Get Used to It: Ep. 46, "Gay Rights and The Left"

(typewriter clacking) (typewriter clacking) (upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used To It." I'm Sheila Kuehl, your host, as usual, and today, I have one of those shows where we kind of start with a topic and figure out where we're going with it. I had a thought the other day that since the governments of France and England, and now Mexico seem to have taken a bit of a left turn or a return, that it might be interesting to talk about whether we see anything like that in our near or far future in the United States. And if so, what that might mean to the gay and lesbian movement as it constitutes or reconstitutes or reinvents itself. I have three wonderful people here to talk with us today about this, Jackie Goldberg, who is a city council member in the city of Los Angeles. Welcome, Jackie. - Thank you. It's nice to be here. - Great to have you. Charles Stewart, who is Chief Deputy to State Senator Diane Watson and the former co-chair of the National Association of Black and White Men Together. Welcome, Charles. And our third guest, Torie Osborn, finally having moved back to Los Angeles from Washington DC. We're happy you're here. Who as I'm sure you know, is the author of the book, "Coming Home to America," and the former Executive Director of The Center here in LA. Welcome, Torie. - Glad to be here. - Jackie, let's start with you because for no reason, except I guess you just got back from France and you sort of heard the premise as I stated it to the people. What do you think? - Well, I think that European politics are so very different than American politics, that it would be hard to extrapolate from what's happening there. When I was in France, everyone was talking because I was there right after the June 1st elections and unbeknownst to anybody, not only were the Conservatives turned out of power instead of gaining seats, they were routed out of power. And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that people were very afraid that the various subsidies, which are a part and parcel of French life at really all levels, three out of five people live in some kind of housing that has some subsidy from the government in one fashion, or another, either that's how it got built or that's how they get rented or so forth. Many private corporations are, in part, subsidized by government funds and so forth and so on. I think that the thought of the austerity program was enough for them to say, nah, I don't think so, not in interested in austerity, and they threw out the Conservative government instead of the Conservative government calling the elections to pick up seats. That's why they called them, was to pick up more seats, so they'd be a little stronger when they went into the austerity program. - Gives new meaning to the oops factor. - [Jackie] Yeah, truly, truly. - Better not call an election till you know who's gonna show up. - Yeah, it's just amazing. So think the parliamentary system makes it possible for things like that to happen, because the parliamentary system is much more responsive to the mood of people than our system, which has defined elections in specific years at specific times, only a third of the senators. You can't really change this government very quickly, very easily, and that's how it was designed, by people who did not like rapid change. So we're with a structure that makes changes, even if the mood of the country changes, it takes a long time to get there. You've gotta be able to sustain it for a long period, as I think the Republicans may be about to find out. And it's difficult to sustain it for a long period because we've become a country, I think, that wants instant change in whatever it is that's troubling us and government is slower than that. And so, the next two years they say, we asked you for this, you didn't give us this, off with their heads. I do think, though, that there is a trend back maybe away from the radical right. I think Newt and company gave everybody a really good view of what that would look like, and I think that's why Clinton was reelected, in part. And I think that has a lot to do with the radical right's social agenda. I think they've done better on their economic front than they've done on their social agenda, but they can't get, it's like holding the tiger by the tail. They can't give up the social agenda or they lose a huge block of their voters. So they hold onto this social agenda, which includes homophobia and all of the other phobias that they're scatter around with their every breath, and the problem is, is that whole bunches of people in America just don't don't buy that stuff anymore. - Does it matter, though, that in the United States, I mean, if you had to point to a place or a political party or anywhere that the left might be resting, you know, ready to rearticulate its agenda, it's much more difficult to find here than, I would guess, at least in the countries where we saw this come back, although the Labour Party in England nobody's gonna say they're the epitome of the left wing. - By comparison to anything in America, they are. - [Sheila] That's true. - I mean, the thing that Americans don't realize until they've looked at European governments is, is that their centrists are our far left in the Democratic party. That's their centrist, and then they have socialists and communists and greens and other parties. I think the parliamentary system, because you can win a few seats and still have a role. If a party doesn't have a clear majority itself, it needs to gather other smaller parties into, into making a majority party so that they can pick a prime minister. Nowhere is that clearer, by the way, than in Israel, where a very tiny right wing sect can have tremendous power. Here, if you're a tiny sect, left, right or center, you have nothing. - Mm-hmm. - So I think- - 'Cause you can't even get any seats, you mean. - That's right. You can't get any seats, or if you get a seat, you get one seat, and you get no chairs, you get no special committee, you don't get anything. - Can't even have a caucus. - Right. (Sheila laughs) You don't have any access to any powerful position in a structured government like the United States. A parliamentary system, where they're continuously having this fashion a majority party means that small parties get to have power even with not a majority vote. So their ideas keep in the marketplace. They're always there, even if they aren't the majority sentiment. Here, you can just- - What about- - [Jackie] Crush us and move us aside. - And what about outside the government, though? I mean, I use it as an example, because from far away, you say, it seemed to me, maybe there was going to be some sweeping, slow U-turn and you're right. In America, it's slower than anywhere else, and it is meant to be, but what about outside the government? Do you see any kind of forces gathering again, or- - Yes. - You know, inventing themselves. - Yes. Certainly the labor movement has put organizing the unorganized on the list again, which they didn't for many years. They said it, but they weren't doing it. Now they're putting money into it. That's gonna make a huge difference because the unorganized now look like what the demographics of America are emerging to be. They are not white, blue-collar workers. They are service employees, they are multiethnic, they are multinational, they are Black and Brown, they are Asian and Pacific Islander, and when you begin to organize that group as the new labor movement, and that group contains gay and lesbian people who, for the first time in a very long time, are feeling safe enough in some places to come out, well, I think we got a, if the lesbian and gay and bisexual movement is able to reach out to the labor movement and reach out to all of those groups who fight 209, who fight 187 and mean it, not lip service, but mean it, to be out in the demonstrations, to be out on the picket lines, if we can do that, we and the labor movement and the sentiment that exists in America, that we just saw in the living wage coalition fight, you know? Amazing thing about that, the LA Times came out against it, strongly, in an editorial, the Daily News, strongly, in an editorial, KNX Radio strongly in an editorial, the Chamber of Commerce said life as we know it would end if we passed this thing. It not only passed unanimously, but the polls showed that like 85% of the people who vote, which is a more conservative group than just the people who live in Los Angeles, 85% of the municipal voters thought it was a great idea. Now it's because everybody who thinks for longer than 20 seconds believes that the gap between rich and poor widening is not safe for anybody. - Well, you know, it used to be that we thought, in the middle class or the lower middle class or the working class, I can be upwardly mobile, and now I think people are afraid that wherever they are, they're going to be involuntarily downwardly mobile. - Well, it's happening. - And that's the class that you wanna protect is the one you think you're gonna either slide up into or slide down into. - Right. - What do you think about all this, Charles? - Well, I think that we're going to have to make some stretches if we're going to actually connect potential constituencies and make them real constituencies, and make sure that lesbigays are involved in that, and take our proper role in trying to be part of a progressive movement that empowers people that haven't traditionally be empowered. And I think it's gonna be real hard for the next few years for us to do that. I think that the signals from Europe are mixed. I think that it's always difficult to translate the peculiarities of another country to the situation here in America. I don't know whether or not it's that they're so unique or we're so unique, but it's very difficult to do that. In France, you have the situation where you have the Conservatives, who are traditionally perceived in France is isolationist, actually being thrown out of office by Labour, which is traditionally considered an international kind of a movement, in order to protect and assure that the French people will hold onto benefits that they feel have been hard won. At the same time, what we're seeing is a movement toward coalition in Europe, but the problem is, for the French, is that the capital isn't in France. It is in Paris, and so, I don't know how much we can translate from that to the American situation. What I do think is translatable are the economic trends. What I think that we're seeing in the United States, to some extent in England, is the fact that we're in an era perceived as very affluent. We're in a boom era, and that bodes well for certain types of movement, and it bodes well for certain kids of strategies, and I think that we need to be conscious of that, and we need to organize with that in mind. I think that we can expect that people are going to not be organizing and not fighting and not motivated out of a sense of despair. There are a lot of us who live in despair, and there are many of us who have a reason to fear, but that isn't going to move America right now. Too many of us are feeling too well, and we don't want, don't bring us no bad news. However, there is a different kind of a responsiveness and we know this historically, in America, during good times. People are more generous, they're more willing to extend their borders, they're more willing to extend a helping hand and an understanding hand when they themselves don't feel economically threatened. That's something that we need to be conscious of, we need to integrate into our agenda, and we can utilize that as a step off point to organize in order to say, we want part of, we want to be included in, we want to contribute to affluent America, to successful America. - Of course, you know, movements in this country are based on difference, which is what we've seen, probably since the advent, at least, of the Civil Rights Movements, and again, I'm always stuck in my own lifetime. So this may be not absolutely accurate, historically, but the movements based on difference have been essentially progressive. That is, they've been about liberation, they've been about equality, and you could tell me whether you think that's a progressive notion or not. I guess Americans did when they had the revolution. Has our movement really been like that. I mean, has it seemed to you to have elements of progressiveness, progressivity, whatever, in it? Or is it a different kinda thing? - Absolutely. I think that we've been a progressive movement in the sense that we have started from disempowerment, from a sense of oppression and from the reality of oppression. That wasn't something that was in our own minds. This is something that people of color, that lesbians and gays, that poor people, that people of a variety of different groups, recent immigrants, have had to face in this country. And as we've coalesced, as we've decided that we're not going to take it anymore, we have stepped forward, we've done that through the process of identity politics, and for us, that's been more than a strategy. It's been where we are, it's been where we've lived. We've had to claim the right to be ourselves, and in doing that, I think that we have stepped into and incorporated a progressive movement. The reason it's been progressive is because we've been willing to coalesce, we've been willing to extend a sense of shared purpose and shared liberation with regard to other groups and that's very important and that's of the essence of progressivism. And that's, I think, something that we certainly see in the lesbian and gay movement, that's something that we see in the Civil Rights Movement. I think that there are a lot of issues that the African-American community, for instance, has with the lesbian and gay movement because in some ways, there's a perceived difference of directions needed to be pursued, yet at the same time, you'll find that Black preachers, many of whom are in Congress, have been the strongest supporters of lesbian and gay rights at the congressional level, at the state level, at political levels, at all kinds of levels. That's the kind of coalition building that I think is the essence of progressivity. - [Sheila] Torie? - Well, I think the spirit of gay liberation was certainly progressive. It grew out of the women's movement, it was linked to the various movements of the '60s. It shared a sense of connections across and between various struggles for freedom, international as well as national, and I think the best spirit or soul of gay politics over the last 30 years have been progressive, as Charles said, but I also think that inevitably, the trickle down theory of a very conservative era has increasingly had its stamp on gay and lesbian politics and I actually think we're in a time where, from where I sit, the conservative or moderate or even, I mean, I wouldn't call it right wing. I mean, the right wing of the gay movement is like Andrew Sullivan, who's for marriage and gays in the military. I mean, that's not very to the right. - If we were really right wing, we'd want to beat ourselves up in the parking lot. - Right, exactly. You know, everything is relative here. But I do think, I do see an increasingly power of corporations in the gay and lesbian community to basically sort of buy organizations and I see very little discussion and debate about what that means. I do see a lack of vibrancy on what I would call, kind of the left, although the term itself doesn't have a whole lot of meaning, which I think shows how kind of bankrupt ideology on the left is, and I don't wanna kind of sound too academic or abstract but I do think we are still in a right wing era, I do think that the right wing hasn't crested. I think that it is still the most powerful political and social force out there, and so, what that inevitably means is that people's horizons are limited. The debate, the political debate, whether it's in Congress or whether it's sort of on the streets has narrowed, in my view. There's several things. I don't think progressive forces, I think because of identity politics, which is absolutely necessary, I mean, I don't want to be in a world, I don't wanna be in a new progressive era where recognition of difference, where gay and lesbian voices, where recognition of the power of feminism and women and all different, and multicultural voices are not front and center, it's not a movement I wanna be part of. However, I think, as many people have pointed out, the fragmentation, the loss of traditional left ideas, the dissolution of socialism as a vibrant, as having any kind of relevance in this country, and the lack of something to take its place has meant that voices other than ra-ra capitalism, individualism, make your own way, and very conservative voices since the right wing is so powerful, and even reactionary voices, you know, are few and far between, and I think we're in one of those in between periods, where kind of the old answers are dead, the right wing doesn't really have the answers that can unite this country, that can lead us forward. They just plain don't. They're anti-democratic, they're anti-pluralistic, they're anti the best of American spirit, but we're in a time where there isn't much on the left, and so, to me, what that means is, I think it calls for some interesting conversations to take place across movements, and within the gay and lesbian community, I mean, as Jackie said, I think part of the question is, when is the gay and lesbian community going to move beyond itself and really link up in a meaningful way, not a rhetorical way? I mean, it's not sort of like, do you believe in NAFTA or not? This sort of abstract debate that sometimes has happened in the left wing of the gay movement that's sort of irrelevant, but real questions about how do we take this vibrant workplace organizing, for example, the thing, there's so many things happening in the gay and lesbian community in workplaces, in corporations, in small businesses, in government workplaces. These employee groups are flowering all over the place. What does that mean in the context of a resurgence in the labor movement, of a labor movement that's looking to organize in sectors that it frankly ignored at its own peril over the last 30 years? How do those conversations happen across class, across race and so forth? So I think the challenge is, for the left in general, whatever the heck that is, for progressive forces in general and for the gay and lesbian communities, how do we move beyond our own issue, how do we have meaningful coalitions that really mean something, and how do we forge a vision which the right wing will never be able to do, that speaks to the best, that speaks out beyond our own self-interests, that engages people in activism and in changing the world, the way we saw in the '60s and '70s? - Well, I wonder whether, let me try out one sort of tenet on you. In many ways, it feels to me as though, in the last half of this century, some of what we've incorporated in government about how we wanna protect people, what they consider their rights, came out of a socialistic notion that if you're gonna collect all those taxes, you ought to probably use them back in a way that tries to equalize. And it's interesting, in a time when we see wealth and poverty being more polarized, still people think about healthcare and access to healthcare as something we ought to be getting to them. You know, people talk about, well, is there a retirement plan at work and all of that? Is that just a very small percentage of folks or have we incorporated some of this in a way that makes it seem so mainstream that we don't see these? - You mean the gay community- - As lefty ideas? - People in general? - People in general. - Yeah, I think healthcare as a right is something that people have, that came out of the legacy of the New Deal and the New Frontier, and so, the people do have a sense of that. That is a progressive notion. - Well, then maybe that's where the left has been tucked away all these years, if you know what I mean. I mean, we were talking about how the multiplicity of parties in Europe and that's a place where the flames are kept alive, et cetera, maybe we're missing it. I mean, you know me, I think the glass is half-full, so I try to see if these ideas are still alive because we've incorporated some of it, and I don't know how successfully, but. - Well, actually quite successfully, and it is, I think, gonna be where you talk about the return, where the return comes from. People have taken for granted that certain things like healthcare come with certain jobs, taken for granted that there are holidays and weekends off, and then, we see the state legislature okay the end to the eight hour day, and at first. - [Sheila] Not yet. - Well, it's working on it. But you know what I'm saying. But I think that what you're going to see is, is that most movements don't come out of the head. Most movements come out of the conditions that people find their lives in. The one place I disagree with you, though, is that I don't think we're in an affluent period. I think we're in an affluent period for some people, but not for most people. In fact, just the opposite. I think most people are afraid about what's gonna happen to them economically. And I think because they see that some of the things that they thought we could never lose this, this is just the way it is now from now on, being threatened, like what does a healthcare plan mean if you can't go to a doctor? - [Sheila] Right. - I mean, I may have a perfectly good health plan. It says so, I have this little card, I carry it in my pocket, but no one will let me use anywhere and if I need to be in a hospital, before the stitches have been finished, they're wheeling me to the front door. I don't consider this healthcare. Pardon me, people are gonna react to that as it happens to more and more people. That's where the fight back will come from. - Well, maybe this is what links us to France in a way, and that is not the question of what labels you put on, left, right or center, but the feeling of entitlement and the removal of whatever that is. Nevermind the real word entitlement, when we talk about welfare reform, we'll probably get into that, too, but maybe the notion, I'm sorry- - No, but your point about the language is really important, because the language has become irrelevant. It's become meaningless, sort of traditional left versus right versus center. I mean, it's become less relevant to describing what's going on, so I think you're right about that. - Well, maybe we ought to say what we think we're talking about. I mean, I realize I came to you with this notion and said, please talk about it, but what, if we have a notion, if we have an ideology about and we call it left or progressive, what do we mean, what are some of the things that we mean? - Redistributing the wealth. I mean, in this country, we've seen a revolution from the top 1% of the country owning 17, controlling 17% of the wealth in 1978 or whatever it was at the end of the Carter administration, '80, to controlling 40% of the wealth. We've seen a bigger, you know, 50 million people, whatever living in poverty, an increase greater than in 50 years. There were trends until the last 20 years to decrease the gap between the richest and the poorest, to increase a safety net, and to basically expand the middle class. I mean, I'm not an economist, but you look at those statistics and the fact is, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is shrinking. - And shrinking toward the low end, not toward the high end. And that's being done in a number of different ways. Downsizing is a very big, you know, I mean, the things that have happened is, actually, if you wanna look at a period in history that this most- - Resembles. - Resembles, I would say it would be the 1920s. Because there's some specific things that were exactly the same. Deregulation was considered the thing, let business do whatever it wants, what's good for business is good for America, that was a very big part of that period. That's what's happening here now. The notion that capital should be allowed to essentially do what it wants with the environment, should be allowed to do what it wants with respect to labor, those are both very in vogue in Washington and Sacramento and Los Angeles. - Now capital's international. - Right. Absolutely. - Which really changes the picture. - Oh, yes, indeed. - And so does labor. - Not yet, but it's going to be. It's beginning to happen. - It isn't organized international. - It's beginning to happen, but it will, it has to- - But markets are there now, and I think that increasingly, people perceive themselves as if we're in a country where if corporations are telling us that if we're in a country where, that is not friendly, that is not friendly to making a profit, then we will relocate to where there is a labor pool that is more pliant, that is less demanding, that has less of a sense of its rights. - But that's international capital talking. - Right. - And international labor movement would say, I don't care where you go. The rules are gonna be the same. - No, I think what Charles meant, as I heard it was, that you can hang that over the head of a local labor force because you're saying, you think- - [Jackie] Only as long as you don't have an international labor force. - Right. - That's the goal. First, organize the unorganized here, but then, to organize the unorganized everywhere. That's the only thing that'll fight that kind of international capital. You have to have an international labor movement. - But practically speaking, what you're talking about is organizing the West, because there are a lot of countries where you aren't going to be able to do that. - Why? - The majority of the countries. - Why? - Because, quite simply, because their political regimes aren't gonna let you in to do that kind of organizing. - Well, I don't think they're gonna be invited in. It's gonna happen inside the country. - But we're not there yet, Jackie. - Well, no, no, I appreciate that. That's why I'm saying, you're right. - [Sheila] So but that's one of the- - It's going to happen, and you can see it by looking at the countries that they're now moving out of some Asian countries, which used to be the cheap labor, who, once they started realizing how much money the bosses were making, began to organize into the next market of cheap labor, where they're still at, but eventually, they run out of countries. That's all I'm saying. - But let's return to the notion of what might be elements that we're talking about, that we might include in the notion of progressive. - Oh, okay. - For me, for me, it's increasingly about multiculturalism and about, indeed, reaching out, appreciating other cultures and recognizing that just as the global economy has shrunk, so has labor, the ability of labor to move around, to take power, to educate itself, and that, and that to reach out, embrace people who are like us and who are unlike us, and to create a kind of world, a kind of a culture which is affirming to people who are different. Not necessarily becoming stuck in our differences, and because identity politics has had its uses and has had, and perhaps, has had its day. But getting to a point where we understand that because someone is different doesn't mean that they can't contribute. In fact, America has always taken and absorbed and benefited from many of those differences, but we haven't been willing to treat the people that bring those values and those ideas here, we haven't been willing to treat them as peers until they acculturate, until they assimilate. I think that we have to redefine what we mean by progressives and look at it, we say progressive, we don't even say liberal anymore. It's a dirty word. - Oh, no, I think liberal is to the right of progressives. - Right. - That's the only reason I don't use it. (Charles chuckling) - Now it's time for a break, so I'm going to just pitch the break and we'll be back in a few minutes. Don't go away because we're going to continue and wrap up and who knows what we'll talk about? We'll be right back. (gentle music) - [Narrator] Life's problems can be tough. Sometimes, it helps to talk. Call us. We're Women Helping Women. - Hi, welcome back to "Get Used to It." I'm Sheila Kuehl, and today, we're talking about the resurgence of the left, if there is any and if there will be one, its relationship to the gay and lesbian community, if there is any and if there will be one. (laughs) And anything else we think to talk about. My guests today, as I told you before, but I'll tell you again, Jackie Goldberg, City Council Member in the City of LA, Charles Stewart, Chief Deputy of the State Senator, Diane Watson, and former Co-Chair of the National Association of Black and White Men Together, and Torie Osborn, the author of "Coming Home to America," and former ED of the Center here in LA. Welcome back. Well, we've been talking a lot about economics, we've been talking about politics, et cetera, and we talked a little about queer, but I'd like us to see if we can bring these notions, if we can, together. Do we have a movement? Do you see anything different happening in the movement and if so, is it a thing that might help America take this turn or are we captive to our own right wing? Tell me what you think, anybody. Jackie. - Well, I don't think that we are exactly a movement. I think we have issues and the issues are getting played out, some in legal forums, some in congressional forums, some on the street, but it's not really an organized movement. I think to the extent that we haven't done that is to have missed some opportunities. But if you look at the voting trends by lesbians and gay men, we are definitely more progressive, more liberal, more left, pick a phrase, than we are conservative. And that's not just Democrat versus Republican, although a gay Republican in this particular environment, I don't understand anymore. I did 20 years ago, but I don't now. But it's also in terms of things like reproductive rights, you know, much, much, much better voting record in terms of progressive issues on that than the average person of the same socioeconomic background. Much better record on environmental issues than, again, a similar group of demographics that weren't also gay or lesbian. In terms of 209 and 187 in California, or the recent mayor's race, we were definitely more liberal. Not as good as I'd hoped we'd be on 187 and 209, but better than the same group of people who were not gay who had the same demographics. So we are definitely, as a not well organized, but nonetheless, a community of interest, because the outer world creates that for us, antisemite and Jew, homophobic and gay or lesbian person. I mean, if there's no homophobia, it'll be interesting to see what our identity becomes. It may really be challenged. - Well, that's that question about dualism. I mean, Torie, you were telling me about the recent, version of The Advocate that you read that was all about youth. I haven't seen it. - Well, it was their issue, their double issue on under 30, and it was, what really struck me was how multicultural it was, how sort of the new vision and what the youth in our community are talking about, through the leadership and the successful under 30s is beyond gay and lesbian. It's beyond bisexual, it's beyond categories. It's sort of I'm queer, you know, it's much more, it's a different view of the world on this issue, and again, if you look at the polls of straight kids under 30, there is much more acceptance of gay and lesbian. I mean, it's a different world. The under 30 polling is, you know, 30 points ahead of the over 50. It's just a different world. This issue ceases to have a great deal of meaning. Bisexuality is much more accepted, fluidity of sexual identity is much more. I mean, it's a different world under 30, but- - Are you talking about different racial categories or not- - [Torie] Absolutely, same thing. A sort of multiracial, multicultural- - And you know, the federal government's really terrified of this. - I know, they said no. - They would not allow the census to include- - All of the above. - Mixed racial categories. - That's right, Jackie, and I, for one, firmly opposed it. - You did? - I absolutely did. - What does a kid do like my son? - Well- - Who's Black and white? What's he do? What's he mark? - As far as I'm concerned, he needs to make a decision as to where his interests lie and vote his interests. In fact, the same politic we've been advocating all along here. I asked at the recent Black and White Men Together convention, how many people in this room, and I was in the Black Caucus, consider yourselves Black in terms of your political identity and interests? And everyone in the room raised their hands. I said, how many of you are pure Black and are not at all multicultural? And nobody raised their hands. I said, we just went from a room full of African-Americans to a room empty of African-Americans, and we can't afford an empty room at this point. - Well, but I think that's maybe your age group, because my son's under 30, and he resents having to choose. He says, which part of me do I deny? - Except when you know that thereby hangs a tail. There's a kind of a different thing. For instance, we can identify groups that have been oppressed are also groups that are deepest in poverty. If they're deep in poverty, then they need some help and we need to identify, you know, when you talk about Prop 209, which incidentally, for those of you not living in California, was the anti-affirmative action initiative that passed, this was the sort of devil's version of the non-racial, definitive society. - Oh, he's not saying don't, he would not argue that you should leave out African-American as a choice. He's saying if he chooses to identify himself as African-American and Jewish-American, which is how he sees himself, there should be a category that says mixed that he can put down if that's how he sees himself. Who is the government to tell him who he is? - [Charles] And you know, we absolutely have to affirm that. We have to affirm to people- - That's all he's saying. - [Charles] Claiming all of who they are. - That's all he's saying, and he's saying, they're asking me to pick one and pretend I'm not the other and I don't wanna do that. - That's the generation- - Don't put me in that box. - [Torie] I think that's a generational- - He said, don't put me, and you know, every application for college he filled out, they had all these categories, he checked two boxes, even though, every time, it said only check one. He said, I'm not gonna check one. - And this is a good thing. - That's all I'm saying. - This is a trend that speaks to some of the success that the gay and lesbian community has had- - Absolutely. - In putting beyond either/or, in transgendering things, in moving beyond dualism, in saying to the world, you can't put us in the boxes and that's part of, in fact, what our message is. That's one of our values. It's not just about respecting and sort of delighting in diversity, but it's about moving beyond those boxes, and I think, you know, Charles said it, we've sort of said it here, I think there's a way in which identity politics has had its day, as you put it, that, which doesn't mean it can't be, it mustn't be in part of the foundation of some future work, but that there has to be a way we start looking at what we all have in common. There has to be a way in which we start revitalizing a sense of responsibility to each other and building communities and politics and a national ethic of social responsibility again. And you know, I look around me, I think, I don't think we have, necessarily, a coherent movement with a strategy and so forth, but I do think, if I look around, and I say, kinda what's bubbling and burbling and happening at the grassroots level, I think, the labor movement is one, and I think the gay and lesbian movement, ironically, in a very conservative era, and after multiple generations of itself. I mean, there are not a lot of movements that move along in a pretty perky pace for 30 years, and I think we're still moving, albeit it isn't necessarily organized and it isn't necessarily kind of focused or with a clear vision, but I do think that you cannot deny that if you look at, in schools, if you look in workplaces, if you look in religious institutions, that the issue of homophobia is in good faith being grappled with in all of the institutions of American right now. And that makes us vibrant, it makes us necessary as we kind of identify. To me, it's the search for vision. To me, it's what is the language, what is the vision that's gonna unite America across difference? I mean, there are gonna be a few really wealthy people who are into their self-interests, but my experience is that, you know, upper middle class people who have bought in and succeeded and are prosperous, also, there's a part of them that wants to be part of something larger than themself. And I'm not just talking about spiritual or religious. I'm talking about feeling a sense of connectiveness, to a sense of social purpose. - Everybody. - Everybody has- - [Jackie] Everybody wants that, everybody wants that. - But is that just the conditions? Isn't that sort of the vanguard of the, you know- - [Jackie] Oh, no, it's a universal feeling out there. - I agree. - I see it very much in local politics, but it's not always progressive. It doesn't have to be inherently progressive. - [Torie] The right wing is manipulating beautifully. - Depends on the leadership and also, as vibrant as the lesbian and gay movement is, and I agree with your assessment, it's not always a progressive thing that our goal is. I mean, our goal really is for it not to matter. Which is not particularly a forward pushing agenda. It says, we really want to be just allowed to be who we are and it shouldn't matter to anybody as to our jobs, as to whether we get married, we wanna be treated equally before the law, that's not a, necessarily, forward moving agenda. - But I think we've pushed the boundaries on family- - That's true. - Of definitions of family and relationships, on sexuality in this Puritan country. We say sex is good, guys, and we're not letting that one go. No matter what they say, no matter what. We think it's great, you know? - But having achieved a lot of that, I think it's appropriate for us to step back and reexamine the progressive movement, and essentially, do an analysis, what still is to be done, what is it that we found doesn't work, doesn't work for us, doesn't work for America and then move forward. I think people of color are stepping forward and taking a look at that and looking at our own families and saying, there were parts of liberation that have worked for us and from '60s liberation and there are parts of it that haven't worked for us. We need to reexamine that and recontextualize that, and make sure that the advantages that we don't resort, for instance, back to sexism and oppression of women in the African-American community, in order to affirm the male members of our community who are deeply in trouble. And yet- - A very good point. - And yet, that is the way the debate is increasingly being framed. And it's gonna continue to be framed that way, unless we step forward- - 'Cause I don't think the sisters are gonna buy it. - None of the ones I know are. - That's right. I don't think the sisters are gonna sit there, and say, oh, yes, guys, I'll wait around for you guys to figure this out. - Well, it's been an interesting progression, though, I think, because there was oppression, and then each group that has been oppressed has said, finally, wait a second. The first step is to say, no, I'm not bad. So I have to have pride. That's it, I'll take pride in who I am, even though it was originally defined by someone else saying you're different. So I'll say I'm proud of my difference. And now I'm gonna make it a movement, an identity, whatever. We didn't really slice the world that way. It's the people who wanted to oppress who did. So then we're saying in this community, I always thought it was amusing, I'm saying, I'm really proud of who I sleep with. You know what I mean? (group laughs) Really, what, I don't know everything else, but a culture grew up about it, and there is something different. - [Charles] We needed to do that. - Absolutely. - Now, when people come out, they are able to take the kind of leadership that we've seen. I mean, I look around gay lesbian people just in, you know, in California. And they, once they're comfortable with themselves, they have such power as leaders, in other movements, in other places, in business, in whatever it is, like all this pent up energy that they never showed in junior high school or something, you know, they can suddenly do it, it's set free, but with the perspective of an outsider. And I wonder if there's some power in that. - I think so. - You know? - [Torie] The perspective of he outsider? - Yeah. - What The Advocate article on youth talked about was the Generation Q stepping into that space and saying, I don't wanna refight your battles. I don't wanna refight your wars. You've given me this space to feel good and to feel proud of being a lesbian or gay person or bisexual and any and all of the combination, as time shall tell, and I'm going to take that space. Now I don't want to have to be proud of what I am or what box I belong to. Now, I wanna look at what I can contribute, and that may not necessarily be what we of our generation thought it was going to be. - Right. - They aren't necessarily saying I'm going to go off to college. They're saying that what I wanna do is not necessarily to fit into a corporate world and be successful. - Yeah, that's what I was struck by, was how many of them, like many of us, 30, 40 years ago, said, life is about changing the world. That's what I, in different ways, they said it in different ways, but I thought, wow. - Straight kids, too, though. - Yeah, no, I believe that. I think it's a generation, this new generation. - But when they talk about changing the world, is that coming to what you were talking about in terms of the affirmation of multiculturalism, et cetera, is that inherently progressive, if they talk about it this way? - To a certain extent- - Well, it's part of it. - They take it for granted. To a certain extent, they take for granted that they don't have to identify their friends along racial lines or ethnic lines, or know that much about the gender identity or what your allegiance is or what your religious background is. The thing is, this is what I have to contribute. What do you have to contribute? What can we learn from one another? And that is how I perceive my empowerment, and they really are stepping off from where we've come. The problem, of course, for us old guard is that we still see battles that need to be fought. - Yeah. - We still see economic challenges that await, that have to be addressed. We still see inequities. - And when they come up- - And privilege- - Against them, they will, too. - Can we wait? Will be around? - No, no, no, we don't wait. We have to them on right now. - Absolutely. - I'm just saying they're gonna join with us in those battles as soon as they come up against them, it isn't- - How different are they, though, from, how different are they from you guys at their age? - They're very different. - Very different. - I mean, you standing on a car with a megaphone, and I don't know where the hell you guys were, you know, I mean, I've seen pictures of you all fighting those, but no, seriously. You were all fighting these things in the '50s and '60s. - But you see, I don't know. I came up into the '60s. I mean, I was a teenager in the '60s. I'm too young to have been a part of the Civil Rights Movement. I watched it on TV. It is what fired my passion. It is what made me who I was. And there was a sense, a mass movement of people who felt that the greatest thing to do with your life was to try to change the world. It might be changing your little high school in Bed-Stuy, New York. It might be, staring a daycare center, the first ever. I mean, it had multiple forms, but remember, it was the movement. You could be doing women's stuff, you could be doing Black Power stuff, you could be doing, later, gay stuff, but you were all part of the movement for about 10 years, from you know, '67 or something to the mid-'70s, till the antiwar movement, till Vietnam was over. There was a huge sense that not only that millions of people were in motion, trying to end the war in Vietnam and making the world truly democratic, expanding the opportunities for more and more people, but there was the sense that that was the best thing to do, that that was the most wonderful life, that that was the most fulfilling life, that the personal fulfillment was political action and that ranged along a spectrum. I mean, there were liberals, there were radicals, there were, you know, whatever. Generally, along a left spectrum. Now that, it is different now. People are- - You know, I have a friend that 20 years later, whom I knew back in the '60s when we were teenagers, during that era, who is a straight, white male, who came to me and he said, "Those of us that were friends "and that felt such dedication then," he said, "Those of us, those of you who are still "going forward with that are because you're Black "or because you're gay "or because you're in the feminist movement." He said, "I'm envious, I resent the fact that- - That's such bullshit. - Had that to fight for. - I'm sorry. That's such bullshit. - He was coming from a sincere place. Then how would you respond to him, Jackie? How do you respond? - If he still believes in that, then he still has a lot of work to do. He has a lot of work. - What do you say- - Let himself off the hook. I'd say get involved in organizing a fight back on behalf of the people who are about to be thrown on the street through the various federal changes. - His point was that we were fighting through identity politics. - He was never fighting through identity politics. - No, he wasn't. We were. - Yeah. - We were. - [Torie] He owned the new left, the student movement. - No, no, no. - And that's his contention. - No, I don't agree. - Well, where are your colleagues from the- - What's the strategy then, Jackie, how do we engage him? 'Cause that's America. - Because he was fighting for a world in which he would be able to enjoy the fruits of his labor and so would everyone else around him. He was never fighting for white maleness. - No, I know, but I think has been hard, the last 15 years. - Only when you wanna let yourself off the hook. - Straight men to find a place for themselves, unless they happen to be in the labor movement, or unless they happen to be in local politics. - All I'm saying is, I think they're letting themselves off the hook. - [Charles] Even if that's true, that's not a winning argument. - No, no, I understand that. - You have to feel- - We don't recruit people to a movement that way, Jackie. - [Jackie] I wasn't trying to recruit people that way. - But how do we do that? - Very simple. It's very simple. The things that we believed in, as white left people in the '60s were what? Were that there's something more important that just yourself, all right? That there is a public welfare, a greater good, that we are interconnected and that, if there is any group that is not doing well, it affects me. It's not I'm doing for them. - Right. - That's bullshit then. It's bullshit now. You do it because you're connected to everybody else. - [Charles] Okay, let me play the devil's advocate. Let me try to talk like a straight white male here. - Oh my God, it's right here first on Sheila's show. (group laughs) - This'll be good. - Go for it. - How do these things happen to me? - [Jackie] Go for it. - Those things were important to me then, and they were right and I still believe in them, but you know what, Jackie? I found out life is hard. I found out that life is, it's tough for me to get into the kind of job that matters to me that lends me meaning, that it's tough for me to make a family work and stay together, that it's tough for me to ensure that my kids are gonna be able to make it in this society, that that has absorbed- - Did very well. You do very well. - An enormous amount of my energy. - You do very well. - Thank you. - And I would say to you that if you are not about expanding the opportunities, it will always be tough for your kids and for you. You see, the argument that the right wing makes is that there's only so much, it's just a very little stuff that we can have, and therefore, you have to knock everybody aside and hold onto it. That's not true. - I agree. - The reality is, is that there is enough for everybody. There really, truly is, particularly in a state like California, which is so incredibly wealthy. There is enough for everybody. It means that you have to be willing to stand up and say that those at the top just can't have unlimited amount, that's all. Not that they can't have more than anyone else. They just can't have an unlimited amount. There is enough is enough. There is enough is enough. And that there are limits to everything, and that we live in an ideological time where there is no limit. You're entitled, in fact, you're encouraged to believe that you should be able to acquire more wealth than if you spent as much money as you could spend every day of your life, you could never spend it all, and that that's okay. And if he believes in what he says he believes, he'll say that's not okay. That's not okay. - But maybe that- - You ever had- - Go ahead. - Or not enough. - There is enough for everybody to be able to send their kids to college. Why do we fight over affirmative action? Because we believe that we shouldn't be building more and more universities so that every kid who wants to go gets to go. That's when you have to fight over it. You create scarcity and then, you have to fight over it. - That's right. - Right. - That's right, because we're building- - [Jackie] No reason why there isn't enough- - Well, I can tell you, we're building plenty of prisons. Nobody has said that we've got too many prisons. - Too many prisons, let's close a few of them down. - Uh-uh, no, no, no, no, we need 14 more. If we hadn't drawn that line. - Exactly. - In case anyone wonders why the budget was late in California. - No, but that's the point, and that's where we have to make the argument. That's where leadership makes a difference. You say, you know, there's virtually no reason in a state like California. Now you can pick places in the country where, frankly, their natural resources are not great, where you may have to argue what the federal role oughta be. But in California, you don't need a federal role to have enough universities that every single kid who wants to go oughta be able to go and for free. - But the attitude requires an absence of fear for one of two reasons or both. One is, you don't care if you have enough, because you can live on what you've got and you raise your family to live on what you've got, and it's okay, it isn't like needing a bunch more. The second is, you feel comfortable with what you've got. And it's fine, you feel, and you were talking about, in the expanding economy, when people are making more, they're more generous, and you said you didn't think the economy was expanding, although the numbers show, something is growing, even more than the stock market, unemployment is down, but- - Unemployment is not down. Unemployment is technically down because they don't count the people who have stopped looking. Unemployment is not down. - But most people, but you can't deny the fact, it isn't just government disinformation. More people in the last few years, for example, have felt that the recession has receded in California, that there is a sense, if you look at polling data. Now we could have mass false consciousness going on. - No, no, no- - But most people- - [Jackie] Depends on who you're talking to. - But there are a lot of middle class people who feel as if, who are feeling a little more secure. I don't know the, I mean, you know the numbers better than I do. - I don't know the numbers, I can tell you that- - But wait, wait. See, the point isn't, it is not to argue, 'cause the point is that unless we create a movement that speaks to the fellow, in whose persona you just were, and that speaks across class lines, and that goes back to what you said, that if somebody is poor and hungry, not that that person feels so other, that I don't wanna deal with them, but that somehow, I feel that there's something I can do, most, many people in this country, particularly straight white men who have been left behind by the movements in the last 15 years, don't feel a place for themselves in a vision of moving forward. I have no argument with anything of what you've said, except that I don't think that there is the leadership or the ideology or the vision or the movements moving that speak to this fellow. 'Cause you can't, in the United States of America, build a movement without middle class participation. It cannot be a movement simply of, you know, unorganized strawberry workers. It has to be across class movements. It's going to have to be, to make substantial change. So we're gonna have to reach this guy, whether- - Oh, absolutely. - And yeah, you know, because he owned the new left, there is a little bit of sour grapes there, and we can all say, yeah, well, you know, we needed our time, too. Women needed our time for our voices, and gays and lesbians did, and people of color did, so buddy, but the fact is, we better figure out a way for us all to come together. - I wasn't suggesting- - Or we're all in trouble. - I was suggesting, though, that there are straight white men who have found a way to be involved and be relevant and all of this. And I'm simply saying I was annoyed that he was letting himself too much off the hook. It's different if he never claimed to have those views. - You know, we're, you're not gonna believe this. - [Torie] We're out of time. - But we're like within 30 seconds of being out of time, and I wanted to take that 30 seconds just to, I mean, no matter where we are in the middle of a conversation, we would never have neatly wrapped up any of it, so I wanna thank you, Jackie, thank you, Charles, thank you, Torie. Thank you very much for being with us. I can bet you that we're gonna still be sitting here the next 15 minutes, finishing this conversation. I'm so sorry you can't be with us. But please do keep tuning in, because there's change in the wind, and we oughta get used to it. (upbeat music)