Rad Geek People's Daily

Today is the 33^rd anniversary of the Stonewall uprising (well, perhaps: some date Stonewall on June 28, since much of what occurred was after midnight) in New York City, the foundational event of the modern gay liberation movement. But it seems to have slipped many gay rights organizations' minds.

Stonewall marked the first spectacular uprising of a radical, agitating gay movement which would no longer settle for the daily denigration and terrorism inflicted against LGBT people, and would not accept compromise, appeasement, or a ghettoized underground gay community as the solution.

Although the Stonewall Inn remains a powerful marker to gay liberation activists outside of the US, many in America have forgotten it, or wish we would. Today, there is a feel-good liberal gay rights movement which (sometimes) pays lip service to Stonewall, but rarely remembers the power of that moment. And there is a gay Right movement which loathes Stoneall and everything it stands for. They both work, with only slightly different priorities, for appeasement, tolerance, and assimilation into the mainstream of American culture. But at Stonewall they were not pleading for justice in return for assimilation. Butch dykes, fairies, drag queens, street kids, and every other spectre haunting homophobic American culture stormed through the streets, fighting back against the police who had victimized them for so long. Stonewall's lasting legacy rests in groups such as the Gay Liberation Front, Radicalesbians, ACT-UP, and others, which confronted our culture with an uncompromising demand for justice, an end to oppression rather than an end to difference. This is what has marked the past three decades with unparalleled success, compared to the relative stagnation of the era of reformist groups such as the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis and ghettoized underground bars.

The feel-good liberals and the conservatives play into each other's hands to write the radicals out of history. I looked for a good story on the anniversary, and found nothing at all on:

1. The Advocate magazine and news updates
2. Out
3. Gay.com News
4. Human Rights Campaign
5. PFLAG

But in spite of the blackout, the radicals have been here all along. They were instrumental to the triumphs of the past thirty years, as gay liberation has made stellar progress on every front. They were here to suffer the horrors, with the Reagan backlash, the AIDS holocaust, and the rise in anti-gay murders. And all significant progress toward gay liberation depends on the ability of radical views and solutions to remain within the LGBT community and LGBT activism.

I hope that everyone will take some time today to remember and thank those who have gone before us in the struggle for justice. Happy anniversary, everyone.

As of this morning I will be on the road to visit the family in Texas (partially because I haven't seen them in ages, partially as a maneuver to get the car back in time to pick up a guest from Atlanta), so GT and The Daily Linkroll may be sporadic for a little while. Don't say I didn't warn you.

In the meantime, have a ball reading T. Phoebe Reilly's review and critique of Ghost World from Bitch. I recently saw the film and enjoyed it a great deal; the review does a pretty good job of summing up both what I liked and what worried me throughout.

Today, Mr. Padilla was being held in a high security jail at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina. Bush administration officials said Mr. Padilla had been declared an enemy combatant, a status that makes it easier for the government to detain him without having to bring a criminal charge that would force it disclose sensitive intelligence sources.

There was also some question as to whether there was enough evidence, absent information gathered from intelligence sources, to bring a traditional criminal prosecution that could be won in court. That meant, officials said, that the best and perhaps only realistic alternative was to turn him over to military custody in which he could be held indefinitely.

When I heard the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense cooperated effectively to place an American citizen under indefinite detention without charges in complete violation of the Constitution, I felt much safer from those who hate our freedom. God Bless America.

For further reading:

• Ex parte Merryman decision (1861), under which Executive suspension of habeas corpus during wartime is unconstitutional
• Tom Tomorrow on the convenient timing of the announcement of this month-old arrest
• GT 2001/10/01: Biff's Back, for a commentary on civil liberties in this time of crisis
• GT 2001/09/17: Fears of Domestic Fascism

The anti-choice movement has been working for years to spread disinformation and harassing counseling on abortion through deceptive Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which pose as women's health clinics. In reality, CPCs generally offer only pregnancy tests and use the results to harass and intimidate women with unplanned pregnancies. Some even serve as commercial adoption brokers, directly profiteering from the anti-choice propaganda that they peddle.

In their latest move, CPCs have begun to move online. A Google search for "abortion" returns paid AdWords for online websites which either are directly connected with CPCs, such as ChooseBirth.com, and front projects for CPCs, such as StandUpGirl.com (where you can hear carefully selected and edited testimonials, get phone numbers for national CPC hotlines, and Take a glimpse into the cool world within the womb via 3-D ultrasound and color e-scopy video.

Google's AdWords and other new web publicity tools are something that we in the pro-choice movement have to be aware of. The antis are already exploiting them to get their agitprop out to women and girls looking for help. We had better start talking about what we can do to better provide and disseminate pro-choice information against the tide of CPCs and their anti-choice supporters.

OK, as promised, here's the report from the past few days of cross-state rabble-rousing. The big event was a protest at the DEA offices in Montgomery, as part of a national day of direct action at about 60 DEA offices across the country, fighting back against the federal government's nation-wide crackdown against medical marijuana dispensaries.

We drove up to Birmingham on Monday night to petition at the primary election polling places to get Dr. Jimmy Blake on the ballot as an independent candidate for Jefferson County Commission in the November general election. The sun was beating down on us all day, and the breeze couldn't bother itself to blow for more than about five minutes. Nevertheless, the pay was good, and Vestavia Hills was a hopping place for getting signatures. One poll worker said she'd sign the petition because she supported Jimmy Blake, but she didn't think we should be outside a primary polling place to petition. Well, OK, I thought, and I don't think you all should be using state funds to subsidize the internal party business of the two major parties. I'd be glad to stop petitioning out front of primary polling places if Demopublicans actually had to go through the same shit to get on the ballot that independents do. But I held my tongue. A signature is a signature.

On Wednesday morning we drove down to Tuscaloosa and began to plan the big event for Thursday 6/6.

Thursday we met Floyd Shackleford in Wetumpka The Montgomery TV press had arrived thanks to the efforts of the media collective assisting ASA, and we got a chance for some great film of Floyd delivering our Cease & Desist order from 73% of the American people to the DEA. We held a banner (DEA: Stop Arresting Patients) and distributed the fake WANTED posters I put together for the event, while Floyd and I talked to the interviewers.

We had prepared Burma-Shave signs which we hoped to hold by the side of the road for passing motorists to see, but we arrived a bit late and all we had time to do was deliver the Cease & Desist order and talk to the press. We had also run off lots of copies of flyers to hand out to passing pedestrians, but the DEA building was off in a office building ghetto a bit off the main streets, so there was no foot traffic for handing out our flyers. I was a bit disappointed that it turned out to be more of a press conference than an actual demonstration. Nevertheless, the newsmedia coverage was a lot more sympathetic than I thought it would be, and it came together pretty well for something we had thrown together in less than a week of active planning. The day was beautiful, the drive home peaceful, and the remainder of the day restful.

Take action! Thanks to the publicity from participating in the national event, we are quickly gaining contacts around the state for future actions toward taking the high ground in the drug war. If you are in Alabama and would like to join the network we are developing of activists who are fighting to end the federal government's assaults on states' rights and compassionate care, get in touch and ask me to add you to the contact list.