According to the National Equality March’s itinerary, the weekend of Oct. 9-11 will be jam packed with activist training workshops, memorial services, and, oh yeah, that big march and rally on the West Lawn. Yes, that is also Columbus Day Weekend, when Congress won’t be in session. Fine. But what about President Barack Obama? Surely he’ll be around to hear the cries from gay America, right?
No. He’s expected to be at the bi-annual Presidents Cup Golf tournament in San Francisco, joining Presidents Clinton and Bush II.
Officially, current and former commander-in-chiefs have not RSVPd yet; presidents, with their busy schedules sticking pins on their lapels, can only give a few days notice. But if Obama sticks to tradition, he’ll show up, just like his predecessors did while in office. (The last time a president didn’t show up was during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.)
Not that Obama’s absence from D.C. will change NEM organizers’ plans. It’s just now they have to figure out how to coordinate a demonstration in San Francisco … on the same weekend as the march.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Puck
You mean when Bush was vacationing in Texas of course
Josh
Are they still use the word “March?” Petrelis says less than 10,000 people are going. I have friends in DC that are not going. “Small Gathering” seems more appropriate.
This Cleve Jones mess is embarrassing for us and is actually so bad it could have been done by HRC.
YellowRanger
So this is an “equality march” on Washington with about 10,000 people, being held on a weekend when congress and the president won’t be IN Washington, where nobody involved in the actual marching will be demanding any actual equality……..While a completely different demonstration is taking place in San Francisco—where the president will actually be……………..
All aboard the failboat.
Chuck
Golf- hitting balls and wearing ugly clothes. Could anything be a bigger “F-you” to the gays?
Landon Bryce
Josh,
Please try to convince your friends to go.
Please go yourself if possible.
InExile
I just read that all the college Presidents are calling on all of their fellow students to join the March on Washington. Surely if all these straight kids can support equality, gays can also.
Where are you guys getting this 10,000 number of people attending? Such a low estimate is ridiculous.
Those of you throwing cold water on this march are not helping, in fact you are actively working against it’s success.
Solis
Too bad Obama will also be missing SF’s Castro Street Fair (by a week – October 4th)
Kurt
How clever. The gays pick a date for a March in DC when the Prez is already scheulded to be in Gay Mecca.
Chuck
@InExile:
Agreed. And we actually have a cause, in marked contrast to the tea baggers who showed up by the 10s to show their support of Fox News and the teenager making minimum wage for Insurance Corporations with the power to decide if you and your family live or die.
Gaufrette
Obama, it is apparent now, was just using the gay community as part of his ‘broken coaltion’ to get the numbers. I can smell betrayal burning in the air and I don’t like it.
rudy
@Gaufrette:
So Obama is to blame for Cleve Jones’s birthday march now?
Wow.
Joel
InExile wrote: “Where are you guys getting this 10,000 number of people attending? Such a low estimate is ridiculous.”
From the March’s own budget, they’re anticipating 20K people, max. It sounds like a joke, but you can estimate attendance from how many porta-Johns a group rents. If you don’t contract to rent enough, you don’t get your permit. Work their numbers, and you get enough porta-Johns for 20K max. So, 20K, that’s more than 10K, but still paltry by comparison to other major constituency actions in DC, paltry compared to previous LGBT marches, and paltry compared to recent demonstrations that garnered decent media attention.
“Those of you throwing cold water on this march are not helping, in fact you are actively working against it’s success.”
Nice blame game attempt, but if you’re suggesting that a handful of critical comments on blogs can easily overwhelm the March’s organized promotion efforts, then the real problem is with anemic and nearly-non-existent promotion efforts, not us. This movement is a democratic one. Any one of us, or group of us, has the right to express our doubts about any strategy or tactic. It’s been that way from the start, it’s that way now, and it will remain that way, so get used to it.
schlukitz
@InExile:
Joel said:
It’s been that way from the start, it’s that way now, and it will remain that way, so get used to it.
That probably explains whey they are still raiding gay bars, forty years after Stonewall!
Sounds so, oh I don’t know, Religious Right?
Joel
Oh, Schlukitz, clearly the reason they’re still raiding bars is because we haven’t had enough meetups on the Mall hastily tossed together, wherein we’ll waive signs at an empty White House and Capitol Bldg., competing for attention while three other events are held on the Mall that same day, and with just a few Members of Congress joining us (since, according to march organizers themselves, they didn’t even start calling their staff until about four weeks before the darned thing).
Yes, if we’d held this kind of march earlier, I’m sure the cops and elected officials at the city, county and state levels in Georgia and Texas would have said “HOLD UP FELLERS, I got second thoughts here, after all, didn’t you see that march on C-Span?”
I’m sure that focusing on the local and state levels over the last year or two, instead of this DC march bunk, wouldn’t have had as real an impact.
Thank you for setting me str8 on all this.
schlukitz
@Joel:
I was tempted to say “Think nothing of it”, but then I thought to myself, that’s precisely what you do think of the march. Nothing!
Thank you for your daily dose of negativity.
Btw, how is that Proposition coming along to stop the march? Collected enough signatures yet to get it put it up for a public vote?
JT
I find it very comical that whenever anyone criticizes the Messiah the kool-aid drinkers rail “BUSH BUSH BUSH”! or “RACIST RACIST RACIST”!
It’s a bit exhausting children.
Your March will fail because of the Liberals who have been screeching like hyenas how much they love the Messiah?
What are you even marching on anyway? You love your Messiah? You should be happy that he makes you grovel for morsels.
Joel
I love how it’s “negativity” to question a movement tactic today, but it wasn’t “negativity” to question failed movement strategies and tactics in the sad aftermath of Calif.’s Prop 8.
Thank you for your daily dose of inconsistency. Let’s catch up the day after the march, shall we?
schlukitz
@Joel:
Hope you like the flavor of crow! LOL
Joel
Wish you could tell us a single tangible political product of this march, that cannot be better achieved in any other manner!
Wish you could stretch beyond rhetoric to discuss specifics! Wish you could venture staking your credibility on an estimated attendance, outcome, and purpose!
Wish you realized politics is not a scene out of a movie! Wish you understood a 1960s protest model is anemic a decade into the next century!
Walk your little soles off.
schlukitz
@Joel:
You seem to be of the opinion that your comments about this upcoming march are of paramount importance. Words that should be struck in stone. You know, like the Emancipation Proclamation or Manifest Destiny.
I don’t know to tell you this gently but, they’re not!
After all is said and done, it’s just YOUR opinion and nothing more and they won’t make one iota of difference one way or the other with respect to gaining our civil rights.
Hope that doesn’t break your little heart.
Joel
I know well the difference between some comments on a blog thread and those “struck in stone.” (I wasn’t sure that “Manifest Destiny” was something placed into stone, but I know we should all trust your civics brainpower).
I also know the diff between meaningful political strategies and tactics, and a meetup in front of an empty capitol and WH.