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Hi y’all.
I’m especially happy to be working with Firedoglake today after seeing them support a cause I’m also targeting from another angle. The recent action alert to pressure Obama to sign the Executive Order ENDA echoes my work with the Occupy Austin OccuQueers and Get Equal Texas. Some days ago I participated in the first stage of an escalating campaign of direct action on Executive ENDA by delivering pens to Austin’s Obama For America headquarters.
The OccuQueers were tipped off that one of Obama’s LGBT advisors was coming to town Sunday for a ‘LGBT Briefing’ at the Four Season’s Hotel downtown. A few of us hoped to attend and ask questions about why Obama isn’t keeping his promises to our community. When I RSVP’d for the event, I quickly received a reply from Nydia Gutiérrez letting me know I was on the guest list.
The following morning, while I ate at Waffle House, I noticed another email. Could I please send my address, employer, and any group affiliations? Before I could reply, I had yet another email, but this time from Obama For America’s Mary Pharris asking me to call. When she called back she told me, without asking any questions, that the guest list was closed and I wasn’t on it. She apologized for the inconvenience but would contact me in the future if there were events I could participate in.
I don’t know how personally to take this — did they google my name after accepting my RSVP and go ‘Oh crap, that’s the guy who mic checked Arne Duncan?’ — because after their flip flop on my attendance they also rejected other allies of ours, including an active duty service member. Regardless, it’s a continued disappointment that while Obama expects the support of the LGBT community, they ignore their promises to us while holding secretive strategy briefings.
We’ll keep the pressure up. They can ‘Expect Us,’ as someone once said.
That’s what’s on the mind of this queer hippie occupier & an unapologetic Lady Gaga Fan. What’s on your mind today? This is today’s open thread.
4 Comments
How very rude of them!
Gaga fan here too.
Well, if they can’t get reactor #4 at Fukushima, Japan, safe, and it looks impossible, all human life in the northern hemisphere is done anyway, according to a Japanese diplomat who’s requesting UN intervention.
The diplomat in question, Mr. Akio Matsumura, previously Japanese ambassador to Switzerland, can be found at
http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html
Good luck to all of us!
They’re studying the possible evacuation of Tokyo, – that’s 20 million people, – at present, and so you can expect a sudden influx of Japanese wherever you live.
Interesting times without a doubt.
Wahyusamputra
Why am I unsurprised by this turn of events? It is SOP for the gang of sellouts and liars in the Maladministration of “Hope and Change”! All we have received from them is the Chicagoization of our National politics.
It is truly unfortunate that you don’t posses sufficient political clout (read cold, hard cash) to merit their attention. I am willing to bet that if you were multimillionaire, your original invitation would have been honored, no matter what your history.
I do feel like Obama learned a lot from Chicago politics, and that’s why we have to find some way to make it expensive, or annoying enough that he has to pay attention to this issue.