You know, it’s really just pathetic when the Democratic leadership’s most forceful condemnation of reckless international aggression comes from Al fucking Gore. If he ends up being the most pro-peace Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 2004, I think I am going to go insane and start systematically knocking off people’s hats.

Meanwhile, in DC, the waffling continues:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House’s second-ranked Democrat, said yesterday that she didn’t think Democrats would offer a single alternative to the Bush proposal. Her party, she said, was working on a number of different approaches that she hoped would become a part of the resolution that Congress finally votes on.

This is precisely what the problem is. Despite some high-level divisions, the Right is overwhelmingly lining up behind George W. Bush. They’re pushing this issue as hard as they can and trying to use it as a wedge for November. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, because it’s viscerally terrified of anything that might vaguely resemble a consistent commitment to social justice, or an opinion seriously challenging the Administration on foreign policy, has no unified plan, is making no common voice, and generally is letting the Right-wing nuts have a field day with it.

This is precisely why we need a vibrant multiparty system, so that the many people who are now in the Democratic coalition (Congressional and otherwise) who know that the present course of the Party leadership is politically suicidal and fundamentally reckless and stupid, actually have some leverage to challenge the War Party toadies and the Right-wing maniacs.

The LGBT community in California suffered a tragic loss when Jeffery Tod Owens was murdered on June 6. A gang of four to six men attacked Owens and Michael Bussee at about midnight outside of the Menagerie bar in Riverside. They stabbed Owens at least four times as they spat out anti-gay slurs, including "You want some trouble… fag, here it is." There’s been no motive at all uncovered other than simple, blind, blood-thirsty hatred.

The campaign of terror against gay men, lesbians, and transgendered people has got to stop. I’m tired of reporting on savage attacks, and I’m tired of celebrating the lives of people who should still be alive to celebrate with us. I urge everyone to join grassroots efforts for awareness and acceptance of the queer community, such as National Coming Out Day on October 11 and the Day of Silence against hate crimes on April 9. Str8 allies, help out wherever you can; we need the support. And I think we need to start talking as a community about what kind of efforts we can make to really track and fight back against anti-gay terror. I mean grassroots groups that move beyond the HRC style of top-down lobbying and feel-good cultural activism (that’s valuable, but it’s not enough on its own). How can we organize locally to defend ourselves and the people we care about? I don’t have any answers, but I hope that we can start asking the questions.

For further reading

• GT 12/10/2001 Gender Terrorism in Nashville
• GT 8/25/2001 Terrorism Against Gay Men in Hawaii
• GT 4/09/2001 Savage Anti-Gay Violence in Pennsylvania
• GT 8/03/2001 Anti-Queer Terrorism in Our Schools
• GT 5/05/2001 Religious Right Attacks Queer Students’ Safety in Washington Schools

Some bad news coming out of Alaska: the ballot initiative to institute Instant Runoff Voting state-wide in Alaska was soundly defeated, with 64% of voters rejecting the measure.

If implemented, the measure would have used IRV in all state and federal elections other than governor (the Alaska constitution specifies plurality voting for the gubernatorial race). IRV is a ballot reform where candidates are ranked by voters in order of preference. If there is no majority winner of first-place votes, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and an "instant runoff" is held using the second-place votes of the people who had voted for that candidate. IRV uses a single paper ballot to create as many runoff rounds as are necessary to find a candidate with majority support, whereas our current first-past-the-post system simply throws up its hands and gives the election to the person who got more votes than any of the others, even if a majority of voters voted against her or him.

The first-past-the-post system creates all sorts of problems, especially the "spoiler" phenomenon: if there are more than two candidates running in an election, candidates with similar positions can end up splitting the vote, and the first-past-the-post system will just throw the election to a candidate with a minority of the vote, but with enough votes to get more than either of the two candidates who represented the majority position. This creates the old "Wasting your vote" brickbat used against every third party candidate. Instant Runoff Voting would mean an end to "lesser of two evils" politics as we know it, and allow breathing room for a vibrant, growing independent party movement.

Unfortunately, the Alaska League of Women Voters played a major role in smears and distortions which helped defeat the initiative, in spite of the LWV’s overwhelming support for Instant Runoff Voting nation-wide.

The Alaska League of Women Voters opposed the measure, saying there was too little public debate about it and too many potential problems. League President Cheryl Jebe said preferential voting violates the principle of one person, one vote.

This is just a lie. IRV has been repeatedly upheld against court challenges that it violates one-person-one-vote. It does not violate one-person-one-vote any more than a traditional run-off violates it; indeed, it respects the principle more, since all voters have the same opportunity to make a run-off vote, whereas in traditional run-off systems, voter turnout always decreases in the run-off because people cannot necessarily make it out to two different elections.

Jebe said the measure was too confusing and too costly to implement.

This is also a lie. IRV has been used in elementary school elections and is no more difficult to understand than counting 1-2-3. Since Alaska often has to use traditional run-offs, which require a second election, IRV would also result in substantial savings to Alaska taxpayers.

Oh well. You win some, and you lose some. Does this mean that the people aren’t ready for democracy? No, it just means that some powerful interests are lined up against us and ready to use any lie or manipulation they can to try to stop IRV from taking power out of the hands of political cronies. We have to do a better job of presenting how IRV works and why we all benefit from it. The campaign for IRV is still building steam, and as it becomes adopted from the bottom-up more and more across the country, I believe that serious ballot reform will still see its day.

There is good news on the electoral front in the effort to end the US‘s insane war on people who use certain kinds of drugs.

In Georgia, Bob Barr has lost his seat in Congress. Because of redistricting, Barr faced another House incumbent, Rep. John Linder, in the Republican primary, and lost in a 2/3 – 1/3 massacre. Bob Barr is one of the worst drug warriors in Congress, particularly known for his assaults on democracy in Washington DC in order to deep-six a successful medical marijuana voter initiative. A Libertarian candidate’s ad targeting Barr for his sadistic zealotry against medical marijuana may even have played a significant role in Barr’s defeat.

Across the country in Nevada, a ballot initiative will be appearing in November which could completely reshape the drug war debate in America: Nevada already has a provision for medical marijuana; Question 9 would legalize the selling of medical marijuana and completely eliminate arrests for use and possession of up to three ounces of marijuana. A victory for this initiative would represent a dramatic rollback of drug prohibition and the first major strike against the cooperation between feds and state governments in the Drug War. According to recent polling data, the initiative is in a dead heat: 48% support it, 48% oppose, and 4% are undecided. With on-going organizing and campaigning, Nevada has a very good chance of rolling back prohibition this November.

These state-by-state, grassroots victories are just what is needed to win. Medical marijuana initiatives across the country are already rolling back state restrictions and greatly taxing the resources of the DEA. As the campaign expands into more states (one, two, many Vietnams…) our low-level victories are reaching the critical mass at which the government’s ability to carry on its sadistic drug war will simply collapse. Onwards.

Take Action!

You can help Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement with a small contribution which will allow them to run hard-hitting ads in favor of the initiative in the days immediately before the vote. Your contribution will help them push their campaign over the finish line.

As I mentioned, I spent the past weekend attenting the fourth annual Southern Girls Convention in Athens, Georgia. About 250-300 people showed up from all over the South. I had the opportunity to attend a few really good workshops, had a really good time with friends, heard Elaine Brown and Constance Curry give great talks, saw some excellent shows, and most of all, had the invigorating experience of getting touch with hundreds of people and organizations doing social justice organizing in the South.

SGC’02 organizer Natasha Murphy, super-rad and looking a bit like Che in this photo

Before I go on, let me just say: thank you so much to Natasha, Merritt, Julie, Theo, and everyone else who drove themselves so hard to make sure that everything was set to go in Athens. Thanks also to all the wonderful women and pro-women organizers who made it all happen by organizing workshops and participating in the convention. As y’all may know, I helped organize last year’s Southern Girls Convention in Auburn. It’s been really invigorating to see the convention going on—not to mention having a chance to actually participate rather than just driving myself sleepless and staffing the registration desk!

Why am I getting so effusive? Well, simply the fact that several hundred rad people could come together and put on a pretty unapologetically anarchist / radical feminist political convention in the heart of the Deep South (Alabama and then Georgia) is inspiring and a bit humbling—and the fact that we’ve done it for four years now, going on five, is invigorating. The event has risen to the level of even getting coverage in the New York Times (!). The Times story presents a pretty positive image of the convention, but like most major media presentation, it leaves out a lot of important things about what the convention’s all about politically, and how it runs. But you have to understand all that to understand why SGC is as important and inspiring as it is. The convention is a totally grassroots, bottom-up meeting which is completely organized by local kids and run by the participants rather than any kind of self-appointed professional organizers. Workshops are based around the idea that we don’t need to import experts to tell us how to organize (from the North or from privileged sectors in our own community)—we can share our own knowledge and learn from each other. And the convention’s politics are unapologetically radical feminist, generally socialist and/or anarchist, pro-LGBT, and supportive of many other struggles for social justice. It’s not about being Scarlet O’Hara with an attitude (and let’s not even get started on the racism of that ideal…). Rather, as the Times article gets to at one point, it’s about Southern women and pro-woman activists raising hell and working to make our own communities in the South places that we want to live. And I feel really confident that we are beginning to see that happen.

What does this mean, in concrete terms, on the ground?

It means that we are working on having hard discussions about what we can do to improve our communities and our organizing efforts — such as how we can build activist communities that are more open, loving, and supportive even when we are facing emotional stress and crisis; what sort of processes we need to help prevent and respond to sexual assault in our communities; and how boys can become good allies in the work for women’s liberation. Here we got a lot of good starts but also need a lot more work. For next year, we are talking about new formats for workshops that will give people a lot more space for in-depth and focused strategizing on concrete solution—while still offering time for introductory discussion about the issue and the principles from which we want to approach it.

It also means we are doing on-the-ground organizing to roll back the power of the small Right-wing elite that has rigged the game for so long in the South through measures that directly challenge, or simply sidestep, their power plays. A perfect example is the movement to set up abortion funds to ensure low-income women’s access to reproductive choice in spite of the government’s refusal to cover this vital medical procedure under Medicaid.

It also means chances to share our skills in how-tos, whether on good vegan nutrition, political lobbying, bicycle repair, or taking control of your own body and healthcare.

And it means networking and enjoying a community with people doing work all over the South. When Southern activists are primarily used to feelings of isolation and hopelessness, the value of just seeing how many other people are working for change can’t be overstated.

Organizers have discussed all kinds of plans for how we can improve and expand the work we are doing through SGC. The always-rad Ailecia Ruscin is working on a networking project to keep Southern organizers more closely in touch with one another from day to day (if you’re interested in this project, get in touch with me and I’ll let you know more). We’re talking about organizing smaller state-level meetings to accompany the big annual meeting, allow for more discussions and much more on-the-ground organizing meetings. And new organizers are planning on putting on the next SGC in Asheville, North Carolina. Everyone is really excited about making the fifth SGC even bigger and better than before, and continuing to make SGC a transformative presence in the South for many years to come.

Women’s liberation and the rest of the struggle for social justice are not just alive and kicking in the South; the movement is on the rise and can no longer be ignored.

For further reading:

• GT 7/27/2001 Southern Girls Convention builds pro-woman community in the Deep South
• NYT 7/22/2002 Where a Southern Girl is also a Feminist by Kate Zernike