An Activist Reflects

It helps that they probably didn’t have to be centralized.
No,
they did it all by computer. But if we don’t burden them with our
baggage, if we don’t insist they look at the world as we see it through
60-year-old eyes and then see it freshly, there’s nothing they can’t do.
The problems come when [older activists] say, “No, that’s not the way we did it.” I
had to bite my lip six times on the march because I was like, Where are
they going to get housing? Well, they had a committee on the computer
that got all the housing that was needed. But it wasn’t the way that I
did it. We had three floors of offices and they had none. I had to be
willing to listen and learn, as they did for me. I brought a lot to the
table both philosophically about spirituality and nonviolence and tone
and rhetoric and bringing people together, so I brought a lot to the
table.

There has been an extraordinary sea change that has taken
place in the LGBT community, and it’s still taking place and it hasn’t
shaken itself totally out. Some organizations like Human Rights Campaign became very
powerful dealing with legislators, dealing with the political issues,
and I spent a good deal of my life helping to build that. I was one of
the founders of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. I was Clinton’s top
LGBT adviser, which was the historic moment where we came into our own
political power. Since then we have believed that if we raised the
money, provided the volunteers, created the alliances within the
Democratic Party, when the right moment came, our time would come too.
What has happened is a couple of things. The very first and most
important sea change in this community started with the passage of Prop.
8 [California's anti-gay-marriage measure]. A whole Prop. 8 generation of people under 30 years old who were livid
and couldn’t understand how that could happen because they had never
experienced anything like that — they were radicalized. Then the Harvey
Milk movie really inspired them. You can’t underestimate the impact of
that movie on these people. The third thing that happened was that the
leadership of our national organizations didn’t embrace them. The fourth
thing that happened was they created it themselves. I think out of the
march, four or five different organizations have been created just like
after the March on Washington in 1963.

It’s very important to
have a historical perspective of this stuff. Sometimes the more things
change, they stay the same. Since the march I have met, in my
apartment, almost every week since then, three or four new young people
each week with new ideas and new ways of doing things. I haven’t seen
such energy in ages in this community. It’s amazing. What’s happening
is, with the disappointment in Obama and the passage of Prop. 8 and
[the anti-gay-marriage Question 1 in] Maine, that we are making a transition slowly, but surely, which will
change our institutions, which will change our movement.