wouldn’t leave. They chanted slogans and talked to each other and to journalists about why they were there and why marriage equality was important to them. In the end, only one protester was taken into custody — and he was released almost immediately and never charged. The others were allowed to leave unmolested when the building closed for the day.

But authorities handled the protesters last August quite differently. That action was sparked by a federal district judge’s ruling that Proposition 8 violated the U.S. Constitution — and the almost immediate decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to “stay” the ruling until they could consider it, meaning that Proposition 8 remained in effect indefinitely and same-sex couples still couldn’t get married in California. Once again, S.A.M.E. planned a civil disobedience action in which Anderson and Baumgardner would approach the clerk’s office and demand a marriage license. Another couple, Tony and Tyler Dylan-Hyde, had the same idea, and since Tyler is an attorney he became the legal spokesperson for the protest.

“This time, they wouldn’t even let us in the office,” Khabir recalled. “When it was clear they wouldn’t budge, we sat in the hallway. We were chanting really loud, and then they started arresting people. We were trained to make the police say that we were under arrest” — a reference to the law that police can’t just stop and detain people; if you ask an officer who stops you if you are under arrest, s/he has the legal obligation to answer yes or no, and if the officer says no, you are free to leave. Khabir said she and the other S.A.M.E. members wanted to make clear to all the participants — including ones who, like the Dylan-Hydes, hadn’t been part of the planning but had heard about the action via Facebook — that “we were not going to resist arrest.”

In picking the site for their action, S.A.M.E. had entered a jurisdictional twilight zone. Ordinarily, a civil disobedience action in the city of San Diego is handled by the San Diego Police Department. But since the CAC is County property, it’s under the jurisdiction of the County Sheriff’s Department, an agency with a reputation for being harder on protesters than the city police. After three protesters were taken into custody, Khabir said, “the sheriff’s deputies all disappeared and came back with 50 people in riot gear for the remaining six people, and they told the media people to be on the other side. I was never so glad to see so many cameras.”

Khabir said it seemed like the sheriff’s deputies “were doing exercises, the whole mass arrest thing,” since they brought two empty full-sized buses to take nine people into custody. Also, rather than being taken to a jail and then booked, as would be standard practice for the city police, the protesters were taken down to the basement of the building, where “they have a whole processing facility” — and, she said, “it was kind of hard to remain silent in the face of authority people who were acting friendly.” Eventually the protesters were separated by gender and put on buses, with the women taken to the Las Colinas jail for women while the men were taken to the county jail downtown. “If you’re risking arrest,” Khabir said, “do it with a lot of people of your own gender, because they kept us together and the solidarity was helpful.”

One aspect of the action that worked, Khabir said, was that “we got a lot of media coverage, which was good for our movement.” But it’s also been frustrating because “we expected the laws to change.” (Indeed, Tyler Dylan-Hyde had written a legal memo which he hoped would persuade the county clerk to issue him and his partner a marriage license despite the appeals court’s stay. The clerk and his officials didn’t bother to read it.) “People expressed their outrage and it’s still taking a long time,” Khabir said, pointing out that despite their promise to resolve the case quickly, the appeals court ended up delaying it further by referring it back to the California Supreme Court for a ruling on whether the proponents of Proposition 8 have “standing” — legal-speak for the right to sue — given that the state government refused to defend the proposition in court.

“We have got pro bono lawyers [i.e., ones who are donating their services], one for each of us,” Khabir said of herself and her eight fellow arrestees. “We’re calling ourselves the ‘Equality Nine,’ much to my chagrin. Our position is to fight the charges against us to the maximum extent possible. We started a petition campaign and had a lot of fundraisers to raise a lot of money. We’re hoping to help people out financially, including people without jobs who got arrested that day.”

What particularly disturbs Khabir and the other members of the Equality Nine is that right now they’re in legal limbo — the county prosecutors have neither filed cases against them nor dismissed the charges. Khabir said she thinks the reason they haven’t been charged is that the overall case against Proposition 8 is itself in legal limbo. On the same day as the NLG event in San Diego, the attorneys who filed the lawsuit against Proposition 8 in federal court, Theodore Olson and David Boies, made a motion with the appeals court to have the stay lifted, and earlier that week U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department would no longer defend the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states who don’t recognize same-sex marriages to refuse to recognize such marriages from states who do, and also bars married same-sex couples from any federal benefits offered to legally married people.

Be that as it may, Khabir noted that a group of immigrant-rights supporters crashed a baseball game at Petco Park downtown and unfurled a banner attacking Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, a week after S.A.M.E.’s action at the County Administrative Center. “They’ve already had their cases resolved and have done the community service they were sentenced to,” Khabir said — while the Equality Nine are still waiting to see what the authorities will do to them.

Looking On: The Legal Observers

In some ways, Rachel Scoma’s presentation was the most interesting of the three, since she focused on the odd role of so-called “legal observers,” people who attend a civil disobedience action to see what’s going on and document any abuses of protesters by the police and other authorities. Though she graduated from law school a few months ago and is nervously waiting for the results of her State Bar examination — which provoked a few empathetic groans from members of her audience, most of whom were past or present Thomas Jefferson School of Law students — Scoma explained that “legal observers don’t need special legal training, just training.” What they’re there to do, she said, is “watch the police — not the protesters, which is sometimes hard because the protesters are a lot more interesting.”

The purpose of legal observers is to look at the police response to a protest and document it in any way available — notebooks, voice recorders, cameras, videos — and, if there is any police misconduct, to testify about it in any trial involving the protesters. Because they’re going to be testifying, if necessary, as neutral parties, Scoma explained, legal observers can’t do anything that suggests participation in the protest: they can’t cheer the speakers, join in the chants or carry signs — even though it’s their sympathy with the protesters’ cause that put them there in the first place.

“If you’re an observer, you have to do everything in your power not to be arrested, including complying with all police department orders,” Scoma said. “Your job is to document police actions, not argue with them. Law is made in the courts, not in the streets.” She said that observers can offer the police the bare minimum of cooperation — “comply as little as possible, not as much as possible,” she said — but must remember that “we are there for the protesters, not ourselves. Don’t use any violence, verbal or physical, towards the police. Don’t carry alcohol or drugs or weapons on you. Don’t wear anything incendiary like anti-war slogans or profanity on your T-shirt. Maybe dust off your old suit and put it on. Work in pairs whenever possible.”

Scoma also described the preparation for legal observer work, which includes scoping out the location of a protest in advance. “Familiarize yourself with the area — how people go in and out, where the nearest police stations and hospitals are,” she said. “Learn the street names so you can take notes, and orient yourself to make sure you know which way is north, south, east, west. Make sure you have continuous information from the leaders of the protest.” She also said to “bring extra copies” of the official forms for reporting instances of police misconduct so you can fill them out then and there while the misconduct is happening before your eyes.

During the action, she said, “the first thing to have is something on you to identify yourself as a legal observer. Notebooks, lots of pens, a wristwatch — not your cell phone because that will be confiscated if you’re detained or taken into custody — and extra water. The best thing to use is a tape recorder because that’s the best evidence, but it also makes you a target for police officers. It’s easier to dictate what’s happening than to write it down. Bring extra film and batteries. Pretend you’re going on a Girl Scout trip. Video evidence has been successful in documenting police misconduct. It’s a good idea to drop off notes midway through an action so your whole day’s work isn’t confiscated by the police. Write down who, what, when, where and how.”

The information you should be looking for and recording, Scoma said, includes “badge numbers, names and descriptions of the cops, what department or company they’re from, [whether they’re] putting on gas masks, bringing in tanks or urban vehicles, giving an order to disperse. Get the names and contact information of witnesses because you’ll be the one in court and talking to the media. Try to get the cops to tell you which protesters were arrested. Don’t be biased; record what happens and always be truthful.”

Scoma also talked about the possible risks of being a legal observer. “Sometimes the cops are accommodating; but sometimes the cops single out the observers, as they did in Seattle in 1999,” she said. “Also, the more equipment you have, the bigger a target you are, so bring a notepad as well as a recorder or video camera. Practice judging distances in everyday life. The most important thing is to watch the cops. When the cops go off, things can happen very quickly.”

Asked during the question-and-answer period what justification the police can have in taking recorders and cameras away from protesters or observers, Landon said, “They may not be allowed to do it, but when you’re under their authority, sometimes you allow it to happen and then argue it later when you are in a position of authority. We have a Police Review Commission in San Diego, and the Sheriff’s Department has one too, which allows citizens to file complaints. The problem is people don’t do that. There’s something called a Pitchess motion which allows us in discovery [the phase of a case before the trial when each side has a right to the other’s evidence] to subpoena records of law enforcement officers to see if they’ve misbehaved before — but if people don’t complain there’s nothing in the pot for us to find.”

There was also a brief discussion about the activities of Canvass for a Cause, the group Scoma works with, which formed after the Target store chain was found to have given money to a political action committee in Minnesota, where it is headquartered, which in turn donated to an anti-Queer candidate for governor. Canvass for a Cause organized to leaflet in front of Target stores with information about the Queer community and the anti-Queer contributions made by the group to which Target donated. To do that, they had to invoke the authority of Pruneyard, a unanimous 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that, even though shopping malls are private property, because they allow and even encourage members of the public to come onto their property, they’re considered public property for purposes of allowing political free speech.

One audience member said she was with an organization that was picketing a Running Store outlet when the store’s manager came out and said they couldn’t be there without getting her permission first. Asked if the manager had the right to do that, Scoma said, “It’s debatable, and mostly based on how open it is to the public. The more they invite you in, and the more places there are to eat and sit, the likelier it is that Pruneyard applies. We’ll go to any store that doesn’t require a membership card to shop there.”

A man in the audience who has also worked with Canvass for a Cause added, “First, the store manager will ask you to leave and tell you they don’t allow solicitors. We don’t pay attention because that’s routine. Then they say they’ll call the police, and the police will generally negotiate and ask us to move. It goes back to the distinction of whether it’s a suggestion or a lawful order. Once they realize they’re not going to get rid of you, they will tell the store manager you have a right to be there.”

“There’s no question that we have a right to be on private property to express ourselves,” Landon summed up. He said that when business owners accuse protesters of blocking customers’ access to their business, he said protesters have a right to be there “as long as they’re walking at a normal pace” and not actually standing in the doorway or pushing people away.

Diversionary’s Fair Use: A Screwball Comedy for Today

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

In the 1930’s the Hollywood studios pioneered a new type of movie comedy that came to be called “screwball.” Before that, film comedy had been the province of specialists — Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd in the silent era; Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields in the early years of sound — people who looked and acted funny and played such stylized characters it was impossible to imagine them as actors playing regular roles. Screwball democratized movie comedy; it was a style actors otherwise known for serious drama could play, and instead of slapstick and elaborate comic action it got most of its laughs from outrageous but still recognizably human situations and witty repartée.

Sarah Gubbins’ Fair Use, playing through March 13 at Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Boulevard in University Heights, is a play that’s essentially screwball comedy for the 21st century. Basically it’s two plays in one, with plot lines that intersect. Don (Stephen Schmitz) is a writer whose latest novel was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize — only another writer, known for cheap spy thrillers, is suing him for plagiarism, claiming that Don’s critically acclaimed book was lifted from an unpublished memoir of his which Don allegedly read in his capacity as an editor at a publishing house.

The other is a Bisexual love triangle involving three of the attorneys representing Don. Sy (Amanda Sitton) is — at least as far as she lets on — 100 percent Lesbian and has an intense crush on Madi (Jacque Wilke), whom she necked with at a party the night before the play opens. Madi is an outside attorney the firm has brought on because she’s a specialist in copyright law. Sy’s partner Chris (Wyatt Ellison) has the hots for Madi, too, and in order to press his suit he grabs hold of a love letter Sy has written Madi and passes it off as his. Either out of some twisted sense of loyalty to her law partner or in hopes that somehow this will make Madi — who insists she’s never had sex with a woman in her life — come to her in the end, Sy continues to ghost-write Madi letters under Chris’s name.

The gimmick is that just as Madi and the firm’s literary consultant, Bec (Wendy Maples) — a butch Lesbian who had a brief affair with Sy years before; the two parted as lovers but, like the late Jane Chambers’ Lesbian characters, have remained friends since — hit on an idea for a successful defense of Don’s suit, playwright Gubbins is unashamedly using the same gimmick. Their defense will be that both Don and the person suing him used bits of Melville, Faulkner and other writers in the public domain. It’s an argument which pisses off Don no end — it makes it seem like nothing in his book is original, that it’s all been compiled from other sources — but closely follows Gubbins’ own strategy.

Diversionary’s program cops to the “echoes of Cyrano de Bergerac” in the script, and Edmond Rostand, the 19th century French playwright who wrote Cyrano, may well have been ripping off The Courtship of Miles Standish — whose author, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, may have been stealing from someone else, and on back the borrowings can be traced, probably to a cuneiform tablet on the outskirts of ancient Babylon or even farther to a cave drawing at Lascaux. While the copyright case at the heart of Fair Use seems more 20th than 21st century — a playwright who really wanted to be au courant would probably have made Don a hotshot computer programmer fighting off a Microsoft-like giant who claimed underlying copyright, patent or trademark rights to some basic Internet search procedure — it makes for a charming premise for a comedy.

It’s also well performed by Diversionary’s crew. Director James Vasquez keeps it fast-paced the way a comedy should be. Set designer Matt Scott and props person David Medina give us a utilitarian office whose only connection to a more romantic past is the 1930’s-era typewriter Sy writes the love notes on (she has a laptop computer on her desk, too, but seemingly uses it only for work). The play is nominally set in Chicago, Gubbins’ home town (where it was premiered in 2008 by Steppenwolf Theatre), though it could take place in just about any major U.S. city, and there are no painted or projected backdrops to give it a sense of place. It’s effectively lit by Michelle Caron and costumed by Jeannie Galioto, though this is not a particularly challenging script in the technical departments.

Where Diversionary’s Fair Use shines is in its cast. Amanda Sitton dominates the stage as Sy, really the central character; she’s tall, leggy, sexy and manages to play a Lesbian who can’t be characterized as either butch or femme. She’s slender and small-chested but there’s utterly nothing boyish about her. Sitton uses her body effectively to project a surface energy and drive that masks an acute degree of personal frustration. Playing a less challenging character, Wyatt Ellison does a good job of projecting a man who’s far more accustomed to using women than loving one. Wendy Maples, who rolls up her sleeve, enlists Sy’s help in repairing a bike for one of her other girlfriends and asserts herself by smoking in the no-smoking office, seems to have dropped in from another play altogether but adds a welcome streak of broadness to the play’s humor.

Next to Sitton, the best actor in the cast is Stephen Schmitz, who looks properly hang-dog and is especially effective when he reacts to his attorneys’ decision that the only way they can get the court to find him innocent of illegal plagiarism is to find him guilty of legal plagiarism. He does overdo the emotional basket-case stuff a little, though; even given the conventions of how real writers have fictional writers behave, one still has a hard time believing that someone so clueless in his own emotional life could write a book (no matter the source of its plot) so many readers had cherished as a rare insight into human feelings and affections.

Jacque Wilke’s Madi is the one problematic member of the cast. She looks like Reese Witherspoon’s Legally Blonde character 20 years later and gone decidedly to seed. Galioto’s costume and the uncredited makeup artist have made her look too much like a bimbo, and one has a hard time understanding both why Sy and Chris think she’s the attorney who’s going to save their case and why they both want to have sex with her. Wilke is a talented enough actress that she overcomes the handicaps and makes the character believable, but one still gets the impression that the root of Sy’s emotional frustrations isn’t being a Lesbian but having absolutely rotten taste in who she wants to be Lesbian with.

Still, a characterization that would be pushing the bounds of risibility in a serious drama is acceptable in a play that’s supposed to be funny, and while the ending of Fair Use is a bit pat and predictable (if you haven’t guessed how it’s going to turn out well before the intermission, you’ve seen precious few plays or movies lately), that was often true of the 1930’s screwball comedies on which it was modeled. Fair Use is a charming comedy and a good start to Diversionary Theatre’s current season — and it’s a real pity they’re only running it for three weeks.

Fair Use is playing through Sunday, March 13 at Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Boulevard in University Heights. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., with a special performance Monday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets and other information, please call (619) 220-0087 or visit www.diversionary.org

Assemblymember Atkins Talks on State Budget to Queer Democrats

Vince Hall, Stephen Whitburn Discuss Local Redistricting

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

PHOTOS, top to bottom: Toni Atkins, Vince Hall, Stephen Whitburn

“Before we can get to legislation, we have to pass a budget,” said recently elected California State Assemblymember Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) to the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club at their February 24 meeting. That’s not just a matter of political or fiscal prudence, she explained; it’s a parting gift former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger left to his successor, Jerry Brown. He called the legislature into special session, which lasts until March 6, during which time they’re only allowed to work on budget issues. “We can’t hold any other hearings,.” Atkins explained. “We can’t hold any committee meetings. When the governor pulls that card, we cannot do any other legislative work but focus on budget.”

Another, even more important deadline is looming for the legislature on budget issues: March 10. That’s when the legislature has to approve language for a ballot measure to go before the voters in a special election to extend the state’s current sales tax rates and vehicle license fees, which passed as a temporary two-year measure in 2009. Governor Brown came into office with a package for closing half the state’s $25 billion budget deficit with spending cuts and half by keeping these revenues, which otherwise would end this year. But because California’s Constitution still requires a two-thirds vote on tax issues, even to put it on the ballot requires “the support of a couple of Republican colleagues” — and so far the Republican legislators have stood united and steadfast in opposition.

The $12.5 billion in spending cuts in Brown’s budget proposal, Atkins said, will target “every group of people you would consider vulnerable in the state of California … seniors, working families who count on child care, health care for children … the disabled, people who count on medications for HIV and AIDS.” Virtually all California’s social programs have already been cut in successive budgets under Governor Schwarzenegger, Atkins said — “We already lost dental coverage for kids” — and she admitted that Brown’s budget proposal will cause even more pain for those Californians least able to bear it. And it could get even worse if the Republican caucus in California’s legislature has its way.

“If we do not vote to extend the taxes, we are going to have to go back and cut another $12.5 billion,” Atkins warned. “It could mean we completely wipe out every social service and health care-related program we have — [affecting] the most vulnerable people in California — and education, class size reduction, colleges and universities. California still has the best colleges and universities in the country — in the world — but the more we don’t feed that system and that structure, [the more] we’re going to spiral down. There are going to be impacts long-term because we’re not investing in education at every level. Double the cuts, and we basically lose education [and make] significant cuts in health care.”

What’s more, according to one club member who’s also a labor union official, his union has been briefed that the chances of getting the Republican support needed to hold the special election is “50-50 at best.” Atkins said not only has virtually every Republican in the state legislature signed national Republican strategist Grover Norquist’s “no new taxes” pledge, a number of them have formed a “tax caucus” whose purpose is to block any new revenue sources for the state. Right now Governor Brown’s budget plan is being discussed in a conference committee between the two houses of the legislature, Atkins explained, “and there are some things that are being discussed as possible strategies” to peel off the handful of Republican votes needed to put the tax measure before the voters.

Atkins also discussed the possible local effects of Governor Brown’s proposal to do away with local redevelopment agencies and redirect the tax money they suck out of cities’ and counties’ general funds to schools and county governments. “Some people may be thrilled by that, and some people may not be,” Atkins said. “There are good pieces to redevelopment — like the 20 percent set-aside for low- and moderate-income housing — that [the loss of which] disturbs me greatly. There’ve been good things done with redevelopment dollars in North Park, City Heights and parts of downtown. There have also been major abuses.”

According to Atkins, when she went to Sacramento after serving eight years on the San Diego City Council, she hoped to reform redevelopment — not bury it — but not only did Governor Brown have other ideas, a proposition passed by voters in November 2010 that limits the state’s ability to take revenues from cities and counties makes it virtually impossible even to negotiate fund transfers with redevelopment agencies. Hence Governor Brown decided that the only way to redirect redevelopment money to schools and other services was to end redevelopment altogether. The proposal is still being negotiated, Atkins said — “the Senate totally approved the governor’s plan to eliminate redevelopment … the Assembly left in a little paragraph that will leave in a little room for maneuverability” — and, she added, “My hope is that we preserve affordable housing dollars.”

The budget and tax issues have overshadowed two bills Atkins has introduced and intends to push strongly for this legislative session. One is AB 499, which would fix a quirk in current law that allows minors to obtain treatment for sexually transmitted diseases without parental consent, but not prevention. “I think we’re catching up with the times,” she said, adding that her bill would allow teenage girls to follow the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommendation to get vaccinated for the human papilloma virus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection believed to increase a woman’s risk for breast cancer.

Atkins’ other pet bill, which she’s carrying for the Queer lobbying group Equality California, is AB 887. Currently, she explained, California’s civil rights laws state that you cannot discriminate on the basis of “sex” — which is defined as “gender, gender identity and gender expression.” What her bill would do is insert that definition in 34 separate places in current laws that just use the term “sex,” thereby “mak[ing] clear and strengthen[ing] the protections people should have, especially in our Transgender community,” Atkins explained. “We need to make sure that people who need their rights protected know that they really are protected.”

Redistricting, Part Two: The Local Level

The club also heard from Planned Parenthood lobbyist and former Assembly candidate Vince Hall, and former County Board of Supervisors candidate Stephen Whitburn, on the local ramifications of redistricting, the process of redrawing political boundaries every 10 years to comply with new census data. The previous meeting had featured an elaborate presentation on state legislative redistricting by San Diego County Democratic Party chair Jess Durfee — particularly on how the shift from having legislators draw their own districts to having an independent commission do it will affect Democrats and how the party can affect the process — and Hall and Whitburn covered some of the same ground, particularly the elastic definition of the term “community of interest” as it’s used in redistricting.

Hall pointed out Charlie McKain, longtime activist and club member who for the 1990 redistricting — the last done by the San Diego City Council before city voters formed their own independent commission — drew a map that brought Hillcrest and North Park together in the same City Council district and thereby enabled voters to elect an openly Queer Councilmember for the first time. “There had been a tradition of splitting Hillcrest and other neighborhoods with large LGBT [Queer] populations,” Hall explained. “The San Diego Democratic Club provided the leadership to stop that, and Charlie unveiled a map on [then-City Councilmember, now Congressmember] Bob Filner’s conference table on which he had sketched out a Third City Council District.”

McKain had done in-depth research to draw his lines, Hall recalled. “He had drawn on membership lists of the San Diego Democratic Club and other LGBT groups, the locations of bars and listings of same-sex, similar-age couples,” he explained. “The map Charlie McKain presented produced an electoral victory that shocked the city, when a very popular candidate was defeated by Christine Kehoe [in 1993]. Three years later she was re-elected against token opposition.” After Kehoe was forced out due to term limits, her staff chair Toni Atkins, also an “out” Lesbian, won the next election against the formidable opposition of former Councilmember John Hartley — and when Atkins herself was termed out the general election was between two openly Gay men, Todd Gloria and Stephen Whitburn.

According to Hall, the Queer community’s big challenge is going to be to preserve the general outlines of the current District 3 in the face of an expansion of the City Council from eight to nine members, and also the ongoing demands of the Asian-Pacific Islander (API) community for a Council seat of their own. (Ironically, current District 3 Councilmember Todd Gloria is of Filipino ancestry and therefore counts as API.) Hall said the main task is making sure the redistricting commission continues to recognize the Queer community as a “community of interest” because “it is a community that has been oppressed and has organized against oppression. It has elected legislators and is a voting community that enforces its ideals regardless of party affiliation.” The city’s redistricting commission is meeting every Thursday at 4 p.m. at City Hall, 202 “C” Street downtown, and Hall and other activists urged as many club members as possible to attend and make the case for continuing the current District 3 in substantially the same form.

Whitburn conceded that redistricting for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors is “a very different animal” because, unlike the state legislature and the San Diego City Council, the Supervisors still get to draw their own districts. Based on previous experience, Whitburn said, “the Board of Supervisors has an advisory commission which will present three maps, and the Board will throw them out and do their own.” Whitburn said he’s hoping that Bruce Resnick of San Diego Coastkeeper is hoping to get enough people “involved in the process so they will be forced to care” — and to lay the groundwork for a lawsuit under the federal Voting Rights Act in case the Supervisors adopt a blatantly discriminatory map against the recommendations of their own commission.