January
F orging A head
Critics and strife abound, but the momentum is unstoppable:
A national gay rights march is just months aw ay
A
fter two years of planning— and
the departure of some high pro
file leaders— details of the Mil
lennium March on Washington,
planned for April 30, are finally
becoming clear.
Three big-name celebrities will headline the
entertainment, and the march now has an office
and an articulated vision.
The event, originally planned as only a rally,
now also includes a march through the streets of
the nation’s capital.
“I think this is a crucial march at a crucial
time,” says Dianne Hardy-Garcia, a Texas
activist who was recently appointed co-execu
tive director of the event. “The march is a tool
for energizing our community, bringing them
out and getting them politicized.”
Actors Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche
and singer Melissa Etheridge will he among the
performers who will entertain gay men and les
bians from across the country who gather on the
National Mall.
“Ellen and her partner, Anne, have served as
inspiring role models tor a rising generation of
lesbian and gay youth and have furthered under
standing and acceptance in the larger society,”
says Ann DeGroot, one of the march’s four
national co-chairs.
Former Portlander Donna Red Wing, anoth
er march chair, adds that Etheridge will he mak
ing her second appearance at a national gay and
lesbian march.
“Melissa’s music has been a powerful vehicle
for social change and understanding," Red Wing
says.
The three performers, as well as Third Rock
from the Sun co-star Kristen Johnson and other
performers not yet confirmed, will also appear at
Equality Rocks, a concert presented by the
Human Rights Campaign the day before the
march. (Tickets for the concert, to be held at
Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, are now available
from Ticketmaster.)
And the Millennium March will actually
include a march, Hardy-Garcia confirms. Only a
rally had been planned, but some groups wanted
a march.
Organizers had said recently they would
attempt to get permission from the city to
march.
“I can say confidently that there will be a
march,” Hardy-Garcia says. “T he permit is
Millennium March co-chair Donna Red Wing
Millennium March co-executive director
Dianne Hardy-Garcia
secure. That was a big concern. It’s kind of com
plicated to get a march permit in Washington,
D.C.”
In addition to performances by entertainers,
plans include stage presentations that address an
array of march platfonn issues.
Several hundred thousand ballots have been
distributed to gay men, lesbians and allies in
venues across the nation and online to deter
mine the platform.
Organizers had announced that during a
December board meeting they would approve
a platfonn based on the more than 40,000
responses received so far, but the group instead
to donate proceeds ro organizations around the
country.
Ninety percent of proceeds from the march
will he divided equally among statewide gay and
lesbian organizations, national organizations for
gay men and lesbians of color (people of color
make up more than half the march’s board) and
another yet-to-be-determined category.
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decided to adopt a “working vision” and is
encouraging members of the community to con
tinue sending in ballots by mail, e-mail, fax and
through an Internet site at www.mmow.org.
The eight priority issues that make up the
working vision are: hate crimes legislation and
protections; ending gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender discrimination in the workplace;
racial justice; family values— including marriage
and partner rights, adoption and child custody
issues; health care concerns; legal protection for
the community’s youth; overturning anti-gay
initiatives and laws at the federal and state level;
and privacy rights.
March organizers plan to share the event’s
registration list with state and local groups and
riticisms abounded during a Millennium March on Wash
ington board meeting held in early December in Washing
ton, D.C.
The board continued to refuse to release a financial state
ment, something that Donna Red Wing, treasurer and one of
four board co-chairs, had promised to do last April.
“Because more events are being added, the board has to
change the budget to reflect that new income and the alloca
tion of that income to the community,” Red Wing said.
Formulation of a platfonn, meanwhile, was deferred until
the next board meeting, slated for February.
Although the general tenor of the meeting was upbeat,
there was a sense that the group was flying by the seat of its
pants, with few documents to share and a tendency to defer
issues until a later date.
The board continued to be hounded by an ad hoc commit
tee of activists opposed to the board’s decision making process.
A dozen committee members dominated the public comment
period during the board’s meeting.
Mandy Carter— a longtime community organiser from
North Carolina who has worked at the national level for sever-
including the Human Rights ~
7 . 2000
'
17
Hardy-Garcia says she hopes the march will
also help bring out the largest gay and lesbian
vote in history for the presidential election.
“W hat this march is going to do is unprece
dented,” she says. “T here’s nothing like a
national march to inspire people.”
She has said she would like to have been
appointed co-executive director at least a year
ago, but now says she plans to “work her ass off"
to make sure the event runs smoothly. She is in
charge of community organizing, outreach and
communication, and will also run a new Wash
ington, D.C., office.
“I make sure it benefits the people it needs to
benefit,” she says.
Malcolm Lazin of Philadelphia, the director
of the annual gay festival and symposium Pride-
Fest America, is in charge of day-to-day man
agement, fund raising and financial reporting.
“For us, this is going to be our Woodstock,”
Lazin told The Washington Blade.
Hardy-Garcia points out that gay men and
lesbians are not allowed to marry and are denied
many other ceremonies and rights of passage.
“We have to create our own moments,” she
says. “Marches are life-transforming for people.
We have a whole generation who has never
marched.”
Hardy-Garcia says she is aware that feelings
have been hurt by the management changes the
march has undergone thus far. As recently as last
month, former executive director Robin Tyler,
the march’s founder, resigned because of “con
ceptual and creative differences” with the board.
From the beginning, the Human Rights
Campaign and the Universal Fellowship of M et
ropolitan Community Churches— the groups
that first announced the idea for the event—
have been criticized for attempting to design
such a gathering without community input.
Detractors have also questioned the march’s
goals and timing.
However, to all that Hardy-Garcia says: “In
the end, what people will remember is what it
feels like to be on that mall with thousands and
thousands of people like them.”
■ GlP PLASTER is an independent journalist based
in Fort Worth, Texas, who writes for dozens o f
gay and lesbian publications around the country.
Find his Ultimate Listing o f G ay & Lesbian Pub-
lications and more online at w w w .gayscnbe.com .
march. You don’t call a march in a closed
room and then say 18 months later, lets
vote on what our priorities might he.”
Judy Garin, executive director of the
Martina Navratilova, Ellen
National Coalition for Sexual Freedom,
DeGeneres, Ann Heche and
offered her own concern: “There is tremen
Melissa Etheridge— all white
dous violence and discrimination against
women, several of whom
the leather-fetish community.”
have been spokeswomen for
She said a speaker at the podium of the
HRC.
1993 march played an important role in
“W here is the diversi
obtaining more widespread acceptance of
ty r she asked. “And why
that community.
are we looking at celebrities
Millennium
March
naysayer
Bill
Dobbs
The coalition, she added, has sought a
before we even know what
similar commitment for a speaker in the
the platform is going to
MMOW program but “did not get warm, fuzzy feelings of
be?“
inclusion” from their contacts with MMOW.
She added that HRC’s 1998 endorsement of New York
This past fall, the coalition voted to withdraw its endorse
Sen. Al D*Amato for re-election was “pivotal" in terms of the
ment of the march.
guiding principles behind the march.
“Gee, this is a painful thing,” chimed New' York activist
W hat message is being sent to queer, poor communities of
Bill Dobbs. “I’m here to urge you to do the right thing and call
color, she asked.
this off. The way you at the table are using power is wrong.”
Carter also criticized the list of issues circulated for the
He criticized the hoard for not opening its process or its
platform.
books.
“Other than immigration, there was nothing l could relate
to,” she said. “Are we about justice, or are we about just usT
“There is no buzz up arid down the East Coast. Our collec
tive house is not in order,” he said.
Activist Nancy Wolforth added: “W hen we built other
marches on Washington, we had a purpose, we had an agen
Reported by BOB R ochr , a free-lance writer based m Washing
da. We were here to stop the war, or express our outrage.
to
ton, D .C .
,
Carter rattled off the
■
t