DENVER ( Feb. 1, 2009 ) —Less than six months after Democratic Party officials gathered in this city to nominate Barack Obama for president of the United States, Denver hosted a smaller but no less fervent gathering of left-leaning activists and organizers.
The 21st National Conference on LBGT Equality, called Creating Change, concluded today after more than 2,000 community organizers and activists gathered over five days in hundreds of workshops, lectures and skill-building sessions.
"What's powerful about Creating Change is that it's a public square where participants can exchange information. It brings people of all perspectives together to challenge each other but also to support one another in the building of our movement," said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which sponsors the conference. "We want people to bring their full selves: no one should have to check a part of their identify at the door, which is why we highlight a broad range of issues such as health, faith, aging, marriage equality and other topics."
The sessions, categorized from beginner to intensive, highlighted coalition-building strategies between and among LGBT people, with deliberate efforts toward racial, ethnic and gender inclusion.
The local planning committee hailed efforts to include an active contingent of Native American or Two-Spirit people, who spoke at the closing plenary and performed traditional music.
The recent passage of anti-LGBT ballot initiatives in California and three other states is a "wake-up call, especially for those who are not politically engaged in our community," said Sue Hyde, chief conference organizer for the Task Force. Future efforts to advance GLBT rights at the state and federal levels will need to collaborate with individuals who recently became civically engaged as a result of anti-gay initiatives. "The political environment is better but we still have a lot of work to do," she said.
"The big take-home message of the conference for me is how we re-position our movement in the face of opportunity," said Denise de Percin of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. She hopes the conference motivates participants to work across multiple issues and end the silos in which progressive politics often occurs. "For queer politics, feminism, people of color: What if we started over and started worked on all of these issues all the time?"
Hyde highlighted the HIV/AIDS plenary panel session, which included remarks by this reporter, and the participation of HIV/AIDS activists at the conference as an important shift in the conference.
"It has been an important learning experience for the community to wake up and take notice that this [ HIV/AIDS ] is still a crisis," said Hyde.
"I hope this is the beginning of greater LGBT engagement in HIV/AIDS advocacy," said Josh Thomas of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project, which led several HIV-related sessions. "I hope we see some integrating of HIV and health into the broader LGBT political agenda instead of viewing issues in silos, which has been the pitfall of the last decade of organizing."
The Task Force should sustain its involvement in HIV/AIDS and integrate it into its other political and grassroots organizing activities, he said.
"The last eight years, the administration has taken away so much money, changed programs and completely diminished the focus on LGBT people and people of color in HIV and other issues," said Carey. "Moving forward, there will be incredible opportunities working with HHS [ Dept. of Health and Human Services ] and all the other agencies, but we need to gain ground lost."
Carey, who began her career working with HIV-affected homeless youth, said the Task Force is determined to move forward on a comprehensive array of federal policy initiative drafted in coalition with 20 other LGBT groups. She displayed a thick briefing binder of federal issues and requests delivered to the Obama transition team.
"The Task Force has a commitment to pursue these like bulldogs," she said. Chief among the requests will be urging federal agencies and departments to gather more accurate information about LGBT people and their lives. Carey noted the need for advocacy around the 2010 census, which informs the composition of Congress and how federal funds are distributed in the future.
For Adam Taylor, a conference participant from Kalamazoo, Mich., sessions working with youth and involving spirituality were most relevant for the suicide- and crisis-prevention organization he started last year to conduct outreach to local LGBT youth.
His group, called Project Light, made 200 referrals last year alone—half made online on social-network sites such as Facebook. He spoke of a 20-year-old who contacted him last year after his parents kicked him out of their home with no money or place to turn upon learning of his sexual orientation.
"He had no money to pay tuition was unemployed and had already attempted suicide the week before," Taylor said. Such stories resonate with Taylor who faced similar challenges as a young adult balancing work and school and an unsupportive family.
"I hade no idea how vibrant the field of LGBT health is," said Kellan Baker, 26. As a new board member of the D.C. Center, an LGBT community organization, and graduate student at George Washington University, Baker hopes to help increase fully inclusive health services in Washington, D.C., and Moscow, his former home.
"I'm especially interested in health programs that are trans inclusive and help fight homophobia and transphobia. It's incredible how transphobia impacts health policy, poverty, and so many other disparities," he said.
"This movement needs to be capitalized and we need to be committed to institutions for this movement and we need philanthropic commitment to build and sustain this movement," said Matty Hart of Solutions for Progress in Philadelphia.
"Coming from a community organizing perspective in human rights and poverty, Creating Change has made me reconsider what my potential can be in the this [ LGBT ] movement, he said.
David Ernesto Munar, vice president at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, spoke on Creating Change's HIV/AIDS plenary panel and filed this report for Windy City Times.
