Outgoing Task Force director Matt Foreman spoke at the Creating Change conference this weekend. While we’d love to highlight all of his wise words – for example, the gay rights movement is laden with racism – we’re going to highlight Foreman’s thoughts on incrementalism: “…Over the last 34 years we’ve gone from a comprehensive bill, to an employment only bill, to a broken bill that doesn’t include gender identity and does allow blatant discrimination by religious organizations. In what world can you call going from this to this incremental progress?” Worlds where public image matters more than policy results? [Bilerico]
Matt Foreman Lets Loose
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Bill Perdue
Matt Foreman’s always tried to work within the system and has done all he could to get the Democrats to pass our agenda for equality. Now he says “…Over the last 34 years we’ve gone from a comprehensive bill, to an employment only bill, to a broken bill that doesn’t include gender identity and does allow blatant discrimination by religious organizations. In what world can you call going from this to this incremental progress?â€
His disillusionment with the Democrats policy of backstabbing is shared by all honest activists. We watched with increasing anger as they mugged ENDA, maneuvered to drop the hate crimes bill and obstinately refused to repeal DOMA and DADT. It’s a certainty that the best we can hope from them is a watered down version of ENDA or the hate crimes act, and they may not even have the votes in their own party for that. They will NOT repeal Billary Clintons DOMA. As the war continues and spreads year after year they may repeal DADT if the need for cannon fodder becomes too great. Or they may reintroduce the draft or use nukes.
The Democrats continued betrayals will speed up their demise and ensure the inevitable shattering of that hopelessly antiquated assemblage of bigots, union busters and oil pirates. Their cousins the Republicans are experiencing that now. As that process of splintering continues we’ll want to be alert to form alliances with unions, African Americans, immigrants, the antiwar movement and others. But this time we want to do it as a group, in our own name. Just as we should stand shoulder to shoulder with others we have to insist that they support us.
It’s too early to say what group or groups will carry our banner in the post election period. HRC, the Log Cabinites and the Stonewall Democrats (sic) will as usual put party before principle. They may tail along but looking to them for leadership is suicidal. It’s more likely that groups like the NGLTF, UnitedENDA, Pride at Work (when they get their act together) or even a militant assembly of GLBT high school and college students will emerge to spearhead our effort. It’s something to look forward to.