ACT On Principles

LGBT Thinking to Break Free of the Movement’s Straight Jacket. Target: UnitedENDA.org Process: A Real Strategy Dialog

Among the mourning and applause a year after Prop. 8 last broke our hearts, peppered calls for a national strategy are again in the air. Three ideas that caught my eye are:

1. We need to analyze this tactical change in attack ads in CA & ME – back to Anita Bryant and child abuse – and get underneath it and around it.
2. We need a cultural campaign outside of legislative issues; and
3. We need a strong counter-offensive directed at our opponents and their fundraising (the religious ones especially).

But in order to do these types of things, we need to have a national movement strategy. For this, we need a dialog forum that we do not yet have. Meanwhile, we fly scattered and blind.

While there is some hope that Equality Across America will eventually provide such a platform, we cannot wait. ENDA is on deck with hearings in the House and we do not have a national campaign to deliver the missing votes.

UnitedENDA.org - a coalition for ENDA – presents a prime opportunity to begin exactly this type of conversation. But there are major problems with its structure. The group does not disclose how it is operated, i.e., who is setting legislative strategy, and there is no public process – for the 400 plus organizations who have “signed on” – ostensibly to communicate and work with one another. Essentially, it’s a “contact-your-legislator” bulletin board, not a full campaign, not a democratic coalition, and certainly not a forum for discussion.

Yet, on the site there is an excellent ENDA Toolkit which has a great piece on “Coalition Building” on pg 22-23 (www.thetaskforce.org/enda07/ENDAtoolkit_c4.pdf) – which emphasizes “regular meetings with organizational partners,” “creating a safe space for strategic action planning and brainstorming,” and insists in capital letters that we “LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN” to one another.

When I found it, I was momentarily overjoyed, and then baffled, once again confronted with the elitist “do as we say, not as we do” conundrum. Clearly they get the idea, but why is it then, that they have yet to apply it to the coalition? Or more broadly, on a national strategic level, why have the national organizations exempted themselves from their own coalition advice? If there are strategic reasons for this double standard, those deserve to be publicly vetted as well, but no one seems inclined to open this debate in earnest.

Indeed, a recent conference call confirms that this is not the intention of those controlling the UnitedENDA coalition. For example, there was more openness to the ActOnPrinciples.org Public Whip Count from Representative Baldwin, than from the inside coalition legislative team. While AOP consults with the Congresswoman comparing Whip notes, the coalition inside team deflects interest in the option, supposedly based on person opinions of that strategy.

Yet, there is no mechanism in the coalition to discuss whether to use a Public Whip count to rally the missing votes – or not. And this is only one example. With a fully scripted call, there was no group strategy discussion to inspire excitement and collective action. And no process. Just a tight lid, on an old pot.

What a waste of 400 coalition partners, and no-wonder only 30 or so were on the call. Imagine what it could be with 4000 coalition partners actually engaged in a discussion about preparing for a vote on ENDA, while also building a campaign for our human dignity. Of course, this idea scares old-school legislative experts, like the original founders were afraid of true democracy. But the people affected by this cause deserve to be heard.

The post-march energy is out there morphing, and its source is expanding. Umbrella groups are sprouting up, regional conferences forming, state-to-state support growing, and even the awkward focus on district organizing has some life. Local PFLAG groups are waiting for a message to unleash mothers on other mothers, Equality groups are waiting to discuss “full equality now,” while some people are ready to march again. Everywhere people are scrambling for partners, common cause and new focus. They yearn to connect and communicate, like wind looking to form a hurricane.

Meanwhile, nationally we are sitting on this pent-up passion, of which the March was only a tremor. How can it be with ENDA in on deck, that there is still no common rallying point, no new march-level idea – no campaign – and no vehicle through which one can surface? How can that be with so many possibilities?

While it’s anyone’s guess, the inertia seems bound in a movement ideology that rejects public chaos in favor of control. One that fears its own community, which it handily manipulates by filling space, but withholding empowerment. One that still rejects the passion underlying the March.

Conversation can unleash our movement’s bubbling potential. To begin, we need someone to host a national dialog about movement strategy on the web. Even one major national group could host the conversation, but better that it be called by a few community stewards collectively. We need to be able to communicate with each other.

As it stands, our groups are controlling our access to one another as a strategy. The leadership conferences similarly constrict the dialog, boxing in conversations, rather than unleashing conversation. Offering training 101, rather than true tactical analysis. Physical conferences are obsolete in this context, and themselves anti-democratic, elitist, and way too long-term. We need to use the web in an orchestrated way. We need a nimble, interactive and responsive national effort. We need a modern movement strategy.

If I had a vote, which of course we do not in our national organizations, I would still vote for the Task Force to create a web-based national forum for “strategic action planning/brainstorming” around ENDA – as it recommends in its toolkit. It has the network, but it not leveraging it. A structured public forum could be ENDA-focused to begin, and evolve. It could have organization-only conversations, but in public view, and other forums, regional perhaps. Over time, it could break into working groups. It could become a national web-based ENDA campaign if it chose. Its creation awaits only a conversation and the will to have the public forum and follow where it leads. This is doable and we have the technology. But do we have the vision? Is ENDA the cause? Can we actually get each other’s attention? Do we have each other’s attention?

While some may resist such a disclosure of our tactics and open-faced campaign, I believe that such an open process will reveal more to our opposition than our strategy – it will reveal the truth of the matter to everyone. It will also put our movement on a solid democratic foundation.