Washington:
Who we are: Approve Referendum 71 is the campaign to preserve domestic partnerships in Washington State. By voting to approve, voters retain the domestic partnership laws that were passed during this year’s legislative session, including using sick leave to care for a partner, adoption rights, insurance rights, and more.
What we need: We need phone bankers to get our supporters out to vote. Washington is an all mail-in ballot state, and we need to ensure our supporters put their ballots in the mail. Also, youth turnout is a critical component of our campaign, and youth turnout historically drops in off-year elections. So we need a lot of help to turn them out.
How you do it: Sign up here to make remote calls for Approve 71. We’ll then contact you for a training, and you can make GOTV calls.
Maine:
Who we are: The No On 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign is working to protect Maine’s recently-passed law legalizing marriage equality for same-sex couples. Our opponents have put the issue on the ballot for Nov 3, 2009. Because of Maine’s early voting election laws, people are already voting at the polls, so we need help immediately to turn out our side at the polls.
What we need: We need you to devote a few hours to Call for Equality. Call for Equality is a virtual phonebank set up so that you can call Maine voters wherever you are. Much of Maine is rural, where canvassing isn’t effective, so we need to reach these voters- along with other supporters- by phone. All you need is a phone and internet connection. No experience required! We’ll provide the training, and all you need is a a few hours to help get a win in Maine.
How you do it: Click here to sign up for a training and your shift. There are lots of times available for your convenience.
Kalamazoo, MI:
Who We Are: The Yes on Ordinance 1856 / One Kalamazoo campaign is working in Michigan to support the City Commission of Kalamazoo’s twice approved ordinance for housing, employment, and public accommodation protections for gay and transgender residents. Opponents forced a public referendum on the ordinance so dedicated local volunteers, led by former Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Jon Hoadley, are working to ensure voters say YES to fairness and equality and keep Ordinance 1856.
Why The Urgency: In the final weeks, the opposition has gone all out with aggressive disinformation and misleading red herrings to try to defeat the ordinance. This includes signs that say “No to Discrimination” (even though voting No actually supports continued discrimination of GLBT residents), transphobic door hangers and fliers, and now radio ads that falsely suggest that criminal behavior will become legal when this simply isn’t true. The Yes on Ordinance 1856 supporters are better organized but many voters who want to vote for gay and transgender people are getting confused by the opposition.
How To Help:
1) Help the One Kalamazoo campaign raise a final $10,000 specifically dedicated to fight back against the lies on the local TV and radio airwaves and fully fund the campaign’s final field and GOTV efforts.
Give here: http://www.actblue.com/page/3-2-1-countdown
2) If you live nearby and can physically volunteer in Kalamazoo sign up here. If you know anyone that lives in Kalamazoo, use the One Kalamazoo campaign’s online canvass tool to remind those voters that they need to vote on November 3rd and vote YES on Ordinance 1856 to support equality for gay and transgender people.
Contact voters: http://www.onekalamazoo.com/tellfriends2
Some people have commented about the recent incident in Florida where five boys set fire to another. They expressed their “outrage” about why isn’t it called a hate crime when the victim is white. Details revealed that this was not a “hate crime” and that race had nothing to do with the incident.
“Crimes of hatred and prejudice-from lynchings to cross burnings to vandalism of synagogues… the term “hate crime” did not enter the nation’s vocabulary until the 1980s, when emerging hate groups like the Skinheads launched a wave of bias-related crime. The FBI began investigating what we now call hate crimes as far back as the early 1920s, when we opened our first Ku Klux Klan case. Today, we remain dedicated to working with state and local authorities to prevent these crimes and to bring to justice those who commit them.”
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sex of any person. In 1995, the Sentencing Commission implemented these guidelines, which only apply to federal crimes. Following the passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 and at the request of the Attorney General, the FBI has gathered and published hate crime statistics every year since 1992.
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, expands existing federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, and drops the prerequisite that the victim be engaged in a federally-protected activity. The language passed refers to “Crimes of Violence.” It specifically includes transgendered individuals and makes it explicit that the law does not restrict people’s freedom of speech or association.
Basis of the hate crimes reported in 2007 (FBI data) :
| Basis of Crime | % of Crimes Reported | Sub-Category | % of Category |
| Race | 52% | Anti-black | 69% |
| Ethnicity | 14% | Anti-Hispanic | 62% |
| Religion | 17% | Anti-Jewish | 69% |
| Sexual Orientation | 16% | Anti-LGBT | 98% |
| Disability | < 1% |
Note: The FBI has noticed a 30% increase of crimes against the homeless since 1999, 75% of which were perpetrated by persons under the age of 25.
Per Capita rate of hate crimes, 2005 (FBI data)
| Sexual Orientation | Incidents | Adult Population | Incidents per million |
| Gays | 621 | ||
| Lesbians | 155 | ||
| Homosexual | 195 | ||
| Total | 971 | 10.9 mil | 89.1 |
| Bisexual | 25 | 6.5 | 3.95 |
| Heterosexual | 21 | 200.4 | .10 |
- Data based on 2005 FBI hate crime report assumes adult population of 217.8 million.
- Assumes 92% of all adults are heterosexual, 5% are homosexual and 3% bisexual.
Note: Some religious and social conservatives with their own anti-LGBT agendas, believe this figure is much lower. Some LGBT groups and their supporters believe the percentage is much higher. - Assumes all victims were adults, 18 or older.
- Based on FBI data, a homosexual is about 850 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime motivated by his/her sexual orientation than is a heterosexual.
Note: The number of reported hate crimes in 2007 is 8% higher than the 2005 figures.
How accurate are these figures?
One study of gay, lesbian and bisexual adults showed that 41% reported being a victim of a hate crime at sometime during their life after the age of 16. Assuming that 8% of all adults are LGBT, at the time of the study, this means that about 7,000,000 had been victimized during their lifetime out of a total of about 17,000,000,000 individuals. This annualizes to at least 100,000 hate crimes against LGBTs per year (7,000,000 divided by 60 years).
Even this number may be a low estimate. I have been the subject of anti-gay hate crimes on three separate occasions and physical and verbal assaults twice, but they were either not reported or not treated by law enforcement as hate crimes. Many times, even if the crime is reported, the police may refuse to recognize it as such, hence the provisions in the new law, or had no law on the books in their jurisdiction to do so.
Because only about 1,500 hate crimes based on sexual orientation are actually recorded by police per year on average, one must conclude that a miniscule percentage of hate crimes are actually reported to the police by gays and lesbians.
Regarding enhanced penalties for hate crimes, according to former Chief Justice Rehnquist: “this conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm…. bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.”
Some people object to penalty-enhancement and federal prosecution laws because they believe they offer preferred protection to certain individuals over others, saying that “all crimes are hate crimes.” This is categorically not true. Mugging someone at random to steal a wallet or purse for monetary gain is not a hate crime. Beating someone senseless because of who they are is.
Here’s an email I recently received. Apparently this character has gotten the boot before.
SPEAK UP ON TUESDAY AND BEFORE
(To read the original open letter, click here or at the link on the left.)
- Jimmy Smith, jrsmith@co.humboldt.ca.us , 707 476 2391
- Clif Clendenen, cclendenen@co.humboldt.ca.us , 707 476 2392
- Mark Lovelace, mlovelace@co.humboldt.ca.us , 707 476 2393
- Bonnie Neely, bonnie.neely@co.humboldt.ca.us , 707 476 2394
- Jill Duffy, jduffy@co.humboldt.ca.us , 707 476 2395
Friday, October 2, 2009
AN OPEN LETTER TO HUMBOLDT
On June 9 2004, Brian Williamson was found murdered at his home. Williamson was the public face of the gay rights movement in Jamaica, one of the most homophobic places on the planet. Rebecca Schleifer of Human Rights Watch arrived at Williamson’s house to find a crowd singing and dancing.
People were singing a reggae song, Boom Bye Bye, written by Mark Myrie, a reggae performer who goes by the stage name Buju Banton.
This song calls for the murder of gay people, recommending the Uzi machine gun.
It calls for throwing acid in our faces.
Promoter Carol Bruno of People Productions is paying Buju Banton to perform in Eureka. Gil Miracle, owner of the new venue Nocturnum, has rented his space to Bruno. Local newspapers are carrying advertising.
Click here for national info from cancelbujubarton.wetpaint.com.
Bruno will tell you that Banton wrote Boom Bye Bye when he was fifteen. She won’t tell you he still sells it and profits.
She’ll tell you most of his songs are about peace and love. She won’t tell you he says he’s at war with the faggots.
Here’s part of an open letter from Lorrie L. Jean, CEO of Los Angeles’ gay and lesbian center. She’s responding to an open letter from Banton’s manager:
While ‘setting the record straight,’ you didn’t mention that in 2007, when some of Banton’s European concerts were threatened with cancellation, he signed the ‘Reggae Compassionate Act’ (under his real name: Mark Myrie) agreeing (among other things) to never perform anti-gay songs. Perhaps you neglected to mention this, because just weeks later, Banton denied he ever signed it and continued to perform ‘Boom, Bye Bye.’
He was videotaped singing it in Miami in 2006, and sang it in Guyana in 2007.
In 2005, Banton was personally involved in an attack on six gay men in Jamaica.
Here’s a quote from Amnesty International’s 2005 Annual Report:
“popular musician Buju Banton was charged with assaulting six men who he alleged were homosexuals. His song lyrics repeatedly advocated violence against gay men and lesbians.”
Bruno will tell you Banton was never convicted. She won’t tell you that the witnesses never showed at trial. One man lost an eye.
Imagine for a moment if a singer were coming to town who advocated the violent murder of interracial couples, who’d written a song that was played as a celebration at such murders, who refused to renounce violence against such couples, and who still profited from the song.
Imagine that the singer’s promoter explained that most of his songs were about God’s love, and complained that interracial couples couldn’t just “get over it.”
Imagine that the singer had personally been involved in a violent assault on an interracial couple, in which one lost an eye.
How would you feel? How would you feel if you were part of an interracial couple, or had a friend or friends in one?
I understand that many of those who will go to the concert (if it happens) are not anti-gay. Many will have heard and believed the lies that Bruno and others spread in order to make blood money off performances by people like Banton. Many will idealistically defend free speech and the right of an artist to “freedom of expression.”
If this concert goes on, I know there will be a large group outside Nocturnum, exercising our rights to freedom of expression as well. Our point will be simple: if you won’t renounce your advocacy of our murder, we don’t want you in Eureka.
The United States Constitution, you have to love it. Not only does it guarantee us our freedoms we enjoy and that many good citizens have died for to protect, but it also is there to protect us from our own self-righteousness.
I have heard many times before that the atheists, agnostics, and the Muslims are taking away the right to practice our religions. You see and hear this on TV, certain websites, and many, many blogs.
Is it really true it’s those non-believers that are fighting hard to take this right away, or is it the religious themselves the ones destroying this right guaranteed by the constitution?
The reason why I bring this up is because of the fear and propaganda I am hearing about the current president of this great nation. I have heard time and time again that he is a Muslim and he is out to destroy us.
When we accuse this man of being a Muslim, are we not taking away his freedom of religion? Are we not demonizing someone else’s belief and telling the world his belief should not be allowed or accepted? Are we not telling people that we should not have the right choose which religion, if any, is ours to choose?
Whether or not this man is a Muslim, I think those that are making him out to be this evil Muslim, are destroying not just his freedom of religion, but every other American in this country.
So the next time you want to disrespect the belief of another man, think twice and give us a good reason why your beliefs should be respected in return.
