San Diego Hosts Three May Day Rallies

Speakers Seek to Build Connections Between Progressive Communities

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

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

PHOTOS, top to bottom: Marching to the Federal Building; at the Federal Building (2 photos); May 1 Coalition; Carlos Pelayo; Martin Eder; Michael Anderson; Jeffrey; at the Civic Center (4 photos); Christian Ramirez and Lisa Maldonado; Lara Moreno; Greg Robinson

San Diego’s progressive community and labor movement had a hard time getting it together for May Day. After attempts to pull together a single powerful march and rally failed, various organizations — including labor, Latino groups like the nationalist Union del Barrio and socialist parties — put together a series of events. The Union del Barrio action began with a march from Chicano Park to downtown, while labor and the general Left assembled for a rally in Balboa Park between the Centro Cultural de la Raza and World Beat Center and marched to the Federal Building downtown, where they held another rally, following which they converged on the San Diego Community Concourse to meet the Union del Barrio march as it came in for their own rally.

The speakers at the Federal Building and the Community Concourse — which they had to share with the audience for the San Diego Opera’s final performance of Gounod’s Faust (a number of opera-goers muttered hostile comments about the May Day demonstrators) and food concession booths for a martial-arts convention in Golden Hall — tried to bring together various progressive issues. At times the rallies sounded like “The Left’s Greatest Hits” compilations, as the speakers attempted to link assaults on workers’ rights to bargain collectively, the record numbers of immigrants deported by President Obama’s administration, the continuation of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and the new war Obama started in Libya), cutbacks in education funding and tuition increases at public colleges, marriage equality for same-sex couples and other progressive issues into a unified struggle.

Labor leader Carlos Pelayo told the audience at the Federal Building that San Diego City Councilmember Carl DeMaio, who’s pushing an initiative to abolish defined-benefit pensions for new city workers and put them all on 401(k) plans, will leave them with “nothing” on which to retire because San Diego’s workers don’t get Social Security benefits either. “We see a service economy and outsourcing of city jobs at sub-union wages,” Pelayo said. He also mentioned that the workers at the major chain grocery stores in San Diego — Vons, Ralph’s and Albertson’s — recently voted to authorize a strike, and said “we need to be there when the grocery workers go out” so they don’t lose the strike as badly as they did in 2003.

Pelayo also criticized the Obama administration for giving “a lot of lip service” to supporting the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have made it easier for U.S. workers to organize unions. He also said many unions are themselves acting hypocritically by fighting their own staffs’ organizing efforts. “We need to start moving forward,” he said. “We’ve talked about immigrant workers bringing May Day to this country” — ironic because the first proclamation of May Day as a workers’ holiday came from an American, Terence V. Powderly of the Knights of Labor, in 1886 — “and we are not bringing union history into the classroom even though most teachers are union members.”

José Medina of the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) pointed out that his group and other Queer organizations have supported labor boycotts in San Diego, including one against hotel owner Doug Manchester — who’s not only anti-union but also contributed a six-figure sum to get Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, on the ballot. Medina also pointed to Queer support of labor boycotts against Fiesta del Rey in Old Town and Channel 10 news, and later at the Community Concourse he held a “Boycott Channel 10” sign in front of a Channel 10 camera to prevent them from being able to film the event. “On September 22, 2010, when a Gay health care convention occurred at the [Manchester-owned] Westin Hotel, S.A.M.E. picketed with such fury the convention organizers met the next day and promised never to break that boycott again,” Medina said.

“The world is in crisis,” said Martin Eder, founder and director of Activist San Diego but speaking on this occasion for the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). “The social movements are our only salvation. The Left needs to present a vision of what the world should be. Che Guevara said that all true revolutionaries are motivated by the power of love. We’re out here through a great love of the people, and if we listen carefully we will hear people on May Day declaring themselves for peace, justice, freedom and a new society with no exploitation. More than anything, as a San Diego community it’s up to us to build a united front against the oppressor, and to show how moneyed capitalism has stolen all the good things of the world from us, and brainwashed us to accept it.”

Michael Anderson, a founder of S.A.M.E. who with his partner Brian Baumgardner kicked off the Equality 9 demonstration last August when they went to the County Administrative Center and asked for a marriage license — instead, they and seven other S.A.M.E. members were arrested — spoke on behalf of a far more famous political prisoner, alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning. According to Anderson, not only is Manning facing 22 charges — some of which carry the death penalty — but he’s being held in solitary confinement. What’s more, President Obama has publicly declared that Manning “broke the law” — which, Anderson argued, makes it impossible for him to get a fair trial because he’s subject to military justice, and the officers who will try his case will inevitably be swayed by their commander-in-chief’s declaration that he’s guilty.

According to Anderson, Manning is really on trial for having exposed the “criminal” nature of America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. One of WikiLeaks’ most famous posts was video of U.S. troops in Iraq shooting down innocent civilians from a helicopter, which later became the basis of a short film called Collateral Murder. WikiLeaks also published U.S. war plans for Afghanistan and, Anderson said, exposed “the policy of [creating] civilian casualties” through indiscriminate drone attacks. “Obama says Manning ‘broke the law,’” Anderson stated. “Where is the law for unarmed civilians shot down from Apache helicopters? Where is the law for the people who ordered the attacks? Where is the law for Obama and the U.S. government?” Anderson called on the government to drop all charges against Manning and release him immediately.

One of the most unexpectedly powerful speakers at the Federal Building was a man who identified himself only as Jeffrey from the recently formed group US Uncut. It’s an offshoot of a successful campaign in Great Britain, UK Uncut, that targets corporations who use legal loopholes to pay little or no taxes. It was inspired in Britain by the sweeping cutbacks in education and social services being made by David Cameron’s Conservative government, and it points out that virtually all the cuts could be restored if the companies they targeted were paying their fair share of taxes. American activists have been inspired to do similar actions against companies like General Electric (a major defense contractor and, until recently, the owners of NBC and Universal) that pay no federal taxes.

Though Jeffrey said he wasn’t used to public speaking and was nervous about doing so, he was actually quite eloquent. He pointed to his admiration for the original Star Trek TV show — which was visible in the yellow Star Trek jersey he was wearing — and said he remembered growing up on that show and in particular taking to heart its Prime Directive “to mind our own business” and not to interfere in the affairs of other countries — or other planets. He also quoted a line of the character of Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner: “In every revolution there’s one man with a vision” — and proceeded to outline a vision of America vastly different from the Tea Party’s call for a return to the 19th century and its understanding of the Constitution.

“Our vision is not of America as it was, and it’s certainly not what it is today, but what it still could be,” Jeffrey said, “a nation that by allowing us to pursue our best destiny fulfills its promise and becomes America’ best destiny. America’s best destiny is as a nation that remembers the preamble to the Constitution, particularly ‘to promote the general welfare.’ It is a vision that says there will be work that allows for me to care for my family and raise my children. There will be an opportunity to start and maintain my own business, if I choose. There will be schools and teachers that help me and my children to be smarter and wiser every day we want to learn. There is a commitment that the basic health of everyone is never superseded by the privilege of profit. There is protection from the greed of evil men who value profit over equality and social justice, and it will be enforced.”

Abel Macias, a teacher at Mesa College in the San Diego Community College District, talked about how budget cuts have forced the cancellation of summer classes, not only putting him out of work until the fall but also inconveniencing students who want to get ahead ¬— all while the U.S. spends trillions of dollars making war on Afghanistan and Iraq. “It may seem distant because your house is not being bombed,” he said, “but we are being attacked in the U.S. every day. We should be spending that money in this country. They shouldn’t be sending our brothers and sisters to die in that criminal war.” Macias also said that — despite the allegation the Right often makes against the Left of engaging in “class warfare” — that there really is a class war in the U.S., and “to the ruling class you’re just a part of the machinery.”

The event at the Community Concourse was co-M.C.’d by former San Diego City Council candidate Christian Ramirez and Lisa Maldonado, program coordinator of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice. It featured a coordinated campaign to get the San Diego City Council to pass a resolution supporting the right of public workers to organize unions and bargain collectively — something the Councilmembers, including Democrats elected with union support, have so far been unwilling to do — and also to stop the city from impounding vehicles owned by undocumented immigrants.

“Working families did not create this budget crisis,” said student activist Lara Moreno. “Wall Street created this crisis. Education is our right, and we will fight for our access to a four-year institution. Our responsibility is to keep the university doors open to our children. Workers, students and people of faith are standing together. We are workers; we are one.”

“The workers are owed a big kiss from the elite,” said Greg Robinson, political director for local 131 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). “We are systematically under attack. But there’s a solution. It’s called solidarity. The union movement is rediscovering that. I come from a working-class family and the dad said the thing you have to watch out for is the attitude of, ‘Fuck you, Jack, I’ve got mine.’ That is the mentality of all too many of us. In Wisconsin they pitted police officers and firefighters against teachers and social workers. We pit people with health care against people without it. We pit documented workers against undocumented workers. That has to stop.”

“Here we are, having to push back in the same fight our fathers and grandfathers fought,” said Frank Petaro, city carpenter and member of local 127 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). “Public employees have become the scapegoats for the city’s problems. We’ve had no increase in health benefits for 10 years, no wage increases for five years, and we have employees who qualify for food stamps. While the city builds Petco Park, the new library and a bridge to Harbor Drive, they take it out on the lowest-paid workers. Twenty years ago, the city workers gave up Social Security to have health care for life, and now they say they won’t pay for it. We can no longer stand as individuals. Together, we must stand for workers.”

S.A.M.E. Draws 70 to Trans Support Rally, March

Event Inspired by Horrific Beating of Chrissy Lee Polis in Baltimore

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

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

PHOTOS, top to bottom: Cecile Veillard leading the picket at McDonald’s; José Medina and Sean Bohac; Charlie Pratt; Chris; Red; “Hugs, Not Thugs”; Transgender Equality; Trans Violence

Members of the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) and All Out at City, the Queer student group at San Diego City College, staged a march and rally outside the McDonald’s on University Avenue in Hillcrest Saturday night, April 30. The action was in support of Chrissy Lee Polis, a 24-year-old male-to-female Transgender person who had been brutally beaten while attempting to use a women’s restroom in a McDonald’s in Baltimore 12 days earlier. The attack was filmed on a video-equipped cell phone by a McDonald’s employee who posted it to the Internet — where the recording went viral and shocked people nationwide with the ferocity of the violence against Polis.

The April 30 event began with a picket outside the McDonald’s by S.A.M.E. and All Out at City members carrying signs with slogans like, “No H8 on Our Streets,” “I Support Transgender Equality,” “Join the Fight Against Trans Violence,” and “Hugs, Not Thugs” — a contribution of a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in full nun drag. Another participant held a sign thanking Vicky L. Thomas, a middle-aged woman dressed in a white pantsuit who was the only person who came to Polis’s aid while she was being attacked. The marchers circled the sidewalk in front of the McDonald’s and chanted slogans, then walked to Sixth and University for an open-mike speak-out and headed back to the McDonald’s at the end.

S.A.M.E. organizer Sean Bohac, one of the “Equality Nine” who were arrested last August 19 in a sit-in inside the County Administrative Center protesting the continued denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, mentioned his own coming-out process as a Gay man and acknowledged that Transgender people have it worse. He quoted statistics from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force that “one-fifth of all Transgender people experience homelessness at some point in their lives; 53 percent have been disrespected in a public place; 63 percent experience major acts of discrimination, including eviction, loss of jobs, physical assault and incarceration. It’s a sad but true fact that nearly 31 percent of nearly all surviving Trangender individuals have attempted suicide at some point in their lives.”

“Before I went to school, I didn’t understand the gender thing,” said attorney and veteran activist Charlie Pratt. “I was a little boy and I spent a lot of time being a fake ‘boy.’ I’m not Transgender, I guess I’m two-spirit or Genderqueer.” Saying he was “getting tired of the alphabet soup” — the initials “LGBT” (standing for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) now generally used as a supposedly inclusive term for the Queer community, sometimes with additional letters like “Q” and “I” stuck on — Pratt said, “We are all human, and we are all in this together, and that includes all the straight people who support us.”

Chris, who self-identified as part of the Transgender support group at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), thanked the other participants and said, “This sort of thing [attacks like the one on Polis] happens every day. We don’t have to get beaten up to feel it. I’m glad we have allies here and I’m glad we have Trans people here. The best thing I can do to help is have conversations with people, one on one. The more people know how sexy we are, the more they won’t be afraid of us and won’t want to beat us up.”

Another Transgender person, Liat “Red” Wexler — who had come to a S.A.M.E. meeting where the demonstration was planned and self-identified as a “non-binary” (neither male nor female) Transgender person — stated that 90 percent of all Transgender people experience discrimination or harassment on the job. “This is not about Chrissy Lee Polis,” Wexler said. “What would you do if you saw this kind of violence? I would not encourage you to put yourself in harm’s way, but you should turn to other bystanders and call them out when they start laughing,” as some of the people in the McDonald’s when Polis was attacked — including the person filming the attack — did.

“We need the visibility,” said Liz. “The world can be a terrifying place for Transgender and other gender-nonconforming people.”

Zakiya Khabir, another “Equality 9” member and long-time activist with S.A.M.E., commented on the youth of the two women who led the attack on Polis — 18-year-old Teonna Monae Brown and a 14-year-old whose name has not been publicly released — and said, “We have to put Transgender struggles at the forefront of our issues, not just some sort of add-on. We want a world where we can do anything we want with our bodies and our clothes without fear of harassment.”

“I had an awful reaction to the video” of the attack on Polis, said Julie Cervantes of All Out at City. “I started crying, and at the same time I felt anger towards the people who were just watching the attack. I thank Vickey for being the only one who stood up for someone who’s a human being. It could be anybody’s child, family member, friend, human being.” She called on McDonald’s to give their employees sensitivity training so that the next time a Transgender person is attacked in one of their restaurants, the workers will do something constructive “instead of shouting, laughing and videotaping.”

Julie’s sister Michaela, who identified as Bisexual, also spoke. She said that Julie had shown her the video on the Internet and she felt “the two girls who did that were stupid. I have had friends who are Gay and they’ve been made fun of.” She said that as a Bisexual she’s been questioned not only by straight people but by Gays who ask her why she isn’t exclusively Lesbian herself. “I have a thing for girls and guys,” she said. “Coming out to my mom was hard,” Michaela recalled. “Thanks to Julie, I’m here supporting all of you guys.”

“I’m Bi, and it doesn’t matter,” said Laurel. “I’m a human being first. When things like this happen, I lose faith in everybody” — but she added, coming to an event like the demonstration and seeing how many people are willing to stand up for Transgender equality and against hate violence made her feel better about people again.

“There were people who thought it would be inappropriate for us to target [the local] McDonald’s,” acknowledged S.A.M.E. activist and Equality 9 member Cecile Veillard. “But I think it’s important for employers to take responsibility.” She called on people to continue to organize for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would ban employment discrimination against Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals nationwide, and push for an “all-inclusive” version which would cover Transgender people as well.

The attack on Polis has sparked outrage nationwide, including a April 25 demonstration in Baltimore outside the McDonald’s where the incident took place that drew several hundred people, including a Lesbian state legislator and a city councilmember. Several speakers at the Baltimore rally noted that the attack took place just one week after the Maryland State Senate voted down HB 235, a bill that would have banned discrimination against Transgender people. Polis’s mother, Renée Carr, also spoke at the Baltimore rally and said she supported her daughter “100 percent.”

Polis herself spoke out about the incident in two videotaped interviews with reporter Kevin Richardson of the Baltimore Sun. She pointed out that she is epileptic and was in danger of having a seizure because of the attack, and only Vicky Thomas’ intervention kept that from happening. She also said that the punishment didn’t stop with the physical beating; along with the video, her record of prostitution arrests was also posted on the Internet — which is only going to make it that much harder for her to find a legitimate job in the future.

She also said the attack on her at McDonald’s was far from the first incident of violence and abuse she’s suffered from being Transgender. “I have been raped before, too, because of who I am,” Polis told Richardson. “I’ve found myself at parties where they wanted to fight me, and I’ve had to explain myself to them just to get along with people. I feel you shouldn’t have to explain yourself to anybody. Just be who you are, and go as you are. But people don’t want that to happen, and it sickens me that it has to come down to this.”

Labor Representatives Under Attack, Seek Queer Democrats’ Help

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

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

PHOTO, right to left: Lorena Gonzalez, Eric Banks, Michael Zucchet

“I never imagined there would be such a coordinated attack” on the very right of workers — especially those in the public sector — to organize unions and collectively bargain over wages, benefits and working conditions, San Diego/Imperial Counties Central Labor Council head Lorena Gonzalez admitted to the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club at their April 28 meeting. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s so-called “budget repair” bill and the spectacular protests against it made national headlines, but it’s only the tip of opening wedge by the Republican Party and radical-Right activists and think tanks to wipe out organized labor in the U.S. once and for all, Gonzalez acknowledged.

“There are over 700 bills [in state legislatures] that target the rights of workers to organize, bargain collectively and collect dues,” Gonzalez pointed out. What’s more, the attacks on unions and their members keep coming even though, as she explained, “everywhere I’ve seen, unions have acknowledged the economic problems and have agreed to givebacks.” Nonetheless, Gonzalez added, “the Right is using the current fiscal crisis to attack the whole institution of a union.”

And they’re doing it not only because they’ve historically been opposed to the very idea of organized labor, but because they see it as a way of putting the Democratic party out of business. As Gonzalez pointed out, of the 10 largest political action committees (PAC’s) that donated to candidates in the 2010 election, seven were corporate PAC’s that gave only to Republicans. The other three were sponsored by public-sector unions ¬— the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU). “The Republicans in Rust Belt states attacked the only funding source for Democrats,” Gonzalez said.

According to Gonzalez, the attack is coming from traditional union strongholds in Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio not only because those have been especially hard hit by the de-industrialization of the United States and corporations’ mass exporting of blue-collar jobs abroad, but because “these are always the swing states” in Presidential elections. The strategy, she said, is to eliminate the ability of public-sector unions to fund political campaigns, thereby ensuring that the Democrats can’t raise money to compete politically — and thus making sure that President Obama is replaced by a Republican in 2012.

Gonzalez portrayed the Republican attack as aimed not only at unions but all other progressive programs and institutions, including Planned Parenthood, and said that even in states like California that still elect Democrats statewide, “they’re working city by city. In San Diego they’re using a municipal approach to take away union rights. You’re seeing it in the politics of [City Councilmember and probable Mayoral candidate] Carl DeMaio.” She talked about the so-called “compromise” DeMaio and current Mayor Jerry Sanders reached to put an initiative on the local ballot that will abolish defined-benefit pensions for new city workers and force them into 401(k) plans instead.

DeMaio and Sanders have both said that this initiative will put city workers in the same position as people in the private sector who have 401(k)’s. In fact, Gonzalez said, it will leave them worse off because in 1981 then-Mayor Pete Wilson offered the city workers’ unions a deal: if they would allow themselves to be taken off Social Security, the city would fund their health care for life. Gonzalez said the DeMaio-Sanders initiative would “take away the right of any city employee to have a secure retirement,” since they would have neither a guaranteed pension nor Social Security.

Though DeMaio and Sanders are promoting their initiative as a cost-saver for the city, Gonzalez said, “It won’t save a dime … It will actually cost us more because the people coming into the city workforce won’t be paying into the current pension fund.” The initiative will also ban any raises for city workers for the next five years, Gonzalez noted. “The city employees last got a raise in 2005, and this will leave employees in 2018 making less money than they did in 2005,” she said. “This would mean there would be no reason to join a union that can’t protect you in the marketplace.”

Gonzalez was part of a panel discussion with two other union leaders: Eric Banks, president of SEIU Local 221 — which represents workers with the County of San Diego — and Michael Zucchet, former City Councilmember and current general of the Municipal Employees’ Association (MEA), which represents most of the city’s white-collar workers. Banks talked not only about the County but also about the California state budget, from which Governor Jerry Brown and a Democratic-majority legislature has already made $12 billion in cuts — many devastating to college students, senior citizens, people with disabilities and other social-service recipients — and will now likely have to find $14 billion more to cut since no Republicans in either house have been willing to supply the two-thirds vote to put a proposition on the ballot to extend the emergency tax increases passed in 2009.

“We’re looking at cuts with no tax increases,” Banks said. “In the years since 2008 we have cut $46 billion in the budget, including education, services to the poor and elderly, and HIV services. This year we had a governor who had a realistic idea about the revenue question, and he said, ‘Let’s take it to the voters.’ We actually supported the governor’s proposal [to balance the budget with] equal cuts and revenues. It’s no surprise that we haven’t been successful. In Sacramento, ideology has won out over rationalism. … In a blue state, a small number of Republicans are keeping a stranglehold on the state.”

As for San Diego County — where workers have to deal with an all-Republican Board of Supervisors whose personnel haven’t changed since 1994 — Banks said that despite having $2 billion in unallocated revenues, the Supervisors are demanding givebacks in wages and pension benefits. Indeed, all three speakers talked about how successful the Right has been at state, county and city levels in demagoguing the issue of workers’ pensions and making it seem as if it’s public workers and retirees that are bankrupting government and forcing cutbacks in services. “The County is stating they have to lower their pension obligations, even though we [employees] made our contributions and they didn’t. The County pension fund is 84 percent funded, the best in the state,” Banks said.

“Carl DeMaio has proudly proclaimed he wants to make San Diego ‘the Wisconsin of the west,’” Zucchet said. “In San Diego, this has been going on quite a while: using real economic issues to attack the underpinnings of the labor movement and the Democratic party. I would say Wisconsin is the San Diego of the Midwest.” According to Zucchet, the long-term Right-wing propaganda campaign against San Diego city workers and their pensions began in 2001 with an editorial campaign by Bob Kittle, then editorial-page editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Kittle, said Zucchet, “would take almost any issue and turn it into an attack on unions. When I ran for City Council in 2002, the U-T said, ‘Don’t vote for Zucchet. He works for a union and he’s controlled by the unions.’ Our polls said it wasn’t on anybody’s radar back then, but Kittle was ahead of his time.” Another villain in Zucchet’s scenario was former city attorney Mike Aguirre, who despite his progressive reputation on other issues started a legal battle to break the city’s pension contracts with its unions that the current city attorney, Jan Goldsmith, has continued. Indeed, Zucchet said at the beginning of the meeting that the reason he was no longer a member of the San Diego Democratic Club was they had endorsed Aguirre for re-election in 2008.

“San Diego has been living this a long time, and unions have so badly lost the P.R. battle that even in ‘double-D households’” — families in which both adult partners are registered Democrats — “people would say that the most important thing to do is keep those ‘corrupt union bosses’ out of the city treasury. There are probably even people in this room who think all city employees make six-figure salaries and retire on $1 million a year.”

“I’ve had some frustration with Democrats,” said Banks. “They listen to the echo chamber [from the Right-wing media monopoly in San Diego]. We’ve had the best results when we go to the people. I won’t talk to the North County Times anymore. The party needs to be better at holding people accountable to us.”

Like Gonzalez, Zucchet pointed out the little-known fact that San Diego city employees aren’t on Social Security, and he reported that a Superior Court judge recently issued a disastrous ruling for the city’s workers and retirees. The judge said that the lifetime health benefits the city’s workers were promised for voting themselves out of Social Security aren’t “vested” — which means they’re not protected by contract and therefore the city can cut or eliminate them any time it chooses.

“Our average worker makes $52,000 per year and the average pension is $31,000 per year,” Zucchet said. He also said that “the most egregious cases” — the six- and seven-figure pensions that get reported over and over in the local media as if they’re typical — are not for front-line workers but for people in executive positions, “including deputy city attorneys,” he ruefully noted.

“I’m tired of hearing that we’re the ones who broke the economy,” Banks said. “There are people who clerked for the Sheriff’s Department for 40 years and would retire on $26,000 a year. We have people whose job it is to take children out of abusive homes, and many of our members cannot afford to get by. One of our members is living with her daughter in one room of their house and trying to rent out the other two rooms. The County refuses to backfill [restore] any cuts Sacramento is making. Instead, the County sued the state and pushed the services to the city. They’ve cut over 1,200 positions and they’re touting all the awards they’re winning for great public services.”

What’s more, Banks added, the cutbacks are “not just an attack on our workers.” They’re an ideologically driven assault on social services a growing number of Republicans and other conservatives believe shouldn’t exist at all. “They’re attacking core values like education and HIV/AIDS services,” Banks said. “The County has a ton of money in the bank and has the lowest fees [for businesses], and they have the worst record in getting federal and state money” for infrastructure, economic development and social services.

Questions from club members ranged from former club president Gloria Johnson asking why Queer people still shop at the ferociously anti-union Wal-Mart (Gonzalez admitted that many local union members also shop there) to longtime member Patrick Dowd talking about the Right-wing monopoly in local media and how that hurts unions’ ability to present their side of these issues. “Unlike Los Angeles or San Francisco, we don’t have an infrastructure that supports progressives,” Dowd said. “We don’t have a decent media, and that’s why we’re in the dark. We don’t have anything, so how do we inform the public when we don’t have any media outlets?”

“This is a one-newspaper town, and it’s not just that it’s a conservative newspaper, it isn’t a robust investigative newspaper,” Zucchet said. What’s more, he added, the local radio and TV stations are so “lazy” they don’t do their own reporting; they merely read the U-T every day and repeat its agenda on the air.

“I don’t take the Union-Tribune,” said Gonzalez — but she acknowledged that the unions’ rotten public image in San Diego is largely their own fault for failing to organize. “We can’t continue to blame it on other people — developers, the downtown business community, the U-T — because it’s our responsibility to organize. We have to work harder in the immigrant community. We have to work harder in the African-American community. As organizers, we have to go into the community and make the case. In San Diego, 41 percent of registered voters are Democrats and 29 percent are Republicans — so how come we can’t elect a Democratic Mayor and a progressive City Council?”

“San Diego has two things Carl DeMaio has taken advantage of, and we’ve been slow on the uptake,” said club member Linda Perine, who’s currently heading the Queer community’s effort to affect the redrawing of City Council districts. “Carl works very hard and he meets with all the community planning groups and business improvement districts. It doesn’t take a lot of money, but it takes hard work and research, and you have to tailor your message to each group. There’s a clear methodology to defeat this, but it requires a lot of work.” Perine noted that when the Gay & Lesbian Times went out of business, DeMaio’s partner Jonathan Hale launched a Web publication called Digital News Service to promote his agenda — “and that’s something we can do as well.”

“Carl is effective,” Zucchet added. “He is totally fucking relentless. He does this 18 hours a day and he’s been doing it for 10 years. He’s intellectually dishonest and he’s right out in every neighborhood with robo-calls inviting people to meet him. He’s doing a better job [organizing San Diego] than anyone, Republican or Democrat.”

“The labor movement cannot do it alone,” Gonzalez said. “We need help, and we need community members. … We have a very real choice right now. We can sit down and take it and watch the labor movement die, or we can stand up and fight, take the power and demand change. Do we have the energy and power to do something, or are we going to sit back and watch ourselves die?”

“We Are One” Rally Draws 500 in San Diego

Event Is One of 1,000 Actions in Labor’s Mobilization

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

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

PHOTOS, top to bottom: Wisconsin flag upside-down, Randy Fowler, Sr., Lorena Gonzalez

“If it wasn’t for Dr. [Martin Luther] King, many of us wouldn’t be here,” said Randy Fowler, Sr., 50-year-old African-American sanitation worker in San Diego, to a crowd of over 500 in the San Diego Community Concourse Monday, April 4 as part of a labor-sponsored rally called “We Are One.” “I’m a native San Diegan,” Fowler boasted. “My three children went to college here because my wife and I had jobs with good pay and benefits.”

The local event was part of a nationwide mobilization by the embattled U.S. union movement. According to Lorena Gonzalez, head of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Central Labor Council, “We Are One” consisted of over 1,000 actions throughout the United States. April 4 was chosen because it was the anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 — and because he was there to support a strike by Memphis sanitation workers against a city government that refused to negotiate with them. After the hour-long live program, the organizers showed a video about King’s last campaign — and his adversary, James Loeb, then mayor of Memphis, who declared that public workers had no right to strike and whose rhetoric sounded much like that of a more recent union-busting public official, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

“My mom and dad were union workers, and they instilled that in all of us,” Fowler said. “We’re paying things forward and making sure the revenues the city spends go back into the community.” After saluting the head of his local union, Jean Raymond — who had spoken just before he did — Fowler mentioned the irony that he was born on April 4, 1961, and therefore every birthday he’s had since 1968 has been tinged with his sadness over Dr. King’s murder. “Dr. King’s death was a terrible event for the country and the world, but it keeps me going on a daily basis,” Fowler said.

“April 4, 1968 was a long time ago,” said Gonzalez. “It was before I was born. Martin Luther King did something none of us can fathom. He stood up for 1,300 sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, and literally paid with his life. He stood up for the principle that every single worker deserved respect.” Lamenting that “April 4, 2011 looks a lot like April 4, 1968,” Gonzalez described the union-busting efforts of Walker and other Republican governors and legislators as “a shame, but … also heartening, because we have a movement that’s going to fight very hard to make sure we still have a right to collective bargaining.”

Gonzalez mentioned the threat facing San Diego’s sanitation workers today: the measures being put before voters to outsource their jobs to non-union private companies and to destroy the city’s pension system and replace it with the same 401(k) plans that have, she said, “thrown [retirement security] to Wall Street.” She also lamented that no elected officials showed up to support the city’s workers and their rights, even though unions helped many of them win office through donations and campaign volunteers — and that no one on the San Diego City Council would put forth a resolution supporting the event. (One elected official actually did show up, San Diego Unified School District board president Richard Barrera — but Gonzalez was asked not to call him out by members of the teachers’ unions for the district, who resent that as board president it was Barrera’s duty to send out notices to many of the district’s teachers that they might be laid off, depending on how much funding the district receives from the state.)

“California is not Wisconsin, Ohio or Tennessee — thank God — but all we wanted was a simple resolution that they stood with us,” Gonzalez said. “We got positive responses from Chula Vista, National City and some of the local school boards, but the San Diego City Council said no. Five of the eight current Councilmembers were supported by virtually all the unions, but Marti Emerald was the only one who would sign a proclamation. I heard it was ‘divisive,’ but at the same time the City Council unanimously passed a resolution honoring Ronald Reagan. It passed resolutions honoring the Clairemont Women’s Republican Club and [anti-union employers] EDCO and Cox Communications.”

Doug Moore, president of the United Domestic Workers (UDW) — an affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) which represents home-care workers in San Diego County — said that 43 years after Dr. King’s assassination, “both public- and private-sector workers are under attack again. Right-wing governors and their corporate allies are trying to weaken collective bargaining. Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire: the list goes on and on, and if you think that couldn’t happen in California, think again. … That’s why we have to send a clear message to elected officials, from local to state to the President: don’t try it here.”

After a long street-theatre sketch featuring a local union official costumed as Moses’ sister Miriam and a series of men dressed as pharaohs representing corporate greed and political cowardice (and ironically set to a parody of the song “Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho,” a product of the notorious union-buster Walt Disney and his company), Gonzalez introduced Rev. Richard Lawrence. “I was in Selma, Alabama 46 years ago for [Dr. King’s] march to Montgomery,” he recalled. He praised the late president Lyndon Johnson for saying the words “we shall overcome” in his speech announcing his introduction of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which sought to end the Southern states’ denial of the right to vote to African-Americans and thereby met the principal demand of the marchers in Selma. Then he led the crowd in singing “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of the civil-rights movement and many American struggles for social change since.

Republicans Win Without a Shutdown

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN, Editor

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

Well, America dodged the first bullet. The big April 8 deadline for a shutdown of the federal government came and went, and the Democrats in the White House and the U.S. Senate were able to keep it from shutting down. But the price was $40 billion in budget cuts an economy still mired in a so-called “jobless recovery” can ill afford — cuts that will directly attack low-income people, including people with disabilities, and far from “unleashing the private sector” to make investments and hire people, will actually kill jobs.

Not that you’re going to read that perspective in the mainstream corporate media. You’ll be hearing a lot of cant about “bipartisanship” and how the Democrats have supposedly “grown up” and accepted the inevitability of an “age of austerity.” The commitments both major parties, especially the Democrats, made the American people between the 1930’s and the 1960’s — a “social safety net” that wouldn’t let people become poor just because they became old or disabled, that wouldn’t let people die of treatable diseases just because they were poor, that would acknowledge that we are all responsible for each other and that well-off people have not only a social but a moral obligation to help less well-off people — are all, like the Geneva Conventions, “obsolete” and “quaint” in today’s politics.

Instead the ruling ideology of both major parties — though the Republicans are pursuing it with the zeal of true believers while the Democrats reluctantly go along with the demands of the corporate paymasters who finance their campaigns — is that lassiez-faire capitalism is the only legitimate and moral economic system; that all government programs that transfer wealth and income from the rich to the not-so-rich are fundamentally immoral; that weaning people off “dependency” on so-called “entitlements” is a long-term process but one that must be started now; and that, despite the horrendous potential consequences of cutting government spending in the middle of a recession, which will not only throw public-sector workers out of work but also hurt the private businesses they buy goods and services from, leading them to lay off more of their workers, massive spending cuts are a done deal and the only legitimate political argument is over how massive.

The Republican propagandists who boast that their side won the ideological war — that they got President Obama and the Senate Democrats to abandon all hope of further economic stimulus and join them in slashing the federal budget — are absolutely right. In states where the Republicans hold the governorship and both houses of the legislature, we’ve seen them hack away at the working class by fiat — not only slashing salaries and benefits of government workers but denying them their right to fight back by organizing unions and bargaining collectively with their employers. (One of the piss-ant justifications the Republicans offer is that we as taxpayers pay the salaries of public employees but not those of private employees. Bullshit: every time we buy something in the private sector, it’s our money as consumers that’s going to pay the workers.)

And when the Democrats hold the governorship and legislative majorities, as in California, the Republicans still manage to get their way. Like their ideological brethren and sistren in Washington, D.C., the Republicans in the California legislature hamstrung Jerry Brown by pretending to negotiate in good faith over a voter initiative to keep the emergency sales taxes and vehicle fees that have kept the state budget on life-support for the last two years — and just when a deal appeared within reach the Republicans upped the ante and made sweeping demands on non-budget issues they could never have got approved through the normal legislative processes. In California, they derailed a budget deal by insisting on the end of virtually all environmental controls on development; in D.C. they nearly sabotaged the process by insisting on wiping out funds for Planned Parenthood and pushing new restrictions on abortions in the states.

The Republican Party has been steadily winning ideological battles ever since 1980, when Ronald Reagan squeaked into the presidency with slightly over 50 percent of the popular vote against two major opponents, Democrat Jimmy Carter and independent John Anderson. (It’s a measure of how successful the Republican propaganda machine has been at rewriting history that even a staunchly liberal pundit like Ronald Brownstein recently referred to Reagan’s 1980 victory as a “landslide.” It was not.) Ever since, ideas that were previously thought of as part of the Right-wing fringe have made it to the mainstream, from the near-total deregulation of the financial sector (which actually began in the 1970’s under Carter and a Democratic Congress) to the government actively busting labor unions. The carefully crafted compromises of the 1930’s — the ones that gave labor the right to organize and gave Americans a long-overdue promise of economic security when they retired, as well as massive public investments in the economy — that created America’s extraordinary prosperity in the 1950’s and 1960’s have been wantonly and recklessly dismantled in the name of “freedom.”

When George W. Bush was President, I was fond of quoting the words William Butler Yeats wrote when the original fascists were running Germany and Italy and Europe’s remaining democracies seemed helpless to challenge them: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” When Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, I hoped — not with the unalloyed fervor of some of his supporters, but I hoped nonetheless — that the grass-roots movement that elected him would help turn that around and there would be passionate intensity on our side, for a change. I was wrong; Obama turned out to be an inside wheeler-dealer who not only didn’t mobilize the troops that had elected him but actively discouraged them — and once again the Right took advantage of the Left’s pathetic fecklessness and organized as the Tea Party to “take back Washington” on behalf of the rich.

Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten published an article on April 9 that showed just how far we have fallen. Called “Paul Ryan’s budget blueprint would push the aged into poverty,” it was an attack on the recent budget proposal by Congressmember Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) that would essentially abolish Medicare, replacing the current publicly funded single-payer program that provides medical care to the aged with individual vouchers old people could use to buy private health insurance. Relying on an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Rutten said that under Ryan’s plan “the overall cost of health care would go up, and retirees’ out-of-pocket medical expenses would double — an increase that would push tens of millions of people living on fixed income over the financial brink.”

Rutten also quoted an exultant editorial in the Wall Street Journal that said Ryan’s gutting of Medicare would be “as important an advance as the shift from defined-benefit pensions to 401(k)’s.” He rightly pointed out that the Ryan plan was yet another in “the line of initiatives that, over the past 30 years, have dramatically increased social and economic inequality” — and, he might have added, have gradually increased social insecurity and devolved more and more responsibility away from government (and private employers) and onto individuals. By excluding people already on Medicare from his “reforms,” Ryan is hoping to blunt the opposition from current recipients that has sunk previous efforts to privatize Medicare and Social Security (and which Republicans, ironically, used themselves in their effort to defeat the Obama health-insurance reform bill last year) — just as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker tried to forestall opposition to his public-sector union-busting by leaving out the two most popular sorts of public employees, police officers and firefighters (whose unions had endorsed him).

But Rutten’s article went farther: he took his readers back to the heady politics of the early 1960’s, the years of John Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, when the government took up the unfinished business of the New Deal and guaranteed not only financial security but health care to old people through Medicare — and also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made the systematic segregation and discrimination against African-Americans and other people of color illegal at last. He reminded us of a book whose cautionary tale has been virtually forgotten: The Other America, published in 1961 by economic and social activist and critic Michael Harrington. In his introduction, Harrington wrote that he intended the book to expose “the huge, enormous and intolerable fact of poverty in America,” to which, he said, “the truly human reaction can only be outrage.”

It’s a measure of how far we have fallen that the U.S. is now governed by people who not only feel no outrage towards poverty in America but regard the poor as responsible for their own plight. The book that inspires Paul Ryan isn’t The Other America but a novel published four years before it: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Rand’s view is that lassiez-faire capitalism is not only the only efficient economic system but also the only moral one. She regarded any taxation of the wealthy to create a social safety net to be theft and enslavement of the rich. In one of her writings, anticipating the obvious objection that the government or society as a whole owed an obligation to take care of sick people and people with disabilities, she said, “Misfortune does not justify slave labor.” The plot of Atlas Shrugged deals with the mysterious disappearance of the world’s capitalists, who have decided that they can no longer tolerate being expected to support the nonproductive masses and hide out to form their own free-market utopia, emerging only when their rebellion brings about the collapse of the collectivist state they hate.

Congressmember Paul Ryan is enough of an Ayn Rand devotée that he orders every staff person he hires to read her novel. Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan almost literally sat at Rand’s feet while she was writing Atlas Shrugged. Her blueprint for a society ruled by a wealthy elite in which everyone else lives on the crumbs thrown to them by her free-market entrepreneurial heroes is clearly the lodestar of modern-day Republican politics. Rand’s vision is behind House Republican leader Eric Cantor’s recent — and almost totally unreported — statement that Social Security and Medicare “cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be.” Republicans’ current hard lines in budget negotiations in Washington and Sacramento, and their sweeping attacks on workers’ rights, the social safety net, women’s reproductive freedom, the environment, and so-called “illegal” immigration, are all part of a long-term ideological war which, despite occasional reversals, they have been winning for over 30 years.

KURT WENDELBORG:

Not Your Typical Mr. San Diego Leather

interview by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

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

PHOTOS, top to bottom: Kurt Wendelborg as we interviewed him April 5; and Kurt in full leather and in the jockstrap portion of the Mr. San Diego Leather contest March 19.

Kurt Wendelborg may look like a typical Leather community titleholder — he’s tall, thin, in excellent shape physically and commandingly butch in his overall appearance and demeanor — but he really isn’t. Most of the Mr. San Diego Leather winners have been people who’ve lived in San Diego and been involved in community activities for years; Kurt had lived in San Diego less than a year when he ran for the title and won. Most of the title winners have been “tops,” playing the dominant role in scenes; Kurt not only is a “bottom” but proudly boasted of that from the stage at Rich’s during the March 19 contest — leaving this author, and probably quite a few others, thinking, “Did he really just say what I thought he said?”

Offstage, Kurt is personable and easygoing but also passionate and dedicated about serving his community and his fellow human beings. He eagerly agreed to a Zenger’s interview and talked about the role of the title contests in the Leather community, his ambitions as a community leader and how he hopes being Mr. San Diego Leather 2011 will help him grow both personally and as a member of the Leather community.

Zenger’s: Kurt, why don’t you just tell me a little about yourself, your background, and how you got here?

Kurt Wendelborg: How I got here? It’s always the million-dollar question. I grew up in Chicago, went to school in downstate Illinois and started my first job at an advertising agency in Chicago. About 1992 they transferred me to San Francisco, which is how I got to California about 1992. After many years in the Bay Area, I wanted to get off the hamster wheel a bit and spend more time doing personal endeavors, so I moved to Palm Springs in 2007. After a couple of years there I realized that the pendulum had swung a little too far in the other direction, and I needed something of a happy medium, a slower pace than San Francisco but still a little bit of urban stuff that I like to enjoy, and that’s how I found San Diego.

I kind of tripped over San Diego when I was in Palm Springs. A buddy of mine had an RV and we started coming down to camp out by the bay in the Mission Bay RV park hang out. Then I started getting out to Hillcrest and North Park, and I realized that this was the place I was probably going to end up. That was a year ago in April.

And a little bit about myself? The statistical stuff? I’m 48 and single, and I do advertising and marketing for a living. I’m really trying to get more of a balance of my personal and professional lives. Luckily, since I’m self-employed and have been since 1996, I have the capability and flexibility during the day to do more volunteer work and community service. I’m taking some classes at junior colleges — personal enrichment, art history, stuff like that — and a creative writing class at UCSD, and really trying to find a little bit more of myself after that crazy pace in my 20’s and 30’s and 40’s, when you’re building your career and trying to buy the house and the car and all that other stuff.

Zenger’s: How’d you get involved in Leather?

Wendelborg: I originally got involved in Leather when I moved to Palm Springs. I was intrigued by it and exposed to it when I lived in San Francisco, obviously, through Folsom [Street Fair] and Joy Alley, but I wasn’t really involved in the Leather community, not by a long stretch. When I moved to Palm Springs, I didn’t know anybody there when I first moved there, but the first guys I started to pal around with were in the Leather community. That’s how I got introduced to that bunch. Over a couple of years in Palm Springs, my journey continued at a bit of a slower pace, but it still moved forward.

When I moved to San Diego, that was really where it grew exponentially. That’s when I first met my buddy Ben, and he introduced me to the whole gang of the Leatherfolk that are now my really good friends.

Zenger’s: That’s something of a surprise, because we’re used to the Leather titleholders being people who’ve been involved in the local community and been in the Leather scene for years. You’re a relative neophyte. How did you get up from dabbler to titleholder that quickly?

Wendelborg: I don’t think that tenure or longevity in any community determines your credibility or capabilities. I think it’s your passion and the energy you put forth, and your commitment to the community. And that’s exactly what I have, I think. I’ve been around a lot of other folks that have been in the Leather community for several years, but they only go out every couple of weeks to one or two events. I’ve been heavily involved with all the members of the community, from just going to the bars and social gatherings to helping some of the 2010 titleholders with their fundraisers.

Zenger’s: How would you explain the whole business of Leather titles to someone outside the community? I can see someone walking into Mr. San Diego Leather and finding it an utterly preposterous event: a mixture of beauty contest and community service. Where do you think that comes from, and where do you think you’ll find your balance?

Wendelborg: Where will I find my balance? A lot of it has to do with education, I mean, especially with people who are kind of putting their toe in and wandering to and from a certain event, and don’t really understand the Leather community but who have an intrigue and an interest in that community and have questions. If they did walk in the door of that contest and saw something the physique or jockstrap portion, I’d want them to understand is it’s certainly not about looks. Well, maybe it’s a little bit about looks, but it’s more about how you carry yourself, your confidence level, if you look comfortable in your own skin.

The whole thing about the titleholder persona is it’s kind of like an onion. You’ve got to peel away the layers and try to explain to people that it’s about community and about credibility and trust and loyalty. Also, a big piece of this title for me is that it’s giving me a new purpose.

Zenger’s: So what is the purpose?

Wendelborg: Well, it’s twofold. There’s a personal purpose, and there’s also a community purpose. The personal purpose for me is to further my Leather journey. I couldn’t think of anything that would educate me more, get me in tune with myself more, from an educational level all the way through to a spiritual level, and getting myself more ingrained in the community. How much more ingrained can you be in the community than you possibly get than to be a titleholder and carry that responsibility?

From a community perspective, it allows me to further my endeavors in fundraising and community support. It’s definitely going to open some doors that may not have opened to me prior. It’s my job, certainly, as a titleholder and as a person and a man, to walk through those doors and carry the title and myself with respect, and continue to educate outsiders about the community and bring people who aren’t in the community back in. I want to be able to reach out to people who’ve taken a bit of a sabbatical or a hiatus, or had to deal with disdain in the community, and try to find some way to drive them back into the fold.

Zenger’s: What are your fundraising priorities going to be? What issues and what groups are you going to concentrate on?

Wendelborg: My big fundraising platform will be seniors. Prior to living in San Diego, I did a lot of volunteer work with the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender senior community in Palm Springs, through what they called the Rainbow SAGE Center; and prior to that in San Francisco through the Golden Heights Neighborhood Center. In both capacities, depending on what the needs of the day were, I interacted with and helped support our seniors. I think they’re the most forgotten segment, not only of our community, but society in general. So that would be my primary platform.

Also, I’m actually looking at putting togther something with Anthony [Rollar, Mr. San Diego Leather 2010] for the Leather Archives and Museum. And something else I was thinking about is a more localized Leather history: finding a space to do something about all the information that has been gathered over the last years. There’s been a big effort to try to get some San Diego Leather history put together, and then learning who’s the repository of all that.

Zenger’s: So you want to set up a San Diego Leather Museum?

Wendelborg: It wouldn’t have to be something like that, but it would actually bring more education. What I keep hearing that resonates among a lot of people who are new to the community is there haven’t been a lot of repositories for this information or places to self-educate. You’ve got to reach out and try to find mentors, and certainly people are very willing to give you a hand, but there’s a little bit of work that people have to do by themselves, individually. That’s where I’ve been struggling myself, trying to find the repository of information to help understand not only what’s happened in the community as a whole but specifically in San Diego.

Zenger’s: Some older Leatherpeople lament the effect of the Internet on the community. Things you used to have to learn by seeking out older people and going to community events, now you can just go online and get the basic facts of how to do this or that. It’s getting harder to bring people to events and get them to participate one-on-one when they can learn everything, or at least think they’re learning everything, by sitting at home on their computers. So do you think there’s a need for people in your position to help build a stronger presence at live events; and if so, how do you think you can do that?

Wendelborg: I think “presence” is the key word, and that’s one thing I’m really going to make an effort to do, to put a face to the name. The Leather community has a lot of faces, but the titleholder is supposed to be the pre-eminent face of the community. So if I’m stretching myself across the bridge to any community in San Diego, as long as I’m visible, hopefully that will pique someone’s interest to have a conversation with me, and I can let them know that there are events, there are social activities, at whatever kind of depth they want to engage in with the Leather community. It doesn’t all have to be BDSM or the sexual thing. It can be an initial Leatherman friendship and brotherhood and nurturing, and I think it’s going to be on an individual basis, which is why at this point it’s important to get out there and shake hands and talk to people.

One thing that I have found interesting is a couple of Fridays I have been at the Eagle, and after 10 or 10:30 the dynamic really changes. It goes from the tried-and-true people in the community that we all know and love, and transitions to a younger kind of hipper North Park crowd. Some are maybe coming in for cheap beer or because it’s a cool place to hang out, but certainly there are several guys I’ve met who are intrigued, who are starting to put their foot in the Leather community.

And, regarding your point earlier, those are the guys who are going online. I’ve buddied up with a couple of them, and they come in with the outfit or the clothes. They’ve seen photographs and they know what the look is, but I’ve been trying to work with them and help them understand as best I can that it’s not about the look. It’s about the significance and what I would call the protocol behind it. I’ve actually turned some guys around and got them on as good of a path as I can, based on where I am at this point in my own journey.

Zenger’s: Do you think your professional background in advertising and public relations is going to help in reaching out and building awareness, both within and outside the Leather community?

Wendelborg: I do. I do actually think any profession brings some kind of a talent and education, and that crosses lines into whatever endeavors you’re trying to put on. With my background in P.R. and marketing, I’m certainly a little more cognizant of the need to reach out to the press, and to try to get photographs and photo-ops and all that kind of stuff, make sure stories get arranged for people here, and there’s always some kind of note about what’s going on in the Leather community.

But it’s also about basic business acumen. When you’re asking someone for something, go in, introduce yourself and shake their hand, and make sure you follow up with return phone calls, and all the basic tenets of business that I think a lot of people have forgotten. With respect to what we were talking earlier about people being online, people send e-mails, they don’t pick up the phone.

When I went to put together things for my auction basket in the contest, I specifically made it a point to know when every business owner and manager was in the store, in the establishment, and to go in with a letter in hand, to explain what was going on, introduce myself, and explain how their donation was going to help not only the Leather community in general but certainly their business on the back end. Nine times out of 10, I walked out with a commitment. That’s one of the big things I learned in business: you never walk into a meeting without knowing what you want to get out of it or walk out the door with.

Zenger’s: How do you think being a titleholder is going to affect your personal life?

Wendelborg: It’s already affected my personal life, and I’m only in week three! In a very positive way. I have very much had to shift priorities. I’ve already had to get a little bit more help on the work side so I can spend more time and do due diligence to support this title. I’m seeing that there’s going to be a time demand. There’s also going to be a financial burden, which I’m definitely ready and willing to take on. I’ve got a stipend from Leather Pride for travel and expenses, but I’m going to go through that very quickly.

But I’m in this for the long haul, and part of my own journey is to get myself through it. I recognize those two things: time and money. But anything that you’re passionate about, it’s kind of like a zero-sum budget: you’ve got to put forth all your efforts, whether it’s financial or emotional.

Zenger’s: What do you think is going to happen to you after your year is up?

Wendelborg: Well, from a community perspective, I’m certainly not going to be going anywhere. I think all that’s going to change is that I’m still going to be an extra set of hands to help the next titleholders, both the Ms. and the Mr., and some of the other communities: the Rodeo, the Imperial Court. I’m kind of a fundraising junkie, so to speak. At this point in my life I’ve had my career and made my money and done all the stuff I was quote-unquote “supposed” to do, and now it’s more about people I surround myself with, my friends and my family, and trying to make the world a better place, even a little bit. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s true.

I actually love volunteering. I get an incredible charge out of it. It doesn’t take much to make somebody feel special and important. That’s the whole thing about community service and volunteering. Sometimes people think it’s this really overwhelming commitment, and it doesn’t have to be. If you don’t have money, you have time. A couple of hours a week can make a world of difference to somebody.

Zenger’s: Are you planning to enter IML [the annual International Mr. Leather contest in Chicago]?

Wendelborg: Next year, yes. Anthony Rollar is running this May, and then my chance at that contest will be May 2012. And yes, I’m definitely planning on running.

Zenger’s: When you said you were from Chicago, I had this vision that you were thinking of it as “the hometown boy returns.”

Wendelborg: I hadn’t actually, originally, but it certainly would be a fun coming-home story. It’s the same story you hear about anyone who has a little bit of success, either personally or professionally. I was not always the last kid who was picked for the sports teams, but I was certainly second or third from last. I was always a chubby kid, and I wasn’t the smartest kid, and all that kind of stuff. Just average, but to come back and show people what I’ve accomplished on my own, how can you not feel good about that?

Zenger’s: One thing that struck me when you spoke at the contest is that most of the titleholders have been heavy-duty tops, and you’re not.

Wendelborg: I know. I’m a heavy-duty bottom! Yes, very counter-intuitive to what people think. I’m actually a very aggressive heavy-duty Type A personality, absolutely independent. Being a bottom sexually doesn’t necessarily at all coincide with what your personality type is. In fact, people are usually actually very shocked — like, “You’re kidding? You’re a bottom?” And I say, “I am a top all day long, and I have been for 30 years. I have run my own company, I have rental properties, I have a family I take care of. I have a lot of responsibilities.” I make enough decisions nine to five. I really don’t want to have to make that many decisions after that. That’s when I can shut it off and enjoy myself.

And frankly, what people don’t really understand about the top position/bottom position sexually, is to me, maybe since I am such an aggressive bottom, I feel that I’m the one that’s getting all the pleasure. That’s what happens when you’re a bossy bottom, though. I’m getting 100 percent of the attention. It goes both ways, though. No matter what your sexual perspective, it’s definitely 50-50 no matter what your role.

Zenger’s: Anything else you want to add that we haven’t covered?

Wendelborg: I can’t really think of anything. We covered a pretty wide gamut. I’m three weeks into it and as days pass I’m still kind of ebbing and flowing. Sometimes I’m really charged up and excited, and then sometimes in the morning it’s like, “Oh, my God, what am I doing?” But in general, I’m absolutely thrilled to have this opportunity to grow myself personally, spiritually, emotionally and help contribute to the community. I continue to imagine the experiences I’m going to have and the people I’m going to meet. That’s, I think, the most inspiring thing I’m feeling at this point.

Zenger’s: So it’s essentially telling the world, “Surprise me.”

Wendelborg: Exactly. And I’ll surprise them, hopefully, at some level.

“Scripteasers”: Experienced Actors Meet New Scripts

Group Has Done “Cold Readings,” Play Critiques Since 1948

by LEO E. LAURENCE, J.D.

Copyright © 2011 by Leo E. Laurence • All rights reserved

Photo caption: Scripteasers host Jonathan Dunn-Rankin (right) stands with guest Alan Cruz, 21 before some of the host’s massive and wildly colorful art collection. Photo by Leo E. Laurence.

Some of the area’s finest experienced actors, directors, playwrights and guests get together every other Friday in the elegant hilltop home of Jonathan Dunn-Rankin, an experienced actor in the theatre and television.

They are called “Scripteasers,” and they meet to hear cold readings of stage plays where the ac-tors have never seen the script, and there are no rehearsals.

Curiously, after the cold reading, the whole group of about 30 or more people tear apart the script, many with an experienced eye, in a unique open discussion by everyone.

They aggressively probe the play, questioning whether the author’s premise is clear. Are the characters clearly defined and developed?

Is the dialogue effective and realistic? Did you hear trite words and phrases?

Did the script hold your interest, and why?

Are their staging or production problems?

Is the script marketable as it is?

After the people at Scripteasers have torn apart the new script in every technical and artistic way, the play’s author is giving a short opportunity to respond graciously.

History

“The ‘Scripteasers’ was formed on May 5, 1948 as The Dramatists’ Workshop to give script-writer members and guests the opportunity to hear their works read aloud by (experienced) local actors,” says their Web site, www.scripteasers.org

“At the group’s Silver Anniversary celebration in 1973, Hazel Burrows, the founding president, recalled how the name change (to Scripteasers) occurred during ‘an interminable meeting’ where such appellations as The Dramatists’ Guild were bandied about.

“Finally Aubrey Rankin, half in jest, threw out Scripteasers. It caught everyone’s fancy … ” the unique group’s Web site adds.

“For the past 63 years, the (Scripteasers) have been meeting on alternate Fridays in members’ homes to give unrehearsed ‘cold’ readings of new works, followed by a period of (in depth) con-structive discussion to aid writers in developing their craft,” the Web site explains.

The evenings are “topped off” with a popular period of light refreshments, when many roam about and enjoy the host’s fabulous art collection.

For years, Scripteasers have been meeting in Dunn-Rankin’s elegant hilltop home overlooking the bay and airport. Inside, all high walls are totally covered by brilliantly colored in modern art. One guest, Alan Cruz, 21, was fascinated by a hanging painting that uses oddly converging geomet-rical lines to change the image as the viewer changes position.

Large coffee tables and side pieces are filled with stunning sculpture.

Hanging above everyone's heads are several huge “mobile” sculptures hanging from high ceilings.

Attending a Scripteasers meeting in Dunn-Rankin’s large home is literally enveloping yourself in very brightly-colored art gallery.

Participants often arrive early to have time to look over Dunn-Rankin’s huge art collection.

Some of those who regularly attend Scripteasers are Mary Boersma, Tom Turner, Tom Furth and Nina Ternsaky.

Success!

The late Ruth Purkey, whom Dunn-Rankin called a “prolific writer,” was one of the local script-writers whose works withstood the critical, sometimes brutal and often hilarious hard-core test of the Scripteasers.

“Her works were carried in the Baker & French catalogue” — the standard source for theatres looking to produce copyrighted plays — he reported.

Another author who made it through the Scripteasers gantlet was Beatrice La Force of Alpine, who, Dunn-Rankin recalled, “wrote a collection of children’s plays that were produced.”

Scripts critiqued by Scripteasers have been produced at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. Others have been staged elsewhere or been produced as films. Scripteasers’ scripts have also been published in best-play anthologies and are carried in publisher’s catalogues.

“Actors in the Scripteasers’ ‘cold’ readings have appeared in local, regional and national theatres, on television and in film,” their Web site reports.

“The scripts are selected by our script coordinator, Richard Addesio,” explained Dunn-Rankin, standing near a stunning nude sculpture of the Greek god Adonis.

Tough Discussion

After the “cold” reading of the play at Scripteasers, the 30 or so attending critically discuss the play. They don’t try to rewrite the script, but they can offer biting tips on everything from casting issues to character development.

That discussion is very unique.

It is highly structured by a strong moderator, as participants and guests eagerly engage in tough discussion. The group can range from 21 to 81 years of age, but many are experienced personalities from local theatres.

There’s a unique procedural process that scriptwriters have to follow to be considered for a “cold” reading at Scripteasers.

“Your script must be original, fee of copyright restrictions and unproduced,” the group’s Web site states.

“Your first step is to submit your script via e-mail or as a hard copy.

“Your script must be (A) written in standard dramatic format, (B) be securely bound, (C) and contain the following information:

“(1) Category: stage play, screenplay, TV script, etc., (2) Type: drama, comedy, mystery, experimental, etc., and (3) Cast: number of roles broken down by women and men.”

Their e-mail address is thescripteasers@msn.com and their Web site is at http://www.scripteasers.org

These “cold” readings by Scripteasers every other Friday at the stunning Dunn-Rankin home are really open to anyone. There’s no fee to attend and they provide a fine spread of refreshments after the meeting ends.